Fumbling Through Parenthood

Letter W (Water) Unit Recap – FINALLY!!!

2012-09-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

Although our Letter W / Water unit was a bit random and broken up, there’s no denying Dude enjoyed it & learned a ton!

Here are all (or at least most) of the activities he did:

We started out the unit with an evaporation science experiment. For this one we poured some water into a jar, placed it in the windowsill, marked the water level every of couple of days, & discussed what was happening.

He made this cute little “Where’s Turkey?” book as we reviewed positional words. This is from this book that I picked up during the Scholastic dollar days sale that I posted about on Facebook.
(I don’t see it available through Scholastic anymore.)

Folding Washcloths

We played quite a few games of Guess Who?. This is a new to us game and is recommended for 6+, but after a little bit of instruction Dude picked it up quickly. His mama also enjoyed it much more than most of our preschool games ;)

Dude made some Wax drip art, which you can read more about here.

Lots, & lots or Watercolor painting. This has been one of his favorite art activities for awhile.

Letter W printing practice using his Dry Erase Activity Center

Letter W hunt from Confessions of a Homeschooler

He made a cloud with glue and cotton balls

Then we used it as a raindrop counting mat. I put a number in the top corner and he counted out that many raindrops (flat glass stones) underneath his cloud.

We later pulled out this same page for some extra fine motor skills practice. Dude cut and glued on grass,

Traced flower stems,

And used stickers to add flowers and the sun.

We really got a lot of mileage out of that one sheet of blue construction paper!

We also set up a toy Wash on the back porch. Both big boys got in on this!

Dude did a Letter W playdoh mat from Homeschool Creations

We did another evaporation science experiment, this time testing to see how direct sunlight affected the rate of evaporation.

We read the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk and did an art project related to it. You can read all the details and see more pictures HERE.

And we did yet another evaporation experiment.

You can read about all of them HERE.

We talked about condensation & precipitation.

Dude observed condensation on a cold mirror and the outside of a cup.

We talked about the “sticky” characteristic of water and Dude observed it for himself by moving water around with a q-tip on wax paper.

My little student painted, colored, cut, & glued to make this tissue box water cycle. He was quite proud of it! (The printable we used is from this book, another Scholastic dollar days score that I don’t see available over there anymore.)

Some random water play with a set of measuring cups.

Another game we played a lot during this unit was Dr. Seuss What's in the Cat's Hat?. This is a silly guessing game that’s a lot of fun.

Moving on to the precipitation portion of the water cycle, Dude made it rain by squeezing water out of a sponge.

As our grand finale science experiment we made it rain in a jar. This was pretty neat to watch and demonstrated all parts of the water cycle. It also gave us a chance to discuss the 3 states of matter: liquid, solid, & gas.

Another aspect we added into Dude’s “school” during this unit was this Systematic Sight Word Instruction for Reading Success Program. The program includes flashcards (which we’ll be using), reproducible worksheets (some of which we’ll be using) and more ideas. I’ll probably share a little bit of what we do each week from this program, but not everything.

Dude’s first set of sight words were: I, a, run, play, can, & we

In addition to the parts of the program that we used, Dude also traced the sight words that I’d written in highlighter and sprayed his sight words off the fence with Water as I called them out.

Whew! I think that’s it!

I’m going to list our book choices for our Letter W / Water unit in the widget below. Good books really are an integral part of our “schooling” and are read multiple times during our units.

Thanks for following along!

I'll be sharing this post over at:

Tot School, Preschool Corner, The Sunday Showcase, Show and Share Saturday, and at the Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop

Amazon.com Widgets

Sticker Slap! – Counting Game

2012-09-08T17:54:00.000-04:00

Dude and I have been playing this fun little game for the past couple of days. I’m not sure he’s realized it yet, but he’s also practicing his math skills!

All you need to play is two (or more) sets of cards with increasing numbers of stickers on them. I made mine with two different colors of cardstock so they’d be easier to sort for the next game. And if your child is anything like mine there WILL be a next game!I only did the numbers 1-10 for now but you could easily go higher.

For the game each player takes one color of card and places them face down (in random order) in a pile in front of them. On the count of three, each player turns over a card, puts it in the middle of the table and then tries to be the first to slap the card with the most stickers. If you’re first you take both cards and put them in your discard pile. The person with the biggest discard pile at the end of the game WINS! Super simple, but being able to both race and slap has made this a big hit with Dude. It’s great counting and greater than/less than comparison as well.

This was one of the bonus ideas in our Shoe Box Learning Centers: Counting book.

Water Week Science – Condensation & Precipitation

2012-09-02T23:29:00.000-04:00

Here are the science experiments we did to help my son understand the processes of condensation and precipitation. These are some pretty difficult concepts for a 4 year old to grasp so I tried to model as many things for him as I could.

We started off by simply observing condensation form on a cup filled with ice water. We talked about the cup being cold and cooling the air around it. We also talked about there being water vapor in the air all around us and how it condenses and turns back into liquid water when it gets cold enough.

Dude also observed the condensation that formed when he breathed on a cold mirror.

Next we talked a little bit about water being “sticky.” I didn’t worry about any technical terms, but I did put a small amount of water on a piece of wax paper and let Dude move it around with a q-tip to observe these forces and how the water naturally wanted to “stick” together.

