Fall Activities - tot and K

This week has brought us our leaf/fall activities. Since we really don't celebrate Halloween here, we spent the day doing fall things. Our focus book was Fall Leaves Fall by Zoe Hall. It is a simple read. short enough for the tot to sit through.

First, I had J solve a mystery puzzle using a 100 grid. She had to find the numbers on the grid and color them accordingly. This was great practice for number review. 

She was surprised that it actually created a picture.

We played a leaf math game. She rolled two dice and added the numbers. She then colored the answer on her mat.

Then we slacked off and played with play dough. I didn't get all of our activities done that I wanted to. I had so much planned but ...oh, well...they had fun with the play dough and they were playing so nice, that I didn't want to spoil it.

Not much for fall but tonight we will be playing some games and eating candy. That will be the extent of our fall activities. Hope yours is full of sweets.

Tot Tuesday

Lately Kaleb has been begging for our fall sensory bin which consists of nuts, measuring cups, bottles, scoops, and a metal can. He loves this scooping and pouring activity. I have been trying to teach him to keep it on the blanket. That doesn't always work and I end up with nuts everywhere.

He was pretty busy this day, scooping and pouring.

He actually emptied out the whole plastic bin - whether it was in his cups, can, or....

well, on my floor. When you come to my house, no matter what I do, you have to watch where you walk. It is worth it, though, 'cause he loves it.

Sonlight Week 7 1/2

This week brings us to a major holiday here called Kurban Byram and the schools will have five days off. This includes the school that my DH and DD attend. So, we will be taking a few days off. I find it difficult to work on school when there are others coming and going, so why not take a few days off? We did however get some school done, just not our regular Sonlight schedule. I took this time to review her reading, work on Monet (since we will hopefully be going to the museum this week), and work on our book of the week. Here are some of the activities we did this week.

We read about Joseph and how God watched over him even though he went through some difficult times.

J practiced her numbers up to 30. We have been playing Go, Fish with the number cards I made. She likes this way to review and loves it when she beats me.

J worked on her handwriting. She likes this activity as well. She still needs plenty of practice.

I did have time to finish a mini owl quilt. He turned out cute and he is hanging in my hallway right now. I found the pattern in a quilt magazine that I bought while in 'Merica. It was a quick quilt - the binding probably took the longest amount of time. That's about it - I thought I would have more pictures but I don't. Hope you have a great week.

Book of the Week - Tot

Our book of the week is The Legend of Spookley, the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. It is a cute book about a square pumpkin who saves the day. For the tot, I planned pumpkin activities.

I cut a felt pumpkin and pieces for the felt board. Kaleb could change the pieces as wanted.

He added all of the pieces - cute.

I found a cute printable from Mama Miss. It had pumpkin faces that you could match. I made it magnetic because he loves magnets.

I also cut foam pumpkins with accessories for Kaleb to paint with water and place on the glass door.

He liked playing with the water and paint brush.

Kaleb has a new fascination with markers. He loves them. He gets so upset when J is coloring with them and I won't let him color with them. I gave him a pumpkin and let him color it with markers. He was thrilled - markers, yay!

I let Kaleb make a pumpkin snack. I gave him a English muffin-like piece of bread, some orange cream cheese, and a handful of chocolate chips. He was supposed to decorate it like a pumpkin, but he ate all of the chips instead.

Here he is licking it!

He's so funny! This was the extent of our pumpkin activities. Since we do not celebrate Halloween here, I didn't want to do too much. I think our next book theme will be leaves.

Links

Serving Pink Lemonade idea for the felt jack-o-lanterns came from here.

Mrs. T's First Grade Class idea for the square pumpkin.

Mama Miss the printable for the pumpkin faces.

Mess For Less idea for the foam pumpkins came from here.

Meme Tales the idea for the pumpkin snack came from this blog.

Book of the Week - Kindergarten

Our book of the week is The Legend of Spookley, the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. We don't have the actual book but we own the app for the iPad. I was hesitant at first to buy the app because we don't really celebrate Halloween here. But I was pleasantly surprised when we read the book. It was about a pumpkin who is different that the others and how he saved the day. Since it is Fall, I decided to have a pumpkin week. One thing I should note is that we have pumpkins here but our pumpkins aren't orange, they are green. We won't be working with actual pumpkins this week. I wish we could. Here are some of the activities we did.

I printed pumpkins on orange paper and wrote J's words on them. She could "pick" the pumpkin when she read the word correctly. The pumpkins came from File Folder Fun.

I cut a felt pumpkin out with different pieces to decorate it. Here J is making a Picasso pumpkin - she is so enamored by Picasso.

I made a popsicle pumpkin puzzle for both Kaleb and J. I have been wanting to make this for a while and it was simple to do.

We read about the life cycle of a pumpkin and created a mini book.

J is working on her number order, she wrote her numbers from 1 to 20 on this pumpkin themed sheet.

J is working on her alpha order as well. She is singing her alphabet song while writing.

Spookley is a square pumpkin and at the end of the book, the pumpkin patch showcases pumpkins that are different. J made different shaped pumpkins for her patch.

J also did a pumpkin life cycle craft. This turned out cute and all of the pieces fit into her large pumpkin. Here you can see the seed, the leaf, the flower, green pumpkin, small orange pumpkin, and the large pumpkin.

