Month 4, Week 2: All about the letter K.

This week we are continuing our learning of snow, ice, and winter with our number of the month being the number 5 and our shape of the month being rectangles. With that we are also learning all about the letter K and Arctic animals. This week we kicked things off with our letter of the week crafts and like most weeks I let our preschooler guide us on what he would like to create for this week's craft. This week we have created a king's crown for our capital K and a kite for our lowercase k.

 

As we continued our learning of winter and all the snow and ice that can come with it (obviously, depending on where you live). We decided to switch gears over to learning about the animals that exist in the colder Arctic and polar habitats. We recently bought a book that is hands on and helps children learn all about different areas of the world and those who live there whether it be animals or people. Thanks to this book and a trip to our local library, we had enough material for learning about all the Arctic and polar animals. But learning from a book alone isn't how we do things around here and we had a great way to really relate to these animals we were learning about.

 

 

We wanted to give our kids a hands on learning opportunity about animals in cold weathered climates and how they have special fat on their bodies to keep them warm. Since we don't have the same fat on ourselves I found a great hands on activity that you will only need a bowl of ice water, Crisco or butter, and plastic wrap. Fill your own bowl with cold water and ice to start. Then you will have your own toddler immerse their hand for as long as they can stand (usually it's only a few seconds) so they can see how cold the water is. Then coat their own hand in Crisco thickly and wrap with plastic wrap and have the immerse their hand once more for as long as they can stand (usually they can do this for quite awhile, we even let our toddler do it a few times). And that's it! This learning activity teaches them how the Crisco we used is like the special fat these animals have and how it helps protect their bodies from cold temperatures. Toddlers and kids alike love this hands on learning activity!

 

After a trip to our local library to enjoy story time and a fun outing to our local indoor bounce place, we wrapped up our week with a winter themed sensory box. This simple sensory box was just something I whipped up with what we had on hand like buttons, metallic ribbons, water beads, and small animal figurines. These easy sensory boxes are a quick and fun way to give your toddlers something hands on to learn and play with.

 

 

 Like most weeks we try to make a few trips to our town's local library to collect books and learning materials on what we will be covering for the week. This week after story time, we collected a few books that we enjoyed learning with. Here are a few of our favorites for this week:

 

 

 Thanks for another great week of learning with us and we can't wait to show you all the fun things we have planned for next week. As you may have noticed each week varies on how many activities we include in our learning and some weeks are shorter than others, this was definitely one of those weeks. With more activities outside of our home and some traveling we made the week short and sweet (one of the perks of homeschooling). We cannot wait for next week's theme and to share all the fun things we have planned!

 

 



Month 4, Week 1: All about the letter J.

Welcome back everyone! We have officially switched back over to homeschool mode around here and have been excited to get back to our learning. This week kicked off with learning all about snow, ice, and winter (it has definitely been cold enough lately to feel like winter). With that we are focusing on the color white, the number 5, rectangles, and of course the letter J this week. Since we have been on such a long break lately, we took the first partial week of this month just to review what we have already learned so far this school year. And now we have jumped back into our normal routine with introducing the letter J, learning it, tracing it, and writing it.

To get our week rolling in a fun direction, we did a fun snowman themed name recognition craft this week. Both our toddlers were able to participate in this activity (obviously, our youngest toddler receives more hands on help than our preschooler does). All you need for this activity is some construction paper, a marker, and glue of some sort. I go ahead and prep this activity by cutting out all the snowman circles we will be needing (we also added hats that I had already cut out as well) and I letter them like so:

At this point we let our preschooler start putting the letters in order to spell out his name. Name recognition is something we work on each day and this activity is a fun reinforcement of remembering what we have learned. This is such a simple task that doesn't take much supplies and can be changed to fit with different themes as well. In the end your preschooler should end up with something like this:

To keep in theme with our fun snowman names, we came across a fun little snowman science activity that was just perfect for this week's learning! It is called "melting snowman" and it is sure to be a big hit with your little homeschoolers as well! Since the instructions are a bit long I made a separate post with all the details for this fun science activity that you can find here.

Not to miss out on any of the winter fun this week we moved straight into a sensory art project that was all about the cold. With the lack of snowflakes in our area, we had to get creative and make our own. With a few pipe cleaners and a few other ingredients you can create your very own snowflakes as well. You will need the following:
1/3 cup of borax, 2/3 cups of water, pipe cleaners, and some string.
Cut a pipe cleaner into six pieces to create simple snowflakes, once they are ready you can tie a small string around them and tie the other end of your string around a pencil to hang in your glass. Boil your water and mix the borax into it, when completely mixed together you can then add your pipe cleaner snowflakes in. Once you have your pipe cleaners in your glass, you will need to leave them overnight. After a few hours crystals will start to form and before long you will have your very own little crystal snowflakes.

