Whatever floats your boat

We start most days with a short preschool time.  Mostly for Tyler, Brooklyn usually participates, Alan loves it, and Dale takes care of Daniel if he's awake.  If Daniel's awake, not Dale. Dale's always awake. :)

I like to do a weekly theme for preschool, and some gel better than others.

This week is 'Boats' inspired by, and semi related to, Alan's Five-In-a-Row book, The Little Red Lighthouse.

Today we read Bear Island

sang Row, Row, Row, Your Boat,

and read a picturebook of Noah and the Ark.

We talked about the fact that 40 days (how long it rained) is more than a month, after which we sang our months of the year song (to the tune and motions of The Macarena ,thank you Dr. Jean).

Then, tomorrow being the first day of February, we threw in a little ground hog rhyme, just for fun.

I cut out a construction paper square, circle, and triangle for each kid for a boat craft, but first we did a shapes song. Alan and Tyler loved it and asked to do it over and over.

The shapes song, to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle,Little Star":

Put your circle in the air,
Hold it high and keep it there,
Put your square behind your back,
Now please hold it in your lap.
Put your triangle on your toes,
Now please hold it on your nose.

Hold your circle in your hand,
Now it's time for you to stand,
Wave your triangle at the door,
Now please put it on the floor,
Hold your square and jump, jump, jump,
Now throw your square up, up, up!

When we finally finished singing the song, I cut the circles in half and the other shapes down to size and we glued them together to make boats.

Preschool Unit - Cars & Trucks

Shapes Bus - No Time for Flashcards

R road, inspired by - No Time for Flashcards

Stop Sign - No Time for Flashcards

Traffic light

 Cut a rectangle shape for body of traffic light.  Cut 3 holes down center of rectangle.

Cut 3 squares of wax paper.  Cover with bits of green, yellow, and red tissue paper.

Glue tissue covered wax paper to back of light body. 

Trim any overhanging wax paper/tissue.

Road map Town

Lay out big piece of paper. Draw. Drive. :)

Simplified version of this paper tube race car from Family Fun.

Tire track painting - No Time for Flashcards (again!)

Transportation puzzle

Plus a handful of car, truck, and transportation books from our library.

Linking up with:

Under the Sea - Preschool

Tyler's second unit of the school year was beach and ocean. Such an easy and fun unit! Here are some of our activities:

Music:

From the blog: Because Babies Grow Up.

Books

A few of our favorites from the library this unit:

Crafts and Stuff

Seashell sorting and other printed activities from Under the Sea, on hand from last year's extensive ocean unit.  (Check it out for lots more links and activities!)

 Remember our finger painting a week or so ago?  After the pages were dry we folded them in half, drew a fish shape on the back, cut out both pieces, and glued them together with a string in the middle for hanging.  Or flying around the house.  

'F' is for 'fish'!  And 'fingerprints'. ;)  Thumbprints all over our cut-out letter, embellished with magic marker faces, tails, and fins.  I like to teach letter sounds before letter names, so Tyler and I both went around talking about his 'fffff' a lot. 

Paper plate fish: color or paint the backside of two paper plates.  Cut a triangle out of each for a mouth/tail.  Staple the plates together, with the tail opposite the mouth.  We did this project the same day Alan read about Jonah, so we made a paper Jonah to go inside the fish.

Water play with fish figurines.  And a rubber ducky.  And a toy tire.  Because you just never know what you might find in the ocean, right? 

Linking up with:

Weekly Wrap Up - Week 3

We still weren't back to full swing this week after Alan's tonsillectomy last week.  This was a recovery week for him, full of pudding, jello, yogurt, & gatorade. He spent a lot of time watching the Olympics on tv, and laying around resting.

Dale kept up a full school schedule.  We are working these days on practicing turning in an all-around good product.  Not just slapping down the right answer, but working with a good attitude, putting in his best effort, and using creativity (unless it's math ;) ) and his neatest handwriting.  

This was Daddy's last week home so he spent a lot time reading and playing with all his kiddos before getting back to work. 

Our biggest projects this week have all been Olympics related.

