WWW: I Flit, I Float, I Flitty Flee, I Fly

September 17, 2011 by




Once again our schedule has gone haywire and our arts and crafts day was held on Friday instead.  The toddlers had been begging to paint for weeks now so we all trooped to the bookstore last Thursday to buy some paint and a couple of new paintbrushes. Oh, wait! That was the reason we moved our Wonderful World of Wednesday to Friday. We had no paint!

Armed with fresh paint and new brushes, we were all set to create our own garden animals from bits and pieces of materials scattered in the house.

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First on our insect collection were Handprint Butterflies which we had already done a few weeks ago.  Since, this is the second time we did the activity, the toddlers were already familiar with the procedure. Jakei didn’t make much of a fuss this time and patiently waited for his handprints to be cut out.

Next on our list were Ladybugs made from plastic bowls.  We used the following materials for our ladybugs:

  • Plastic party bowls (left over from their birthday party a few months ago)
  • Board paper or any cardboard
  • Sandpaper
  • Red tempera paint
  • Foam tape (double adhesive)
  • Black markers

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The toddlers painted the outside of the bowls with red paint and we set these aside to dry.  In the meantime, we cut out circles from an old red folder and glued the legs of the ladybugs on them.  We cut out L-shapes from sandpaper and used them for the legs.  We then used foam tape to stick the circle cutouts on top of the bowls.  When the paint was dry, we drew faces and black circles on them to complete the details of our ladybugs.

Last on our insect collection was the caterpillar.  By this time, paint had lost its allure on Jakei and the little boy just kept running around the room.  Thus, only one caterpillar adorns our wall now.  To make our caterpillar, we used:

  • Empty egg tray (washed with soap and dried thoroughly)
  • Green and yellow tempera paint
  • Fuzzy wires (we got red and white stripes)
  • Fasteners (you can get colorful ones from Hallmark Scrapbooking stations)
  • Cardboard
  • Foam tape
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Due to my poor skills in photography, this caterpillar looks blue in the picture. It really is green, really!

I cut the bottom part of the egg tray into four sections and  attached each one on cardboard pieces using foam tape.  The toddlers painted the egg tray with green and yellow paint.  I then inserted fuzzy wires for the caterpillar’s antenna and fasteners for the eyes. Ta-da! We had a caterpillar!

Surprisingly, we didn’t make too much of a mess! This is also our first time to use tempera paint and it certainly won’t be the last.  The paint washed off easily from the toddlers hands and did not stain their clothes.  I guess this means we can have more painting activities from now on.

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Filed Under: Arts & Crafts, PLAYhouse preSCHOOL Tagged With: ,

PLAYhouse PreSCHOOL: Nature Tripping Week 1

August 20, 2011 by




Little girl was down with fever from Monday night to Thursday night so we weren’t able to do all of the activities scheduled for this week. Although she was running a fever, she still asked for some worksheets. I let her answer some of her worksheets since they would not entail much physical exertion. Other activities though I postponed for next week.

  

 

 

Most of the materials I used were downloaded from 1+1+1=1 and Homeschool Creations. I created a couple more worksheets for Math and Language skills which I’ll be uploading in my Free Printables page soon.

Inspired by other homeschooling moms, I’ve now started to be more organized in preparing lessons for my toddlers. Here is our schedule for our two weeks of Nature Tripping:

Nature Tripping: Week 1
Thinking Tuesday Wonderful World of Wednesday Thursday Talkies
Patterns
Counting
Sorting – flowers or vegetables		 Leaf Imprints
Collage
Pressed flowers		 Letter L – leaf, lily, lake, lettuce
Letter R – rainforest, rose, radish
Nature Tripping: Week 1
Thinking Tuesday Wonderful World of Wednesday Thursday Talkies
Patterns
Counting
Sorting – flowers or leaves
Ordering 4 objects from smallest to biggest
Sequencing – plant growth		 Leaf Imprints
Collage
Pressed flowers
Make A Garden		 Letter P – plant, pot, pineapple, peach
Beginning letters – flower, leaf, grass, tree, water, sun, seed, fruit, soil
Picture Story

I have still much to learn and I have yet to really find a curriculum to use but since this is just toddler school, I’m not really stressing myself (and the toddlers) and we’re all just trying to have fun learning together here in our PLAYhouse PreSCHOOL.

Filed Under: Arts & Crafts, Miscellaneous, PLAYhouse preSCHOOL Tagged With:

PLAYHouse PreSCHOOL: Space Exploration Week Wrap-Up Day

August 12, 2011 by

We’ve had space-related activities every morning this past week.  Before some of you think that I’m this “tiger mom” torturing my toddlers with learning activities, let me clarify that these lessons actually take only an hour or two  (even less than an hour for Jakei) each morning.  The toddlers are pretty much allowed to do whatever they want to do the rest of the day.