As our first week back after our winter break came winding down, we made sure to find time for our letter of the week crafts. This week to celebrate our capital J we made a baby Jesus (this was actually our preschoolers idea for our letter of the week craft and I couldn't get over how creative it was) and for our lowercase j we made a jellyfish. The ideas for these letter of the week crafts are endless and can be altered to what your own toddlers like that still goes in line with the letter of that week.

Our week is winding down to an end and we are still trying to transition back into our routine from a very relaxed break. That being said we have had to overcome some concentration hurdles lately for both our toddlers, this has brought up some need for hands on instruments to help calm our little homeschoolers as well as help them refocus. For this we made our own stress balls out of leftover balloons, play dough, and flour. These are simple to make and effective for helping toddlers overcome stress, emotions, or even needing concentration help. All you need is some balloons, a funnel, and either play dough or flour (we made two of each kind for a variety of textures). Fill your balloon up until the neck of the balloon and work any air bubbles off, then tie them off and you have your very own stress balls. We also made our own version of a calming glitter bottle that you can find here.

We are officially wrapped up with this week and hope you enjoyed some of our fun winter learning! Be sure to check back in with us as we continue our winter learning into arctic animals and some cold hands on learning, literally!

Glitter Bottles.

Calming glitter bottles are such a great tool not just for homeschooling ,but for just everyday life with toddlers. It is a tool we use to help our toddlers refocus, use to calm themselves down, and even depending on the colors or objects used they can be used to go along with our learning themes. Our version are miniature takes on other versions we have seen so that we can have multiple glitter bottles on hand. Below is our instructions on how to create your own.

You will need:

• Empty miniature water bottles with labels taken off.
• Glitter glue
• Glitter (and any objects you would like to add)
• Water

Start by filling your water bottles with half the bottle of glitter glue that you have, then add in 1/2 a cup or more of glitter. At this point top your bottle off with water and mix vigorously. Don't fret, it can take a lot of shaking to completely mix all the glitter and glue. Once everything is mixed you can superglue your bottles lid on (this is a precaution especially if you have younger toddlers). And that is all you need to have your very own calming glitter bottles for your household.

Melting Snowman!

If you are looking for a fun winter themed science activity for your preschoolers then we have something great in store for you! Since the snow has been lacking this winter where we live, we decided to make our own versions of "melting snowman" for the kids to enjoy and they couldn't of been a bigger hit! For this activity you will need:

• baking soda (and a little water to make it form able)
• a cup or mold
• accessories for your snowman (buttons, eyes, foam noses, glitter, etc.)
• a pan
• vinegar

To start you will need to mix your baking soda with a little water to make the baking soda form able for your cups, you won't need much water because you are just wanting it to be a little moist not runny. Once your baking soda mixture is ready you can prepare your cups. We put some googly eyes in the bottom of our cups and put a layer of baking soda mixture over them. Next, we added some buttons and poured the remainder of our baking soda mixture on top of those. Make sure to pat it all down so it forms tight and then stick the cups in your freezer to help your snowmen form quickly. We left ours overnight and in the morning everything was ready for our toddlers.

Once your snowmen are ready, you can take them out of their molds and put them in a shallow pan. All that will be left is making up your vinegar solution which you can use just plain vinegar if you'd like or you can add a little blue food coloring to yours like we did (it gave it a fun winter feel and a little diversity from the white snowmen). Once your vinegar solution is ready then you gave your toddlers free range to explore and "melt" their very own snowmen.

There are a few ways you can do this, a squirt bottle or a turkey baster are good choices for younger toddlers ,but if you don't have any of those lying around then a cup or large spoon works just as well. And that's it! You have a fun winter activity that you don't even have to brave the cold for!

Wilson family winter break.

We approached the month of December with high hopes of keeping with up with our homeschooling routine and not taking any time off ,but as many of you can relate this previous month was already packed to the brim with holiday gatherings and travel. We didn't completely write off all learning this month, thanks to Over the Big Moon we were able to supplement with some of their free printable pre-k packs. This month we printed out the nativity learning pack that you can find here, along with an expansion pack that you can find here. These were perfect for the Christmas season and we loved that they had a nativity theme that helped keep our reason for the season in focus for our preschooler.

Of course since this wasn't a focused month of learning for us we kept our hands on learning tools simple. With the learning packets we printed out were fun puzzles that I just laminated and kept on hand for quiet time. Another favorite was an actual nativity scene and figures that we printed out, laminated and used throughout the month as a quiet activity. These are easy to pack up and bring along with you to use outside of your normal homeschool areas, like church or restaurants. Another fun and easy activity to fall into the Christmas season is Christmas tree play dough and button ornaments. All you need is some green play dough, a tree cookie cutter, and some buttons. Both our toddlers loved this activity and continued to come back to it all month long. The last hands on activity we did was a Christmas countdown with our preschooler. This was another easy and festive activity that just took strips of paper and tape. Each day we ripped another chain off and let our preschooler count the number of chains left.

