Preschool ~ Oceans Theme Part 2

We loved this theme and could have continued on for another two weeks with all that Turbo still wants to learn!  Here's some of our activities these past two weeks.

Art - We stamped an Under the Sea poster with large foam stamps.  This is a terrific activity for him. It's helping him practice 'staying within the lines' and I saw a quick improvement to his coloring.

He did a free painting with a circle foam brush. He says its round fish and waves.  We also make these adorable ocean animals by connecting their parts with brad fasteners.

We read Over in the Oceans, a lovely book and were inspired by one of the pictures.

So we made this....

Build a Fish
We used the cute templates from Sparklebox to make these adorable creatures - 6 in all.  Even LilSweetie got in on the fun. You poke holes in the pieces and attach with a brad. The kids loved that the parts moved! LilSweetie's is the Turtle and she cherished it!

Games
Of course we played Go Fish! He loves this game and will play it 100 times in a row if I will too. Daddy does, but not Mommy.

We also played Fish Bingo. I thought this was from Monterrey Aquarium website, but can't find it now. Sometimes we dumped them on the floor and other times we put them in ABC order. They have a paperclip on them and we used a magnetic fishing pool to fish and then mark our BINGO cards.

Sensory Tub
What's a fun theme without a sensory tub? The kids love these and I love that I can now leave them out! Both kids do a great job keeping it together.

Outing
We went to the beach of course! Love this beach because the sand is so soft and the water is rocky. That means the kids don't want to wade too far into the water and I can more safely take both by myself.

I had some directed play activities, but didn't use them at all. They were having such a great time playing with the sand that I didn't want to interrupt that.

 Turbo was SO excited to see Sand Bugs. Lil Sweetie and I say....Ewww.

You can see our Ocean Theme Part 1 and Ocean Book list if you're looking for more.

Ocean Books

Here are some of the Ocean Theme books we read these two week. I'm sharing the ones we read more than once and the kids enjoyed.
This is a sweet story about seasonal changes on an island and the secret it has to share.
This was an absolute Favorite! We made Seaweed soup at the beach, pretended to make it at home and read the story several times.
Touching and unique story about a boy and his walk with his Gramma.  She’s in a wheelchair and still they go to the ocean, around the lighthouse and see the sights together.  Loved this tear jerker!
Our favorite book about Tide Pools. Great use of words to describe the feeling, look and movement of the sea life. Great info too!
the kids really liked this one
A great book about Sea Turtles. Lots of facts written in the form of a story. This was read many, many times.

The following books were also enjoyed! These are fiction/fact books vs story books.
Starfish
The Seashore
Starfish, Seashells and Crabs
Seashore, Eyewitness books
Exploring the Sea
Wonders of the Sea
Exploring an Ocean Tide Pool
Life in the Water
Life in the Sea

See our Ocean Theme Posts
Oceans Part 1
Oceans Part 2

Ocean Theme ~ Part 1

In addition to our Core Lessons, we had an excellent time learning about the Oceans. It's a vast subject and I wasn't sure where to being.  I was thrilled to find the Sea Searchers Handbook to give some spine to our studies. I went through the online book and selected several units, then got some supporting books from the library.  These were all terrific!!  We learned about Wind and Waves, Tides, Crabs and Food Webs.  I don't have pictures of everything because I was playing too!  Here's one though....

Tides to Siphon:  Here we are learning about Tides. We added rocks, gravel, plastic sea creatures to our tub, then filled it with 4 large bowls of water to simulate High Tide. As it filled, we talked about which creatures were getting covered by the water and which ones were out. We used a plastic lid to make waves and see how it lapped up over the tallest rocks.  Then we siphoned the water out to simulate the tide receding.  That's when the tide learning stopped and the "how a siphon works" learning began. He was SO interested in his. He would raise and lower the end to watch the flow slow and speed up. He would add air to make it stop and have me restart it.  Eventually we went back to the low tide and tide pool discussion, but the highlight was siphoning!

