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As you probably know, we’re getting ready to leaveAustralia. The packers come next Tuesday, soI’ve been quite busy. Our suitcases are mostlypacked with the things we’ll need/use for thenext 3-4 months. I thought I’d share thisbag of preschool -tot activities I put together.We’ll be spending a week here, a week therefor a couple of months, so this should be a goodcollection of small things to pull out when inneed in...
Paper strips, swirls for cutting Pom-poms for sorting Opposites puzzles Find the word, clothes pin activityfrom http://sunflowerschoolhouse.com/
The kids place the hair barret ontoa rubber band and snap it closed.I first saw this idea atmymontessorijourney.typepad.com Pony bead counting activity A bag full of finger puppet animals Sewing with a large embroidery needleand huge buttons.
Matching: I made this using foam boards,matching foam animals/shapes and coveringit with contact paper. An inexpensive wooden teddy bear puzzle. Frog/Dragon Fly Color Matching Gamefrom filefolderfun.com Marbles, golf-t and suction cup the golf-tand marbles are for doing balancing “relay”races trying to walk keeping the marblebalanced.
This year (2009-2010) our main units included natural disasters,China, biomes/animal habitats, ancient Greece (we did ancientEgypt just before this school year officially started and before Istarted this blog), flowers and apples (the last two were gearedmore towards my preschooler). We also enjoyed lots of scienceexperiments (almost weekly) and the younger kids really enjoyedthe theme time tables. We did a lot with geography throughout the year and reallyenjoyed doing country/continent swaps...
This is probably not the typical workbox picture, is it?!As you can see, we’ve broken down the workboxes andstacked them, ready for the movers. Now all schoolsupplies that I’ve chosen for the next few months are inthe green bag there. (Ignore the blue tray; it has manipulatives,workbox subject labels and other random things that haveyet to be packed and put away.)These days, school is considerably less “hands on” sincewe haven’t...
Like many people, we were short on space. Our workboxeswere set up between the kitchen and hallway doors. Imade the red book display case to fit under the hangingbaskets which held some of the bigger books that we usedregularly. The hard plastic files (to the left of the red bookdisplay shelf) helped keep things organized for the work-boxes. They held things like Montessori math manipulativescut up “science-take it to your...
We’ll also be bringing the beloved craft table because it’slong (fits three kids comfortably) and is the perfect heightfor them. A friend made it and it’s been wonderful forsetting up our weekly science experiments and theme time tables.You can have a browse of what we did this past year if you lookthrough the tab at the right.
As I said, the table was quite long and we permanentlyhad the dulcimers (there’s a kids dulcimer not picturedthat we used this year), composer pics, etc. So, while it’sprobably not valuable it sure is functional for us!!
The kids have been real troopers as we pack up, sort, break down furniture, sell appliances, outdoor play equipment, and everything that moving entails. Not to mention the endless errands around town. We were also stuck at home as ED was sick all night a couple of nights ago. Today, we dedicated the morning to some plain outdoor fun. We packed up the kids’ bikes and had a really fun...
Golden Orb Spider: When we stopped for a water break, we spotted this huge spider. It’s web was at least five feet across. The main portion of its body was as big as the first joint of my big toe (it was probably 4 inches across if you count the legs)! Glad it was off to the side; it’d be horrible to ride our bikes into that web!!
Animal Antics: If you’ve read our blog for a while, you know that DD knewall her letter sounds at age 3 and started putting wordstogether just a bit before she was 4. She wasn’t yet readyto read, though, so we did lots of games and she would readone word on a page or one word at at time in games and such. She’s now had the patience and interest to...
This is a continuation of the post: What We’re Using to Teach DD (age 4 1/2) to Read where I explained that DD is using Animal Antics (affiliate link) Starfall Books and other readers to learn to read. Primary Phonics by EPS: This fall, DD will also work on the first two sets (20 books) of Primary Phonics Readers by EPS (affiliate link) . All I have are the storybook...
One of the few things we did out-and-about last week was to go to Jesse Gap with friends. The older kids had a lot of fun climbing up the rocks. There was a “cave” up behind the trees and the boys spent a long time exploring while the younger ones hid plastic Easter eggs in the grass. (Yes, we kept a hawk’s-eye out for snakes!) Meanwhile, on the home front...
