Nutrition - Part 3

I am running a few days behind this last month and our November has carried over into December.  Here is the second set of activities that are on our shelf this month.

Literacy

Fill in the missing letter.  I did this as a one-on-one with Mister and Ladybug before they did it alone.

Part of the -an family - This was put on the shelf after we made the -an family house.

Math

Measuring vegetables using nonstandard measurement.  The vegetable printouts are taped to the tray, so they wouldn't move.  Rather than say, "Four" I had them include what was used to measure.  For example, "Four links."

Practical Life

Mister and Ladybug picked green-light recipes that we will make.

On each dot, they put on a pumpkin sticker.  The top set were cut between the stickers and the bottom set were cut on the line.  I introduced the top set first and the bottom set a few days later.

Art

Grocery basket painting

Two Things She Loves

The Wee One loves the play food and the food cards from the red-light, green-light activity, so it would only be natural to put the two together.

And she thought

Maybe tomorrow...

What's in the Fridge?

You can't have a nutrition month without vegetable stamping and painting.  So, when I found out Ladybug was confusing her shapes, I took the opportunity to make shape prints from vegetables.  Also, Mister  loved mixing colors and he tried out a variety of combinations.

The carrot was rolled and a circle stamped.  The potato and onion were also circles.  The celery leaves was a paint brush and the end was half-moon stamps.  The rutabegas were a rectangle, a square, and a triangle stamp. 

Even the Wee One was able to make prints.

Green Means Go

I am putting aside my thoughts about Dr. Sears to tell you that his book Eat Healthy, Feel Great is one of the best books we have read this month.  It is an easy to understand book about eating healthy and how it makes our bodies feel good.  He uses green-light foods, yellow-light foods, and red-light foods, which made it easy for Mister and Ladybug to know what foods to eat and which foods to avoid.  Now at every meal they go through their plate telling using the green-light or red-light. 

After reading the book, I put a red-light, green-light activity on their shelf.

I believe the cards are from Lakeshore Learning, but were purchased about ten year ago.

We also did this activity, which is very similar to the above, but reinforced the idea of green-light and red-light foods. 


I asked Mister and Ladybug to choose at least five green-light foods and five red-light foods.



Nutrition - Part 1

We love to eat and we love to cook, so this month has been especially enjoyable for all of us.  Here is what we have done so far:

Practical Life

I have seen pumpkin cleaning on a variety of sites and planned on putting this on their shelf this month, but I love that Chasing Cheerios took it one step farther.  She had her girls decorate and clean the pumpkin. 

Mister was so intense on his coloring and cleaning.  After he decorated his pumpkin, he was methodical in getting all the marker off.

Literacy

I wasn't able to find an English version of this series, but I am able to read Spanish (see my year in Spain didn't go to waste).  The pictures are fun and real.

We skipped over the final sets of letter sounds because I realized they were bored and knew all the sounds.  As an assessment, I made a complete sound to letter matching activity.  Mister felt overwhelmed by the amount of work, so he only completed a portion of it.

Sensorial

Mister and Ladybug have sorting down, but since I bought these on clearance last year I figured they could do one more.  Surprisingly the Wee One has tried to do her own sorting.



Math

We are still working on counting by 2s and then looking for the continuing pattern on the calendar.  This banana paper was found at JoAnn Fabrics in the dollar section.  I put contact paper over them before punching a hole, so the paper wouldn't rip.

A Basket Of Fruits

Last week on the Wee One's shelf, I put a basket of fruits for her to explore.  She also picked the coffee can on the shelf to put her fruits in and dump them back into the basket.  While she was playing with them, I described the pineapple as rough, the apple as smooth and red, the strawberries as small, etc.  After she had played with the fruits, I chose the banana, orange, and apple to do short and modified 3-period lesson. 

This basket has been used from ages one through eight with each group finding their own way to play with them. 

When the Wee One abandoned her fruits, Mister and Ladybug played eye spy with me.  I put out all the fruit and said something like, "I spy a fruit that is rough."  Mister and Ladybug each had a change to give clues for their fruit.

We did fruit sorting. 

• Peels vs. No peels
• Skin I eat vs. Skin I don't eat
• Small vs. Large
• Fruit I like vs. Fruit I don't like
• Colors

Finally, we put them from smallest to largest and largest to smallest.