File Folder: fish and colors

I made this for my 2 year old to help her learn colors. She LOVES it. I'm planning on making more for both her and my son.

I got it from http://www.filefolderfun.com/PreschoolColorMatch.html

Sound and Music: Blow a Sound

We read this book. :)
Science: We talked about wind instruments and tried to make one but we couldn't get it to work. I'll have to experiment more with that one.

Language Arts: We went through some titles involving instruments such as "The Lost Trombone" or "The Talking Clarinet"..etc. We went with "The Magic Flute". Then Collin wrote a story based on that. Here's his story.

• Once upon a time a magic flute went out for a walk. The magic flute got lost and saw 100 bears. He vibrated and spun and became a tornado and blew the bears away. He walked and walked until e saw his house, it had a big hole in the roof. He felt some raindrops but when he tried to fix it he realized he had no more magic. He tried to fly over the house but his flying power stopped and he fell right into the pool. The water froze over and he was stuck there. Finally, it got so hot that the water melted and the magic flute was free. Then his powers came back and he fixed his roof and went home. Another family had moved in though so they played rock, paper, scissors to see who got the house. The magic flute won and said to the family, "You can live in the house next to me." So, they did.
• THE END

 Math: Sorta do a cakewalk with numbers 1-10. When the music stops, stop walking. Children (and parent if playing) identifies if they're standing on an even or odd number. :)

Art: Show child how to blow in a glass bottle to make music. Paint and decorate bottles.

Sound and Music: Volume

We read Quiet as a Mouse by Carol Roth. For some reason I couldn't find the image in google. I found the book at my library though.

Science: We made a 'stethoscope' (well, something to make quiet sounds loud) and a megaphone.

Art: We made a radio out of a cereal box.

Language Arts: Made a loud and quiet book.

Math: Talked about decibels and practice counting by tens.

Music and Sound: Pitch

We read Nate and the Great Musical Note. We found it a bit dull though so I recommend maybe finding another book.

Science:  We listened to the difference in pitch of different sized items. I had my husband cut a small dowel into 8 different pieces, each one an inch larger than the next. We dropped them and listened and figured out which ones were higher than the others.

Then we made a water scale and compared the pitches in each bottle. I couldn't find IBC cream soda which would have been better b/c they're clear but I did find root beer and they worked fine too.

Language Arts: We wrote songs with our water scales. :)
Math: I put a number in front of each bottle, numbering them 1-8. Then I had a card and wrote different math equations like '5+2=' and then we figured out the answer by tapping the bottles with a spoon.

Sound and Music: Echoes

Literature: We read this book.

Science: We experimented with how echoes bounce off different surfaces.

One was talking in the tube and the other listening. We used a tile, the table, cardboard, mirror and anything we could find.

We used different length tubes too. :)

Then we talked about how the sound waves are absorbed into some so we yelled at the objects and felt some vibrating more than others. Collin really liked this!!

Language Arts: We played a copycat game. The took turns copying what the other said and did.

Math: We talked about places -- ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. I drew the numbers on the driveway and bounced it on the ground to each other. We had to name what place the number was in that the ball landed on. Collin loved this and we played it for over an hour.

I'm not sure why he looks so serious in this picture though.

Sound and Music.... waves and vibrations

We worked on sound vibrations. Here we hit the pan with the spoon to make the rice on the plastic bounce.

Here we were targeting the sound waves to hit the piece of paper. There's a piece of card stock on the end with a small hole in it. When we yelled in it it vibrated the strip of construction paper.

Of course when learning about sound waves and vibrations we have to make the classic comb kazoo. :)

This one was our favorite -- made from tongue depressors, rubberbands and cut up pieces of a straw we made a sound sandwich. We just blow and it's a whistle. So awesome!

We made a sound box. Collin decorated the bottom and Ronni and I decorated the top.

Okay, I put the paper on it and Ronni did the rest.

Here's the sound box. We talked about the different sounds the different sized rubber bands make. I also pulled out my guitar and and we looked at the different sized strings on there and the different sounds the strings make when you hold one down on the different frets.
We did other things too but a lot of our stuff comes from a curriculum now and I don't want to break the copyright or anything by posting it all on here.

