P is for Penguin

(Kenna is 35 months old.)Antarctica is an interesting part of the world, and since we aren't seeing much snow here in our neck of the woods, I thought it would be a good first continent to learn about in Geography. I pulled out our Penguin Toob and we got to work with some fun penguin and snow themed-trays.

 Of course, we started with an iceberg. And since Dora is our favorite little friend, we became Diego and tried to rescue Baby Penguin. (Notice the glass of ice water, with a straw? I think all that talk about ice and water made her thirsty...)

 We used salt water in a squirt bottle. We talked a lot about why salt makes ice melt, and all about how water freezes into ice. She was rivoted.

 And Kosher salt to sprinkle around. It ate through the ice beautifully.

 Finally, Diego spotted the poor baby penguin's feet. He was in desperate need of rescue.

 Tada! Rescued! We did it! We did it!

P is for peanuts, the perfect snack for after rescuing a penguin.

Here are our trays for the week.

 

:Counting:
Use snowflake stampers to count to ten. Stamp one snowflake next to the number 1, stamp two next to the number 2.  Talk about snowy/icy Antarctica.

:Pattern Blocks:
I love this cute pattern block penguin mat. It's black and white, which should be harder compared to last week, where the pattern mat was color-coded.
From Prekinders.

 :Playdoh:
White playdoh snow for our penguins to play in and make tracks in. We love our homemade playdoh.

 :Penguin Identification:
Five species of penguins, to talk about differences in each penguin species. These little cards are great- they are meant to be strung up in a mobile, but they are really detailed illustrations and have the species name labeled. Printable at Scholastic.

 :Continent Map:
I got this great idea from AdventuresofBear. Turn a world map into a puzzle of the seven continents. Ours is backed with magnets and stored on a cookie sheet. Kenna and I have been placing and naming all of the continents, but this week we will examine the map and find Antarctica.

 :Thermometer Clipping:
Use these great little cards from Making Learning Fun to learn how to read a thermometer. Kenna practices with the thermometer every day during calendar time, so she will likely understand this quickly. Also, these cards practice reading "tens" numbers.

 :Matching:

Snowflake patterns to put back together. The snowflakes are all black and white, so Kenna will have to acutally match the pattern on the cards. I did simplify it a little by splitting the cards into two compartments, lefts and rights. Got these here.

:Penguin Cards:

I was going to attempt to turn these amazing cards into three-part cards, but I decided that Kenna is going to love looking at the pictures, and be done. I may still create an extra set of labels for her to match up, but with words like "Galapogos" and "Emperor", I'm not sure it matters if she can ID them or not.  The cards are from Lapbooks.com.

K is for Kite

 K week was kinda dull compared to the excitement we had during ocean week, at the actual ocean!! I just kinda let Kenna do what she wanted, and we stayed really calm and cool this week.  I pulled out each of my tot trays and snapped a picture for ya. All printouts are from www.confessionsofahomeschooler. (her site rocks!)

size sequencing

Tracing the letter K with dry erase markers. (I just stick my sheets in a sheet protector, so I don't have to laminate so many things.)

Letter tiles- I provided the lowercase letters to go with the uppercase word card. Kenna hated this tray this week.

THEN CAME THE FUN PART!!!

We pulled out our awesome, cool and very special DRAGON kite!! It was a super-windy October evening, so we quickly ate dinner and surprised Kenna with it. 

She was very excited. Like squealing, jumping and growling excited. 

The wind was great, but we decided that trees and powerlines were making for bad kite-flying. We threw the three kids in the car and headed to the park. 
Ready, Set, Go!

  Our dragon kite sailed on the wind, and it was magical. 
Then sadly, it crashed and burned.

  Quinn was relaxing in her carseat as we attempted a few more flights of the dragon. Little Man was trying out his army crawl on the basketball court. (ruined that shirt...)

 Bill and I were totally and utterly determined to get the kite to stay aloft. Kenna lost interest and we found her on the swings.   

 We're flexible, (and frustrated by the kite...) so we all got on the swings.  Kenna, Little Man and Quinn would still be swinging if the sun hadn't gone down. It was really peaceful to have all three kids happy at the same time. ahhhh.

 As I declared Kite Day over, Kenna and Daddy raced for the big red slide and took a ride down together.

 Down they go! Wheeee!

And that, my friends, is what I call a perfect evening!

J is for jellybeans

Graphing Jelly Beans. 
Hands down, best activity of the week. I don't generally bribe my kid with candy, but after this, I am rethinking my strategy! :)  She graphed jellybeans with a focus~ our first time we've ever done graphing, and she loved it. She carefully placed the beans on the graph by color, and then we counted them together.

We talked about "most" and "least". It was amazing to hear her form complete thoughts about the graph.  ( I taught third grade for 7 years, and reading a bar graph is HARD!) We removed the jelly beans and colored in the bars of the bar graph using a dry erase marker.  And of course, we munched on jelly beans. It rocked!

Another awesome letter identification game. I provided the JELLYBEAN card, along with lowercase letters and she got to work.

This is still challenging for Kenna- especially when the b is upside down. (looks like a q.)