We first demonstrated precipitation with a simple sponge. After getting it wet Dude squeezed it (to connect all the tiny water droplets into bigger droplets) and “made it rain” into a pan.

Our final science experiment for this unit was to make it rain….inside a jar! This was not only really neat to watch, but also a great way to model every aspect of the water cycle, making the the perfect finale for our week. You can see all the details for this project HERE.

You can also see our evaporation experiments HERE.

I'm sharing this post over at:

Tot School, Preschool Corner, The Sunday Showcase, Noted: Show & Tell Blog Hop, Show and Share Saturday, and at the Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop

Making It Rain! (In A Jar)

2012-09-02T17:28:00.001-04:00

I found a description of this experiment here and couldn’t resist trying it as part of our water cycle studies.

Here are the materials you’ll need for this project:

A Jar
(We used a giant pickle jar, but I think a smaller jar would have worked better)

A Hammer

A Nail
(I used a screwdriver tip because because I couldn’t find a nail at the time.)

A Towel

Ice

Salt

and Water just shy of boiling (not pictured)

First you’ll want to place your jar lid on the towel and use the hammer and nail to make several dimples on the inside of the lid.

Be careful not to actually puncture the lid. You only want to make indentions not actual holes.

Now for the fun part: You’ll need to warm enough water to fill your jar about 1/3 full, until it’s almost boiling. Dump this water into the jar and immediately put the jar lid on upside down (rim up). Fill the jar lid with ice and sprinkle some salt on top.

And watch it rain!

Ours actually took a few minutes to get going. I think because we used too big of a jar. But it was pretty neat to watch!

And if you're looking for a good book to go along with this experiment, we're big fans of all of the Magic School Bus books. The Magic School Bus At The Waterworks follows along well with this experiment and further explains how water gets to our houses.

You can see the rest of our water cycle experiments here & here.

And a recap of all of our letter W activities COMING SOON.

Water Week Science – Evaporation

2012-08-27T22:46:00.001-04:00

As you can probably guess, we did a BUNCH of science experiments during our unit on water.

Here are the first few that demonstrate evaporation:

For our first experiment we filled a jar with water and put it in the windowsill. We marked the water level with a marker the first day and Dude made a prediction about what would happen to the water level over time. Every couple of days after that, we’d observe the new lower water level, mark it with a new line, and talk about evaporation. At first I explained the process to him, but he was soon explaining it to me!

For our next experiment we put a small amount of water onto each of two plates. We then put one in the direct sun and provided some shade for the other plate. After a couple of hours Dude observed what had happened to the water on each plate and we discussed why.

Our last evaporation experiment was the most visual and definitely Dude’s favorite. He started out by wetting his chalkboard with a rag.

Next he fired up the hair dryer, pointed it at the chalkboard, and watched as the water evaporated right before his eyes.

Like I said he LOVED this one!

Next up I’ll be posting our condensation and precipitation experiments, so keep an eye out for those!

Wax Drip Art – Letter W Week (Catch Up Post)

2012-08-25T21:30:00.000-04:00

I never did get all of our Letter W week activities posted so I’m going to try to catch up on those before moving on to this years activities.

Here’s another art project I found lurking on my camera:

For this project you’ll need:

Some sort of thick paper (construction paper, watercolor paper, cardstock, or similar)

Pillar candles (We used some leftover Christmas candles.)

A lighter or matches

Tape (optional)

& a mature child
(NOT optional! This project involves fire and could be very dangerous! I did it with my oldest son with water nearby, and while his younger brothers were sleeping. Please use your own good judgment and take appropriate precautions before deciding to do this project with your child.)

First you’ll want to tape your paper down. This step is really optional, but for safety’s sake I’d recommend it.

Next light one of your candles, hand it to your child carefully, and have them angle the candle down so that the wax drips on the paper. Dude needed to be reminded a few times to point the candle down.

Now just get creative with it!
As Dude worked on his art, he made observations about how the wax melted and spattered as it hit his paper, & how it sometimes puddled when the drops were close together. We also used this as an opportunity to talk about the solid wax melting and turning into a liquid, then cooling back into a solid.

So proud of the finished product!

Another Safety Note: You’ll notice from the pictures that I started my son off standing in a chair. I did this so it’d be more natural for him to hold the candle higher away from the flammable paper. He did sit down later, but I do think it helped him initially. I didn’t want any burning paper experiments here just yet!

Our New Morning Board

2012-08-23T17:39:00.000-04:00

New Year = New Plan

I’m excited to be adding a new element to our home preschool this year, a morning board! Now that the older boys are 4 and 2.5 I’m doing more and more things with the 2 of them together and I wanted some way to start our school time off in an organized and hopefully *fingers crossed* calm manner. I think our morning board will be just the thing to accomplish that.

Here’s the layout I came up with:

I attached everything using double sided tape to a foam board I bought at Walmart.

Most of the printables are things I found online for free. Starting at the top left, I printed & laminated the calendar songs from the 1+1+1=1 website. I attached them to the board using binder rings to make a sort of flip book. I went with the larger version for now because we’re not familiar with them, but there are also smaller versions available here.

Under that is our Make the Date box with velcro strips underneath to make the date using real coins. For now Dude will be doing this using only dimes and pennies. I just typed mine up but there are different version available to print here & here.

