A is for Alligator

I recently asked Kaleb what he wanted to learn about in school. His reply was "Alligators." So, since we finished the farm unit and he seemed so disinterested in the way school was moving currently, I decided to take his suggestion and run with it. Alligators it is:) At this point, if he said roaches, I would have ran with it. I am putting away the Journeys curriculum and creating my own. We will be learning about animals through the alphabet, suggestions will be from him. The need for an easy curriculum (open and close) has changed and we are back on the kindergarten track. I just hope this gets him interested in school.

We started with the letter A and made it into an alligator.

Not the best smile here, but he liked his A alligator.

He also made an alligator pocket that we filled with cards that began with the letter a. He liked sewing these and has asked for the next one - b.

I ordered a ton of alligator books from the library. One book was The Watermelon Seed - cute book about an alligator that swallows a watermelon seed and is afraid that a watermelon will grow in his tummy!

We made an A chart and added all of the words we could think of that began with the letter A. When we needed help, I had him look through a picture dictionary for some ideas. I wrote the word and, if possible, I drew a simple picture to help him remember. I am not the best artist but I think I did okay.

We played Alligator math. I made a simple greater than/less than chart with alligator teeth and I used the green Uno cards. He picked two cards and placed them on the mat. Then he turned the alligator to the largest number so he could eat it! Kaleb loved this game.

I found an alligator Toob so we had some fun checking out the alligators. You may not be able to tell here but Kaleb placed the soft shelled turtle in the mouth of an alligator. I guess he was listening when we talked about what an alligator ate.

After he played the gators, we made some treasure rocks or "Alligator Eggs" as I called them. It was a simple recipe with coffee grounds and flour (link below). Our Riley was helping the project along:) These took several days to dry, so do them early.

He painted a cute alligator that I found at Color Me Michelle (link below).

As we read those alligator books, we added facts to different shapes and he glued them onto his alligator. Cute!

We learned the poem, Alligator Pie. He made a simple mini book about the pie and then we made the pie (below).

He thought we were going to add cut up alligator but he was glad we didn't. (You can get alligator meat here at the fair.) Instead, our alligator pie was banana cream pudding pie tinted green I added cookie eyes and whipped cream nose just before serving.

He made an alligator briefcase, after reading The Lady with the Alligator Purse.

After the alligator eggs were dry, I hid them around the yard and had the kids find them. I hid some harder than others, so it took some time to find them. Then, they broke them to rescue the alligators inside.

Lastly, just for fun, I found an alligator that would get larger when submersed in water. We started out with the measurement before adding water and then, we waited to see just how big it would get. My tot Riley did not like the look of that thing. Whenever he was sitting on the counter while I was making dinner, he asked me to move it.

It was a fun week of alligator learning, a full week. It looks like he enjoyed it. If not, I give up...haha. We are on to bears, dinosaurs, sharks etc... See you soon.


Links for Alligators

PreK Projects - has the idea for dinosaur eggs which we in turn made alligator eggs.

Narrating Tales - has a free printable alligator template for a cute craft.

Color Me Michelle - has a super cute alligator craft. We used it to record alligator facts on the squares.

I Heart Crafty Things - has a cute stand up alligator craft with free template.

Recipe for Teaching - has an alligator number comparing cards freebie.

Crazy for Crust - has the recipe for Alligator Pie, easy to do.

Shannon's Book Nook - has a free printable template for an alligator purse that will go-along with The Lady with the Alligator Purse book.

Welcome to Mommyhood - has the free alligator printables, if you are looking for some:)

Nursery Rhyme - 1,2,3,4,5 Fish Alive

Kaleb and I are working through Nursery Rhymes as part of his kindergarten curriculum. We are using Literature Pockets as our main book as well as most of the activities that are presented in it. This week's rhyme was Fish Alive.

Kaleb started his week of the rhyme by creating his own - he caught a dog alive. He filled in the word dog and even drew one all by himself.

I printed some fish and labeled them with numbers and the letters of his name. He colored them and cut them out to make a fishing game.

Give the fish a paperclip and tape a magnet to a wooden dowel and you have a simple game that we played all week. When he caught the fish numbers, he put them in order from smallest to largest. When he caught the letters of his name, he placed them in order as well.

He created a cute fish bowl craft complete with fish.

He made a pop-up card for his rhyme.

He also did some fishy math subtraction. This free printable was found at Tweet Resources (link below). Next week, we are going to take a break from the rhymes and work on a Before Five in a Row book that has been on my to-do list. See you soon.


Links

Messy Little Monster - has a cute idea for paper fishing.

A Little Pinch of Perfect - has a cute paper plate fish craft.

Tweet Resources - has the free math printables for the rhyme in her TPT store.

