Coupon Saver Activity

Argh!! The afternoon slump.  School is finished.  Lunch is over.  Still 2 hours until naps.  What to do?  Then we hear it.  Off in the distance.  Coming closer.  A low rumble.  It is thunder? a train? a bulldozer?  No.  It is the mailman (our is really loud).  Yea.  First he goes down the opposite side of the street and then we wait anxiously by the window for him to come back up our side.  What does he have for us today?  The highlight of our afternoon.

About once a month we get the coupon saver.  I give the envelope to my oldest and we have turned this into a little learning project to extend the joy of mail time.
Fine motor skills: opening the envelope without tearing the coupons
Sorting:  making three piles - the ones for momma (haircuts, pizza...), the ones he wants (builders, tractors...), and the rest
Cut and paste: cut out the pictures he wants and glue them to another piece of paper
Writing: label each of the pictures either by himself or by dictating to me

Thank you USPS for brightening each day!
Visit Preschool Corner for more great ideas.

Volcano Day- May 18

May 18th is the anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980.  I lived in eastern Washington at the time and although I was still a toddler I remember coming home from church and having our house and yard covered in ash.  My mom collected several jars of the ash and when we moved to California a few years later we would take the jars to school each year for show and tell.  Eventually all the jars were broken and we don't have any of the ash left but I decided it would be an interesting childhood memory to share with my kids.  So we this week we celebrated volcano day.
We started off by watching a short, simple video about volcanoes on How Stuff Works.com.  I liked that it was not too complicated or scary!  We discussed the terms volcano, magma, lava, and erupt.  We reviewed the word igneous from an earlier lesson on the types of rocks.
Then we did a mini-book on volcanoes from crayola.com
 Finally we made a little volcano in the sink.  I put some baking soda in the bottom of a cup and added a few drops of red food coloring.  Then I slowly added vinegar and the kids watched it "erupt".  We did this several times because they were enjoying it so much.  There was no clean up since we were doing it in the sink.
This seemed about the right level to approach the topic of volcanoes for the first introduction and we had a great time.
Find more ideas from other mothers at preschool corner.

Bird Week

We started the week by looking up birds in our encyclopedia.  We talked about the parts of the bird (wings, feathers, talons, beak, etc...), the different types of birds, and where different birds live.  Our encyclopedia had full page pictures of five different habitats each with a few birds from that habitat.  There was also a picture of a bird skeleton (we reviewed the term vertebrate) and a section on the different uses for the different types of bird feet (webbed for swimming, curved for gripping, or sharp for ripping).
On Tuesday we read a book called Beaks! by Sneed B. Collard III.  Each page focused on a different type of beak and what its particular shape and make up are good for.  Some beaks are made for pecking, some for fishing and some for tearing food.  One type of beak is even made upside down.  The end of the book had a little quiz to test our new knowledge of beaks.  Tuesday night Dad and the kids watched a Woody Woodpecker cartoon and talked more about woodpeckers.
Wednesday we combined birds with another theme day - park safety and Dad took the kids to a duck pond for a picnic dinner and to feed the ducks (a nice break for Mom).  The ducks loved the bread and kids were able to share with Dad the parts of the bird they knew and what ducks webbed feet and beak were used for.
Thursday we talked about state birds and the national bird (bald eagle).  We have a flapbook that has the birds listed for each state so we looked up ours (Alabama yellowhammer), grandma's, and some of the other states he knows.  It was a good geography review.

Friday we wrapped up the week by making a bird.  I went to the DLTK site under listings by material type to the toilet paper roll link.  (I use this site all the time since we always have toilet paper rolls around.)  We looked at each of the birds they had on their list and he choose Tweety Bird since it is yellow like the yellowhammer.  So, we watched a Tweety Bird cartoon.  A nice end to a really fun week.

Hope this gives you some good ideas.  Feel free to add some more in the comments and look for more at preschool corner.

Encyclopedia

Since our first son was old enough to ask questions about anything and everything, I began encouraging my husband to help our son find the answers to his questions by first looking in one our books before turning to the internet.  I know the internet is a great resource but I wanted our children to think of books as a resource as well and there is just something different about having a book in your hands as opposed to looking at a computer screen.  My husband agreed and would look for answers in a picture dictionary that we have.  He began complaining though after he tried to use the dictionary and three times in a row the thing he was looking for wasn't there (a picture of a groundhog for instance).
We started looking for a better picture dictionary.  As we were doing this we both remembered having encyclopedia sets in our homes when we were growing up and loving to look through them.  Many of our friends shared similar memories when we were discussing our delimma with them.
So, we decided to buy an encyclopedia set for our home.  A quick investigation showed that a new set was not within our financial means.  There are several thrift stores in our area so be decided to look there.  Our first trip out we found a set that was only five years old and most of the books were still shrink wrapped.  We were able to purchase the entire set for $10.