And below that are boxes for Spudder to velcro on a Color of the Day, Animal of the Day, Shape of the Day, & Letter of the Day. We’ll review these daily of course, but my plan is to use this section as inspiration for activities to keep Spudder occupied while I’m working with Dude. For example I might pull out playdough in the color of the day, or a letter of the week type activity for the appropriate letter, or have him make the shape with popsicle sticks, those sorts of things. This printable is also from 1+1+1=1.

Across the top of the board I have a section for making the date.

In the middle of the board (where you see the apple page) is actually where I attached a sheet protector. I plan to rotate out what’s in this space to keep it interesting. At the moment we have a logic problem from this book. I actually bought the digital copy during the Scholastic dollar days sale I posted about on facebook, but it doesn’t seem to be available from that website any longer.

Next we have this Days in School section where we’ll count up the days in school and do some place value review.

Botton center we have our What’s the Weather Like Today block.

And in the very right corner I attached a plastic pocket for slipping in these Godly Character Trait cards. I printed mine 4 to a page.

We’ve only been using our board for 2 days now. But so far we’re really liking it!

I'm sharing this post over at:

Tot School, Preschool Corner, The Sunday Showcase, Noted: Show & Tell Blog Hop, Show and Share Saturday, and at the Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop

It Looked Like Spilt Milk (Story + Art)

2012-06-12T21:09:00.000-04:00

As part of our water unit study I decided to do a little art project inspired by the book, It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw. This is a cute book, in which each page shows a white image on a blue background that looks like one thing….but isn’t. I really liked the way this book got Dude thinking!

This project was super simple yet lots of fun! Basically Dude squirted some white paint on blue paper…

Folded it in half…

Opened it up….

And we tried to imagine what the picture might be!

He actually made some pretty neat pictures! We decided these were: rabbits talking, a butterfly, and a plane flying through the clouds. Can you see them?

I found the idea for this fun little art project over at A Mommy's Adventure. She’s got lots more story related art ideas on her blog as well. It’s definitely worth checking out!

Football Sensory / Imagination Bin

2012-06-07T18:05:00.000-04:00

HI ALL!

It’s been far too long since I’ve had the time or energy to post to this blog, but I’m excited to say that I’m finally ready to get back with it! I’ve got lots of fun things planned to keep these little ones busy over the summer and we’ll also be continuing with our preschool & tot school at home. The posts will probably be short and sweet from here on out, but I hope you enjoy seeing what we’re up to!

First up I’d like to tell you about the sensory bin we have out right now.
It’s all about FOOTBALL!

The contents include:

Green rice (I colored mine by mixing the rice with rubbing alcohol & green food coloring in a ziploc bag.)
Straws cut to 3 different lengths (hash lines)
Little connecting figures in 2 colors to represent the 2 teams. (These were a Target $1 section purchase awhile back, but you could also use colored clothespins.)
10, 20, 30, 40, 50 number cards
Green pipe cleaners with 10 white beads on each (field lines)
A coffee scoop
& a toy flag we had from a play golf set

As always I put the bin in the middle of a blanket along with some random containers and let the boys have at it.

They spent quite a while stacking, scooping, pouring, sorting, ordering, and observing the sound of the rice on the various containers.

I also used this as an opportunity to discuss some math concepts with Dude. We talked about the total football field length and the yard lines & hash lines. (I didn’t even know they were called hash lines until I was making this bin!) We also used the number cards and 10 bead bars to practice counting to 50 by 1s, by 10s, and just talking about the ones and tens place values. Dude is not quite 4 and can count, but still has a way to go in actually understanding the relationship between numbers. I think this was some good hands on practice though!

This coming week I’ll be sharing our letter W and water unit study activities, but until then you can check out our previous sensory bins, letter of the week activities, tot tray ideas, and boredom busters by using the tabs at the top of the Fumbling Through Parenthood homepage.

Outer Space / Letter S Unit

2011-09-05T18:17:00.001-04:00

Let me start off by apologizing for the lack of posts recently. We’ve just had so much going on behind the scenes lately that I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed by life. For privacy reasons, and because I prefer to focus on the positives, I doubt I’ll be sharing much of that here, but hopefully things will be back to normal soon. And there may even be some good news coming out of all this chaos!

But without further ado, here are the activities we did in our Outer Space / Letter Ss unit:

We made sponge comets and had fun with some space-themed water play.

Dude used our mini foam letter tiles to spell out some words that start with S.

We made a Sun in a bottle and talked about the composition of our closest star.

Dude used his finger to erase S’s I drew on a white board.

Then moved on to drawing his own S’s in our salt box.

We used a flashlight to discuss perspective and the sizes & distances to the Sun and other stars.

We made Sun Prints and talked about the importance of protecting our skin from the Sun.

We used the planet cutouts and planets mini-book from our Space Lapbook, along with some space flashcards from the Target dollar spot to put the planets in order, discuss ordinal number words (first, second, etc.) and learn a little about each planet.

Dude used clothespins for some fine motor work while doing the beginning sounds cards, also from the Space Lapbook.

We played several games of space dominoes while using some space vocabulary words. These are also in the Space Lapbook.

I’m so NOT a glitter fan, but I’ve also accepted that it’s an essential part of preschool, so I let Dude go crazy making his own night sky using glitter and glue. Yep, he loved it!

I introduced Dude to the hundreds chart. I had outlined the numbers 1-10 in green and gave him corresponding Duplo legos with masking tape numbers on them to count and connect. I can’t remember where I printed the hundred chart, but if you google it I’m sure you can find more than a couple.

