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A Field Trip to the Air and Space Museum

Preschool and Kindergarten Community at Homeschool Creations

In our house this week, the camera was off during much of our school time, but we are having fun learning about Australia and kangaroos {I’ll be sharing more next week}. This past weekend though we did have a LOT of fun visiting the Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport.

Air and Space Museum (35)

Kaleb was MOST impressed with the plane above and made sure that I had numerous pictures of it. I’m sure it had NOTHING to do with the video clip that they had playing nearby, showing the plane as a Transformer. {grins}

Air and Space Museum (40)

He also made sure that I had four pictures of the camouflaged plane. Just because it was cool.

Air and Space Museum (41)

Seeing the Discovery up close – very amazing.

 

Air and Space Museum (57)

Spending time together as a family and with friends we don’t get to see often was just as much fun though. It was a FABULOUS trip – and one that I’m glad we were able to make!!

From Others Linking Up

~ If you are talking about the days of Creation, Every Star is Different had some great Montessori trays and activities that her family used during their learning. She traced the Earth on a piece of construction paper and the kids poked through with toothpicks and then held them up to the light.

Earth outlined with toothpick holes from Every Star is Different

~ If you happen to have access to an old projector, here is a fun idea for your kids from Learning at Play. They used felt cutouts to project scenes on the wall.

projector play with Learning at Play

~ Have lots of rocks around your house? Check out the 30 different ideas that Fantastic Fun and Learning shares for rocks.

Learning fun with rocks

~ There’s Just One Mommy shares a cute puppet that they made to go along with the book Bear Wants More {and I agree – those books are all so very cute!!}.

bear-wants-more-activity-from There's Just One Mommy

 

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool and Kindergarten Community. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

 

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The Legend of the Easter Egg Bag Book

Preschool and Kindergarten Community at Homeschool Creations

Leave it to a friend to remind me about The Legend of the Easter Egg, a well-loved book in our house, and the lapbook that I put together many years ago and shared at Homeschool Share. Yes, it’s true – I forget some of the printables I make. My brain must be getting old.

Legend of Easter Egg Bag Book

Instead of making a lapbook to go along with The Legend of the Easter Egg, we made a bag book. Curious what a bag book is? It’s super simple, I promise:

  1. Lay a stack of small paper bags on top of each other  {we alternated four bags top to bottom}
  2. Fold the stack in half {so they form a square booklet}
  3. Punch a few holes along the fold
  4. Tie a ribbon to hold the bags together.

The bags make a small book of sorts and then we added in fun clip art and lapbook pieces to go along with our book. {Here’s an online tutorial for making a bag book}.

While we didn’t use every lapbook piece from the Legend of the Easter Egg unit, we did read the book together almost every day and then picked a few things daily to talk about in more detail: weather, language, feelings, science, etc… It was a great way to talk about Easter and learn together – and most importantly, have fun!

The Parts of an Egg

examining an egg shell

We have plenty of eggs in our house, so we pulled an egg or two out to crack open and examine. This was a great hands-on time to look at a few parts of the egg: the shell, the yolk, the egg cell, the chalazae, and the albumen {the white}, and that tiny little air sac. There is a great go-along printable for the Legend of the Easter Egg lapbook that we used to label the parts after we poked and inspected our own egg.

EggSperiments

eggs in vinegar experiment

There were three egg experiments that we worked on together. First we hard boiled a LOT of eggs {had to save some to color later in the week!}.

  • Experiment #1: Which spins faster: a hard boiled egg or a raw egg? We made predictions and then ran our experiment. I can’t tell you the answer – you need to try it for yourself!
    the soft shelled egg that popped
  • Experiment #2: What happens when a hard boiled egg soaks in vinegar for one day? We actually soaked a hard boiled egg and a raw egg in vinegar to see if there would be any difference. Kaleb thought the squishy eggs were MUCH fun to poke, especially when the raw egg ‘popped’ and the shell was all limp on the plate.
  • Experiment #3: What happens when the egg from Experiment #2 sits out of the vinegar for 24 hours. We’re still waiting to see the results of this one, but Kaleb is checking it faithfully!

Weighing Chocolates

weighing chocolate

The little boy in story, Thomas, wakes up one morning in a candy shop {literally}. Every child’s dream, right? We pulled out our Chocolate Fix game and used our bucket balance scale to weigh the different chocolates and also compare their weight to other things around the room {crayons, paper clips, etc…}.

We also talked about the symbolism of the Easter egg, telling time as well as days and months of the year, winter weather {hail and freezing rain}, and quite a few other things that we pulled from the book The Legend of the Easter Egg. Overall, a fun week and we’re definitely going to make another bag book again!