Ocean Words ~ Turbo loved reading each of these during the day as the mood struck.  It also helped to remind him what he learned and would spark questions.  He mostly wants to know about "what does it eats and who eats it." He ends up using the vocabulary frequently in conversations. Adorable.

Tide Pool Fan
This was so fun! Turbo got to cut, glue and hole punch.  He did a great job with the hole punching too! It's from here.

Commotion on the Ocean Fun! 
What I Learned book
Each day I read an ocean book to Turbo and he would recount something he learned from it and draw a picture.  Drawing and coloring have not been favorite things for him, so I wondered how he'd like this. He had a great attitude and enjoyed it.  You can see he used the Tide Pool Fan as a reference point for his drawing. He had a hard time grasping what I wanted initially, then worried that he couldn't draw a good picture. A little encouragement and he did a great job!

We also did several other parts of that unit. The graphing with tricky pieces thrown was huge fun around here. Turbo loved to identify all the tricky pieces before we got started and used them for a different activity later.  We did the Ocean labeling, Schema and Devotion to the Ocean. There's still so much more here for another go-round!


Science
Does and Egg float in water or saltwater?  We tested the eggs and completed a little booklet.  The egg does indeed float in saltwater. Turbo thought that was very cool.  Then we poured out half of the salt water and added the fresh water.  Can you guess what happened? It floated in the middle - under the fresh water and on top of the salt water.    

Blubber Test
After our ocean visit where the water was quite cold, we read about whales.  Naturally the question "How do they stay in that freezing water so long" came up. So we did an unplanned experiment to explain.  Take one bowl of icy water, 2 ziplock bags and 1 container of Crisco and you've got your very own blubber experiment.  They first put their hand in the icy water until it was reeaaalllly cold - about 45 seconds for Turbo.  Then we put the Crisco in a ziplock to simulate the blubber.  We didn't want greasy fingers so we covered our hand with a second ziplock.  Then into the blubber and into the icy water.  "WOW!! Where's the cold" was the response.  You couldn't feel the cold at all for at least several minutes!  Very fun experiment.

Circle Time Activities

• Rhymes ~ She Sells Seashells; A sailor went to sea;
• Reviewed the Oceans on the globe
• Sang Oceans songs - My Bonnie, I'm a little fishy, Take me out the Ocean, and the very favorite "Did you ever see a fishy". We ran around to the songs, but this one kept us running the most.  
• Videos from Monterey Bay Aquarium

Pretend Play
Pretend to sell seashells

Nature Table
Shells and Magnifying Glass was a huge hit.

Books ~ Oh my! We read tons of books these two weeks. I began reading to them during dinner and they LOVE it.  It also helps dinner time go smoother ~ less goofing, chattering and such.  More eating, listening and talking. (yes, there's a huge difference between chattering and talking!)  All the titles are downstairs right now so I'll do another post.

Resources ~  It get time consuming to post links on each item when there's so much overlap. I will absolutely do that when I have time.  Since I won't post without the link-backs, I wanted to at least get them in the easiest way.
Balanced Literacy Unit - Commotion on the Ocean - Great resource with TONS of stuff. We did several things and will go back for more next go-round.
Monterey Bay Aquarium Teachers Place - The Sea Searchers Handbook and online videos were a key part of our theme learning.
Learningpage.com, Kidsparkz.com ~ We used theme printables from these sites.  (If you're looking, I didn't post about them.)

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Here's our Weekly Wrap Up post and Stay tuned for another post with our Books, Art, Games and Outings!!   (Updated: links to related posts)

Linking to: Preschool Corner

Preschool Week 1 & 2 ~ Wrap Up!

We had such a great start to our Preschool!! It was better than I expected.  Turbo was thrilled about most of the activities and thinks school is super fun.   Here's a few things we did.

Character:  Orderly
We learned the song and verse from HubbardsCupboard.org.  We created some new Order within our playroom and we looked for opportunities to compliment each other being orderly.  This has made an impact in our relationships. He's really looking for nice things to say to me and his sister. I LIKE THAT!

Handwriting:
We worked on l, t, i, j & v these two weeks. I'm using the Kumon Lowercase letters workbook with various warmup and practice to start.

