Rrrr, I'm Gonna Eat You - March Work

This month we have been talking about food chains and dinosaurs.  Honestly, I am not too interested in dinosaurs as a stand alone topic and neither is Ladybug, so to appeal to more than one person in this family I have attempted to combine the two.  

We started the month talking about herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores and the dinosaurs that fit into each category.  The dinosaur toob has been a great resource for this month.

Each time I have introduced a dinosaur I have given a fact sheet and a coloring sheet from Enchanted Learning.

Match the carnivores with the picture and name.  Each dino has their name on the underside.  We also discussed features that made the carnivores alike.

We have also talked about the animals that are not extinct.

After Mister and Ladybug had a good grasp of what eats what we moved on to who eats who with food chains.

Simple Food Chains 

Apparently a cactus grows in the savanna.  Mister and Ladybug pick a producer and two consumers to make a food chain.

More Complex (Complete) Food Chains

Chose the pictures to make a food chain and label the omnivore, carnivore, or herbivore.  

Art

How to draw a dinosaur!

Math

Number writing practice because who doesn't love a white board?

Fill in the missing numbers on the dinosaur eggs.  This was defiantly a challenge activity for Mister and Ladybug.

Game for two

Literacy

Dinosaur egg sight words (Mister's word) .  Ladybug is reading Biscuit books (her choice) and Mister is reading sigh word readers.  

Sight Word Soup - This game is played like Scrabble Soup, but with sight words.  Each sight word is written on a card and a chip.  One person picks the top card and shows the sight word.  The players put in their spoon and scoop out sight words written on wooden circles and blank circles.  When they find the the sight word they call it out and put it on their board.  When the cards are all gone the person with the most wooden sight words wins.

Practical Life - Name Writing

The Wee One

Two of the things on her shelf

Sensory

Dino feet prints

Dinosaur eggs

March?  Not so much in the tundra, which is why we are still in our pajamas in some of these photos.  I mean it's hard to get out of them when the windchill is still hovering around 0.

C is for...

I have been feeling a little bit guilty because I haven't been as focused on letter sounds as I was with the twins.  She knows more than I thought, but it's no where near what the twins knew at her age.  Granted she knows more about numbers, one-to-one correspondence, and science than her siblings and her interest in letters and phonics has only recently emerged but that mommy guilt is an awful feeling.

We attempted letters in the fall when she first showed interest, but her enthusiasm was short lived so I backed off.  Now that we have started again we have covered CMAT with a focus on the sounds of the letters rather than the letter name.

Letter C

Powder Puff  Clouds

and a Cupcake

There are no more sprinkles left on her cupcake. Smelling leads to eating and eating leads to a bare cupcake.

Cloud Writing

I must remember to tape the handles in the future.  

Writing Practice

We have work to do on that grip!

Car Painting

Cookie Monster Counting

Cookie Eating for my my own Cookie Monster

These were 20 minute oatmeal and raisin cookies and if I could remember where I found them I would give you a link.  

Making Reading Relevant and Fun

One of my favorite parts about doing preschool with  my kiddos is being able to really customize their work. In a classroom of 20-28 it's terribly time consuming and takes a lot of dedication.  To those teachers that do teach to their students, I admire your work and thank you.

Anyway, Mister has had some setbacks in reading and we were both frusterated.  He wasn't enjoying his work and I truthfully I wasn't enjoying working with him.  There was something wrong with that picture because he is suppose to love school. The last thing I want to do is to turn his love for learning into a chore.

After some trial and error I found he loves to be an illustrator or author and illustrator.  In the three weeks we have been working on books, his reading has soared.  Ladybug has taken a renewed interest in learning new words and reading harder books.  The best part is these books are totally customizable.  Sometimes I have Mister and Ladybug add their own ideas, sometimes I have them practice writing a word, and sometimes I just have them illustrate their book.  Each time they create a book, they read it to my husband right before bed.

Working on sight words

Ladybug's book was about making cupcakes.

Mister's book is about his favorite things to do.  

There's More

I was looking over my blog and realized that in February I had a bad case of "Mommy Brain" because I didn't post some of the activities on our shelves.  The pictures were taken and uploaded, but they have sat unused.  So in an effort to play catch-up here are a few more left-overs.

Math

One-to-one correspondence - The Wee One put one heart on each of the stickers.

Mister and Ladybug covered their board with hearts and subtracted the number rolled.  The first person to clear his or her board was the winner.

Make a stamp pattern.

Art/Literacy

Mister and Ladybug folded their paper make a heart, traced the pattern, and cut it out.  They designed a valentine for a friend.  We also took dobbers and made designs on our paper using the doilies.

Word list created by the kiddos for their valentine cards

Practical Life

Cutting out hearts

After reading "It's Raining Hearts" they punched and glued their own hearts.

Valentine pony beads and pipe cleaner bracelets.

The Wee One Shelves

Another goodie from last year - It's Raining Hearts tree

Strawberry hauler for one-to-one correspondence

Okay, I think that's it...really.

February Leftovers

A little of this and a little of that from February.  By the way it was really cold last month, which meant zero motivation to get dressed and less laundry for me!

Practical Life

This was a great activity to practice the pincer grasp.  

Math - What is Valentine's Day without candy heart activities?

Sensorial

Candy heart sorting.  How many do you think were ingested during sorting?

Literacy - A lot of sight word practice this month.

The Wee One's letter practice - Letter M

Art - Watercolor coffee filter hears

March - Rrrr I'm Gonna Get You!

Long time no see.  Lots of stuff, to get technical, going on over here and it has left me with little energy to do anything other than veg when I have free second.

Mister and Ladybug are loving the Magic School Bus chapter books and we are reading about food chains and food webs.  Mister has taken to dinosaurs to the "delight" of his sisters so we are combining the two this month.

• Green rice
• Fish aquarium plants
• Pom-poms for rocks - Our rocks are under a few feet of snow and frozen to the ground.
• Blue petri dish - lake
• Big rock - mountain
• Blue paper - river
• Pipe cleaner - waterfall (Mister's idea)
• Dinosaurs
• Funnel
• Spoon

I was informed that I forget the source of all energy: the sun.

You're Out of This World - Valentine Cards

Mister and Ladybug's teacher requested that the valentine day cards did not include food this year.  Last year we did Love Bugs and Pocket Full of Kisses and since they have many of the same kids in their class we I decided we needed a new idea.

Mister is really into space and I found space stamps at oriental trading.

Ladybug is really into princess, but I didn't think the boys in her class would love to get a wand, although I  might be surprised, so I went off Mister's stamps.

And for their teachers.  Thanks to Pinterest, I was able to combine two ideas.  I will swap the kisses for valentine colored kisses.  I know this goes against the no food thing, but it's not for the kids.  Right?

Happy Valentine's Day!