Tot Tuesday

Riley....always in the middle of things while we are doing school. He does not want to be left out:)

On J's lap...

on my lap....

always on my lap:)

Character Training - Goodness with free printable

We are currently in our second year of the Virtue Training Bible. We are taking our time, as you can see, by trying to work on one virtue each week. This week's virtue was Goodness.

J starts her Goodness notebook pages by looking up the definition of the virtue. She writes it under her headline.

We talked about ways she could have the virtue of Goodness and this was her face when I mentioned that she could be nicer to her brother. What a face! She ended up writing it on her list though (she knew I was right.)

She colored her goodness word ring. We add it to the other virtues that we have been studying.

Then, J works through the Bible highlighting the verses, tagging them, and reading them out loud. We discuss them as well.

Here is a view of the Goodness notebook pages that I created to go-along with our virtue study. If you would like to download them, feel free. Have a great day.

Download Goodness Notebook Pages HERE.

Little House in the Big Woods - Final Week

This is our last week for the book Little House in the Big Woods and our first Prairie Primer unit for fourth grade. We had the opportunity to visit Cracker Country in Florida and we learned a ton while having some prairie fun. J wore her Little Prairie dress all day, even though it was extremely hot! Everyone loved her dress, some though she worked at Cracker Country, and others invited her to work when she turned 13! She was super excited about this trip. I am glad we made the time to go.

J started of our visit to Cracker Country by dipping candles. This was definitely something I wanted to do for our unit but never got around to buying all of the supplies.

Kaleb and J with their hand dipped candles.

J washed some clothes with the washboard and learned to iron. She couldn't believe how heavy the iron was! I couldn't believe how long it took to heat up. I am so thankful for electricity:)

J sat in on a school lesson in a 100 year old schoolhouse with a 100 year old school teacher (according to the teacher). Hands in her lap and ready to listen:)

We visited the Cracker Country printing press and received a newspaper. J and Kaleb are reading the paper.

J tried her hand at roping cattle....she tried but with no luck. Cracker Country was a great field trip. It was great for our unit on Little House as well as our Florida history unit. I love when things just work out for our school:)

The final installment in the Little House in the Big Woods was to have a Gold Rush party. I made simple horses from paper, gave the kids cowboy hats, and bandanas from the Dollar store.

We ate camp food and panned for gold. They searched for gold nuggets that we hid in our yard and we drank root beer! Fun, fun, fun. The panning for gold was somewhat harder than expected. I bought a kit from Hobby Lobby and it came with the pans and gold/sand mixture. It probably would have been easier if I made the gold/dust mixture with larger pebbles. J enjoyed the activity but Kaleb thought it was too hard. The whole family helped Kaleb fill his gold pouch. So they both ended up with "gold" to keep.

It was a good end to a good book unit. J loved the hands-on activities and I enjoyed them as well. We are on to the Little House on the Prairie. See you soon.

B4FIAR - Blueberries for Sal

This post was actually supposed to happen a few month ago. I decided to finally post it. Using Before Five in a Row, we rowed Blueberries for Sal. It is a cute book about a mom and her daughter going blueberry picking where they meet another mom and daughter group blueberry picking as well.

I made a cute bear for Kaleb to feed blueberries to using the tongs for fine motor practice. He rolled some dice and had to feed the bear the number of blueberries he rolled.

He put the numbered blueberries in order from 1 through 20.

He found the b's in the blueberry bushes and stamped them blue.

He went alphabet blueberry picking around the house. I hid a blueberry for each letter which he found around the house. He then put the letters in order.

He measured his hand print against that of an actual bear. Do you see how big that paw is?

We discussed real and fake bears and sorted the facts between the two.

He made blueberry pictures using a cork. He stamped blueberries with blue paint and made a picture.

He counted out each number using glass marble blueberries. He used this ten frame worksheet to practice counting his numbers.

He compared numbers using the glass marbles and dice.

I found some magnets at a thrift store and I placed them on the magnet board. He placed the beginning sounds under each one. We definitely had fun rowing this book and I hope to continue rowing since our situation has changed. We still have a few Before Five in a Row books left before we can move on to Five in a Row. We may just get to them this year:) Sorry for the late post but I though you would enjoy seeing it. Have a great day.

Links

National Wildlife Foundation - has the recipe for bear paw cookies.

M is for Monster - blueberry pancake counting printable.

Artsy Momma - has the painting with blueberries idea.

Annie's Adventures - has a free unit on bears to download.

123 Homeschool 4 Me - has the blueberry math printable game.

Preschool Alphabet - has the great idea of an outside alphabet game, match the blueberries to the correct letters.

Growing Book by Book - has the free printable abc berry sort that would work well with this book.