He did his Letter Hunt worksheet in his new Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center. We're really liking this tool.

We had some star shaped pony beads, so I set up this patterning & lacing activity for Dude. He was very proud of his completed necklace.

Dude did some sound sorting with the cards from here & here. We used a pocket chart just to mix things up a little.

Dude colored this phonics coloring page, and glued on pictures of things that start with letter S. (Both of these printables are from Homeschool Creations. I printed the images at 50% of normal size.) We also looked through a grocery ad to spot some more S words to add. He found soup, soap, & strawberries.

Random stickering with stars & smiles

Doing his Letter Builders

Dude matched up the Space Vocab cards from his Space Lapbook. I also pulled out the flashcards from our target $1 deck that matched so he could see some real pictures as we discussed the terms. I had intended for us to later play memory with these cards, but we never got around to it.

We attempted this neat Moon craft. Ours didn’t quite turn out, but you can learn from my mistakes by reading my Moon Craft Flop post.

I disassembled the Countdown Book from our Space Lapbook and Dude counted out star stickers for each number page.

We made spaghetti for dinner one night, so I let Dude make S’s (and other letters) with some extra noodles. My son can be quite particular about the textures he’s willing to touch, so I like to include sensory activities like this whenever possible.

We tried this Constellation Copying Worksheet, but Dude wasn’t really into it. I think it would have gone over better if he was a more confident writer. My son tends to be a perfectionist when it comes to putting pen/pencil to paper, so writing can be very frustrating for him. His Dry Erase Center seems to be helping since it’s so easy to erase, but this is one area where I’ve stepped way back and am just letting him figure it out in his own time. The last thing I want to do is frustrate him.

We made our own DIY Moon Sand and did a crater making experiment in our kitchen. Dude loved this!

We added some Space Accessories to our DIY Moon and I set up a space themed sensory & pretend play area for Dude. You can read more about that HERE.

Another day I gave Dude all the pages of the Countdown Book from his Space Lapbook and a loose leaf ring clip and let him order the pages and assemble the book himself.

The removable rocket on the last page was a big hit!

I found these star shaped ice cube trays at the thrift store and set up this fine motor & reasoning activity for Dude. I put pom-poms into one tray and then gave him coordinating pom-poms and children’s chopstick to use for recreating my arrangement in the other tray.

We used the Moon Phase Chart & cards from our Space Lapbook to put the moon phases in order and talk about how the appearance of the Moon varies.

Dude led his astronaut to the Moon. Nothing too fancy here, just a little practice with alphabetical order and letter recognition. This was the back page of the Space Lapbook.

We tried using a hammer and nail to punch holes in a tin can and make our own constellations. This was harder than I expected and I actually had to make starter holes for Dude. He still loved it though. We took it into a closet and put a flashlight underneath, so we could see our shining stars and newly named constellation. (BTW, I just have a standard hand crank can opener, but by using it to go around the can a couple more times after the end was already off, I was able to get a dull, safe edge.)

I tried to teach Dude how to do a somersault. You know, tuck your chin, arch your back and roll. Well, let’s just say we’ve still got some work to do on mastering this skill. There was more flopping than rolling :)

And of course as usual there was lots of reading going on. Here are our outer space book choices:

Me and My Place in Space by Joan Sweeney
There's No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System by Tish Rabe
On the Moon by Anna Milbourne
Earth and Space (Usborne Starting Point Science)- We used this for reference. It's an older Usborne title, but I really like it. It also covers other topics besides space.
The Magic School Bus: Lost In The Solar System by Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen
The Magic School Bus Out Of This World: A Book About Space Rocks by Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen
(The Magic School Bus books are really more for the 4yr+ age group, but Dude just loves them.)

I also let Dude watch The Magic School Bus: Space Adventures DVD

Oh, and if you own this Solar System Floor Puzzle and you're doing a unit on space, it'd be a good opportunity to pull it out.

(Note to self: We own this!)

I hate it when I do that.

I'm sharing this post over at:

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What’s on the Tot Trays? Post 11

2011-08-28T19:43:00.001-04:00

Here are the tot trays that have been out lately.

Color Sorting cards from Homeschool Creations

I’d intended these more for Spudder, but Dude actually completed this activity more than once.

(no photos) When presenting this to Spudder I only had out yellow & blue. My 18 month old certainly doesn't know his colors, but I just used this as another opportunity to expose him to those color words.

The next tray was this little stacker that I’d picked up at Dollar Tree in the spring. Spudder rocked this thing! He didn’t always have the pieces set down into one another, but he consistently put the pieces in the right order.

For this tray I set out a random collection of objects for Dude to trace around. He liked this a lot and did it several times.

Toothpicks and a Parmesan Cheese Type Shaker

I knew Dude would be interested in this tray too, so to add a fun twist for him I also put some pipe cleaners that I’d twirled around my finger on the tray. I didn't give him any instructions on how to get them into the container, but he eventually figured out how to straighten them out and push them in there. He could have also screwed them in and it probably would have also been easier for him if I’d cut them in half, so that they weren’t longer than the container.

Upper to Lower case ABC matching puzzles. These are from a set of early learning puzzles we have.

On the final tray I put out the materials for Dude to make a star collage. The stars were the result of the star cutting strips from a previous tray and I just gave him paper and glue to make it into another project.

