Preschool
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, History/Social Science, Interest Led Homeschool, Preschool, Teaching, the Give Way, Theme, Tot School
Tot School: Community Worker (Helper) Theme
Another post that fell to the wayside with my second pregnancy…so mainly pictures here. 🙂 But, hopefully you’ll get some ideas and be inspired for your own look into it. I put “helper” in the title to help for those searching for ideas, but I always said “worker”. I think it’s a misnomer to call people “helpers,” because their job involves helping people. Pretty much any job does, but nobody ever says a community helper is a cashier. Yes, firefighters help people, but they also get paid to do it. They’ve chosen it because they like the job, and they get paid to do what they like.  As is the…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, 9-11 Year Old, Book Clubs, Book Focus, English, Historical Fiction Book Lists, History/Social Science, Interest Led Homeschool, Kids' Book Club, Preschool, Social Activities, Teaching, the Give Way
Kids’ Book Club: Creek Exploring with Minn of the Mississippi
This month’s kids’ book club book: Minn of the Mississippi This is a 5th grade reading level book. It’s a wonderful mix of fact and fiction, but I’d say my newly turned 5 year old had a hard time focusing. We skipped a lot. I’d recommend this book for the 7 and up age range for sure.  The illustrations are beautiful! Looking forward to reading more by the author. We live in an area that is not abundant in rivers, even in the winter. The nearest thing we have is a little creek. Since it was summer when we did this one, there was just enough water to make mud.…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, 9-11 Year Old, Book Clubs, Book Focus, English, Interest Led Homeschool, Kids' Book Club, Preschool, Social Activities, Teaching, the Give Way, Theme, Tot School
Kids’ Book Club: Oh, the Places We’ll Go with Dr. Seuss
Books for this month’s kids’ book club: Any by Dr. Seuss (I’ll link all of them at the end of the post. We almost got to them all!) I tried to do some Wacky Wednesday things. Balloon tree — wacky! Shoe tree – wacky! She dressed up as a wacky Daisy-Head Mayzie. That was a real flower! 🙂 Here’s the star machine from the Sneetches book (my favorite!) I put sticky stars out for the kids to put on (and take off). 🙂 Then they colored a picture I found of Hop on Pop on the Seussville website. I also set up flowers and pipe cleaners for them to make…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, English, Interest Led Homeschool, Letter of the Week, Preschool, Teaching, the Give Way
Letter of the Week – Letter Z
Day 1 Find z stickers and put on Z Color and assemble Letter Z Book Go to library and get z books Make a zebra Lego Day 2 Fill in Z Outline and z Outline with carrots (zanahoria). (Other options: zeros, zippers, zebra stripes, zucchini painting) Draw a zig zag color by numbers She had to make me one too. 🙂 That I of course completed. Video: Olive and the Rhyme Rescue Crew Starfall Computer Activity Day 3 Run/walk in zig zags Make a Lego zig zag Activity Sheet 1 Activity Sheet 2 Video: Get Squiggling! Day 4 Zucchini muffins Sing zippity do da song “plenty of (z words) coming…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, English, Interest Led Homeschool, Letter of the Week, Preschool, Teaching, the Give Way
Letter of the Week – Letter Y
Day 1 Find y stickers and put on Y Color and assemble Letter Y Book Go to library and get y books Video: Olive and the Rhyme Rescue Crew Day 2 Fill in letter Y Outline and y Outline with: (Other options: yarn, yellow things) Stand and make a letter y Old versus young (look through photo album and see who is old and who is young) Sang the Yankee Doodle song Video: Get Squiggling! Day 3 Real yo yo Aluminum foil with yellow yogurt to write and play in. I had the baby playing with it too, so I decided to use turmeric and saffron to make it yellow…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, English, Interest Led Homeschool, Letter of the Week, Preschool, Teaching, the Give Way
Letter of the Week – Letter X
We only did three days for this letter. Day 1 Find x stickers and put on X Color and assemble Letter X Book Go to library and get x books Video: Olive and the Rhyme Rescue Crew Play the xylophone and make a Lego one. 🙂 Starfall Computer Activity Video: Get Squiggling! Day 2 Put an x on paper with tape and let her paint it and then pull it off (see picture below) Color in X Outline and x Outline with: toothpicks that make an x (other options: old x-ray film, q-tip x-ray, sixes, foxes, boxes) Play tic tac toe Activity Sheet 1 Activity Sheet 2 Video: Sesame street…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, 9-11 Year Old, Book Clubs, Book Focus, English, Interest Led Homeschool, Kids' Book Club, Preschool, Social Activities, Teaching, the Give Way