So, we’ve explored space this entire week and the toddlers are now familiar with the planets and other objects seen in space.  Of the eight planets, Jade can now identify Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter and Saturn. She knows that Mercury is the smallest planet and that Jupiter is the biggest.  Jakei can identify only the planet Earth but with some help, he is able to distinguish planets from non-planets.

Their vocabulary words for this week included: astronaut, asteroid, space shuttle, space station, satellite, comet, sun, moon, stars, constellation and planets.  I also bought them a small plastic globe where Jade can now easily spot the Philippines.

Toddlers exploring the Solar System through Tots School

Space Exploration Week: Thinking Tuesday

Next week, we’ll be learning more about Plants.  This was Jade’s choice when I asked her to choose between plants and animals. I do hope I’ll have the energy to sustain our playhouse preschool seeing that the toddlers are having fun learning about new things.

Filed Under: Arts & Crafts, BookWorms, Miscellaneous, PLAYhouse preSCHOOL Tagged With:

PLAYhouse PreSCHOOL: Thinking Tuesday Activities For Our Space Exploration Week

August 9, 2011 by

To match our theme for this week, I prepared Math worksheets with space related pictures and used them in conjunction with the Solar System Learning Pack from Tots School.

We started with a sorting activity which required identifying planets and non-planets. Since it involved glue, Jakei gladly participated. Since Jade can already pretty much work on her own, I was able to help Jakei with his work. He was able to identify which among the pictures were planets and which ones were not. He had a little help from the pictures of planets on our wall.

  

Next, we did the worksheets I prepared. By this time, though, Jakei was more interested in playing with the crayons than on answering worksheets. Which is absolutely fine with me. He’s only two years old after all.

Jade is already quite adept at counting objects from 1 to 10 and can match a set with the corresponding number. She still needs more practice counting objects more than 10 though. Although she’s able to count in rote, she lacks the concentration counting specific objects.

  

A-B-A-B patterns are a breeze for her already so I’ve started to give her more complex ones. My husband didn’t go to work today so he was the one who helped Jade finish the worksheet on patterns. They finished all the worksheets fairly fast, so the rest of the morning was spent playing with their toys.

Filed Under: Kids At Work, PLAYhouse preSCHOOL Tagged With:

PLAYhouse PreSCHOOL: Toddlers Exploring the Solar System Through Tots School

August 8, 2011 by

Unlike other three-year-olds who are now in preschool, my little girl goes to school at home, in our dining area. We’ve put off enrolling her since her immune system is quite weak.  Good thing there are now plenty of sites that provide ideas for toddler activities.  My toddlers and I have been using Starfall.com and Time4learning. I also prepare worksheets for them to do at home.  And, of course, we’ve got our music and movement activities and arts and crafts messy time.

However, there are days when I am unable to prepare worksheets for them especially now that school has started and I’ve put on my academic tutor hat. Thanks to Mommy Chris of The Mommy Journey, I found another site that is rich with resources for toddlers and preschoolers – 1+1+1+1 Tots School.

We’re using the Space-themed printables for this week’s Space Exploration. Today, we did the S printables which I used with the Solar System Pack.  I only print in draft to save on ink and laminating the cutouts are a bit costly so I just make do with board paper.

Here’s how our Space Exploration went last Friday and today:

I cut out the pictures of the planets and asked Jade to stick them onto the wall.  After naming the planets, we counted them, and identified the biggest and smallest planet.  Jakei counted with us and kept pointing at planet Earth.  I kinda miss Pluto though.

Lining up the Planets on our wall

Little boy proudly points to our own planet Earth

Jade was able to trace the letter S neatly and has shown improvement in coloring pictures.  Jakei still needs plenty of work on writing and coloring but he was able to name all of the pictures shown.  He even used the correct color for the star.

I printed two sets of the shapes with stars in them and gave each toddler one set.  Both of them were able to recognize and name all the shapes except for the hexagon.  We’ll be using them tomorrow for a matching game. The cards with objects found in space were used for vocabulary building and for sorting.  I asked Jade to group all those that begin with the letter S.  Two other cards, the space shuttle and space station, were also used for our counting activity. Jade is already able to recognize some color words. She read white, pink, yellow, green and blue correctly and was also able to use the correct crayons. (By this time, Jakei has lost interest in our lesson and chose to munch on some Koko Krunch.)

  

For our activity on counting, I placed a picture of a space shuttle at the foot of the wall and a picture of a space station a few feet above the space shuttle.  The S printables from Tot School came with star cut-outs with the numbers 1 to 20.  I asked Jade to help the space shuttle go to the space station by placing the stars in correct order.  She was able to do 1 to 10 without help but needed some assistance finishing the task.

All printables we used were downloaded from Tots School’s vast resources. We’re continuing our Space Exploration theme for the rest of the week. For our Thinking Tuesday tomorrow, we’ll be doing some worksheets.  I’m still thinking of a craft we can do for our Wonderful World of Wednesday.  Do share ideas if you have any.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous, PLAYhouse preSCHOOL Tagged With: , ,
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