And a few other educational(ish) things that have been done lately:

Building with Guidecraft Interlox

Spelling words with Boggle Junior

Spudder educating Mama on how dangerous it is to leave out the same Tot Trays for too long...

Working on fine motor skills with Connect 4
My boys continue to fight over this almost every time we pull it out.

Stabbing playdoh with a fork

(Yes, sometimes I get a little desperate!)

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Wordless Wednesday – Reading

2011-08-17T13:39:00.000-04:00

We may not be doing “school time” everyday right now, but at least some things are consistent. Both reading and messes come to mind.

Space Themed Sensory & Pretend Play

2011-08-12T00:28:00.001-04:00

After we completed our Making Moon Craters activity, I decided to keep rolling with the pretend play and turn it into more of a sensory experience. My son’s always been particular about tactile sensations, so I’m trying to provide him with frequent opportunities for sensory play.

It was nothing too fancy, but Dude played with it for quite awhile.

It basically consisted of:

A black piece of fabric

DIY moon sand & cake pan “Moon”

Rocks (asteroids)

Bouncy Balls (planets)

Some dollar store plastic and foam stars

Space Toob (This has a great variety of figures, even a space monkey!)

I also put together a pretend Earth out of stuff we had on hand. The blue base is actually the boys old changing pad cover. (I liked the soft velvety texture of this.) I topped that with some green Easter grass and a plastic piece of “land” from another playset we have.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ….Blastoff!

There was lots of blasting off, flying around other planets, exploring the moon, making craters, and even fixing the Hubble telescope.

I just love watching little imaginations at work!

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Preschool Corner

Making Moon Craters

2011-08-07T19:11:00.008-04:00

Today we finally got around to doing the messiest portion of our space studies. It may have been a little messy, but it was definitely worth it! Dude had a ball making "moon craters" and learning about meteors, meteorites and the atmosphere.

We started out by making our own model moon. We did this by using a biscuit pan and filling it with homemade Moon Sand. There are recipes for moon sand all over the web, but we made ours by mixing:

3 cups of play sand

1 cup of cornstarch

and a little more than 1/3 cup of water

(I’d recommend mixing the dry ingredients in a big bowl first and then mixing in the water slowly until you get the desired consistency.)

We then collected some rocks and a marble to represent different types of meteorites.

And you guessed it! We ~~threw~~ dropped the "meteorites" onto our moon’s surface.

(We placed our moon in the middle of a sheet on our kitchen floor to help contain the mess, which actually turned out to be pretty minimal)

Dude was ALL about this!

We then removed the meteorites and observed our craters. The moon sand held the crater shape wonderfully, but it was a little difficult for preschool fingers to remove the meteorites so I ended up helping with this part.

We also tried dropping the meteorites from greater heights and tried to predict how the craters might be affected.
I’m pretty sure the look on his face in this photo means “ I can’t believe you’re actually letting me do this!”

My son really LOVED this activity!

Some space facts that tie in with this project:

A meteorite is a rock, iron, and/or icy body that hits another body in space.

The Earth’s atmosphere causes most meteors that are headed our way to burn up before they can hit our planet.

The moon doesn’t have an atmosphere to protect it from meteors.

Because the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere there is also no wind on it’s surface, so craters and even astronauts footprints from 40 years ago are still there!

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Moon Craft Flop

2011-08-02T19:39:00.002-04:00

Today we tried to make a cute moon craft that I saw over at I Heart Crafty Things. It really is a great idea….but unfortunately Mama messed it up.

The basic idea is to mix flour and white paint to make a textured medium to paint a moon. What I did, and shouldn’t have, was to also add water. Oops!

The process of painting the moon actually went well and Dude did really enjoy it. But when we tried to use a bottlecap to add “craters” it was obvious we’d done something wrong. Ours was just a sticky mess!

I tried to save the project by giving my son a rock to at least add some texture to his moon, and that sorta worked, but again Big.Sticky.Mess.

And as ours dries it continues to look more and more pathetic, complete with rippled, bunched up paper. Yeah, not showing you a picture of that.

But here’s how cute it could have looked if we’d done it right! Don’t you just love that texture? You can hop on over to I Heart Crafty Things for the full tutorial.

In the meantime I’ll just keep reminding myself that it’s process over product that’s really important anyway. And it was a fun process!

Sun Prints

2011-07-29T19:10:00.002-04:00

After we talked about why we need the sun, what the sun is, and how far away it is, I also wanted to touch on protecting our bodies from the sun. I made sure to point out to my son that a little sunshine is a good thing! I didn’t want him to be scared of the sun, but I wanted to illustrate for him that too much sun can be dangerous. Sort of like cookies, & vitamins, & toilet paper....We seem to be having this conversation a lot lately.

For this little activity you’ll need:

2 pieces of black construction paper

Some uniquely shaped objects

A sunny day

And a tray is helpful

Let you child position their collection of objects on a piece of construction paper on the tray.

Take it outside and leave it in a sunny spot.

Have your child hypothesize about what effect the sun will have on it.

After a few hours (or the next day, if you’re forgetful like us) bring the tray in and let your child remove the objects and observe what happened to the paper. It’s a good idea to have an extra sheet of construction paper handy to act as a reference as to what your paper looked like beforehand.

We left our paper outside from 1:30pm until sundown and as you can see the results were plenty noticeable. There is special paper made for this type of experiment that gives more dramatic results but construction paper works pretty well and is cheaper.