Olympic Rings:

(Ok, so technically we did the rings last week, 'kay?)

Finishing the boys' joint Olympic lapbook:

And creating our Olympic Medals Count poster:

Color the flags...

Add a star sticker for each medal won!

(not nearly up to date, but we are working on it!)

And of course, watching as many events on tv as we can!

Hopefully we'll be back in full swing next week, with Daddy back at work, and full schedules for all boys!

Linking up with:

Wrapping up, looking ahead

As January is winding down I am swinging back and forth between "wow that went fast" and "is it just me or has this been the longest. month. ev-er?"


This weekend we finally hit the 6-weeks-to-go check point in the countdown to some spring break plans.  Greg and I have been waiting for that point to let the boys in on the big news... a trip to the beach!  With our boys you never know what kind of reaction you're going to get when you make an announcement.  I was prepared for this one to fall flat, but the boys excitement was delightful, and their enthusiasm was contagious!  Now if we can all just somewhat contain that for the next 5 weeks or so.  I see a paper chain in our future for sure. ;)


In the meantime we carry on with school and fun days.  You  know we're just 3 days away from Groundhog Day, right?  That's got to be one of the silliest days in the calendar year.  That's not going to keep us from observing, of course. ;)


Here are our groundhog plans for the week:
 - Look up and discuss groundhogs / woodchucks, their characteristics and habits
 - Color a groundhog
 - Watch this woodchuck video:

 - Discuss the February 2 tradition and Punxsutawney Phil
 - Make a paper plate groundhog mask
 - Try the "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck" tongue twister
 - Make playdough groundhogs
 - Groundhog Day prediction poll, tally & graphing
 - Groundhog Day mini book
 - Groundhog Puppet
(These and more Groundhog's Day links can be found here.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

How we've been celebrating:

We started out the month with a giant tree, a stack of colored leaves, and  roll of double-sided tape.
We try to each write at least one blessing a day to put on the tree.

We even have guests put up a thankful leaf!  The tape we are using is re-stickable, so after Thanksgiving I plan on putting our leaves into a notebook for a keepsake.  Stores flat! :)

Some of our Thanksgiving school work on my makeshift bulletin board (until I find what  I am looking for to make one).
My favorites are the handprint Mayflowers from Almost Unschoolers. The video link (about the Mayflower II) on that site is also very good!

A turkey hairclip for Miss B!  From Vanessa.

Also from Vanessa @ Silly Eagle Books.
(Hmm...went to get that link and noticed our turkeys are missing their wings. Whoops!)
These three turkeys are among the things at the top of my thankful list, along with their sister,
their Daddy, and a host of other blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving 

from all of us in the Buffalo Herd!

August Ocean Unit

Preschool Resources:

Under the Sea

Exploring the Ocean with a Hermit Crab (Based on Eric Carle's House for Hermit Crab)

Elementary Resources:

Exploring the Deep Sea

Paper Plate Fish
(from "Under the Sea")

Goes great with the book Rainbow Fish)

Gigantic Ocean mural posters
(bought second-hand a couple of years ago)

Feeding the Octopus goldfish crackers

(From "Under the Sea")

Octopus and crab in 'seaweed'

Paper Plate & Balloon Octopus

Crab Handprint Puppets

(From "Under the Sea")

Sand & Glitter Seahorses

Jellyfish

Some of our book selections:

If you enjoy older living books, I cannot say enough good things about Houses of the Sea!

Of course, this isn't an all-inclusive list of our month+ long unit, but a smattering of our favorites (and the ones I remembered to get pictures of.) ;)

As far as the currclick resources listed at the beginning, "Under the Sea" is full of excellent ideas and great printables for the Preschool/Kindergarten set.  Lots of alphabet, math and other activities... 90 pages worth!  Almost everything I buy on currclick I wait and get on sale, but if you are thinking of doing an ocean unit w/your 3-6 year old (depending on ability) this would be worth full-price! (A whopping $5 if I remember correctly) ;)

The Hermit Crab resource includes printables for a lapbook.