The First Day

Today was the first day of our new year and I think it went pretty well. :) We had fun. The theme for the next two weeks is "Sound and Music". It's going to be fun! Today we went on a sound walk, made a sound collage, and worked with money. :) The kids are excited about their new year and so am I! :)

The "Classroom"

Our house isn't big enough for a real classroom but I'm getting the dining room ready to serve it's purpose... it has a lot of purposes. That poor room. It's the kids' library, the piano room, the pantry, the dining room and now it's also the classroom. hehe! The poor overworked room.
The above picture is the bookshelf, next to it are my craft supplies and FHE stuff. There are also two small boxes of the kids' individual stuff like a pencil bag of crayons and their scissors. Next to that are two diaper boxes but I've replaced those w/ crates now. The top one is the Sunday box and the bottom one has books we don't use anymore and tempera paint.

This is the other bookshelf. It holds the piano music and photo albums but the top shelf is used for homeschool supplies.

Here are my trifold boards opened. I will open them only for school time and then put them away later. One is for weather and the other is the word wall. We just don't have room for them otherwise so they're on tri-fold boards that I can fold back up and stick behind a chair. :)

I put this rectangle up there b/c I don't have a cork board. It will be to display their artwork and projects in.

Collin has been asking a lot of questions about states and America and stuff so I thought we could learn a bit about the states this year and the Pledge of Allegiance. On the window are window cling letters. Then, on the right side of the window are aprons for when we work in the kitchen and "experiment." hehe!

I think we're all set for now. Now we just have to wait until Aug 2 to start our "classes". hehe! I'm excited. I was even really shocked b/c as I was putting the words on the Word Wall for this picture, Collin knew all the words except "away". hehe! Surprised me!
And, if you're wondering, most of the wall decorations I found at the dollar store.

plans for 2010-2011

Well, we're preparing for a new year. I will have one 4-K and one 2-K this year. I want to make sure that I will be able to homeschool so this year I'm going to follow all the laws required for SC. That means that we have to have 180 days of school that last 4 1/2 hrs each day. I have to keep attendance, a diary of everything we do and a portfolio of the kids' work. I found a cool program, that's free if you get the basic, online that keeps track of most of this stuff on the computer. I'll still have to keep a portfolio though.That shouldn't be too hard. Especially if I continue with the lapbooks but I haven't decided yet.

We aren't starting back until Aug 2 so I won't have anything exciting to post. I may just put updates of things going on here in preparation but in Aug I'll get back to it. We will be using a curriculum called In His Image so I won't be posting new ideas on here but I thought I could use this blog for the portfolio. I'll scan in samples of the kids' work and things like that. :) I'll also post about stresses or things that worked and ideas I have here.

I know, you are all curious of our schedule for next year. Okay, probably not but I'm going to post it anyways. In order to get our 4.5 hrs in, I've decided to start school at 7:30am. The kids are normally up by 6/6:30 anyways so it will be easy to just start doing school at 7:30. We will go 7:30-12:30 w/ a 30 min break from 9:30-10am for snack and play outside time. 12:30pm we'll have lunch and then nap/quiet time. After nap, we'll go on a nature walk and find something we think is neat and draw a picture of it. If we need to then we can come back home and look it up. I know, that will be more than 4.5 hrs but I'm really not sure if I can stretch out 4K and 2K work to last until 12:30. We may make play time a bit longer and then we can even count that as PE if we want so.... we'll see. We may find that we can cut back a lot but this is what we're planning on for right now. :)

Easter Day 5 (family)

Song: I Believe in Christ
Read: John 19

Discussed the crucifixion then watched The Easter Dream.

Easter Day 4 (family)

Sing: He Sent His Son
Read: Matt 26: 47-56

We talked about the betrayal of Jesus. Then we played the Friendship Matching game. Print out the page twice.

Easter Day 3 (family)

Song: He Died That We Might Live Again
Read: Mark 14:12-21

We talked about Jesus praying in Gethsemane. When my kids are a bit older we'll do this crossword puzzle but since they aren't quite big enough for that we just ended after the story. My kids were sad enough over that.

Child Reward System I found and starting it today....