We concluded this experiment by talking about how the sun “hurt” the paper by fading it and how the toys protected the paper underneath them. In this 100+ degree heat it also seemed like the perfect time to talk about why we wear swimshirts, hats, and sunblock to protect our skin from the sun when we’re going to be outside for a long time.

And I'll bet with some particularly placed items, you could also use this same method to make some unique summertime art! We might have to try that another day.

Stay tuned!
Next week I’ll be posting a couple of space crafts and some space-themed sensory play.

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The Sun & Stars – From Our Perspective

2011-07-25T22:06:00.002-04:00

Our next little space activity was intended to help my son better grasp a few of the Sun facts that I’d written in his Space Lapbook. In particular I thought he might be confused by the fact that the Sun is a star, and not even a big star at that. It’s really just an average size star! It certainly looks big when you look up into the sky. To help this make sense to my son we did a simple perspective activity using a flashlight.

Note flashlight in hand. That generally produces a big cheesy grin in our house.

There wasn’t really any way to take pictures of this one, but I’m sure a description will be adequate. It’s super simple.

Basically we found a darkish area in the house and I got as far away from my son as I could, turned on the flashlight, and pointed it at him. I explained to him that we were pretending the light was a star in the sky. I further explained that the Sun is also a star, just like all the other stars we see in the night sky. I then started walking toward my son and asked him if the star looked like it was getting bigger or smaller. Of course he said it was getting bigger. I stopped near him and explained that the Sun only looked big because it’s the closest star to us. After moving closer and farther away a few times to let him digest the concept, I then handed over the flashlight and let him very eagerly explain it to me.

See, super simple!
(but essential to understanding the Sun)

A few Sun facts you could present with this activity:

The Sun is the closest star to our planet.

The Sun is 93 million miles from Earth.

The Sun falls into the medium-large range of the stars in our galaxy.

Sources: here & here

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The Sun In A Bottle

2011-07-22T17:25:00.004-04:00

No Space Unit would be complete without some serious talk about the Sun.
It is the center of our solar system after all! But with that being said I tend to find science for preschoolers a little tricky. I do absolutely LOVE both math and science , but I’m not always sure of how to take things down to a preschoolers level. I want to find that perfect mix of fun, along with a concept he can understand.

Over the next few days I’m going to share a few science activities that I’ve used recently that seem to fit that bill and have helped my son better understand some of the science of the Sun. The first concept I was trying to illustrate is that the Sun is not just a ball of fire in the sky, but is actually comprised of swirling hot gases. (ok, it’s actually plasma that 4th state of matter, but he’s 3 and I’m not going there.) So not a ball oh fire, ok?

To illustrate this point we created a Sun in a bottle.

To do this you’ll need an empty bottle, oil of some kind, food coloring, a funnel, water and I recommend a hot glue gun.

Fill your bottle about halfway full of oil.

Mix red or orange food coloring with water and fill the bottle the rest of the way up.

We added drops of food coloring after mixing the oil and water and it took a lot of shaking and waiting to get it to mix with the water and separate, so I’d recommend coloring the water beforehand.

Marvel at the oil and water separating.

Wait a day, get a hair cut, & bruise your cheek. (See note above and you can skip this step.)
Put some hot glue into the lid and screw it on tight.

Let your child swirl it around like the gases of the Sun.

Note: This isn’t the most realistic model since the Sun has identifiable layers, but it definitely captured my son’s interest and helped him think of a familiar sight in a new way. I think it’s perfect for the preschool set!

A few general Sun facts you could present if your child is ready:

The Sun is made up of plasmas - extremely hot gases.

By mass the Sun is comprised of about 70% hydrogen, 28% helium, and 2% other stuff.

The Sun falls into the medium-large range of the stars in our galaxy.

The Sun is about 4.5 billion years old.

Sources: here & here

Have a great weekend!

We’ll be back Monday with another science activity about the Sun.

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A Little Pick Me Up Activity – Exercise Cards

2011-07-21T18:56:00.006-04:00

So we got out of our Tot School routine and have been slow to get back into the groove of things. It is summer after all, so we’ve had more than a couple of worthwhile distractions going on around here. But now that the fun of family visits is over I felt it was finally time to get going with more routine tot schooling again. Tot schooling really does just “work” for us.

We started things off today with this moving, shaking, & learning activity that I wanted to share. It does require a couple of resources, so it’s not the sort of thing you could do off the cuff, but the resources are free, so with a little preplanning it would be a fun activity that could be quickly repeated. It definitely will be repeated in our house!

You’ll need these Exercise ABC Cards from Homeschool Share, some kind of ABC manipulatives, and a bag or bowl. I highly recommend laminating the cards. We used our bottlecap letters as our manipulatives. I printed mine out from COAH (letter disks under the phonics category) and glued them to powerade bottle caps, but you could use ABC magnets or anything else you have handy.

Now you could probably figure it out from here, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what we did.
We took turns drawing letters out of the bag, naming them…

Finding the matching card…

And doing the corresponding exercise.
(This was laying on your back and pretending to ride a unicycle.)

Each exercise contains a word that starts with that letter, so with this simple activity my son got to work on: letter identification, matching (visual discrimination), letter sounds (phonics), & of course gross motor skills.

And can you tell how proud he was of his jumping jack?
That was his newly acquired skill for the day.

