Homeschool blog featuring free homeschool printables, information on how to homeschool, a yearly homeschool planner, homeschool curriculum, and more!
Can you guess our preschool theme this morning? We had fun with several crafts and activities…
– do a dot marker fun
– a twig, bead, and leaf sensory bin to build your own apple tree
– handprint apple tree art
Find all of these ideas (and over 30 more!) in the post 35 Apple Crafts and Activities for preschoolers.
We are having so much fun learning about birds together. So much, that we’re going to do more next week as well. I was going back through some of the things that I did with Zachary years ago and have been planning a few other fun things for us to do together. I have to laugh as I look through these pictures ~ Kaleb apparently likes all of his blue shirts a whole lot! Here’s a little peek at what we worked on this week.
The older kids are learning about birds in our science time with Nancy Larson® Science 2, and one of the things we all enjoyed this week was listening to different bird calls through the cd-rom in the book Common Birds and Their Songs.
The kids were trying to figure out which bird calls they’ve heard in our own backyard and laughing at some of them. We were finally able to figure out one of the bird calls that we’ve heard often ~ a pileated woodpecker!! Kaleb noticed one on a branch outside of our school room a few months ago. We haven’t seen him since, but we have heard him.
When we were cutting back our ferns this week, I found a bird’s nest that was hidden inside from last spring. Kaleb and I had fun looking at it…until he realized that the black stuff inside was most likely bird poop.
Michaels had miniature wooden birdhouses for $1 and Kaleb picked out one to paint this week. It’s now sitting in our windowsill near all of our Backyard Birds cards for when we are looking out and identifying birds together.
Rice Krispie Nests were one of our snacks for the week too. Laurianna helped with the rice krispie part and Kaleb had fun tinting the coconut with food coloring to add to the nests. We used jelly beans as our eggs, but they were a huge hit.
I saw this cute Footprint Robin and it was something that I knew Kaleb would love and may be super cute to frame and hang it the school room too {grins}. He loved having his feet painted and finishing up the project too!
ALL of the kids wanted to make the birds in a nest craft once they saw Kaleb making one. Apparently you are never too old to paint a paper plate and make a mess everywhere!
We dove into the realm of soft chalk pastels and all of the kids drew a chickadee {thanks to HodgePodge for the tutorial}. Kaleb had a little help with the initial body shape, but he did all the rest on his own ~ colors and tracing to finish his project!
The One More and One Less pages from the Kindergarten Bird Printables were a HUGE hit with Kaleb. Do-A-Dot markers were again once of our go-to things to grab to mark off the numbers that we added and subtracted.
We’ve been working on many of the other printables from the Bird Preschool Pack as well as the new Kindergarten Bird Printables. When the older kids were learning about the parts of a bird, Kaleb worked on the modified version that I put together for him on the parts of a bird printable.
~ Kindergarten Bird Printables
~ Bird Preschool Pack and Printables from Homeschool Creations
~ Bird Preschool Pack and Printables from 1+1+1=1
~ F is for Feather from Spell Outloud
~ N is for Nest from Confessions of a Homeschooler
~ Totally Tots Bird Theme Posts
~ Bird Sensory Tub @ Totally Tots
~ Edible Bird’s Nest
~ Yarn Bird’s Nest {via Adventures of Bear}
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 Corner.
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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This week we started a unit on birds with the older kids as part of our science lessons with Nancy Larson Science 2. When Kaleb realized what we were doing, he said that night that he wanted to do birds for his school time as well. He remembered doing some the year before, so I pulled out our Bird Preschool Pack for him to work on and then realized that he was ready for a little more. I’m working on some more printables to use with him next week {and share with you all too!!}, so stay tuned for those!
It’s been fun watching our feeder, especially since the weather has been beautiful and we can sit on the screened porch very close to them and hear the birds ‘talk’ to each other. We have some FABULOUS picture cards from Backyard Birds that we can compare to the birds at our feeder. The nuthatch and the cardinal have been the two most common ones lately {pictured below in our Backyard Birds cards}.
A momma cardinal flew right up {and literally into} our window and then sat on the ledge looking right at Kaleb and me for the longest time. Kaleb sat SO very still and just talked to her {so cute} and I didn’t dare move, afraid I would scare her away. Maybe she was a bit dazed from her bump into our glass, but Kaleb had such a close-up look it was great!
This has also been a great time to talk about birds since we have six new chicks living in our basement at the moment. The kids are all loving on them, have built houses for them out of our Guidecraft blocks {complete with colorful water blocks for windows and paper towel floors to catch the poop}.
We are able to talk about the many different characteristics of birds:
Since we’re getting closer to Easter too, I also pulled out our Resurrection Eggs and we’re working on some Easter projects as well, including a Resurrection Garden. Kaleb helped gather rocks and moss for it this week and we are now waiting for our grass to grow as we talk about all of the events leading up to Easter. I know it’s a bit weird to look at right now, but when it sprouts, it will be much fun {this picture was before we added in the moss}. We’re checking it for sprouts all the time!
I’m still waiting for our book Benjamin’s Box to arrive {to go along with the Resurrection Eggs} and we’ll read that together next week along with The Legend of the Easter Egg. Along with that, we’ll continue learning about birds together.
That’s about it for us this week! What have YOU been up to? Please note the NEW website address when you link up this week. If you have a button on your blog, could you grab the coding and help direct people to the new address? Thanks so much!!
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 Corner.
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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