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.

What's On the Tray- Jan. week 3 & 4

I am trying to get more organized, now that Kenna is about to hit the big 3! I feel like I need to start planning better and getting into more of a structured curriculum.  She is young, but also very smart. I am making a list of goals for the year, subjects I want to cover, and then I'm going to spread them out over 10 months. ( I was a third grade teacher for a long time. I have a deep need for a nice lesson plan book and a "Standard Course of Study" to make me feel focused!) I am feeling like the whole world is in our grasp, and overwhelmed with all the choices and possibilities for learning.

I'd like to tell you that I will take Kenna's lead and run with whatever she is interested in, but until she knows what interests her, I am going to do the leading.

I am currently in the market for a pre-k program (instead of trying to pick and choose age appropriate topics and order them in a sensible way) that meets a few important requirements:

-is not overtly religious

-focuses on hands-on activities

-can be adapted down to a 3 year old level

Suggestions? I am ready and listening! I feel very overwhelmed by the options out there!

Meanwhile, I have redesigned our schoolwork presentation. I have tot trays out again, (as opposed to just workboxes) and they are going to be out for the week, featuring repeatable, Montessori-style activities.

I am repurposing our workboxes (our green tubbed Ikea storage unit). They will contain "consumables" or work that really only needs to be done once.  I am going to start with 6 bins of activites each day, and see what we get through. Someone on the web had "starboxes" available when the child is done with their work, containing open-ended blocks or toys. I love this idea and will have at least one out for now.  I finally added numbers to our workboxes, and made a workbox chart, so that we can slowly learn to use the workboxes in order and complete all the work in one box before moving on. For now, all activities will be done with mommy guidance, but there are some things that she can do on her own at this point, like Kumon worksheets, tracing sheets, and size sequencing cards.

My guess is that it will take us all week to work through all 9 workboxes. I sincerely doubt she'll work through all of the activites in one school day.  Eventually, the goal will be to finish all workboxes each day.  Right now, no pressure!

I have also added a geography area to our schoolroom. It's nothing to look at yet, but I'll post pics in  few weeks. I have up a world map, a contintent puzzle on a tray, and a tiny American flag. I have two atlases. That's it. I would like to have geography trays available each week that address our goals. I want to start with the 7 continents, and then focus on North America for a while. Then I want to do our state and city. That should be enough to get us through the year! I like that it is all in it's own area, and I am kinda wanting to separate all the math from the language stuff, too.  (I'm such a third grade teacher...)

We'll see. We'll see.

And, now, on to the trays!

:color sorting:

with snowflake stickers from Oriental Trading.

:Extention activity:

Snowflake color patterns. This was so much fun, she begged for more snowflakes to keep the pattern going!

 :Pouring Snowflakes:
Tiny snowflake beads to pour. I love this little white creamer I found at a thrift store. Wish they had two!

:Clipping lowercase letters:
Great letter cards from confessionsofahomeschooler Edited (I need more sleep, and to keep better notes!). Apologies to Carisa from 1+1+1=1- she actually made these and you can print them HERE. (For the record, I did learn abou the activity here at COAH. :sheepish grin:)   Kenna will say the letter and find its lowercase match. I haven't included all 26 here, just ten. Once she picks this tray, I'll switch out the cards for ten more.

:Stamping:

 (Kenna got to this tray before I could even photograph it! She loves to stamp!) I will add a lowercase stamp halfway through the week, and some lowercase letter m pages. I was going to have her do some collage work as well. I was thinking cutting out some "m" words or objects that start with M from a magazine. I am curious to find out if that kind of work interests her. I'll let you know!

 :Pattern Blocks:
 Cute mat from prekinders.com make for an easy introduction to pattern blocks. We talked about the shape names, how each shape is a different color, and of course we built block snowmen!

 :Prewriting practice:

I don't have metal insets to trace, so my scrapbooking stencils will have to do. Kenna will use colored pencils to trace ovals. She can draw faces in the ovals or cut them out if she wants.

 :Counting:

This fun worksheet asks "how many peppermints in the jar?" I plan to place a number rock on the jar lid, and ask Kenna to fill the jar with the right number of candies. I have a billion mini candycanes left over from our town's holiday parade, so I may replace the peppermints with candy canes! She'll love that. Especially if I let her eat a "crack" of it when we are done.  (Crack me off a crack of "candycan", Mama!) Edited to add: This worksheet is from 2TeachingMommies as part of their awesome new CandyCane unit.

:Letter identification:

Matching Sesame Street names with our letter tiles.

So, that is what's on our trays for the next week(ish)- at least I can say we are doing a lot of stuff, even if it isn't well planned yet!

.....................................................................
Linking up to Montessori Monday!