Dad Picture Magnet and Buoyant Foam Starfish!

Day 3 of our Week - Our themes are Fathers Day and the Ocean.

Foam Dad Magnetic Pictures!

Project - Foam DAD magnetic pictures. I wrote "DAD" in bubble letters on a template and traced it onto foam pieces. I cut "DAD" out along with the insides of the letters. Then Connor, Lauren and I chose pictures to put in the middle of the cut outs. They helped me arrange and glue the pictures. Then I hot glued 2 magnets on the back of the project. Materials needed - Craft foam, scissors, craft glue, magnets, pictures!

Foam Starfish!

Project - Buoyant Starfish. Connor and Lauren love their octopus' from the other day, so they wanted to make another ocean creature. They both chose starfish this time. You can find the template on the website www.FamilyFun.com/magazine I traced the template onto yellow foam. Connor and Lauren glued googly eyes onto the starfish and they drew a smile onto their starfish. Finally, I hot glued a cork to the back. Material needed- yellow craft foam, googly eyes, cork, black permanent marker, hot glue gun.

Buyoant Dolphin

Project - Buoyant Dolphin. Connor made this dolphin earlier this year. It is just like the starfish above and the octopus from the previous post. Again, you can find all of the templates and directions for this neat project on the website www.FamilyFun.com/magazine under Buoyant Buddies. Connor plays with them in the bathtub and they hold up really well!

Buoyant octopus!

Foam Octopus'

Day 2 of our week - Our themes this week are oceans, flags, and Father's Day. Today we focused on the ocean theme.
Project - I found this project in the April 2008 edition of Family Fun magazine. They are called Buoyant Buddies! They are made out of foam and corks. Connor made a dolphin earlier this year and Lauren a frog, but since our theme this week is ocean I thought it would be fun to make an ocean creature. Connor and Lauren both chose and octopus as their project, but they could have chosen a starfish, or crab too. I printed off the templates from the website www.FamilyFun.com/magazine I traced the template on foam and cut out the shapes. Then Connor and Lauren used craft glue to glue on the googly eyes and they used a Sharpie pen to draw a mouth. Then I applied hot glue to the foam shape and Connor and Lauren stuck the cork onto the glue. The website shows you where to place the corks. It is a fun project. Connor and Lauren wanted to make more, but I need to get more corks! :) Materials needed- craft foam, googly eyes, cork, permanent marker, hot glue, craft glue.

Connor drawing a mouth on his orange octopus!

Learning Activities - I have been using the workbook Everything for Early Learning Preschool workbook. (I purchased it at Wal-Mart).

Today's activities

1. Circle search

2. The number 9 - writing the number, counting objects . . .

3. The concept of small and big. Circling the small objects.

I always do letter/number reviews and they always write their names.

Flag Day- Stamped and painted American Flag!

Day 1 of our week - Our Themes this week are Oceans, Flag Day and Fathers Day!! I am continuing with our ocean theme, but we are also incorporating a Flag project for Flag Day and we will be doing a Father's Day project for Father's Day this coming weekend.

Ocean Patterns!

Activity 1 - I printed this grid template off of the website http://www.pre-kpage.com/ocean.html This template is for patterning. I started the patterns in each row with ocean themed stickers and Connor and Lauren finished the patterns with the correct stickers. This activity emphasizes patterns.

Ocean counting!

Activity 2 - I printed off a counting grid paper from the website http://www.pre-kpages.com/ocean.html Then I wrote the numbers 1-5 next to each row. Connor and Lauren read each number and placed the appropriate number of stickers in the rows. This activity emphasized number recognition and one-to-one correspondence.

Other activities - I started using the Everything for Early Learning Preschool workbook. I found this workbook at Wal-Mart. It has wonderful activities that deal with letter recognition, counting, comparing, addition, subtraction, shapes, patterns and more. Connor and Lauren have the basic skills to really understand all of the activities in this workbook. Today they did 3 activities out of the workbook. The first one dealt with shapes- circles, the 2nd one with the number 9 and counting and the 3rd one emphasized bigger and smaller, sequencing, cutting and gluing.