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New Experiences – Blueberry Picking

2011-07-18T20:13:00.001-04:00

I didn’t write up a of formal list of things that I wanted to do with the kids this summer, but the general idea I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind is just new experiences, for them, for me, for us as a family. I’ve just been wanting to try out some new things. I’m not talking about big vacations or expensive theme parks, but just simple things that hopefully involve quality family time and maybe even start some new family traditions for us. We need some family traditions!

A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to do something that was new to me and the boys. We went blueberry picking! Now I grew up in a decent size city, so picking your own berries wasn’t even something I realized people could do until just recently. But there are actually all kinds of pick-your-own farms all over the place! I used the website www.pickyourown.org to find one near us. We then packed up the kids and the sunblock, forgot the bug spray, and off we went.

And boy, were the berries plentiful!

Dude turned out to not be the best blueberry picker. After eating his fill it was hard to convince him of the importance of picking more to take home with us. Although he did do a great job of keeping us on track by chanting “Don’t pick the green ones. Don’t pick the red ones. We only pick the blue ones!”

Spudder on the other hand turned out to be a great little blueberry picker! They all went straight into his mouth, of course. We didn't instruct him on what to do, but when my husband felt him leaning he realized our little guy was helping himself! It was so cute watching him. He happily picked his fill from the Ergo on Papa’s back. Although occasionally we’d hear a little sputtering/spitting noise when he didn't heed his brother’s warning and got a bitter one. I guess there are some things a little guy's just got to learn the hard way.

With a 1 & a 3 year old, we didn't stay out there long, but we did have a wonderful time! We ended up with 3 gallons of berries to take home. And everyone was in agreement that we’ll definitely be doing this again!

What’s On The Tot Trays?- Post 10

2011-07-10T15:39:00.002-04:00

Between the holiday weekend & a visit from the boys grandparents we had an overall slow week in tot school, but a great week in LIFE!

I did, however, have these tot trays out that got their share of attention. They all proved to be quite popular with my kids and will probably stay out for a few more days.

The first tray that spiked Dude’s interest was a playdough activity. I’d hidden pony beads in some playdough for him to find.

Spudder also had a turn with this one. He LOVED it! Please note that this could be very dangerous for a child his age. You can see from the photos just how close I stayed to him to make sure he didn’t put anything in his mouth. My son really enjoys handing things to me right now, so I used that in my favor and let him hand me each bead he pulled out and then we clapped for his success. It was so cute! I actually think I enjoyed this little activity as much as he did :)

The next tray Dude went for was a simple pencil sharpening activity. Simple enough, productive, and apparently quite interesting if you’re 3.

Both boys also had turns playing with these plastic nuts and bolts I found recently in the Target dollar spot. I bought 2 bags and I’m really glad I did because the color and shape combinations were different in the 2 bags. The bolts are different sizes, so you have to match them with the correct nut, but having the 2 bags will allow me to mix things up to where if I only put out a few of these the matching pairs may not be the same color.

The tray that turned out to be Dude’s favorite (and was my favorite for him) was the game Clever Castle by ThinkFun. This game is AWESOME! It’s really more a set of puzzles than a game though. It has you use deductive reasoning to figure out where the character tiles are supposed to go in the castle game board. It comes with a book of puzzles that go up in difficulty as you flip through. At 3 years old my son can only do the first few easy level puzzles, but he seems to enjoy it immensely and has played with it almost everyday. The box recommends this game for ages 5-7yrs and I’d say that’s pretty accurate because I’ve also pulled this game out when we’ve had older kids over and they definitely weren’t breezing through it either. Sorry to gush so much over a game, but seeing my just-turned 3 year old exercise his logic and deductive reasoning skills is just amazing to me!

This fingerprint making & counting activity turned out to be another great tot tray activity for Dude. The little booklet came from the Homeschool Creations Police Preschool Pack. In addition to the counting I was also able to incorporate some math into this since my son insisted on sticking all 5 fingers into the ink. When he got to six I walked him through the problems 5+?=6, 5+?=7, etc.

To go along with our S is for Space theme I drew these pretty lame stars themed cutting strips. This was Dudes first time using big boy scissors instead of the self opening kind, but he did great with them and was quickly asking for more strips. I also used cardstock scraps to make the strips this time and I think that helped him in being able to hold and maneuver it better.

Hopefully I’ll be sharing more space themed activities this coming week. I've got some great ones planned!

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I LOVE Dollar Tree!

2011-07-02T20:20:00.000-04:00

I promise I won’t update you every time I go to Dollar Tree. I swear I always leave that store thinking “I LOVE this place!” But my mother and I have found a couple of new things there in the past few weeks that I just had to share.

Here’s a portion of what we got:

Tot Trays!!! I was so excited to see these for only $1. I bought blue and green for my boys, but they also had pink and all three colors in polka dots. In addition to using these for tot tray activities I also really like using them for setting up supplies for art projects, so I was glad to get a few more. I don’t like these quite as much as my trays from Oriental Trading, but for the price I think they’re a great deal.

