Friday, October 29, 2010

Thursday was a busy day for us!  We made some frosting for our sugar cookies.  Since they were pumpkin shaped, we experimented with red and yellow food coloring.  Amazing!  Those colors mixed make orange when you use food coloring just like when you use paint.  How did Mommy know that? I had planned ahead and made the boys smaller sugar cookies to frost.  There was a lot more eating than frosting going on on their part of the table.

We did a pumpkin cutting activity (fold pumpkin in half and cut only on black line) and a sequence the 5 pumpkin sheet.  These are Ryan's.  He obviously needed assistance, but he had fun and is very proud of his accomplishments.

 Justin did this sort by size sheet.  I think the large and medium are pretty close to the same size.  He initially made a mistake when sorting, but caught it and was able to self-correct before he glued them in place.  He wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't insisted that he sort first, THEN glue.  He didn't want to break it down into steps, but I knew that it was probably a good idea for him to do that.

 Justin also did the color the shapes the correct color.  He went through and did all triangles first, then circles, etc.  I thought he would do one pumpkin at a time.  He also added corn for the scarecrow.  He definitely will still have plenty of skills to master when he starts school.  He likes to color, but not in the lines. 

Friday the boys were so excited for the Embassy Halloween party that we voted to skip school.  AFN was showing some Halloween cartoons and the boys were into watching them, talking about the party, and making sure their costumes were ready.  Halloween has been fun.  I don't know if we will enjoy the Thanksgiving activities as much.  I will do my best.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

We haven't been having normal school for awhile.  We all have colds and I was without my voice for two days.  That makes it kind of hard.  We did some of our projects though, which both boys enjoyed.

These are the scissors that I have been having Justin use.  (I have no idea why blogger keeps rotating this picture sideways, but I suppose it doesn't matter.)  The top pair are Fiskars and the bottom are from the dollar store.  They both spring back open after you squeeze them together to cut.  It makes cutting a little bit easier while you are learning.  The dollar store ones convert to regular scissors simply by folding up the little yellow thingy.  J cuts with regular scissors too, but I find these make things go faster and easier.  What you can't really tell in this picture is that I use a yellow highlighter to show Justin where he is supposed to cut.  Sometimes he gets confused when there are too many lines and he is concentrating on the cutting process.

I also had him do this color word sheet.  He can read his color words, but obviously staying inside the lines is not a priority.  He knows that is what people are supposed to do, but says he doesn't want to.  Whatever.  He is three.  Save something for him to learn in kindergarten, right?  Plus no one will accuse me of doing the work for him!  I love the way he colored orange AFTER yellow and then complained that when orange goes over yellow you can't see the yellow anymore.  Hmmm... maybe if he stayed in the lines...

We painted some paper sacks to give to people as Halloween treat bags.  I had each boy make three jack-o-lanterns.  I had the pumpkins cut along with the stems and face parts.  They had fun and got in some good gluing practice.  Just a dot, not a lot!

We made larger ones as well.  These were for decorations.  They are very unique.  The pattern I have was originally for a Halloween glyph that we did in kindergarten, but I didn't have them do the glyph, just make the pumpkin men.

I am very pleased that Justin seems to be able to sequence pictures without any difficulty.  He is even able to tell the "story" once he has them in place.  Yay!  I know this can be a hard skill for some children and I thought that my unobservant child might not notice subtle differences in the pictures.  He sure doesn't notice major things in life!

 We also had some fun with play dough.  Being the mean mom that I am, I didn't get out the press because I didn't want to have to clean it after they were done.  They had fun with the other tools and with the straws and sticks I let them stick in.  I didn't give them feathers like my mom does.  Just not feeling like it is worth the extra work.

We also did some finger painting.  Justin loved mixing colors.  Ryan hated getting it on his hands.  He said it was a mess.  This from the kid who eats yogurt with his hand when he drops his spoon.  Oh well. 

We started a children's version of the New Testament.  I thought it would be good to get it started now and then at Christmas we can play with our Fisher Price nativity set and already have that story down.  Last year Justin was a bit creative with it.

Ideas from makelearningfun.com

I have found lots of cute ideas on makelearningfun.com.  Many of the ideas are similar (same activity, just different themes) or more for a classroom setting, but I have had fun adapting them for my kids.  Pictured are the Brown Bear color word cards and The Hungry Caterpillar days of the week.  I didn't want them as large as they have them, so I simply printed multiple pages per sheet. I used card stock and laminated them.  For the color word activity you look at the picture of the animal (red bird, blue horse, etc.) and clip a clothespin on the box with the correct color word.  Pretty easy for Justin and too hard for Ryan, but they both enjoy it in their own way.  Justin likes doing this kind of activity and Ryan wants to do what Justin does.  The days of the week are just pictures that go along with the Eric Carle story.  Each picture shows the food the caterpillar ate and has the day of the week printed on it.  Justin doesn't know the days of the week in sequence yet and I figured this way he can learn the order without me teaching him.  I have decided to put flashcards and just about anything else I can on loose leaf rings.  Makes storage easy and I don't have to deal with baggies, rubber bands, etc. 

The website isn't designed as well as I would like, but it has a lot of ideas that I think are cute and my boys agree.

Color Hunt!

Today I pulled out some 9 inch by 12 inch color flash cards that I made a million years ago (okay, probably in 1993) to try out a color hunt with my kids. Justin knows all of his colors and Ryan, though he is a bit young, likes to do whatever his brother does.

I held up a card and had Justin identify the color and then look around the playroom for something that was that same color.  He was clueless!  He wandered around aimlessly and I wondered if he might be looking for an identical flashcard or something.  So I modeled it for him and had him try again.  He did much better once he got the idea.  Ryan didn't know what was going on, but he loved having his brother find an object that he could bring to me.  I would thank him for the item, using the name of the object he brought and pointing out the color.

For the second round, I had Justin hold up the cards and I would look for objects that were the same color.  He loved being in charge of the cards and watching me run around the room.

We are ready for variations.  I am going to print out the color words so Justin can get some practice reading them.  I will let him match the card to the color flashcards we were already using.  This way he can self-check.  Ryan can carry around the color flashcard while Justin helps to find objects that are the right color.

I think I will have a speed contest.  I will see how many objects of a certain color Justin can find within a set time period.  We can keep track and then see what color is "the winner."  Justin is really into contests and comparing, so he will be excited to see which color wins.

Once Justin has found lots of different things (instead of always choosing the same couple of objects for each color) I might give him additional requirements such as it has to have red but NO blue.  It has to have green and be bigger than your hand.

Sometimes I spread the cards out on the floor and give Justin a group of objects to sort by color.  He really enjoys this too.  Ryan's main goal is to play with the objects and move them from where his brother put them.  When Ryan gets a bit older and he can do the sorting, I will have him sort by color while Justin uses tally marks to count how many objects of each color.  I will have him use the data he collects to complete a graph.

Perhaps after that I will toss the cards.  If I ever teach again  and need something like that, I bet I could make them.