Learning and Playing: Our week in review

Here are just a few highlights from Marcus and Sophia's week playing and learning....


Learning Trays:
I had the following learning activities on the learning shelves* for the kids--

1)  Animal Domino Set
Aren't these things cute?  I just love this toy.  These are made by Plan Toys and like most Plan Toys they are extremely durable and well made.   I love these dominoes particularly because they are extra large.  So even very little hands can be successful at stacking them and manipulating them.  Marcus and Sophia don't yet understand the rules of the classic dominos.  However, we played some matching and grouping games with these.   The kids also had fun setting up long domino chains and "huffing and puffing" them down like the big bad wolf.  The other activity that they came up with was using the dominos to build a train across the floor.   All in all this was a very popular tray that promoted basic math skills (matching and sorting); language skills (talking about the animals); fine motor skills (setting up domino chains); and creative skills (pretending to be the big bad wolf and building a train).  Not bad for a simple toy! 

2)  Nuts and Bolts Matching
I found these at a Once Upon a Child store near my house.  (That is where I buy most of our toys.)  These are old school Melissa and Doug Nuts and Bolts.  I can't find these on amazon anymore to link them up for you, so they must be pretty old.  The came in a wooden base that you can actually screw the nuts into, but that proved too difficult for Marcus and Sophia.  So, I took them out and put them on a tray instead so they could twist the bolts with their hand.  I like this particular nuts and bolts set because it emphasises both colors and shapes.  Each nut and bolt is a different color and shape.  The st is also self correcting.  (Only the yellow nut will match the yellow bolt.)

3)  Magnetic Dress Up Doll
Sophia really enjoys this toy.  It helps build vocabulary by teaching her to describe the dolls clothes.  It is also a good toy to practice dexterity as she has to manipulate the tiny little pieces to dress her doll.

4)  Star Counting Game
This was a practice in counting and math. Basically each laminated card had a picture of a spaceship a moon, and some stars.  At the bottom of the cards were three numbers.  (Different numbers were on different cards and they were not in any particular order.)  The child had to count the stars and then put the clothespin on the correct number.  I downloaded these cards for free from some site, but I now completely forget where I got them from. (I hate that!)   If anyone recognizes them, please leave a comment so I can give credit. 

5)  Lacing Cards
The kids see me sewing all of the time, so they were excited when I told them that they could sew with these cards.  However, they quickly lost interest in the lacing.  Instead they mostly pretended to eat the foam food.  :) 

6)  Fruits and Vegetables Cutting Set
You will have to forgive this picture.  As I type this, most of the fruits and vegetables are spread across the living room floor.  Very few got put back on the shelf like they are suppose to.  So I used the stock photo from amazon so you could see the toy we have. This is an ingenious idea for a toy.  The wooden fruit "components" are held together with strong velcro.  The child then uses a wooden knife to "cut" the toys apart.  Marcus and Sophia love pretending to cut the food and serve it to me.  This is an excellent fine motor activity.

  

(Photo courtesy of Amazon.com) 

*To see more information on how we use our learning shelves, please visit this tot school post here. 

Other fun learning and playing:

We had a light alien unit theme going recently.  Marcus was interested in checking out some books about aliens so we just kind of went from there.  (Hence the space ship math activity above.  I made that to tie in with our theme.) 

We made Letter A's in the shape of aliens...

....And we made Alien Masks.

We also played with Moon Sand.  (Speaking of moon sand, I also found a recipe for making homemade moon sand.  I can share that if anyone is interested.  The commercial moon sand is so expensive, so I was glad to finally find a decent homemade version.) 

Marcus and Sophia also experimented with their hanging monkey toy.  They learned a lot about weights and balancing a scale with this. 

The kids also brought out their beginner pattern blocks.  They each choose which pictures they wanted to build with the shapes.  They were very proud of their creations so they each wanted me to take their picture why they laid by their work.  :)

 And we also made a Batman Letter B to add to our alphabet books. 

Sophia also hung out in our listening center while she read her nursery rhyme book while following along to the CD.  She just loved doing this!  This is a great activity for building print awareness.

..And as you know, we love books at our house!  These are the books that Marcus and Sophia chose to read this week.

A is for Alien: A Unit Study on Space

At the library this week, Marcus asked to get some books out about aliens. 
I did a quick search and found stumbled upon two titles that we really enjoyed.  I ended up turning this into a light unit study.

Updated: 11/10/2010 with more ideas!  