Reading:We're using Hooked On Phonics as I found an excellent deal on an older version. While Turbo placed in the First Grade book, I decided to start him in Kindergarten. I thought the transition to structured phonic learning was enough for him to tackle. Good decision. He saw the words, thought it was easy and started rushing the reading. He made mistakes on words he knows very well.  By day 3 it was vastly improved. Stickers are such a motivator.
He also chose his Tag Reader, Bob Books and various Early Readers for additional practice.

Math
We started RightStart Math Book A. It was a toss up because he placed in Book B and the staff at Rightstart encouraged it. Still, I decided to order both A & B as I'm sure LilSweetie will start in A.  Upon looking through both books, I chose A for Turbo. It goes a little slower and that's our pace for this year.  He likes it and thinks it's fun. Here's a picture of the items for one lesson. No pencil in that box!! Just fun manipulatives. Turbo loves that part of the program.

Theme: Oceans!
Turbo loves themes and so do I.  We incorporate our theme into circle time, books, hand-on learning activities, videos to watch and so forth.  There's a ton of activities here - I'll do another post.


Outing: Beach
Somehow we hadn't made it this summer.  While we went last year, the kids didn't remember that. So it was like seeing it for the first time again.  Oh how I love these early ages!!  The joy as they played in the sand and splashed the water.  Turbo was so surprised it was COLD!  We played with driftwood, found crabs (alive and dead), built sandcastles and chased seagulls.  We saw a pelican dive for fish to the surprise of LilSweetie. It was a special day.  The thing missing was Daddy. I'm sad he didn't get to join us due to a work situation.  We might make another trip next week together.

Trees ~ Week 1

I'm thrilled our first two weeks learning about Apples were successful. We did most of my planned activities and had a great time. Now we're on to our Tree Theme!  I found several great ideas from The Adventures of Bear and her tree unit as well as PreKinders Forest unit.

Here are some of our learning objectives.  Given Turbo's lack of  interest, we might not get in depth on these.

• There are different kinds of trees
• Trees grow things
• Trees have roots, trunk, bark, branches and leaves
• Trees are plants
• Trees need water, nutrients and sunlight to grow
• Trees provide food, shelter, wood, paper and oxygen
• Trees have different types of leaves
• Leaves make the food for trees

Field Trip
We kicked off this week with a field trip to our local preserve for a nature walk. Turbo was to take pictures of nature, parts of the tree and anything else that interested him. I thought this would really get him excited about our nature walk.  Nope. He wasn't interested in the nature, the activities or the topic. He just wanted to ride in the stroller next to Little Sweetie.  Our only highlight was throwing sticks off the bridge into the rushing stream.  Let's just say that I've scratched the Redwoods field trip off the schedule for next week!  Still, I forced him to have fun and take some pictures, he happily took some pictures of tree parts.

We watched this great slideshow about trees. It covered all of the learning objectives and Turbo payed careful attention and asked for it most days.  I wish I could find something like this for all our units as it was cute, concise and accurate. 

After collecting leaves (mostly by me) from our neighborhood to supplement our sad, tiny collection from the aforementioned nature walk, we did some leaf activities.  We haven't been doing many arts/crafts, so this was makeup day!

Inspecting and Comparing - we taped leaves to paper and used a magnifing glass to look at their veins and compare the differences.

Leaf Rubbings - with both crayons and chalk

Tree Bark Rubbings - Turbo had the idea "Let's do this on a tree!" so we set off to rub on all trees in our yard.

Paper Plate Wreath

Leaf Collage - Turbo surprised me with this present he made while I was getting the paint for his leaf painting. Awwww. Seriously sweet little boy.

Painting with leaves - it was so funny, he really wasn't sure how to paint with these. Although he enjoyed it! Not really a tree learning activity, but a fun way to paint!

Then we played "Does it grow on/live in a tree?" game. I had him yell Yes or No as loud as he could if it grew on a tree or if it lived in a tree.  We didn't have enough dry leaves to crunch one for each answer, so we yelled instead.