We also got:
A 3-pack of Ice Cream Bowls with Matching Spoons (I have plans for these!)
Mini Erasers
Googly Eyes
A New Sorting Tray
Sea-Life Sponges
Foam Letter Stickers
And of course more Foam & Felt

But the thing I was most excited about were these hand puppets! Aren’t they cute? The quality isn’t amazing, but it definitely seems good enough. And for $1 each? Yes, please!!! (I did pick through the bin to pick out the best looking puppets. There were some that looked a bit funky.) Amazon does have these puppets that aren’t much more expensive, but I was glad to be able to buy only a few instead of a full dozen. I’m really wanting to give my son lots of opportunities for pretend play and promote more story narration and these should be perfect for that!

Does anyone else get as excited about Dollar Tree as I do?
(I know my husband thinks I’m crazy for it.)

Space Lapbook – Making It

2011-07-01T15:22:00.003-04:00

Home Sweet Home!

I’m definitely feeling that statement lately as we are finally back home! We had just begun working with our space lapbook, before things finally feel into place for our return trip, so I never got around to actually posting all the details. I put this one together before our trip with the intention of us working on it from our hotel room. I still plan to use it now that we’re home, but will probably add in some additional activities as well.

Here’s how I put it together:

The inside view
I refolded a file folder to fit the contents I wanted to include. I also laminated everything except the planets mini-book.

Starting from the top left and going clockwise,
I printed out this Sun Petal Book from Homeschool Share and wrote a different fact about the sun on each petal. I also added some additional color to it with markers.

I added this 10-1 countdown flipbook using the cards from the Astronaut Preschool Pack at Homeschool Creations.

But I did make a few changes to the cards to make them work better as a flipbook. I added a title page and also changed up the last page. I wanted my son to really be able to “blast off” the rocket, so I cut it out and used velcro to attach it to a card.

I found these Space Dominoes at Busy Bee Kids Printables. The pocket pictured came from the HSCreations Astronaut Preschool Pack mentioned above.

These Beginning Sound Cards are also from the Astronaut Preschool Pack.

This Planets Mini-Book is from the Solar System Preschool Pack at 1+1+1=1.

For the bottom middle section of the lapbook I used the Moon Phases Diagram from 2 Teaching Mommies, printed it at 50% of normal size, & stapled it to the folder to form a pocket.

Inside of that pocket I put the planets from the 1+1+1=1 Solar System Preschool Packet.

These moon phase cards are also from 2 Teaching Mommies, but after I’d already finished putting this lapbook together I found cards that I like better over at Tired, Need Sleep. I may still switch ours out if I can make them fit. (Pretty sure I printed the 2 Teaching Mommies cards at 50% size.)

These space word cards are another resource from the 1+1+1=1 Solar System Preschool Pack, once again printed at half size to make them fit. I printed 2 sets of the whole cards to use for matching/memory games etc. The little pocket pictured is again from the HSCreations Astronaut Preschool Pack.

And on the back of the lapbook I put this Zoom to the Moon ABC order page from the Musings of Me Man on the Moon Space Unit.

And I think that’s it!
When we complete our Space Unit I’ll do a follow-up post showing all the ways we use these resources and the accompanying activities we do. Until then stay-tuned for more summer time fun and Tot Tray ideas.

If you like the looks of this lapbook, you can also check out our Feelings & Rainbows weeks to see our previous lapbooks in action.

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Simple Fun! - Watermelon

2011-06-23T00:06:00.002-04:00

I just love watching my children explore the world around them. You can call it play, or learning, or exploration, or some other fancy term that psychologists probably have, but really in their eyes it's just FUN! With this in mind I recently gave each of my boys large pieces of watermelon and small spoons. I then sat back and watched what happened.

There was some sensory exploration.

Some thought that went into how best to handle this rocking food

Some attempts to copy the skills of those in the know

Some successes at taking advantage of this sweet fruit

Some trial and error

Some conclusions, "My teeth cut better than the spoon."

And plenty of these :)

Here's to a messy, fun filled summer in 2011!

Space Week Water Play!

2011-06-20T19:49:00.000-04:00

The next topic we're covering in our Letter of the Week studies is Letter Ss is for Space. I'm sure we could spend at least a month doing space related activities, but considering my sons age and attention span, we'll be doing a short study for now and leaving some topics for another day. We're also still away from home so I've prepared a space lapbook we'll be using. I'll share more on that soon.

But the first space activity we did actually involved WATER PLAY!

The temperature here is over 100 degrees everyday! It can be miserable to go outside, but when you have kids who NEED active play, you really don't have a choice. So we made our own COMETS out of sponges, and had a blast tagging each other. This activity turned out to be perfect for cooling down & burning some of that seemingly endless energy!
(This idea was inspired by this post over at Frugal Family Fun Blog.)

Here's what you'll need to do the same:

Sponges, Ribbon (or zip ties), Scissors capable of cutting the sponges

Water and a Bucket (not pictured)

Cut your sponges into strips.

Take a few strips, twist them, and tie the center tightly with ribbon.

Add extra ribbon for the comet's tail.

I used 3 strips per sponge and was able to make 5 comets out of the 2 large sponges I had.

I'm sure these would have been a bit prettier if I'd used more strips per comet, but I was trying to keep it thrifty. I'd do the same if I did it again.

Plop your comets in some water.

Bring out the kiddos and get throwing!

No, not at me!

Ok, ok, at me too!

(I think the high was 108 that day)

We actually started out trying to make this educational by counting up with each throw, but that soon went out the window when it turned into a giant squeal and giggle fest :)

Go on give it a try!

I'm sure you'll get lots of squeals and giggles too!