Fun Read-Alouds:

The first book we read was Alien Invasion written and illustrated by 7 year old Benjamin Kendall.

 

When I first checked this book out, I had no idea that it was written by a little kid.  However, I have to say that Benjamin Kendall is one awesome kid!  This book had me chuckling from beginning to end.  It is not outright funny, but it has this subtle type of humor that I found extremely enjoyable to read.
The story was a great one, and Marcus asked me to read it to him about 9 times this week!   I also couldn't get over his illustrations.  I am 30 and can't draw near as well as Benjamin at 7! 


The second book we checked out was Alistair and the Alien Invasion.

 

This was another great find.  The kids both enjoyed this story and I read it multiple times too this week.  This book also had my chuckling.  My favorite part is the illustration of Alistair ironing his socks before he leaves for space.

History:  
For history, we read Aliens are Coming!

This is a true account of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast written for children.  This book did a great job describing what life was like in 1938 and role that radio played in society. 


Projects: 
After reading our alien books, I remembered seeing a Alien Letter craft on the blog No Time for Flashcards.  So I quickly pulled out all of the stuff to make it and Marcus made an Alien shaped letter A.
First I drew an A on a piece of construction paper and he painted it.

Without any prompting from me, I noticed that he was just naturally tracing the shape of a letter A with his paint brush.  This is what the "A" looked like when he was finished. 

After that we cut out the A and pasted it to another sheet of paper.  Then we added some eyes, a mouth, and antenna.  It turned out very cute I think!

I then asked him if he wanted to add the page to the alphabet book he is making.    (More about the alphabet book in another post.) However, he said that he wanted to use it to pretend to be an alien.


I told him that we could do better than that...we could make actual Alien Masks!!!  This wasn't a craft project I planned.  I just happened to remember that we had some things on hand that would work for alien masks. This is one of the reasons I like to have lots of generic craft supplies on hand.  Sometimes they make for very enjoyable impromptu projects like this.  And things always feel so much more natural when they are child-led and driven.  As opposed to some huge, planed out thing that I try to get the child excited about doing.

So, what did I have on hand?  

Well, Michael's (one of my favorite places in the world to shop) has this aisle of paint-able items that are made out of very thick and heavy card-stock.  They have full sized swords, crowns, animals, dinosaurs, feet...all sorts of things made out of card-stock.  They usually come in packs of 6-12, and they are fairly inexpensive.  I often stock up on these just to have around the house when I need a craft project for the kids to do.  You can paint them, color them, decorate them with jewels, glitter, decoupage, stickers...you name it.

I actually have an entire bin that is labeled "paper things for the kids to paint".  You can see my stash here.

Well, one of the things that we have are masks.  (You can see them sitting on top in the picture.)  Again, I wasn't exactly sure what I would do with these when I bought them.   I will tell you one thing, I didn't expect that we would turn them into aliens!

This was an open-ended art project that the kids totally made and designed themselves.   I put the following supplies out on the table for them to use as they wanted.

Supplies:
1)  Blank card-stock masks (availabe at Michael's)
2)  Purple and Green paint
3)  A bowl of Googly Eyes
4)  Teeth cut out of craft foam left over from our Aligator art project
5)  Craft feathers
6)  Pipe Cleaners  (antenna?)
7)  Paint brushes
8)  School Glue

I love watching my kids at work.  This is one of the reasons I love open ended projects like this.  I love to observe how they each interact with the supplies given.  This is what I observed as they were working with the various supplies:

Paint:
Well, after I laid out the green and purple paint the first thing Marcus did was ask for blue and red paint.  I said, "Aren't aliens green?"  He said, "No, I want a blue alien".  So I gave him some blue and red paint.  Shortly after Sophia said, "I want blue!"  So we had two blue aliens.  :)

Marcus also wanted to paint his aliens mouth red.  However, it gave his alien a very scary look because it kind of looks like blood!  I don't think that was his intention...although maybe it was!  


Eyes:
Marcus made a neat row of eyes on the forehead of his alien.  
Sophia used every remaining googly eye in the bowl to cover her alien.  (Seriously!  She used up the supply of googly eyes!)


Feathers:
Sophia added feathers, but only two, and only to one side of her alien's head.
Marcus didn't want any feathers on his alien.

Pipe Cleaners:
Neither child attempted to use pipe cleaners in their design.

Teeth:
Each child certainly wanted their alien to have lots of sharp teeth! 