J made a pumpkin snack from an English muffin (kinda), orange cream cheese, and chocolate chips. Both of the kids did this, well...Kaleb tried but he just ended up eating the chips! Well, we finished yet another great book/theme and we will be working with leaves next week. Hope you had fun in school this week!

Links

Serving Pink Lemonade idea for the felt jack-o-lanterns came from here.

Mrs. T's First Grade Class idea for the square pumpkin.

Mama Miss the printable for the pumpkin faces.

Mess For Less idea for the foam pumpkins came from here.

File Folder Fun pumpkin sight word game.

Meme Tales cream cheese pumpkin snack idea came from here.

Pinterest my pinterest board for fall ideas.

Tot Tuesday

Kaleb is so funny when we work on school. He so wants to be a part of what we are doing and then he disappears for awhile, easily entertaining himself. It was quiet while I was working with J, I had to see what he was doing. This is what I found...

He had cleared off J's baby bed and was using it as a seat. He was reading quietly. He was looking through all of his books, talking to himself about the pictures.

So sweet. I am glad he loves books, he truly does. I hope he will be a reader when he grows up. Hope your week is filled with good books.

Art Appreciation - Picasso

We have been loving our time with Sonlight and all of the great books that we are reading. But, for a while, I felt like it was lacking art appreciation. We were doing plenty of crafts and such thanks to the book - Hands on History for Kindergarten but I just felt like there wasn't any art.

So I began to research an art appreciation program for J. I am not expecting J to know the ins-and-outs of these artists but I just want to expose her to different works of art. It was difficult to find something on the kindergarten level for J. But, after much research, I found a blog called Teaching Stars. She is working through several artists in an Adventure in Art. She has based her study on a cd called Picasso, That's Who! by Hope Harris. The cd is a collection of songs about some famous artists, geared for kids. There are ten art lessons planned but, so far, only five are posted.

I am excited to be following her lessons and plan on adding Adventure in Art to our curriculum. I waited to add this art because I wanted to be certain our schedule could handle an additional subject. Our Fridays are pretty light, so I decided to add art appreciation. We will take several weeks to work through one artist and our first artist is....Pablo Picasso. Here are some of the activities we worked through for our artist.

Week 1:

First, we read Picasso and the Girl With a Ponytail by Laurence Anholt. I was lucky enough to find this book here at a sale last year. I love these books. There are several more books for other artists. I don't own them all, I just wish I did.

We listened to the song Picasso...That's Who! by Hope Harris. J had fun dancing with her ribbon stick. I also brought out the musical instruments and we all danced to the song. It is pretty catchy.

J worked on a puzzle that I printed, laminated, and added small magnets to. The puzzle was part of an artist study that I found on Confessions of a Homeschooler. This is a free study to download on 8 artists. She uses a different set of books but you can still use the information and it also has a lapbook. I love her stuff, she is so creative.

Kaleb checking the puzzle out - what's that?

We looked at several of Picasso's works of art. I made some art cards that have his art works on them. We hung it on our focus door so we can look at them through the month. We watched a video of his art works with a brief description of his life at Teaching Stars.

Our first art project is based on Hands With Flowers. I had J trace her hand on any color that she wanted - pink, of course.

She cut out the hand and glued it to a piece of white paper. She then added tissue paper flowers using squares of tissue paper and a pencil.

 J drew lines to represent the stems of the flowers. 

Week 2: J colored Picasso's Three Musicians with markers.

We talked about Picasso faces and J drew a picture of her brother on pink construction paper. We then flipped over the picture and cut it into random pieces. 

J took the pieces and glued them onto another piece of paper, making her own version of a Picasso face. (She is not happy about this either.) She did not like the idea of cutting up her creation to make one that did not make sense to her!

Then J created her own Picasso face on the computer using the website Picasso Head. Online, you can create your own Picasso face using different aspects. 

Week 3: 

We read another book about Picasso that my older DD found in the school library, Picasso in the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series. 

We made another version of the Picasso face, this time using oil pastels that I found. J drew a face, then added some details, used the pastels to color and then outlined the face in black.

Week 4:

We talked about Picasso's Blue Period and why he was blue. We looked at his Blue Period paintings and discussed them. I gave J a coloring sheet of The Old Guitarist to color. She chose colors of orange and browns.

We also made guitar collages, Picasso style. First, we drew guitars onto white paper, then colored them with different designs. We went through our scraps of paper and made a guitar collage. We cut up our guitars and glued them Picasso style. J was actually okay with this activity, this time.

We made a Picasso art window in our school room. Here are all of the art projects we did while studying Picasso (2 of mine included, I want to do fun stuff too). J informs me that Picasso is her favorite artist, I love that!

We are off on a tangent - we will be studying Monet early since some of his works are visiting a museum here and we will be going. Monet is my personal favorite so I can't wait. I hope that this post will encourage you to add an art study to your school week.

Links

Teaching Stars the original idea for the art study came form here. She has some links to videos and some good ideas.

Lines, Dots, and Doodles idea for Flowers in Hand using tissue paper as a medium.

Picasso Head online fun, make your own Picasso Head. J loved this, you can add all the details you want.

That Artist Woman two ways to make a Picasso portrait.

Deceptively Educational a study of his blue period and guitar making project.

Laugh Paint Create guitar collage idea.

Art at Becker Middle School great idea here using pop cans for Picasso art. We did not do this but I could see doing this when she is older.