Stamped and painted American Flag!

Project- Stamped, Painted American Flag! Materials Needed- white construction paper, blue construction paper, red paint, white paint, small star sponge stamp and glue.
I cut a blue piece of construction paper into 1/4's. Connor and Lauren painted red stripes on the white piece of paper. Then they stamped stars using the sponge star shape onto a 1/4 piece of the blue paper. After the paint dried they glued the blue, star paper onto the top corner of the flag!
Before we started the project we talked about Flag Day and what it meant! They thought it was funny that we gave a flag a special day. Lauren said, "A flag isn't a person!"

Cupcake Liner Jelly Fish!!

Day 3 of our week - Our theme this week is the ocean and the color of the week is black.
Activity 1- Connor and Lauren practiced writing the letter y and the word joy. We used the worksheet Printing Practice - Worksheet 6 from the website http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/
Activity 2- The 2nd activity focused on counting objects. Connor and Lauren counted pears, umbrellas stars . . . and then circled the correct, matching number below the objects. This activity emphasized counting, one-to-one correspondence and number identification. This activity/worksheet was from the Preschool Everything for Early Learning Workbook.
Activity 3- Connor and Lauren completed a shape/circle activity. They had to trace all of the circles on the page and then count all of the circles.

Project- The project Connor and Lauren completed today was a Cupcake Liner Jelly fish to go along with the ocean theme. I gave Connor and Lauren 3 white cupcake liners each. I folded each liner in 1/2. They colored the liners with markers - they actually made designs :) I used bright neon paper to make the tentacles for the starfish. I cut out strips of paper using the fun design scissors. Connor and Lauren helped with this too. I made my strips about 3-4 inches long. Then the kids glued their strips onto the back of the cupcake liners and glued the cupcake liners to a blue piece of construction paper. Finally, the glued googly eyes onto each Jelly Fish. Connor added his own personal touch by drawing Sponge Bob and Patrick to the bottom of his paper! Materials Needed: Cupcake liners (folded in 1/2), markers, blue construction paper, googly eyes, strips of colored paper or strips of crepe paper.

Paint and sand make textured starfish!

Day 2 of our week - Our theme this week is the ocean and the color of the week is black.

Activity 1- Connor and Lauren practiced writing the letters z and v. We used the worksheet Printing Practice - Worksheet 6 from the website http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/

Activity 2- The 2nd activity focused on counting objects. Connor and Lauren counted moons, cupcakes . . . and then circled the correct, matching number below the objects. This activity emphasized counting, one-to-one correspondence and number identification. This activity/worksheet was from the Preschool Everything for Early Learning Workbook.

Activity 3- Connor and Lauren did pattern activity. They had to correctly color the last circle in each line according to the pattern. Each row of circles had color words in a pattern and Connor and Lauren colored in the last circle according to the pattern.

Project- The project Connor and Lauren completed today was a textured starfish. I found the main idea for this project on the website www.freekidcrafts.com/texturedstarfish.html I printed the starfish template off of the site and traced it onto card stock/tag board. Connor and Lauren then chose a paint color and painted their starfish. (Connor of course chose blue as his color, and Lauren chose purple). After, they had painted the starfish, we went outside to our sandbox and Connor and Lauren sprinkled (dumped!) sand onto their starfish. We let the project dry. Finally, they glued their starfish onto a brown piece of card stock and decorated the card stock with ocean theme stickers! (Blue card stock or any color would look good too).

Coffee Filter Fish, and the color black!!

Day 1 of our week - Our theme this week is the ocean and the color of the week is black.
Activity 1- Connor and Lauren practiced writing the letters j and w. We used the worksheet Printing Practice - worksheet 6 from the website http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/

Activity 2- The 2nd activity used another worksheet from http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/ Connor and Lauren completed The Color Black worksheet. They colored the pictures and traced the word black. They also wrote the word black all by themselves today!

