Magic inflating balloon

 Amazing magic inflating balloon

Here is our day in a nut shell:

Math

We played memory and counting bears

 Another math game we played was rolling a dice, counting the number of dots, then getting to pick out that many snacks. It's a fun way to incorporate math into other activities. 

 Reading

We read for 25 minutes followed by a lesson in Reading eggs.  Fluttershy's favorite.

 Sensory

We revisited out Cloud Sand

Science

The magic inflating balloon.

Our inspiration for today's science experiment came from a fun site Juggling with kids. 

You'll need the following:

Empty plastic bottle

Vinegar 

Baking soda

Balloon

 First place fill your bottle with 1 or 2 inches of vinegar.

 Second put 1 Tablespoon of baking soda in your balloon.  You could use a funnel or like we did.  I stretched open the balloon and had Fluttershy using a spoon pour the baking soda I had pre measured into the balloon.  Carefully put the balloon on to the top of the bottle without letting any of the baking powder get into the bottle.

When your ready, shake the baking powder into to bottle and watch the exciting looks on the kids faces. 

 Super fun activity and fun day.  This all happened before lunch and nap time.  Fun day!

A shopping we will go

Our Preschool Palace Lesson  today was fun with a grocery theme.  

Some of the things we did:

Field trip: Grocery store. 

A grocery store can teach young people how to work within a budget and learning to buy what is on the list. You can help young students understand how to make wise food choices in a grocery store. Before the visit, review types of food items with the children and categorize them into either healthful or unhealthful choices. When you take your trip to the store, give the children a list of foods and have them choose a healthful example.  Option: At the end of the trip, allow each child to choose a healthful snack to buy. 

Activity: 100 card. While many preschoolers cannot count to 100, it is a skill required by the end of Kindergarten. This activity is just an introduction to higher numbers, illustrations of sets of 10’s (counting by 10’s also required in Kindergarten). This activity also reinforces fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, color brown, square shape, 1 to 1 correspondence, and provides a tasty snack after completion!
Use Chex cereal as the counter pieces to fill in each square on the 100 chart. (found on the November month curriculum.)

Preschool Palace fun                                                            

Review square shape: Square poster,  and other posters from previous months.

Activity: Shape memory match. Take several index cards. Take 2 index cards and draw with a heavy marker 1 learned shape on each card. Repeat for all shapes learned, maybe even some new ones! Lay the cards upside down on the table and play the memory game with the shape cards.

Craft: Three colored crayon art. Let child choose three crayons. Then tape the three crayons together into one large crayon. Provide paper to make a design on paper using three-colored crayon.

Worksheet: Number 3 worksheet

We have a bunch of file folder games that I've made.  Today we went through several of them.  We covered shapes, big/small, numbers, and alphabets. 

Here is our craft for today.  We taped 3 crayons together and drew pictures.  Adds a fun twist to coloring.

Sensory bins #1

Thursday: Preschool Palace activities

Movement: Streamer dance. Take hair scrunchies or large covered ponytail bands and loop ribbon or streamers over the band. Children then put band over wrists and use as extensions to move to the music. Play music and dance!
 

Sensory Table: Bean and corn sensory tub. Fill sensory table with dried beans and dried kernels of Indian corn. Add measuring tools.
 

Craft: Bean and corn craft. Allow children to use some dried beans and dried kernels from In-dian corn and glue to cardstock for mosaic, design, free-style design.
 

Snack Option: Tortilla/corn chips with bean dip with corn mixed in. Delicious!
 

Craft/Writing: Family Collage. Have the children go through magazines and find pictures of all the things their mothers do. Cut them out and glue them onto construction paper. The same can be done for dad. Another variation is to have the children cut out pictures to represent the people in their family and the things they like to do as a family.

These are so much for for the kids to dance with and so easy to make.  I've used a large hair band and tied ribbons on it.  My kids love to wear them like bracelets and dance around.

 

Sensory bins are new to us.  This is our first attempt.  Fluttershy had fun digging around and pouring the beans into the cups.

More preschool! Really?

For those of you who read my blog you'll notice we do "preschool" 3 times a week.   These lesson are very short and are mostly are coloring and crafts.  Well, its Thursday and we did our 3 lessons on Monday-Wednesday.  Now that it's Thursday I didn't have anything planned.   Fluttershy insisted that we do preschool today so I decided to try out a site called Preschool Palace .  

I get some of my worksheets from them so today I decided to try out their preschool lessons.  They have them for free for the current month.  You can buy them for a year at a time.  If we decide we like them we may get them for next year.  We'll see.

Today's was fun.  I think I'll keep them for the extra days we need something to do.  Fluttershy really loves having the activities to do and the extra time with me.  Rarity tries to do everything that her big sister does.  I try to keep her involved letting her sit at the table with us and allowing her to to a simplified version of what ever Fluttershy is doing. 

Movement: Shape Twister

Draw shapes on index cards and lay them out on the floor.  Call out the shape and either hand or foot and have then do it.  We even tried Left and right and Fluttershy got it most of the time.  Rarity enjoyed just stepping on the cards. 

Sensory/Craft: Square block painting

Taking a cube explain that the sides of a cube are a square.  Let them dip the side in paint and make squares on construction paper. 

Our new find.  http://www.abcya.com/

I am so excited to find this.  A Free computer learning game that is little kid friendly, good graphics, and a good learning tool. They start at kindergarten level.  Surprisingly Fluttershy was able to do and enjoy more than half of the activities.  She's still learning how to use the mouse so I had to help her with a few games.  She knew the answers but didn't have the coordination to click on some of the littler things.  Her favorite of the day was Alphabet bingo.  

If you have kids 4 or 5 and up you've got to give this site a try.  So much fun.

We also looked at the Starfall.com calendar, talked about the weather, and had fun just playing.