 This was a simple tray that was very popular with Kenna, probably because she knew I would spend lots and lots of time with her when she pulled it out! In past weeks, we used a worksheet where each word was colored. (The word "red" was red).  That was waaaay too easy for Kenna. So this week,  I handwrote a new worksheet in black ink... and whoa- she still identified some! We said the color- Purple. Pppp-purple starts with ____?  Find the word that starts with P. (there are two- pink and purple). We sounded them out (P-ih and P-uh) and she matched them up. I can tell she is going to get really good at this! These might be her first sight words.  (Well, she can already sight-read her name, plus all of our family names...) You can see that she also thought it was fun to find colored pencils that matched each jellybean color.  :) Later in the week we placed real jelly beans on the color words. That was fun, and tasty!

We did a few more jellybean activities that I didn't get pictures of- we sorted a giant pile of jellybeans by color,  we lined jellybeans up in a long line and then measured our line, we weighed them, and we did ABAB patterns with them. Fun stuff!
*All printables came from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com

I is for I do it!!

We finally moved onto I week activities. (We got stuck on H, learning about Hippos, then talking about hearts and being happy, and then we got on a huge horse kick.  I love it when we are so engaged!)  I is for Icecream at our house! This activity turned out to be very interesting. I gave Kenna some playdoh to form into the letter I. That didn't even hold her interest long enough to take the playdoh out of the bag. Instead- she went for some buttons.

I sat back and watched as she lined up the buttons and carefully chose which ones she wanted to place on the lowercase i.  She picked out a square button for the "dot" on the i, since it was a square shape.  After she did this, she and I made an uppercase I with buttons.  I hadn't pulled out the butons in a while- I'm so glad she thought of it!

The next day, the playdoh tray enticed her, and she rolled out a lower case i with playdoh, but she used the buttons as dots. It was really fun and not what I had planned at all!

Are you strict about your trays? I am starting to feel torn- I want her to do the work I've laid out, but I would have been so sad to stifle this creativty today.  Ah, Montessori, I always need to read and learn more.

I is for Ice Cream

 I is for ice cream and inch worms. I set up Kenna's magnet pom poms early in the morning so she could get it done first. She really dislikes it for some reason right now.  She's less cranky in the morning, so this is working for us. 

I gave kenna a melon baller (which was swiped while I was focusing the camera lens...) and told her she could scoop "ice cream into each little "bowl". LOVED it!

Where did I get that fun tray? Why, it was empty, sitting on the shelf at Walmart, so I snagged it and asked the cashier if I could keep it.  (She then decided I was a weirdo and didn't make any further eye contact.)

 I love this little counting game from confessionsofahomeschooler.  Counting, number recognition, and little inchworms.  This was harder for Kenna than I thought. She counts faster than she moves her fingers. We're working on it. She really loved the adorable inchworms! Now that my number rocks are dry, we can use those instead of the cards that we've been using.  It'll spice things up a bit.

This was a simple color, cut and paste activity I created- I used some ice cream clipart to make strips of ice cream. She colored the ice cream, cut them out, and then glued them down.  She really loves doing cutting and pasting right now, so I am embracing it. Look for other fun cut and paste activities coming soon! ( I would totally share the printout, but I don't know how. It's currently a PDF.  Suggestions?)

Ice Cream Texture Tub

 
This week we are doing the Letter I. We are knee deep in a celebration of all things Ice Cream. (Good timing, since temps have been in the high 90s!)

I put some rice in our texture tub, along with these nifty ice cream erasers I found in the dollar bin at A.C. Moore. I also collected a few "I"s- a magnet, a foam letter, and later a couple Is from some puzzles.

Tools- I provided a funnel, a scoop from a can of infant formula, and a small metal cup. Let the fun begin! (And the hours of sweeping up rice...!)

Ice Cream Taste Test

Grab your spoons- it's time to decide once and for all- What's Your Favorite Ice Cream?

We did our taste test as a family, and it was really fun. First we scooped some tasting servings- chocolate, vanilla , strawberry, and peanut butter. (yup- our favorite babysitter told Kenna she loved peanut butter... so Daddy whipped some up!) The rest of the flavors were as easy as grabbing a pint of Neopolitan (which means it was really hard, because I forgot to buy it TWICE when I was at the grocery store!!) Just an FYI, tiny servings of ice cream melt incredibly fast- next time I would scoop one flavor at a time out of the freezer.

I made up some voting sheets so we could record our preferences. For each flavor, I drew a happy, sad and ehhh face. Then we colored in how we felt about each flavor. LOVE it, HATE it, or...Ehhhh. :)

Then we got to tasting! Look how seriously she is taking this whole process! We were laughing, joking, and generally having a great time. Miraculously, Quinn was sleeping and Little Man was happily eating some Os, so we could just enjoy some special time with Kenna. (She gets far too little special attention these days. Ah, the woes of being the oldest.)

Kenna didn't quite understand the voting process- she LOVED them all, but liked saying "ehhh"! :) She picked Vanilla as her favorite, and then asked for seconds of Peanut Butter.

We had a really fun evening doing this together. (and Daddy and Mommy ate a lot more ice cream once Kenna went to bed!)

Laminator Love!

Meet Lil' Lamby! He's my new best friend!!! I've been dying to make his aquaintance for quite some time now. This is my first year using printable materials with Kenna, and I have been quite creative (in my opinion) in how I keep her from destroying my printables. I've used clear page protectors, name badge holders here, and clear packaging tape.

So, as a reward for making it through 9 letters of the alphabet, I treated myself to Mr. Lamby the Laminator.

  :HOORAY:!!!

  I got him at Walmart, (this model) along with some pouches like these. It wasn't a thrifty purchase today, but when all these printables last through three kids, I will consider it money well-spent.

Doesn't he look happy to be in my life?! He's smiling, and so am I.