Activity 3- Connor and Lauren did a cut and paste activity. They colored a banana, pear, lemon, apple, and grapes and then cut the fruit out and glued it in the correct basket. (The baskets were labeled with color words - yellow, green and purple).

Project- Our theme this week is the Ocean. I am using the websites, www.prekinders.com/themes.htm
and www.pre-kpages.com/ocean.html These two websites have wonderful, rhymes, projects, and math and literacy enrichment activities. I found the idea for our project off of www.pre-kpages.com/ocean.html The project title is Coffee Filter Painted fish. I had Connor and Lauren paint a coffee filter with watercolor paint. After the coffee filter was dry I made a small fish template traced it onto the coffee filter and cut out fish templates ( I ended up with 4 fish/filter - you could make just one big fish too). I also cut triangles out of tin foil. Connor and Lauren glued their fish to a piece of blue construction paper and paste the triangle tin foil pieces onto their fish. Then they glued 1 googly eye onto each fish. The end product looked like fish swimming in the ocean.

Paint, glitter, and an egg carton make cool bugs!

Day 2 of our week --- Our theme this week is bugs, and the color of the week is purple.
Activity 1 - Connor and Lauren wrote the letter k and the word king on the worksheet Printing Practice worksheet 5 from the website http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/. They had a harder time with the letter k, but they got the hang of writing it by the end.
Activity 2 - I made a counting worksheet with purple books on it. They had to count the books and circle the correct number listed below the books. This activity emphasized the higher numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10. At the bottom of the worksheet they were asked to circle the group of books that had more in it.
Activity 3 - Again, I made another beginning sound worksheet. They had to circle the beginning sound for ghost, house, and jelly.
Project - Connor and Lauren made egg carton bugs. I cut a cardboard egg carton in half and had Connor and Lauren paint their individual halves. I gave them a pallet of 4 colors. They painted the cartons and then sprinkled glitter on the wet paint. After the paint dried, they decorated their "bugs" with pipe cleaners for legs, mini pom-pom's, buttons and googly eyes. I just gave them a variety of materials to be creative with. I found this idea on the website www.prekinders.com/themes.htm under the theme of bugs. I really like this site for theme ideas. I have used it for all of my themes and it provides links to other great theme websites for preschool age kids.

Ants, purple and butterflies again!

Day 1 of our week -- Our theme is still bugs and the color of the week is purple.

Activity 1 - The kids first "school" activity was writing the letter h and r. They did a great job writing the letters. I knew they would since they both have r's in their names. We used the worksheet Printing Practice -worksheet 5 from the website http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/

Activity 2 - The 2nd activity used another worksheet from http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/ They completed The Color Purple worksheet. Connor and Lauren colored the picture and traced the word purple.

Activity 3 - The 3rd activity was a worksheet that I created called Purple Flowers. Connor and Lauren cut and pasted the flowers onto the correct vases according to the number beneath the vases. This worksheet emphasized cutting, pasting, counting, one-to-one matching and following directions.

Projects - We did 2 projects today. The kids made ants on a piece of construction paper that I folded into 4ths. The first 4th said "1 ant" The 2nd 4th said, "2 ants" The 3rd 4th said, "3 ants" and the last 4th said, "4! Ants, ants, ants galore!" Connor and Lauren used a q-tip pressed on a black stamp pad to make the bodies of the ant. Each ant had 3 ink circles for the body. I drew the antennae and legs with a Sharpie marker.

The 2nd project was a coffee filter butterfly. Connor and Lauren painted their coffee filter with water color paints. Once the paint dried, they picked out a colored pipe cleaner and I wrapped it around the middle of the coffee filter and formed antennae for the butterfly.

Again, they wanted to do more projects - they love making things and then playing with them.