Wordless Wednesday: 3-D Lion King!

Community Service

This is Izzie's first year participating in American Heritage Girls. Her first community service project was to help create Christmas cards and stockings for the American soldiers overseas. The troop's goal was to make 170 of each!

Izzie created 8 beautifully decorated Christmas cards and 3 amazing stockings! The stockings will be stuffed with goodies, such as, chap stick, hand sanitizer, pens/paper/envelopes, hard candy/gum, hot chocolate/other instant drink mixes, and tissues that each girl donated.

A perfect Saturday morning giving back to those who continue to fight for our freedoms. Even though it's a small gesture, we hope they know how thankful we truly are for their service to us and our country.

Storytime From A to Z: What Color Is Your Underwear?

This week at Coop, the Storytime From A to Z letter was "U" and the book was "What Color Is Your Underwear?".

To introduce/review the letter "U" sound, we played a little game with an umbrella. I had the students sit in a circle, while tapping their hands on the floor to sound like rain, and signing the following tune..."uh-uh-umbrella! Who's dancing under the umbrella? (Name) is dancing under the umbrella!" Each student had a turn dancing under the umbrella, while the others sang the tune. It was also a great way to review names!

We read "What Color Is Your Underwear?"...with lots of giggles!

Review from Amazon.com: This hilarious lift-the-flap features animals and the underwear they wear! Kids will roar with laughter as they lift each flap and reveal boxers on a horse, furry undies on a crocodile, leafy green bloomers on a sheep, and more. We save the best for last, though--on the final spread, an elephant is hiding behind a large leaf...for good reason. He forgot to put on any underwear! This is a fun way to teach colors...and the importance of wearing your drawers!

They finished by decorating their own pair of underwear with stamps!

New Library Card!

Izzie has been patiently waiting to get her very own library card!

Now, that she's 5 (and September is National Library Card Sign-Up month), we decided she was old enough to have the responsibility of checking out her own books!

Signing her name to the back of her library card!

Checking out her own books!
She was a whiz at the new self checkout station!

Balancing Act

I found a balance at a used curriculum sale for $2! Izzie has been so fascinated with it! To introduce the concept, we read the book Balancing Act, which is perfect to teach little ones the concept of balancing! I added some farm animal counters and was thrilled to watch Izzie manipulate the balance and practice the concept!

Review from Amazon.com: This deceptively simple and creative book is loaded with fun. Two adorable mice create a teeter-totter using a stick balanced on a rock. A salamander joins one side, creating an imbalance, but then another one of equal weight joins the other mouse, and all is in order–until it happens again with a frog and a bird. Readers might be fooled into thinking that this is just a concept book, but Walsh gives them so much more, including a twist in the ending. Observant children will want to converse about animal and color identification, as well as why the actions and reactions of the animals are creating balances/imbalances on the teeter-totter. The delightful illustrations were done using cut-paper collage and then splattered with acrylic paints. A rock at the middle of the teeter-totter is cleverly placed in the gutter, creating eye-catching spreads with lots of white space and spare text.

Storytime From A-Z: Fox In Socks

This week at Coop, the Storytime From A to Z was letter "X" and the book was "Fox In Socks".

To review the letter "X" sound, I had the students stand up, while I called out some words. If the word had the "x' sound, then they did a jumping jack.

X sound words included: X-ray, taxi, box, fox, ox, six, exit, exercise, explore, next, fix, mix, and extra

Since, there are 7 students in the class, I took 7 pairs of socks from this game.

And on each pair, I attached one picture that had an "X" sound and another picture that did not. Each student had to find one matching pair of socks, then say both words. The word with the letter "x" sound was put inside the washing machine "box".

After the game, we read the book "Fox In Socks".

Then the girls created their own Fox In Socks!

The fox face template is from the Storytime From A to Z book. The letter "x" sound pictures are from KidsSoup. I simply cut out a large rectangle for the body, 4 rectangles for the legs, a half circle for the tail, and made a sock pattern template.

Socks for Fox

Extras For Pirate Unit

We had finished our Pirate Unit, but then I found more amazing pirate loot! So, we decided to do a couple more days about pirates...isn't homeschooling ARGGG...GREAT!!

1+1+1=1 recently released a new pirate unit for kindergartners!

Beginning letter sound pirate wheel with matching letter clothespins.

Same idea with a little twist! I took all the sound objects for letters "B, C, H, P, and T" from the Alphabet Sound Drawers and placed inside the little "treasure chest".

Izzie placed each object to it's correct letter sound.

Completed letter sound wheel with matching objects!

Izzie can recognize which group of objects contains the most/least amount, but this was the first time she used "greater than/less than"signs. I was surprised how quickly she caught on to the concept!