We read Fall Leaves Fall by Zoe Hall. We also read this last year and likely will every year! Such a lovely book.  At the end we got out the silk leaves and pretended to be the wind and trees.

Kumon Books ~ We continue to work our way through the Kumon books. We're starting off very easy and once I start RRSP, then we'll move onto the Capital Letters book.

Weekly Game - This week we're doing puzzles.  He does fairly well, but they don't hold his interest long. After putting it together once, he doesn't want to repeat the same one again.

Pretend Play ~ He asked me to play grocery store this week. He wanted to play with a 'credit card' and really needed the phone since the clerks have them too.

That's it for this week. I'm not sure what we're going to do next week. He's not that into trees.  Maybe I can find some fun science experiments.  If you have any, let me know!

I'm linking up to Preschool Corner over at Homeschool Creations

Learning about Apples ~ week 2

In the spirit of my approach for this year, we're taking our time with each theme, repeating activities throughout the week when we find ourselves ahead of schedule.  It's actually working out great right now. Last week was Apples Week 1  We had a great time and are both excited about more preschool days.

After breakfast each day, we do our Calendar Time.

We did a lot of apple learning outside this week.

Apple Toss & Catch: First we played catch with the apples. He's great at throwing and has good aim. He's improving on his catching skills.   Since I was playing, no pictures.

Ready, Aim, Fire ~ He tried to roll the apples into the circles. Very challenging!

Apple Races ~ We raced our apples down the driveway. We learned which ones roll the fastest (more small and round, the faster) and why some wobbled all around (very knobby/less round)

Feed Me ~ The bucket is hungry and we needed to fill it up with as many apples, while tossing from behind  on a line.

Apple Fractions Puzzle: We grabbed a bucket, our apples, some sidewalk chalk and a knife.   I showed him 1 whole apple, cut into half and apple, then into fourth and finally into eighth.  Then gave him the pieces and he got to reassemble the apple into a whole again.  He liked this.

Apple Fractions Hopscotch
He played hopscotch while dropping the apple pieces in the correct 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 section.

He got to stomp on the final apple ~ loved that!

Hide & Seek - Hot and Cold Game:  I hid an apple in the Family Room. Turbo would try to find it and I would say " colder, warmer, or hot" depending on how close he was to the apple. He LOVED this game. It took a couple times for him to really get it and process it all and now he asks for it most days.

Board Game ~ Hi-Ho-Cherry-O ~ Closest thing to the theme I have. It is a big success. Something he can play easily and enjoys.  One afternoon he took it into his room and played it by himself. Did I mention Lil Sweetie was napping? Oh yea, 20 minutes by myself! You bet I love this game.

Patterning: He laced red, green and yellow apples (faceted beads) onto a pipecleaner.  It made a bracelet and he wore it for a nanosecond. 

Counting ~ I used Confessions of a Homeschoolers Apple Counting sheets for Turbo to count the seeds from our apples.  I only asked for two sheets - low numbers and higher numbers, just to see if he has the concept and to work on simple addition. We took the seeds from 6 and slid them down to 7 to realize we needed to add one more.  I still think Math is a boarderline concept for him right now and need to think of more fun, hands on math activities.

Pre-Writing ~ Costco FINALLY has the Kumon books back! I seriously looked most weeks for months and months. Of course I bought all the ages 2-6 books   We're starting with My First Book of Tracing.  I want to assess Turbo and see if I can get him to slow down a bit and really focus on his pencil holding and writing form before moving on....we'll see.

Tons more Playdough/Pie making play ~ he continues to ask for this every day.

His imagination is in overdrive these days. Which says a lot for an already imaginative boy.  He was doing a lot of cooking on his own. He would say the funniest things to himself ~ "just gonna pop this in the oven for a few minutes" 

Cutting and Gluing ~ Confessions of a Homeschooler's cutting practice and cut/glue Apples onto a tree activity.

Books ~ We continue to read "Apple Pie Tree" by Zoe Hall. We talk about the seasons, lifecycle of the trees and apples.

Well, that's the bulk of our Week 2 activities.

I'm linking up to Preschool Corner over at Homeschool Creations