• My neighbor told me about this. Her 6 yo and 2 yo are LOVING it so I'm going to start getting things organized here for it. I'm so excited! I think it'll be fun!
  Okay... the kids earn "Daddy Dollars" or "Mommy Money" by completing tasks/chores/school or whatever you want the kids to do. Then they get to go to the "Mommy Mart" to spend the 'money'. It can be small toys/candy/tv time/computer time/family walks/game night/movie night/out for icecream...etc. Whatever you can think of that your kids would enjoy. You go to this site to print out the money.
  Here's out money (it's me b/c dh wouldn't pose for a pic, I didn't have a good one of him and he didn't want it on there anyways -- the bum!! haha! )
  
• Here's the chart that I made today. I used a manilla folder and folded it so that it was a tri-fold (lapbook style:).
  This is the inside ---
  
  Here is the outside. This is where the kids' money that they've earned goes --
  
  Here's a close up of jobs and rewards -- remember, my kids are 4 & 2 so I thought the pictures would be useful. 4 yo can read some words but I thought this would be more helpful for him.
  
  

Why did I not post anything yesterday like I was supposed to???

That's simple. B/c it was 88 degrees here in sunny South Carolina and we were playing on a fabulous water slide and playing on the trampoline and having a blast. We also went on a picnic and playgroup and just a fun but busy day!

Easter Day 2 (family)

Song: He Died That We Might Live Again
Read: John 13:1-30

Then we talked about Christ washing the apostles' feet and the 'Last Supper'.

Afterwards, for dinner, we had our own 'last supper'. I tied blankets and towels on my kids so they were dressed like biblical people then we sat down for a picnic in the living room. This year we had lamb, unleavened bread and butter, red beans, rice, raisins, and honey.
Ideas came from Sugardoodle.

Easter Day 1 (preschool)

• I had several items sitting on the table: Easter eggs, a stuffed Easter bunny, an Easter basket, and a picture of Christ. We went through each item, saving the picture of Christ for last and I asked, "Is this why we celebrate Easter?" Finally, we got to Christ and he was very excited to shout "YES!"
• After that we read a story called The First Easter. It's one of those picture stories so he helped read it too.
  
• Next we cut out The Empty Tomb and worked on handwriting a bit. Just follow the directions on the link. The pic is above... wouldn't load down here. Not sure what's going on.
• Matching: We did an Easter egg matching game. I printed out two copies of this picture on cardstock and then cut them out and played a game of Memory. For some reason I couldn't get the eggs to show up here and they kept appearing at the top of the post so... the eggs are above. Sorry!!
• Finally, we did an eggsperiment. Does a hard boiled egg or raw egg spin faster?

I'm sure you may have noticed that all of the pics are at the top of this post. I'm not sure what is wrong but for some reason it won't let me put the pics in the post. Grrrrr.... I think you can figure out which pic goes w/ which activity. :)

Easter - Day 1

As a family we:
Song: Easter Hosanna
Read: Mark 11:1-10

Then we talked about the Triumphal Entry.

After that we made Edible Tombs.

These ideas came from Sugardoodle.

The Letter 'C' - Day 6

• Colorful Collages: This is pretty self explanatory. We gathered a lot of bits of things and then made a collage.
• We made carrot cupcakes

Easy day. :)

The Letter 'C' - Day 5

• Read some books about camels
• Do and Discover: We talked about how camels have huge feet (about the size of a dinner plate) to keep them from sinking in the sand. We went out into the yard and we took a stick and stuck it in the sand and saw how easy it went in. Then we took a plate and tried to stick it in the sand that way. 
• Finally, we made a fact book about camels.

The Letter 'C' - Day 4

• First we did a graphing activity. We worked on colors -- favorite colors to be exact and graphed other ppl's favorite colors. He's really getting good with graphs.
• After that we made "crazy crayons". This means that I took all of those old and broken crayons that no one likes to use and recycled them. :) We peeled off the paper and then put them in lined muffin tins. We stuck them in the oven on the lowest setting until they were just barely melted. (You don't want them too melted or all the colors will mix and turn brown.) I took it out and stuck it in the freezer for about half an hour. When I removed it from the freezer I just popped the "crazy crayons" out of the paper and we had some fun coloring. They're their favorite crayons now, even if they are shaped like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. hehe!
  
• We played Crossing the Creek. I made a "creek" out of rope and we jumped across it. I gradually made it wider and wider until we couldn't jump it anymore.