Wheel School - E is for Excavator

Wheel School Week 5 is now available for download. This week is all about E and excavators.

Download E is for Excavator HERE.

The free printable for the week is a tic-tac-toe game using street/highway signs. This would be great laminated and possibly made magnetic. The clip art for the signs is from Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah.

I would love to hear from you if you are finding these plans useful and if you have any ideas or questions. Enjoy the week. See you soon.

 

Winter Promise Week 5

This week, we finished reading Ereth's Birthday, we learned about beavers, and even went to the aquarium. Here are a few activities we accomplished.

Every day, after we read our animal devotional book. We research the animal that the lesson was about and watch a few short videos about them. J has truly enjoyed this.

I added the + 2 flashcard family this week and J is working on remembering the math facts in her head.

J also worked on reviewing telling time to the hour.

J is writing sentences each week with "spelling words" that I give her. This helps her in so many ways.

J is practicing her upper and lower case letters in her handwriting book.

Because of Shark Week, I have a totally shark obsessed child. I found this great shark shirt on clearance the day before we went to the aquarium. She just had to have it.

Even Kaleb enjoyed seeing all of the fish, sharks, and turtles at the aquarium.

J's favorite animal - the sharks of course!

It was nice to take this time and enjoy a learning day out. I truly miss stuff like this when we are overseas and, if I am able, I am planning on providing many more of these learning opportunities while we are here. Hope your week was shark-tastic!

C is for Cement Truck

This week, Kaleb worked through C is for Cement Truck. Here are a few of the activities that he completed. (Looking through these pics, I noticed Kaleb has the same shirt on. He loves his McQueen shirt and begs to wear it. I do wash it, believe it or not. But as soon as it comes out of the dryer, he begs to wear it again.)

 Because cement mixer activities were hard to find, I chose a theme of tools for the week. I found some plastic tools and added them to the play dough toys. Kaleb was somewhat unsure but soon got into the hang of using the tools to pound away at the play dough.

Next, I gave Kaleb some floral foam, golf tees, and a plastic hammer to hammer away.

I found a sandbox toy cement mixer and added letter beads (A,B, and C) in the drum. He had fun dumping the beads out and putting them back in.

In the sensory bin, I added letter C's, some cement mixer toys, and some erasers in the shapes of tools to follow the tool theme. He liked the tool erasers. Actually he liked taking them apart. Kaleb has been construction vehicle crazy lately. Everywhere we go, he watches out the car window and gets excited every time he sees a digger or dump truck. We are on to dump truck week. don't forget to check back for your new printable of the week. See you soon.

Book Suggestions

Roadwork by Sally Sutton

love this one

Big Machines by Karen Wallace

Construction Countdown by K.C. Olsen

love this book

Tools by Taro Miura

The Construction Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta

Toot Toot Beep Beep by Emma Garcia

Construction Trucks by Jennifer Dussling

Road Construction Ahead DVD

All About Big Machines DVD 

Tot Tuesday

We have been so blessed to be living near a public library. I have truly enjoyed taking the kids once a week to check out books, participate in toddler time, and feed the ducks. Our library has a wonderful lake beside it full of many kinds of birds.

This lake was one of my favorite spots when my older kids were growing up. I have some great memories taking them to feed the ducks.

But the warm memories are gone. On this particular day, the ducks/birds were especially aggressive, chasing after the kids to get at the bread. J is in distress over this duck chasing her down.

Kaleb is throwing the bread in order to keep the ducks away. Not sure what happened. Maybe the ducks missed breakfast (and lunch) or maybe we were on the wrong side of the pond. But J requested that we NOT do that again. Oh well, no cute pics here. Just aggressive ducks and distressed kids. I definitely won't be trying that again, at least not for a while.

Wheel School - D is for Dump Truck

Wheel School Week 4 is available for download, D is for Dump Truck. The free printable of the week is lowercase alphabet puzzles. These will complete the set - the uppercase puzzles were available for download last week with the C is for Cement Mixer visual plans. 

Download D is for Dump Truck HERE.

Lowercase Alphabet Puzzles

We will be working on Cement Mixer this week. So enjoy Dump Truck week but most of all, have some fun. See you soon.

Winter Promise Week 4

We are still reading Ereth's Birthday by Avi. J seems to like the ornery porcupine in the story, I thinks he complains too much. The focus animal of the week was a bear although we also learned about otters, skunks, and foxes. J is moving through her All About Reading lessons rather quickly. I believe we will be buying the next level before long. In Math, she is working on her addition facts and equal/not equal parts.

J is working with her spelling words. I have her write a sentence for each of her words.

J is reading her story of the week Look At That! B.G. Hennessy.

Since our focus is on animals, I take every opportunity to learn about the different animals that we read about. Every morning, we read a devotional about a special animal and then we watch small video clips about the animal.

J is working with her words using the tiles from All About Reading.

Our focus animal for the week was bears. J is completing a labeling exercise. She labeled the bear diagram. I found this free activity from Tapatha Cooksey's TPT store.

J used linking cubes to measure the width of a polar bear paw print. Then, she used the blocks to compare sizes of different items to see if they were smaller or larger than the paw print. The free paw print exercise came from Heather Webber TPT store.

Then we compared the sizes of four bears - polar, black, brown, and panda. We used curling ribbon and laid out the sizes next to each other in order to compare. (the ribbon is hard to see but we taped them to the carpet to keep them straight) The free measuring bears activity came from Sarah Paul's TPT store.

J then determined that she wasn't taller than any of the bears we were comparing. This was a great visual for her to see just how big the bears are.

Then, J continued to practice her measuring skills by using the linking cubes to measure the bears' sizes. She couldn't believe the size of the polar bear!

To finish our bear unit, we made bear claw cookies (link below). I was unable to find the white chocolate kisses, so I improvised and used cut marshmallows. They turned out cute but it was difficult to keep the bakers from eating the white chocolate chips, peanuts, and marshmallows. 

Kaleb is concentrating hard on decorating those cookies. 

The cookies before they went into the oven. They tasted pretty good. I just wish we had the white chocolate kisses. The marshmallows melted more than I wanted them to. Hope your week went well. See you soon.

Book Suggestions for Week 4

Where Once There Was a Wood by Denise Fleming

Forest Explorer by Nic Bishop

Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson

Bear's Loose Tooth by Karma Wilson

Let's Look at Brown Bears by Ruth Berman

Bears by Jen Green

Bears by Adele Richardson

Animal Neighbors - Fox by Michael Leach

Links

Homeschool Share - free printable bear lap book 

National Geographic - online magazine Meet the Grizzlies

Kiboomu - bear claw cookie recipe

Heather Webber TPT - bear claw/hand comparison sheet

Tapatha Cooksey TPT - Polar bear label the parts worksheet

Sarah Paul TPT - Measuring Bears worksheet

Angie Neal TPT - bear craftivity idea with pattern

The 3am Teacher TPT - hibernating bear craftivity with pattern