Chocolate Painting!
A while ago we tried painting with mud because I’m a Dirty Dinosaur was painted with mud. Now that the same author wrote the book I’m a hungry dinosaur, we decided to paint with chocolate, because the author painted with chocolate.
This was a yummy project!
Dancing with the Moon!
In the book Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, Monica is a little girl who dreams of dancing with the moon. The father goes on a ladder to get the moon but it is too big for him to carry down the ladder. So, Monica and her father wait until the moon gets smaller, which it eventually does. Then the father goes back up and gets the moon for her. Then Monica can dance with the moon!
Of course, there are a lot of things scientifically inaccurate about this, but it is a story that introduces to kids the concept that the moon changes over the course of a month. We learned about the moon phases and made our own moons.
Then Caroline delighted in dancing with the moon!
Paul danced with the moon too, but mostly I think he was being a stand-in for Mom to test the lights.
Mary was a happy watcher.
But then she started to wonder: “Can I Dance with the Moon too?”
Nope, Caroline beat her to the moon!
Monica and Caroline: Moon Dancers
Are You My Mother? Games
Caroline loves mamas and babies so I made an animal activity based on the book Are You My Mother?. I made some activity pages. We draw a line to match mother and baby. And we cut and pasted items (such as a snort and a puppy) on a chart: alive or not alive.
We played a matching game with the moms and baby animals. (Caroline’s favorite was the mom and baby human set!).
I also made a barnyard slider match activity.
How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World
We explored where our food comes from (and learned about the geography of the world) by making a map on our driveway. As we read How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World, we acted it out as we traveled to the different places that the narrator told us to travel to.
Paul was our main cartographer.
We pretended we were harvesting the wheat in Italy…
and finding the bark for the cinnamon when we got to Sri Lanka, for example.
Our map ended up in a big circle around our driveway, since we ended up where we started, of course!
Then we found the ingredients in our home, but I gave the kids a twist: we had to make our own butter! Caroline and Paul were happy helping out in the butter churning. And they found the end result to be absolutely delicious.
Even Mary found this a “delicious” outside activity.
It was such a lovely day, it turned out just nice to relax outside too.
Patriotism on the 4th of July
We had Red, White, and Blue pancakes!
Plus, Caroline requested flag toast! It has strawberry jam, blueberries, and cream cheese.
Mary’s 9 Months!
Hum, that toy looks like fun!
The Spooky Old Tree Game
Caroline has always loved to play games for learning prepositions when we read The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree. When we then also read Inside, Outside, Upside Down by the same authors, it was time to resurrect our old game.
In The Spooky Old Tree, three little bears visit a spooky tree. They go up stairs, through a hall, around other things, and over a great sleeping bear. When we played our game before, toddler Caroline’s favorite part was climbing over a great sleeping bear (me!). This was also her favorite part of our preposition game as a preschooler. That often ended in the bear waking up and a chase beginning!
To add in more fun, we then read Inside, Outside, Upside Down and we found a box for climbing in. In this book, Brother Bear, climbs inside a box, which is then turned upside down, put on a truck, and driven away. We also added a chair and a stool, since we can’t really climb “creaky old stairs” or go around or through a “spooky old tree” while in our basement!
The box was lots of fun. Could we go through it?
Caroline required that I get into the game so she could take my picture!
Our prepositions game is a lot of fun. It is a game that does not have winners or losers. Instead, it has people having fun as they unintentionally learn prepositions.
Mary loved hanging out in the midst of the excitement!
Learning the Concept of 100
I am finally a bit more consistent at getting to the number 10 when counting on my own, and yet numbers even higher than that seem incomprehensible to me. Mom decided to introduce the concept of 100, a high number, by making a paper clip counting 100 train together.
In the simple train book Crossing by Philip Booth, the gates go down at a small town railroad crossing in the earlier part of the century. Kids jump and cheer as it passes. They peek at each other underneath the cars and name the brands they see on the train cars. They count the cars (although not every number is shown in the book), and at the last car they yell “caboose!” I love the rhythmic rhyme in Crossing, and I also love that the illustrations are so rich. One two-page spread even shows the entire 100-car train!
Although a preschooler does not need to know how to count so high, understanding the concept of getting to a “huge” number is an important step. We can count high together to come to understand 100 days, 100 bites, 100 train cars, or 100 paper clips. Once we start counting days in school (starting this fall!), making a 100 train will be a great way to celebrate 100 days of school. It seems like so much to a young child, but by counting one at a time, or by counting to 10 ten times, we can get there together.
We started by counting to ten, and found the page in the book that showed the count to ten. Then, Mom made the first chain of ten in the colors that I suggested.
For the next few groups of ten, I did similar colors and I helped me make sure each was the same length. Then, we put our paper clip 100 train together. I loved seeing how long it was. We laid it next to the full two-page spread of the train in the book so we could see how long both of them were.
Learning about the World
Our continents preschool lesson this week was quite simple and brief, but I had remembered my place on the map (and the globe) since then!
First we read Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney. It’s is the general go-to book for such an introduction to our place in the world, mapping in general, and the fact that there are continents. It shows so clearly in steps that we have a place in a house, in a street, in a city, in a state, etc. I was not surprised that Strawberry enjoyed reading it with me. After we read it together, it was time to figure out our place “on the map.”
We began by finding her room. Then we walked down to the corner to find out our street name. Then we talked about our community as we headed home.
We got out the globe and the magnifying glass (a tool that will make any project more fun). Spinning the globe always is fun, so once we got that out of our system, we flipped through a few library books about mapping and continents.
I was delighted to learn about Antarctica (that is where the penguins live) and to hear that my big brother Raisin was born on the continent of Australia. We found the continents as the book mentioned them.
And of course we had to find where we are!
