Category: Ages 2-6: Preschool (Age 4)

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Preschool Geography

NAME THAT CONTINENT: One morning in collection (our group time) I brought out a beach ball globe. We took turns tossing the ball around the circle. Each time someone caught the ball they had to look at where their thumb had landed and had to name that continent. The kids quickly became silly, but we did manage to get a few rounds in for each of them. Another preschool geography...

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Peanut Butter Bird Feeder

We do this activity about once a year, but it’s always a hit with the kids!  Back as a child I always did this with pine cones, but since we didn’t have pine cones readily accessible we improvised using a bit of bark. The kids spread peanut butter all over the bark and then poured bird seed on it.       Our windows are all quite high off the...

Interesting Statistics about Preschoolers and Literacy 0

Interesting Statistics about Preschoolers and Literacy

There are some really interesting statistics out there about educating preschoolers in America.  Did you know that enrollment for preschoolers has increased 679% between 1985 and 2008?  In 1985 0.2 million preschoolers were enrolled in school in the USA while in 2008 this had increased to 1.2 million! But in reality, still only a little over half of all 3-4 year olds are in school (52% in 2009) (Digest of Education Statistics,...

Preschool Math 0

Preschool Math

We incorporate a lot of Montessori math into our preschooling days.  There are lots of great websites, but Living Montessori Now is a wonderful place to start as Deb has compiled ideas from all around the web. I also play lots of board games that require counting, we jump and play and sing about numbers. Here are some of the math activities we did a couple of weeks ago. I had this...

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Preschool Board Games

Today I want to share a couple of amazing preschool board games that ED really loves! ED turned four a couple of weeks ago. I always ask the kids what kind of cake they want.  ED wanted a Beyblade cake (the spinning top that you see down to the right of the cake).  Funny, huh?! I’m no major cake maker but the kids love helping to make their own birthday...

Valentine's Subtraction Cards 1

Valentine’s Day Math Games: Division and Subtraction Cards and other games

Valentine’s Day Division Cards I made a Valentine’s Day set of division cards to use with LD over the next week or so. We use these cards to play a game called Fast Track — an idea we got from Peggy Kaye’s Games for Math. To make the board you need a large piece of butcher paper or poster board. There are three win spaces, three start spaces and various...

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Preschool: Free Valentine’s Day Word Matching Game

ED has been working a lot on letter sounds and simple -at and -an words. I made this Valentine’s themed word matching activity for her to work on over the next couple of weeks. She has to attach the clothes peg to the matching word on the wheel. It took some cutting pasting to put it together, but if you’d like to make your own you can download the pages...

Preschool Activities 0

Preschool Activities

While the other kids are working on their things, ED has lots of preschool activities in her workboxes. Here are a few things she’s done this past week or so: We played memory using -at words. We are going through “My -at book.” ED says the initial sound and then I help her smash the sounds together. This is definitely an activity we do together as she is not reading...

Game: A to Z, Jr. 0

Game: A to Z, Jr.

The girls got a new game for Christmas called A to Z, Jr by Discovery Toys.  What a great game! The game itself is the perfect age for DD and LD (ages 6 and 8). It’s similar to the game Scattergories. Each person rolls the die and picks up a card. Then he/she has to name as many objects as they can for the category they rolled. Categories might include:...

Preschool Math: numbers greater than 10 4

Preschool Math: numbers greater than 10

ED is ready to tackle the teen numbers. She often skips some of the numbers after 13. I am using a homemade version of the Montessori seguin board (download the packet I made here).  It’s a board with lots of 10s in a row. The child then places a digit over the zero to make 11, 12, 13, etc. 1) First ED counted the number of animals. 2) Then she...

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Butterfly and Insect Lapbook

A few weeks ago, I asked DD what she wanted to learn about. She chose to study butterflies and insects. We used two lapbooks. One is no longer available. The other one was a free lapbook on butterflies from Yee Shall Know. (Website no longer available.) (If you’ve never seen any of her lapbooks, I highly recommend her free lapbooks. (Website no longer available.) They are based on the Magic...

Jumping on the bridge 12

Snippets of our Week (for our 5-yr-old)

I’ve been meaning to put up a post about what we generally work on from day to day. But, with blogger not working for a while, I have a plethora of photos to share. So, here’s a glimpse of what DD (just turned 5) has been working on these past couple of weeks.  Her “basics” include math, reading, handwriting, music/glockenspiel, arts&crafts; and another unit-study (a lapbook in this case, but...

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Bird Unit Activities

Last night I set up the table with a few more bird-related activities. These are activities for my 2 1/2 and 4 year olds: In the middle of the table are styrofoam eggs. The girls decorated them with plastic push pins (I don’t know what else to call them!) and colorful brads.  I also set out a bird identification set and the bird lapbook we made years ago. The girls...

Bird Related Activities 0

Bird Related Activities

So aside from learning about the birds in our area (which are all new to the kids), I also selected a number of general bird and chicken activities to slip into their workboxes. Here are a couple they did today: DD had this chicken grid game from prekinders.com in her workbox today for math.  We played with two dice and she had to try adding them together.  That’s quite challenging...