 

 

 We hope you all enjoyed your winter breaks this year, we know we sure did and we are so glad to get back to our routine of things around our own household! Be sure to check in for a look back at our learning so far in 2014 and get ready for all the fun learning that 2015 is going to be bringing us this year!

Month 3, Week 3: All about the letter I.

Here, we have come to the end of our third month homeschooling and wrapping up our monthly theme with continuing to learn about giving thanks, Thanksgiving, vegetables, and the letter I. As our previous weeks this month we started by adding what we are thankful for on our table runner and by this point it is starting to look full. This is definitely a tradition I am going to be repeating in the upcoming years as an easy reminder of all we have as a family to be thankful for. Since this week falls on a holiday and we have multiple Thanksgivings this year with our families, our learning week is going to be a little shorter than our typical weeks. That being said lets dive into our week:

Since this week is a bit of a short week for us because of the holiday we were able to take our learning with us as we traveled to and from our different families for Thanksgiving. We brought along many of our hands on learning tools with us like our lacing cards and our miniature puzzles.

 

This week we left things rather short and sweet as we covered all our workbook lessons early on to give us plenty of downtime for all the hustle of the rest of our week. As most of you know I like to incorporate our toddlers in every aspect of everyday responsibilities as much as possible. This often means that our preschooler is lending a hand in the kitchen beside us to learn basic life skills. Since our week's theme included vegetables which couldn't of landed on a better week since there are plenty of vegetables included in Thanksgiving meals, I wanted to have our toddlers learn hands on about them. Given our toddlers know a good amount about vegetables because our families all garden, we try to pick up local produce as much as possible, and we incorporate vegetables into most of our meals. An easy way to get your children excited about vegetables is to include them in the process of them, it can be anything from picking them out to helping wash or cut them. We decided on having our preschooler do the washing of our vegetables this week. Honestly, you give kids water and fun scrub brushes and this becomes like a silly game to them. They learn while having fun and you have a little extra help, it's a win, win!

 

 

 

As we wrapped up our week of learning we found one last craft to work into our week while staying in theme. We created our very own name turkeys and if you are like us, you already have all the materials you will need to make this easy craft. Just a little construction paper, markers, and some glue and you are all set to create a fun Thanksgiving craft with your preschooler. I just precut the feathers and body pieces for our son, spelled out his name across the feathers, and then set everything out for him to create. This is another fun way to help with letter recognition and spelling their own names.

 

 

We hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving week with your own families and look forward to starting a whole new theme with you all next month. So, as we approach our busiest month by far in our whole year please bare with us as we find a way to make our homeschooling work around all the fun winter activities we have planned.





Month 3, Week 2: All about the letter H.

It's our second week of November and we couldn't be more excited for this week's lesson plans, while we are still focusing on our giving thanks theme, we are also learning about brown bears and hibernation. This is one theme our preschooler has been really excited for since we just recently visited The Portland Zoo and saw the brown bears before they went into hibernation. To kick off the week we started with our letter of the week craft that you can see here. From there we really just dived into our brown bear theme of learning this week by making it an official "bring your teddy bear to school week".

We had transformed our school areas for the week into a teddy bear friendly zone with our very own cave to store our teddy bears for hibernation. This was just a fun dramatic play center we created with a pop up play tent and a few blankets. We left different materials for our toddlers to stuff and create their own unique cave experience inside. It could be anything you have lying around your house, in our case some little blankets, small pillows, and stuffing material. This pretend cave also provided us with a perfect little spot for reading our books of the week (you can see some of our favorites at the bottom of this post).

As you can see above our particular bear cave was literally packed with every teddy bear they could find and it really set the tone for our fun week. We wanted to include our teddy bears in every part of our day, especially with the learning so when I came across this free printable for using our teddy bears as tools of learning, I just knew I had to incorporate it. (you can see the printable in the picture below). This worksheet had a little bit of everything and it incorporated using legos to measure our teddy bear, which if you have a son you know how big of a hit legos can be.

 

From there we continued our number recognition learning with a fun and delicious twist of using teddy grahams as our counting tools. All you need are number flash cards/magnets/really anything you have around your homeschool area and a cup full of teddy grahams. This is just a fun and perfect independent activity for quiet time learning.

As I mentioned above we had a ton of favorite books covering all our learning about brown bears and hibernation, here were a few of our favorites:

To wrap up our fun week of learning we tied in a brown bear craft with our favorite book of the week "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Eric Carle, you can find the printable template for our craft here. All you need is this template, a paper bag, and some craft paper to create your own brown bear face. This is a fun way to tie in what you are reading with a hands on activity for your preschooler.

As we wrap up another week of learning, I just want to let all my viewers know that we are thankful for all of you! It completely humbles my heart knowing there are others out there alongside us on our journey of learning at home and we look forward to sharing next weeks learning themes as we wrap up on this month.