Our Abandoned Activites

We have spent very little time in our Learning Room this month, but we have been so busy enjoying nature and summer.  These are the activities we have dabbled in this month.

Literacy and Language - We are still working on beginning reading, sight words, and handwriting

Sight word sentence strips

Picture to word matching

Ladybug loves Benjamin Franklin, so we celebrated the postal service by writing a letter about one of Benjamin Franklin's accomplishments.

Math - We are continuing our study of patterns and simple addition and subtraction.

 

Sensory

Sun faded paper key matching

Practical Life

Mister and Ladybug traced a diamond, cut it out, punched a hole, and added a string to make a kite.

Maybe next month we will back into our routine, but in the mean time we are having so much fun!

July Sensory Bin - Our Nation

This sensory bin is a take on last year's sensory bin and is all about America.  This time I included a few surprises for the kiddos.  Can you figure out why I put them in?

• Blue and red dyed pasta (use vinegar and food color)
• Stars
• Red and blue bracelets
• Pom poms
• Flipper
• Keys
• Bus
• Horse
• Pineapple
• Ice cream
• Bucket
• Spoons

Preaparing the Molcajete

I have had my molcajete and tejolote sitting as a display piece for a really long time.  For some reason it intimidated me although I am a pretty good cook.  I made a resolve to use it, so I enlisted the kiddos to help me prepare and use the molcajete for the first time.

First, I set out the molcajete and we inspected it.  I had Mister and Ladybug guess what it was and from what material it was made.  Also, we watched how a molcajete was made.

Then it was time to prepare and make our guacamole.

Ladybug grinding up salt.

The Wee One seasoning the molcajete with garlic gloves and cumin.

Mister grinding up avocados for the guacamole.

Our finished guacamole.  I didn't get a single drop of the guacamole because they enjoyed it that much.    

My molcajete was relatively smooth and didn't need much work, so we sped up the preparing process.  We also made baked tortilla chips and had frijoles.

Our Easy and Kid Friendly Guacamole

2 avocados
1/2 Onion
Tomato
Cilantro
Lime

Holy Frijoles - Part 1

We have only done these activities a few times this month.  So far they have seemed to enjoy them.

Math

Mister and Ladybug put the correct number of links on the soccer ball and then add (join) two of them together.

Roll a graph - Mister and Ladybug rolled the die six times and added a sticker to the correct column.  

Literacy

The -et family

Ladybug is very excited to write and for a dollar I made her day.

Practical Life

We are still working on Mister's pencil grip, so I put out "Things from Mexico" pushpin.

Cultural/Geography

The Wee One

This work was first presented to Mister and Ladybug as an introductory lesson to colors in Spanish.  We did a group lesson on the rug and took turns matching and saying the colors.  Also, it's on the Wee One's shelf for color matching.  She finds is really easy and has attempted to say the Spanish words a few times.

There you have it.  Next month I really want to study Mexico and I have plans to include an artist study among other things.

The Pilgrims

History is a difficult concept for little ones because, well, they have a hard time remembering yesterday.  I love when we can make connections from history to our life and that was my goal for this activity.

First we read Pilgrims of Plymouth and we talked about how the Pilgrims were the same and different from us.  I was hoping they would notice that the Pilgrims learned to grow corn and they did.  Mister and Ladybug love to talk about how and where corn grows as evidence when we are driving and every cornfield is pointed out to me.

Mister and Ladybug attend leaves to the corn and then glued on popcorn.  We used Modge Podge for the popcorn.

I gave them the sentence starter, "The Pilgrims learned..." 

July - My Community

Our July theme is My Community with a little United States of America mixed in.  These are some of the activities Mister and Ladybug have on their shelves right now.

This was our before list.  After I defined community, I had them list all the things they knew about a community.  We are adding to the list as we go.

We looked at and sorted Community Cards. 

Math

These were purchased from Target's dollar section

Patterns



Flag counting

Practical Life

After sticking in the pinwheels, Mister and Ladybug love to make wind to see how many they can get to go around at once.

Literacy

I found these at Target's dollar section too.  They are little overwhelmed having all the cards and I have had to give them ideas how to organize their work.