Leaf Collages

Today, we took a walk and collected several leaves.  We talked about how the leaves used to be green, but have started turning colors like yellow, red, and brown.  When we got home, we made leaf collages by sticking leaves on clear contact paper and adding a second piece of contact paper on top once the girls were finished.  This was a simple enough project that even Ella could participate and something that Arin enjoyed very much.

Chrysanthemum

Yesterday, we read the book Chrysanthemum by by Kevin Henkes.  This book is on our list of 100 Books to Read Before Kindergarten.  I searched the internet for some ideas of activities to go along with this book.  I came across a great resource on homeschoolshare.com for a Free Chrysanthemum Lapbook.  The person that put this lapbook together did a great job.  They have sections of material focusing on names (which is what the book is about) and sections focusing on mice (the characters in the book) and a section focusing on flowers (because a Chrysanthemum is a flower).  We chose to work with the section focusing on flowers because I felt that was the most on Arin's level. 

We started our activites by working on the Numbers in Bloom file folder game.

Next, Arin colored the stem, leaves and petals of a flower.  I cut these pieces out and Arin "built" a flower.

Ella, who loves to be part of the action, colored a flower picture, which her daddy found on the internet and printed for her. 

After Ella was done coloring, she enjoyed putting her crayons away.

Next, Arin glued flowers onto stems. That project can be found here (about half way down the page).

Then, Arin really enjoyed the flower matching cards.  This was an easy activity for her, but the flowers are pretty and she wanted to play again and again.  We also talked about the flowers' names and their colors, etc.  In the future, we may use these cards as a memory or go fish! game.

The last project we did was an alphabet matching book.  In this book, Arin glued the lowercase letter next to the correct uppercase letter (I had cut out the letters and placed them randomly on the table beside her).  The q was made to look like a backwards p, instead of a lowercase q with a tail on it.  It was the only letter that she had trouble identifying.

Ten Black Dots

Today we read Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews.  Once we were done with the book, I printed out number coloring pages.  I was disappointed that there were only the numbers 0-9.  I would have liked to have the number 10 as well, but Arin didn't seem to mind.  Once the pages were printed, I trimmed away the excess paper and stapled the numbers together, making a book.  Then, Arin went page by page and stamped the correct number of dots on each number, using her Do A Dot markers.  She loves those markers and she has a love for counting (she takes after her grandma for that) so this was a great activity for her.

Next, I made a game, which I found in Peggy Kaye's book, Games with Books.  (We love activities to go with the books that we read, so I was thrilled to find this book that is full of ideas and I do not have to come up with them all on my own).  The game consisted of 14 dotted cards - some requiring you to move forward and some to move backward, a game board, and playing pieces.  I love games like this that require the players to move a certain number of spaces.  Arin still gets confused sometimes on which space she needs to start counting from, so I love to have a variety of games to reinforce this skill. 

Lastly, we used Games with Books to inspire the final activity, however, we put our own twist on it.  The book suggested making fingerprint dots.  Make one dot and circle it, make two dots and circle them, make three dots and circle them and so on.  Instead, I had Arin make fingerprint dots to fill the paper.  Then, I gave her a die.  She would roll the die and then circle that amount of dots.  Arin loved making the fingerprints and she loved rolling the die, but circling the correct number of dots didn't rank anywhere close to a favorite activity.  Perhaps it was so overwhelming with so many dots.  I probably should have just followed the book's directions for this activity.

Florida: Beach

It's been a while since we have worked on our "Reading Our Way Around the USA" project.  Last month, we spent a week and a half away enjoying the Florida beaches.  So, today, when we resumed our project, we chose to start back by learning about beaches.  Florida has 663 miles of beaches.  Florida has the second largest shoreline in the USA (first is Alaska).

Today we read several beach books:
Let's Take a Walk on the Beach by Karen O'Connor
Beach Play by Marsha Hayles
Beach Day by Patricia Lakin
My Beach Book (Smithsonian Book)
The Florida Water Story: From Raindrops to the Sea by Peggy Sias Lantz
To the Beach! by Linda Ashman
Beach is to Fun: a book of relationships by Pat Brisson
Beach by Elisha Cooper
Warm Sun, Soft Sand by Lenzi West
Beaches by Joann Macken
The Sand, The Sea and Me by M. Jean Craig
 
We also did several activities to go along with the beach theme.
 