Pirate number line...I glued the cute little pirate onto a clothespin, so it easily attached to the laminated number line and covered the appropriate number. After I attached the pirate over a particular number, Izzie had to say which number was covered up, then she reviewed what number was "before" and what number was "after" the covered-up number. We also played a simple math game. I told Izzie the pirate was walking the number plank and she had to make sure he was taking enough steps either forward or backward. Example: pirate covering up number 5...the pirate needs to take 3 steps forward, what number will he land on? Or, the pirate needs to take 2 steps backward, what number will he land on? Very simple. But, reviewed counting forward and backward, while starting at different numbers.

Same concept as above, just pirate on each line can not be moved.

Identification and sorting of coins: quarter, dime, nickel, and penny. Izzie can now recall how many of each coin there is in one dollar, such as 4 quarters, 10 dimes, 20 nickels, and 100 pennies.

Listening to verbal directions activity.

Here are a few activities from Preschool Printables. I printed out one set for Izzie and Mac (Tot School), but there's actually another set, too!

Counting Number Cards with clothespins

Letter P practice writing sheet.

I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with the Internet. I absolutely LOVE finding so many amazing educational activities, but I really hate that I can't fit everything I find into our schedule!

I just recently found ANOTHER pirate unit full of FREE printables! We were already done with our pirate unit, again, so we did not complete any of these. However, they are printed off and ready to use next year with Mac!

One more Pirate Unit!

To see more pirate activities, please check out:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Tot School

Alphabet Sound Drawers

This amazing idea has floating around "blog world" for quite some time...and every time I saw a post about one, I would remind myself that I needed to create one for Izzie and Mac! Finally, it's done!

Izzie and Mac's Alphabet Sound Drawers.

I found this fabulous little tool organizer at Lowe's and it was even marked down on clearance! At first, I didn't like the bigger bottom containers, but once I decided what to put inside of them, I really like having everything together! The first 26 little boxes contain little objects for each sound of the alphabet. The other little containers have paper clips, dice, etc. The larger containers include: color clothespins, letter and number clothespins, tiny clothespins, magnetic puff balls, color counters, alphabet letter tiles, bottle top shapes, dominoes, and letter and number stamps.

Here are a few of my favorite Alphabet Sound boxes...

Counting Coconuts

The Activity Mom

The Shafer Family

Pirates! Day 3 with FREE printables

The girls were so excited to begin school that they headed to the school room before breakfast and still in their pajamas! I always have a "warm-up" activity waiting for them on the table. Today was a pirate color by number sheet.

Our book of the day was Pirate Pete's Talk Like A Pirate! We've read a lot of pirate books during this unit and this one was my FAVORITE! It is hilarious and I couldn't get enough of it!

Review from Amazon: In this new adventure, Pete has a wonderful new ship, but no crew. But not just any crew will do. As Pete explains:

“Ye gots to be stubborn and mighty cranky,
Ye gots to be dirty and awfully stanky!
Ye gots to load a cannon and know how to fire it,
But most of all, ye gots to talk
like a pirate!”

One by one Pete interviews his potential crew, and one by one they get the boot! Whoever will he find to help him sail the high seas? A hilarious and fun-to-read-aloud book that will have every child talking like a pirate.

Ye looks like a pirate, but oh, no! Ye don't talk like a pirate!

Ye gots to walk the plank!

Izzie had a blast acting out the story...she loved that she had to walk the plank and plunge into the ocean! However, Mac wanted nothing to do with walking the plank! She was very excited about climbing up on the table, but would begin to cry every time I mentioned "walking the plank".

Activities for the day:

Matching capital and lowercase gold coin letters.

Izzie wrote her alphabet and drew a picture of a pirate ship.

Parrot coloring with letter "p" writing practice at bottom.

Reviewing colors with this adorable parrot booklet.

Measuring activity.

Comparing the length of her feather to various objects...determining if the feather is shorter, longer, or the same length as the object.

Free printable that I created!

Polly Feathers

Working on pattering strips...from The Mailbox.

Creating own patterns...free printable below!

Flashy Findings

Counting and adding clothespins to these pirate counting cards.

Roll A Pirate Activity

Crafts...

Making Polly the Parrot...inspiration from here.

Working very hard on her Pirate letter "P" craft...she even decided to place the squares on in a pattern! Inspiration from here.

Afternoon field trip to local church with the coolest Noah's Ark play area! The girls pretended it was their pirate ship!

Ye gots to walk the plank, again!

Ye gots to check out our other pirate fun!

Day 1

Day 2

Extras

Tot School

Be sure to check out Making Learning Fun, Homeschool Creations, and 2 Teaching Mommies for more pirate fun!