We brought the books home, made room on a bookshelf and our oldest set them up in alphabetical order singing his ABC song.  We now use the encyclopedia set on a very regular basis and usually ending up finding out so much more than the answer to our original question.  The best part for me has been when our 3 1/2 year old was asking a question about firefighters and his face lit up as he joyfully said, "I know.  I will go get the F."

NASCAR DAY May 16th

NASCAR DAY May 16th

Being a west coaster I won't presume to tread on a Southern tradition. But this is a great day to Run your own race.

Using the small metal toy cars and pre-made ramps or making your own you can ESTIMATE, MEASURE and AVERAGE for distance, speed and weight.

Make it a Car day and learn to change a tire, check the oil and other fluids, and maybe even wash the car.

Have a tail gate BBQ, Watch the movie "CARS".

Learn about Route 66.  Play the Nate King Cole song "Get your kicks on route 66" 

Spend the whole day making left turns.

Run your own 500. Make cardboard cars with suspender type straps to fit over the shoulders or just have them hold them on with their hands. Let them decorate them. Run all kind of races, timed, obstacle, backwards.

JUMPING FROG DAY-May 13th

A lot of what we do for preschool is based off of "holidays" so instead of telling you what we did last week (I combined with a friend for Cinco de Mayo) and you having to a wait a year I thought I would try posting a week ahead.  So here is our contribution to Preschool Corner for this week.







These are some ideas for JUMPING FROG DAY-May 13th

Celebrating the famed Jumping Frog of Calavares County by Mark Twain.

Locate Calavares County in California for a Geography Lesson.

Discuss Mark Twian and his writings with older children.

www.frogtown.org has all the particulars of the contest.

Holding your own jumping contests with plastic jumping frogs, origami frogs, plastic tiddlywinks or just using your own body has Math applications in measuring and estimating.

Our favorite song is 5 little speckled frogs. Catch it on YouTube - Five Little Speckled Frogs

Read a Frog and Toad story together.  Work on the fr and fl blends, frog handwriting, coloring page, tracing page, f is for frog, and a maze.

Make chicken wings and call them frog legs for dinner. Continue with the Fr blend sound and have French Fries and Frozen Yogurt.

Building character-

Two Frogs: An Inspirational Short Story about Perseverance (I would simplify it for preschoolers and take out the first frog but you get the idea.)
Two young frogs fell into a bucket of milk. Both tried to jump to freedom, but the sides of the bucket were steep and no foundation was to be had on the surface of the liquid.
Seeing little chance of escape, the first frog soon despaired and stopped jumping. After a short while he sunk to the bottom of the bucket and drowned.
The second frog also saw no likelihood of success, but he never stopped trying. Even though each jump seemed to reach the same inadequate height, he kept on struggling. Eventually, his persistent efforts churned some milk into butter. From the now hardened surface of the milk, he managed to leap out of the bucket.
The moral of this little inspiring story:
--Those who don't give up and persevere may be in for a pleasant surprise!

Shake your way to fresh butter and buttermilk.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
Heavy cream
A Jar with a lid
Preparation:
1. Fill a jar halfway with heavy cream (baby food jars work great for small batches), and screw the lid on tight.
2. Shake the jar up and down until the cream thickens and begins to stick together. about 10 min. it takes patience and work better with several kids.
3. Then, open the jar, and pour any remaining liquid into another container; this is the buttermilk. Everything else is butter.
4. Knead the butter under cold running water for several minutes to work out any remaining buttermilk (otherwise the butter will spoil quickly). optional step
5. Knead in salt, if desired.
6. Refrigerate.

Eat on crackers or fresh warm biscuits.

The Kentucky Derby-May 1

THREE FAMOUS HORSE RACES: The Kentucky Derby has passed (May 1st) Won by Super Saver. Can Super Saver win the Triple Crown?

http://www.triplecrownraces.com/ has a lot of information about the three races. The Preakness Stakes will run on May 15th and The Belmont Stakes on June5th. (Geography lesson)

For Derby Day we made silly hats and talked about the history of the races.

Math skills were enhanced as we learned how many inches in a Hand, a furlong, and where the term Horsepower originated.

http://www.discover-horse-carriage-driving.com/ was excellent for learning about horses in general.

We learned the rules for playing Horse Shoes. If you don't have a game set you can use broomstick handles or sticks hammered into the ground and jar lid rings. (like quoits, a good scrabble word)

If you have a horse shoe and want to put it over the door or someplace where it will bring good luck - remember to hang it so that the ends are up so your luck won't run out.

This topic can be expanded depending on the interest in Horses.

Books to read: National Velvet by Enid Bagwold, Black Beauty, American Girl: Meet Felicity, Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry.

A new movie Flicka 2 is coming out this month but I haven't read any of the reviews.