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.

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.

All About Money - Part 2

Here are the final activities for the month of January.  Overall I think it was successful and challenging for Mister and Ladybug.

Math

This was done as a group activity because it involved mixing coins.  Often kids will count all the coins by 5s or 10s without looking at each coin.   We started off with easy, single type of coin counting before moving onto two harder coin counting.  

The next are activities are either independent work or one-on-one work depending on how Ladybug or Mister's knowledge.

3-part matching

File folder game matching sticks to the correct pocket.  

Money Mix-Up.  Each coin bag had a slip of paper with an amount and the correct coins had to be matched to each bag.

Literacy 

We put literacy on the back burner to focus on math.  While Ladybug hemmed and hawed all month, Mister was very excited.  The next two activities were done in order.  The first was matching words to pictures and it became increasingly harder from there.

Fill in the missing letters and stamp.

Stamp and write - two challenge words

Practical Life - Penny Cleaning

• Dirty pennies
• Salt
• Vinegar
• Water
• Paper towels

Mister and Ladybug enjoyed sprinkling salt on the pennies after they were dipped in vinegar and rubbing to see the changes.  You could also mix 1 teaspoon of salt in 1/4 cup vinegar and drop the pennies in for about 10 seconds.

Art - Design your own money

I hope you found something you liked and can use this month!

What's On the Shelf - October

I love October because there is so much fun to be had and so much to do!  Here's the first activities on the shelves:

Practical Life

These chopsticks have a tendency to overlap, so just the right pressure has to be applied.

I have cringed at the cutting work  Mister and Ladybug have brought home from preschool, so  for some fun practice they can make a jack-o-lantern and cut it out.

Science/Sensorial

My body wooden puzzle

Human body x-rays

This is a challenge because the pieces are small.

Literacy

Halloween card making

After we played with this, I changed some of the verbs for more variety.  DK should have included blank pieces.

For Fun

JoAnn $1 section

Usborne cards 

Potato Head family

Apple Investigation

I can't believe this month is almost finished and I feel like we have so much to do!  Tomorrow is the last day of summer and it's time for all things fall.  Like every year, we will be going to the apple orchard to pick apples for apple butter, apple pies, apple eating, and what ever else we can make.  As a preview to our annual apple picking I read the book Life On An Apple Orchard.  It's pretty long, so I picked out the most important and interesting parts on each page.  

After we read, we did some movement with 5 Little Apples, but I changed to the words in preparation for a subtraction activity.  

Five red apples hanging in the tree (Hold up 5 fingers)

Red and delicious as can be (Rub tummy)

(Name) shook that tree as hard as she/he could (Shake the tree)

Down came one apple (Apple falling)

Mmm it was good (Take a bite)

They were ready to refocus and sit after our song, so we cut open an apple for investigating.  As they looked at the apple, we talked about each part and made chart as reference for their work.  

I didn't plan on including the core, but Ladybug noticed that the middle of the apple looked different from the rest of the apple.

Parts of an Apple was available on the shelf along with the cut apple and magnifying glass.

Being a good scientist - It's hard not to just take a lick.

I realize that this activity isn't original, but it's fun and easy to expand on the original idea.

Desert Activities

Now that the twins are finished with all their summer activities and there is a small break before their preschool programs starts, we have been back in our room.  It feels good to be back to school and everyone seems refreshed after a fun summer.  Mister is loving all the desert animals and Ladybug and the Wee One are into all the art projects.

Math - Mister and Ladybug are obsessed (their word) with time, whether it's how long something takes to the actual time.  I took this opportunity to introduce the clock.

Match the time on the cards - All cards are on the hour

Making a clock - We will redo this activity with stamps because the stickers kept falling off.

Literacy - We are still working on word families and CVC words.  Ladybug is fully reading and Mister is not too far behind.  We have talked about blends here and there, but nothing formal.

Making words - CVC with one CVCC

Writing words - CVC

Sensorial

Desert colors - paint chips from light to dark

Desert photos 

Art

One dollar snakes from Michael's.  I replaced the provided colors with  desert snake colors.  Before we painted, we looked at pictures of snakes in the deserts of the Southwest.