After our masks dried we danced around in them and played alien for quite awhile.
Marcus and Sophia also thought it would be fun to jump out and scare Daddy with the masks when he got home from work.  I swear I had nothing to do with giving them that idea!  ;) Poor Doug!

Uh-oh....an alien lost an eye.  Luckly she has many back ups!

Sensory Exploration:
For sensory exploration we played with moon sand.  Moon sand is a great material that even adults love to play with.  It has a really cool consistency.  It is like sand that can be molded and hold its shape.  The con is that it can be quite expensive.  Here is a great moon sand recipe that you can make from home.

To make a sensory box for play, I suggest adding in some minature space toys and astronauts. 














Other ideas for sensory play are to provide white playdough.  (This is my favorite play dough recipe.)  Have your child roll the dough into a ball and use an eraser tip to create moon creators.  For even more fun, put out your miniture astronauts and spaceships and have them explore the moon.  Add rocks (astroids) and have those crash into the planets and smash them.  (Can you tell I have a little boy?!) 


Nature Study:  Make a Lunar Calendar
An easy thing for preschoolers to observe in space is the moon.  Take the kids outside at night and have them observe the shape of the moon throughout the month.  Have them draw the shape of the moon and create their own lunar calendar.  DLTK has a some great ideas that makes it possible for even little kids to re-create the shapes of the moon that they observe. 

Making Learning Fun also has some nice moon sequencing cards that can be used to reinforce your observations. 

Other Science Ideas:
With our local preschool co-op, we took the kids outside and we built a scale model of our solar system using various balls as props.  This really gives the kids an idea of how large our solar system is.  We used a 16 foot wide sun made out of old yellow sheets sewn together.  For the rest of the planets we used various balls that were aproximatly the correct diameter.  If you want to replicate this experiment at home, you can use this cool calculator to determine the sizes and distances of your "to scale" model. 

Math:
We also had some Montessori math items on our shelves this week.

We used star counting cards and mini star erasers. The kids identify the number and then count out the appropriate number of start erasers for each number. 

We also used these rocket counting cards.  With these cards, the child counts the stars and then puts a clothes pin on the correct number.  The kids didn't seem to be very interested in these, so we will probably put these out until they are a bit older. 

Field Trip:
We happen to live near an AWESOME children's science museum that has a space exhibit.  If you don't have something like that, you could take your kids to visit a planetarium.

However, even if you don't have any of those things, how wonderful would it be to just take the kids out at night and star gaze.  Talk about making memories!  How special would it be to stay up late one night and just gaze at the stars together. 



Go-Along Books to Put on the Reserve List:

















Other links to become Attached to:
The  Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection for the Letter A.
STart (A Story + Art)
Tot School (See what other toddlers are doing)
Preschool Corner (See what other preschoolers are doing)
Paint the Moon with Puffy "Moon Paint"
Making Learning Fun (a host of Space related ideas for learning!)
Kid Soup Space Ideas (this is a subscription only site.  However, you can get a free trial.)  
More Books About Space



Thanks for reading!!

Pom Pom Sorting and Cutting Activity

As promised, here is some more info on our pom-pom and cutting activities.

Pom-Pom Sorting Activity:
Purpose:  Works on some math skills such as sorting, counting, and number identification

What you will need:
1)  Bamboo mat
2)  Tray with four compartments to sort into labeled by color.  (You could use a paint tray, egg carton, muffin tin, pop cycle container, or whatever you have on hand.)  I used four separate Rubbermaid containers that are meant to organize a drawer.  They can connect together which makes them nice since I can connect however many I need.   To label them, I inserted a small piece of construction paper. 
3)  Pom-Poms in four colors in a basket or container
4)  Bug Catcher Bubble  I purchased mine at Michaels.  They came with a bug kit.  (You can also purchase those them online here.)  
5) Number cards (available as a free download from Montessori for Everyone)


Presentation:
We put this activity basket out on the kids shelves this week.  When one of the kids wanted to play with it, they would carry all of the materials over to their table.  

Then they would unroll the mat and set up the sorting trays.

Then, using the bug catcher they would pick up pom-poms and sort them by color.  The bubble shaped bug catcher made the game more interesting and added in an extra bit of fine motor challenge.

To add an extra challenge, I made sure and included pom-poms in various shades of the colors.  For example, I had both dark navy blue and light baby blue poms-poms that they had to identify as being blue. 