I put some sand in a casserole dish and Arin practiced making some of her letters.  I had planned on working on the concept of vowels, but Arin was most interested in making Q's, so we just went with that instead.

 

Next we talked about beach erosion.  We packed some wet sand on one side of a casserole dish.  Then we poured some water into the dish.  Arin rocked the dish back and forth to make waves and to wash away the sand.

Next, Arin colored some sand.

 

With the colored sand, Arin made a layered sand bottle.

Ella loves to do school also, so she colored a picture of Florida.

Next, we printed out a coloring book picture of a sailboat.  We put the picture under a piece of glass (from a picture frame).  Arin traced the picture onto the glass.  Then, she painted the sections of the glass with glue.  Once she finished a section, she sprinkled colored sand onto that section. She repeated with the remaining sections until her picture was finished.

Next, we threw in a little science.  I filled a glass to the top with warm water.  Then, Arin, slowly poured in a half cup of salt.  The cup of water did not overflow because the salt took up the spaces between the water molecules.

Next, Arin made a wave in a bottle.  She filled a clear plastic bottle halfway with water, added a few drops of blue food coloring, and filled the rest of the bottle with oil.  Ella really liked these wave bottles and she carried her bottle with her for a long time.

The last project, seemed to be the most difficult for Arin.  A few nights ago, I was looking at the Montessori Moments blog.  On there, she had her children write stories using pages of magazines as writing prompts.  I tried this with Arin, but she wasn't grasping the concept too well.  I asked her to tell me a story about the picture that I cut out of the magazine.  She said she couldn't because she couldn't read.  So I told her an example of what I was looking for.  She still wasn't too interested in making up a story.  So I asked her several questions and got her talking that way.   We will be doing more of this type of activity in the future to get more creativity flowing.

Arin's much prompted story.

Mommy: What's happening in this picture.

Arin: There was a little girl and she blewed in a shell and she splashed in the water and then made a sand castle and then she went back home.

Mommy: What did she do when she got home?

Arin: She made a sandcastle.

Mommy: So she made a sandcastle at home and at the beach?

Arin: Yes

Mommy: What's the little girl's name?

Arin: Shelly

Mommy: How old's Shelly?

Arin: Three

A Guessing Game

On Sunday, we took a walk and gathered some more rocks.  Today, we made a guessing game with these rocks.  We had twenty rocks in all.  We took took turns putting a few rocks in a large, lidded, empty yogurt container (the other person had their eyes closed during this).  Then we gave the container to the other person, who would then shake the container and guess how many rocks were inside.  Then the lid would be opened and the rocks counted.  We got the number of rocks right very few times, but Arin still thought this was great fun.  She also insisted on counting the amount of rocks for both of our turns, which I was happy about because it gave her counting practice.

Hot Rocks

I have seen this activity on several different blogs and have always wanted to try it with Arin, but haven't in the past because I didn't want Arin to burn herself on the rocks.  Uncle Todd was here yesterday, so Arin wanted to do some sort of a project with him. We had leftover rocks from when we had gatehered them for our tic-tac-toe game, so we decided to go ahead and try this activity.  I put four rocks on a baking sheet and put them in the oven.  I turned on the oven to 350 and let the rocks stay in there until the oven was preheated.  Then, I took the rocks out of the oven and gave a couple to Arin and a couple to Uncle Todd.  Then, they colored the rocks with crayons.  The heat of the rocks melted the crayons, creating a cool effect.  We were surprised though that the wax was so runny and I thought that the color would have been a bit more bold.

They also found out that it was cool to melt the crayon on the rock and then color with that crayon on paper, which created a different effect than coloring on paper with a cold crayon.

Building a Fire

Yesterday, Arin helped gather sticks in the yard to build a fire. 

Ella was fascinated by the fire.