Kids’ Book Club: Berry Picking with Milly Molly Mandy
This month’s kids’ book club book: Milly Molly Mandy The book is a 5th grade reading level and would interest kids 3-8ish. I’m a huge fan of this book. I kept expecting the plot to include Milly Molly Mandy making bad choices and dealing with consequences, and then the moral. But, what actually continually happened was that she chose the right way! It was wonderful and refreshing to read about a kid doing right. If I had read this book before, I would have definitely planned the activities at my house. The book is full of parties. 🙂 We looked for a pink and white striped dress. But, that was…
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Tot School: Airplane Theme
It’s been over two years since I did this theme. I got pregnant that year and a lot of my tot school posts went to the wayside. So, I figured at least I could post the pictures I have. We were planning a trip on a plane. She was 2ish, and hated things of hers being taken away. So, I figured it might be helpful to talk a lot about the airport experience and prepare her for the loss of her stuff for a little while and during the security check. We did some dramatic play with her dolls going through the airport. Going through the metal detector. Sitting in…
- 3-5 Year Old, Interest Led Homeschool, Preschool, Science, Teaching, the Give Way, Theme, Tot School, Unit Study
Tot School: Fall Theme
It’s been over two years since I did this theme. I got pregnant that year and a lot of my tot school posts went to the wayside. So, I figured at least I could post the pictures I have. Fall Bath — I had my husband cut out leaves. I remember trying myself, and if you look closely you can probably tell which two I did. 😉 That’s shaving cream with orange dye. Playing in leaves. Collecting leaves for gluing onto a paper. Playing in the rain. We visited a pumpkin patch. We don’t do Halloween, so I’ve never really gone to these, but during the week, they’re pretty benign.…
- 3-5 Year Old, Curricula, English, History/Social Science, Interest Led Homeschool, Math, Preschool, Science, Teaching, the Give Way
What A Four Year Old Can Learn
Last year I realized that it was a bit of a misnomer to call this list “goals,” as I wasn’t really focused on trying to get her to accomplish them. It was more just keeping track of what she was learning. Moving forward to get something done is a pretty inherent aspect of the word “goal.” So, instead, I’ve been focusing more on my own goals and learning more about how to facilitate a natural way of learning. The baby was six months when my daughter turned 4, so we were not structured much at all early on. Fortunately, I had put together the letter of the week activities before…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, Book Clubs, Book Focus, English, History/Social Science, Interest Led Homeschool, Kids' Book Club, Preschool, Social Activities, Teaching, the Give Way
Kids’ Book Club: Up the Rhine to Switzerland!
Book for this month’s kids’ book club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland (This link is for the kindle or hardback version. DO NOT buy the paper book! I did and immediately returned it. It was terrible! No pictures, tiny print. I ended up just printing a pdf of this Google ebook.) This book is a sequel to this reading primer. I don’t know if I’d actually read it again. My daughter loved it, but it was really basic. So, not really a classic. Just old. 🙂 But, it’s great as a secondary reader. And, it’s a great informative story. We had a Swiss book club get together, so a mix…
- 3-5 Year Old, 6-8 Year Old, 9-11 Year Old, Book Clubs, Book Focus, History/Social Science, Interest Led Homeschool, Kids' Book Club, Preschool, Social Activities, Teaching, the Give Way
Kids’ Book Club: First Stop! China with Little Pear
Books for this month’s kids’ book club: Little Pear Little Pear and His Friend I found some translations, as well!! Petit Tang (French Edition!)                               Petit Tang et Ses Amis (French edition!) Der Kleine Shang (German Edition!) The book is a high 4th/low 5th grade reading level and would interest kids 3-10ish.   There are two more books in the series. We did not read them, but plan to in the future: Little Pear and the Rabbits More About Little Pear The author, Eleanor Lattimore, actually wrote tons of books!! And they all look great! Many are out of print. I found a few at my local libraries and some reasonably…