For older children, you could also have them count the pom-poms.  Then choose a number card that identifies the number of pom-poms in the containers.

Cutting Activity:
Purpose:  The purpose of this activity is to teach a beginner scissor user (like 2 year old Sophia) how to use scissors properly.  


The next idea I got from an activity in the Montessori Services catalog.  It is called the "using scissors activity") 

(Photo from Montessori Services)

I put my version together and it looked like this:

To put this activity together you will need:
1)  Strips of paper cut approximately 1" wide.  (This will allow the child to cut through the strip in one snip.  You can also optionally put some lines on this paper showing the child where to cut.  I decided to just concentrate on opening and closing the scissors.) 
2)  Good quality safety scissors
3)  Small basket to put the paper scraps

After I put this activity together, I saw that the blog My Montessori Journey has some great tips on teaching a child to use scissors.  If you haven't checked out this blog yet, please do so!  It is a great resource of ideas.

We also added a simple scissor fingerplay to our activity.  It goes like this:

Scissor Fingerplay:

Open Shut Them
Open, shut them, open shut them.
(use index and middle finger to make scissors motion)
Give a little snip, snip, snip.
(three quick snips with fingers)
Open, shut them, open shut them.
(repeat scissors motion)
Make another clip.
(make another scissor motion)

Thanks for reading!  And above all else, have fun and enjoy your precious time with your children.  

For more ideas on using Montesori methods at home, check out:  One Hook Wonder.
For more ideas on introducing math concepts to young children, check out The Joyful Learner.  

Learning and Playing: Our Week in Review

 Math:
We practiced number identification and counting using a mama-made snake counting game.

Language Arts:
We practiced letter identification and phonics by making an "S is for Snake" craft to add to our alphabet books.

  
Gross Motor / Dramatic Play:
We went to the pool with our neighborhood friends.  All of the kids pretended to be pirates and sharks swimming in the ocean.  We packed a picnic lunch and had a fun time swimming and playing.

(Photo courtesy of our local pool.) 

Fine Motor Skills
We practiced cutting with safety scissors, painting, and drawing.


The kids played with their fruits and vegetable cutting set from Plan Toys.  This is a very popular toy in our house.  The kids love to play restaurant and cut their food using the little wooden knives that comes with the tray. 


We played with our magnetic fishing game puzzle.  This is another big hit over here.  I highly recomend these puzzles.  They are a great idea on making the standard wooden puzzle more interesting.  the kids use a magnetic fishing pole to catch the sea creature shaped puzzle pieces.  Then, in order to play again, they have to put all of the puzzle pieces back into place.  This toy taught the kids the names of some new sea creatures and it is a great fine motor activity. 

Practical Life:
We worked on learning how to wash and dry our hand properly and Sophia worked on learning to use the potty.  Marcus has also decided that he is ready to move on to using the big potty. 

Science / Nature Study 
We observed a robin sitting on her nest.  We also found several abandoned nests in some crab apple trees at my mama's house.

The kids also picked strawberries and blackberries. I couldn't believe how many strawberries little Sophia fit into her tiny belly!

 The kids helped me take care of our garden. We harvested our first bell pepper of the season and Doug made a delicious pasta recipe with it using fresh herbs from our kitchen garden. 

The kids dug for worms and went fishing too.

We also spent a lot of time reading some non-fiction children's books about snakes.


We learned a lot about snakes this week from these books.  Here are some facts that Marcus and Sophia picked up:

• Snakes are cold blooded reptiles.  They do not make milk for their babies and they do not have hair.
• Some snakes give birth to live young, while other snakes hatch from eggs.
• Snakes do not care for their young.
• What venom is
• A snake molts when it outgrows its skin.
• Snakes are predators.  Most snakes eat mice, frogs, and lizards.  Large snakes sometimes hunt for large animals like crocodiles and antelope!
• Some snakes use their noses to smell.  All snakes use their tongues to smell.  
• You can't see a snakes ears.  However, snakes do have ears.  A snake's ears are deep inside its head.  Sound travels through a snake's bones to it's ears.  
• Some snakes have heat pits below their nostrils that they use to assist in hunting for prey.  The heat pits can sense the body heat of other animals.  Heat pits help snakes hunt at night.
• Most snakes live in warm places and stay active all year long.  Some snakes live in cool places and hibernate in the winter.  

 Literature:
We cuddled on the couch and read lots of great books this week.

For more ideas on fun things to do with your kids, check out:

and