 

This Week’s Featured Posts

Here are a few fun posts from families that linked up last week to the Preschool and Kindergarten Community. I love seeing your ideas and so appreciate you sharing with others!

bunny playdough mat

To go along with the book The Little Rabbit, Angelue from Nestpirations used a cute playdoh mat to work on 1:1 counting with her daughter. She has some other great ideas as well to go along with their unit.

125 Easter Egg Basket ideas

Need some last minute idea for Easter baskets for the kids? Moms Have Questions Too has 125 Inexpensive Easter Basket Ideas to share – and many are things that are non-Easter related, but things your kids still need and use.

Easter Egg Word Hunt

Tara from The Magnolia Barn shares a fun egg hunt for sight words that she put together for under $1 for her daughter. Games are a great way to make learning fun!

Resurrection Garden Tutorial 2

 

We loved putting together this Resurrection Garden last year {this year’s plan to make one got sidetracked when we all came down with a bug}. This is a no-fail way to grow grass and it sprouts quickly!!

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool and Kindergarten Community. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

 

Were you featured?

If you were featured in one of the weekly posts, feel free to grab the button coding below and display it on your site!

Preschool Corner

 

 

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PreK and K Community ~ Week 1

Side Note: I may have accidentally deleted an image in Photobucket that many of you have grabbed for the PreK and K Community {ahem}. If you happen to notice that there is a missing image, would you be so kind as to re-grab the html? I’m sorry!!

Preschool and Kindergarten Community at Homeschool CreationsOverall, this week has been great and filled with all of our typical studies: math, reading, science, Bible, history, Legos, some geography, language, and handwriting. Here’s a quick peek into our week…

learning fractions with Saxon math 1

Kaleb has been working on fractions and also on counting by 5’s. While he has the tally marks down, that has been a bit more difficult to master. 10’s yes. 2’s yes. 5’s – not so much. We’re trying a few different things to help in that department {and welcome any brilliant suggestions!!}. Funny – I don’t remember the other kiddos having problems with this part. It may be pushed off to a backburner so he doesn’t get frustrated.

hundreds chart

Another new math concept this week was adding in multiples of 10 – to numbers other than 10. {sigh} We pulled out our 100’s chart so that he could easily see, but again – just a wee bit frustrating for him, so we stopped after a bit of trying and we’ll try again later.

 addition wrap ups for math

Our addition wrap-ups though – a huge hit!! I pulled them out this week on a whim {perhaps to keep him busy while I was dealing with a sibling} and he LOVED them!! Definitely using them again!!

mixing liquids in kindergarten science 

In science with Nancy Larson K, we had MUCH fun mixing different things together to see what would happen: sand and water, oil and water, as well as water with food coloring. Kaleb made predictions about what he thought would happen with each mixing and we talked about buoyancy of different liquids too.

That’s a quick look at our week, but I’d love to share a few things from YOU all now – are you ready??

For those of you joining up with us each week, a handful will be featured in the weekly post. If you’d like, feel free to grab a ‘featured’ button down below and share it with your friends!

A Family in the Land has been working on a garden unit with her children – and reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit to go along with it. Her study of plant roots and SO MUCH MORE will inspire you. And all of the pictures – gorgeous!

Root system study

 

– With spring hinting at actually being here, I loved this idea from Teacher @ Home. She used a circle punch with seed packets and made rainbows – how cute are they?? 

rainbow made from seed packets

 

Every Star is Different had a great week learning about fire safety and emergency helpers. This fingerprint activity would be a huge hit with kids and I love that it includes room to identify every finger.

Emergency Vehicle Learning Time 014

 

The Pinay Homeschooler shows how she has been repurposing old flashcards. She has a younger son who doesn’t care for flashcards so she used them as a ‘control’ card and made some extra go-alongs and they are a hit!

repurposing old flashcards

 

Angelicscalliwags has an AMAZING unit based on the book Goodnight Moon. Her food tins to go along make me want to row this BFIAR book all over again!!

Goodnight Moon muffin tin meal

What was your family up to this week? We’d all love to see!! Link up below and share with us and leave a comment to say hello too! Be sure to visit a few of the other moms linking up as well and leave a comment {we all love to hear from others}.

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool and Kindergarten Community. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

 

Were you featured?

If you were featured in one of the weekly posts, feel free to grab the button coding below and display it on your site!
 

Preschool Corner

Jolanthe Signature affiliate button

 

Time 4 Learning – combining technology with education to make learning fun for kids!