A New School Year - Kaleb

Wow, summer disappeared before I had a chance to enjoy it - it was way too fast. And now our new school year is back in session. I am struggling with returning to the blog because of personal reasons. Please bear with me as I face this challenge.

We had a few changes this year that I hope will be successful.....we will see. First off, my DS Kaleb will be attending VPK this year. I found a great private school offering a voluntary pre-kindergarten class that is super close to my house. It wasn't what I had planned for him for school - I had truly planned a year of Super Hero activities complete with awesome books, printables, and such - but for a variety of reasons, I placed him in this half day program. I felt that he would benefit from being around more kids while learning some valuable socials skills such as sharing and getting along with others.

I was worried he would feel that we didn't want him around. But that wasn't the case - he loves VPK. He gets up in the morning on his own, gets ready, and is extremely happy about being in his school. I won't lie - having one child in school and one homeschooled adds some interesting dimensions to the house but we are working it out.

He was exhausted after his first day so he actually took a nap! I certainly miss him during our school day and I have full intentions on bringing him back after the school year is over. I feel like my right arm is missing when he is gone but I know he is learning and enjoying himself. And this gives me some extra time to spend with my DD J. She's in third grade this year and I felt needed some one-on-one time for this transition year.

So, even though I struggled through this decision (I have some homeschool mom guilt going on :), I know it was the right decision for him, at least for this year. It was a big change but I know it will be worth it. I pray that your homeschool year has started with success and less mommy guilt:) Have a great week.

I is for Ice Cream Truck

This week, we worked on learning the letter I....I is for Ice Cream Truck.

The Sensory Bin for the week contained pom poms, an ice cream sand play set from IKEA, several ice cream trucks found here and there.

He traced the upper and lower case I's with his ice cream trucks - large and small trucks. He was thrilled when he woke to find new cars to play with.

I found a cute ice cream balance game which I turned into a math activity. He chose a number bottle cap and then had to count the ice cream scoops onto the cone.

He played alphabet soup - I placed all of the letters learned so far into a large container and gave him a spoon and muffin tin. He scooped the letters and sorted them into the tin.

He traced the letter I with foam blocks.

He practiced his alphabet working with a puzzle. I love this one by Melissa Doug because it has pictures for each letter.

We played animal dominoes. He matched the pictures and numbers.

He traced the letter with his tactile alphabet cards.

He worked another alphabet puzzle. He is only working with the letters that we have learned so far.

He made the letter I into an ice cream cone. This activity is one from my Interactive Notebook Pages. You can find them HERE.

He made an ice cream truck with a kit that I found at the toy store.

He practiced his name with his bottle cap letters.

Kaleb then found the letters to his name in the ice cream sensory bin that I created for the week. Letter I week is finished and we are on to other things. Next letter J. See you soon.

B is for Buses, Boats, and Bikes

We are off learning about the letter B. Kaleb is still fired up about school, begging until sometime tears. I was planning on focusing on one vehicle for the letter B but decided to combine them all. If I need to go back and fill in a week or two, I will review with a focus on one instead of all three. Part of the week, we worked on the Interactive Notebook pages for B that I posted earlier.

I used the blue rice from last week to make our B sensory bin. I added letters and a mini puzzle. Kaleb was more interested in taking the boats and using them in the water.

I gave him a small bin filled with water and he played with the boats.

One of the fine motor activities I planned this week was using styrofoam and golf tees. I gave him a small plastic hammer which he used to hammer the golf tees into the styrofoam. If I had a bigger piece, I would have written a letter B on it and had him pound them into the letter.

Next, I opened a bag of marbles and had him place a marble on top of each golf tee. Not so easy if they weren't in the foam straight.

I found some flat bottomed glass beads to work with the next activity. I printed this free game from Sara Dean's TPT store (link below). I was thinking boats = fishing. We are working on counting and one-to-one correspondence. I gave Kaleb a fish and he fed it the correct number of glass marbles. I had him use a sand shovel for some motor skills. We counted the marbles and he fed the fish. He did not, however, like the fish who had a 0 on it. He felt that poor fish needed some "food" because he was sad.

Next activity, I programmed some bus cut-outs with numbers 1 thru 6. I gave Kaleb a die which he rolled. When he landed on a number, he added the correct number of blocks to the bus.

He traced the capital and lower case letters with a bus. He noticed that part of the letter B looked like the McDonald's sign. Oh, boy!

He painted a bus blue. This cute printout I found at  Action Alphabet (link below). After it dried, I put the wheels on with brads. He loved that his bus could roll.

He placed blocks on the letter B. This time, he grouped blue blocks together (all by himself).

I made a simple fishing pole using a magnet from our Science and a short wooden dowel. Kaleb went fishing by size using the free printable (link below) from Rita Mitchell.

He made a sailboat from a paper plate. To practice cutting, he cut all of the pieces of construction paper and then glued them on himself.

I also made a simple game using mini traffic cones that I found at the Dollar Store. I programmed each cone with capital and lower case letters A and B. I made rings from two pipe cleaners and had him try to throw the ring on the cone. When one landed on the cone, he would exclaim "Big A, Mommy!"

Growing Kinders (link below) had this cute five frame bus printable with children counters. I made it into a game by adding a number cube. We would toss the cube and add the amount of children to our bus. Then we would talk about who had the most children on the bus (greater and lesser numbers).

Lastly, we made boats from sponges and discovered that they would float. One of his favorite things this week was to play in the water with the plastic boats. He asked if he could keep them. We are moving to the letter C but we may return to the letter B since we had to condense our week into a couple of days due to an impromptu mini-vacation - a couple of days at a time-share that a friend of ours offered us :)

Links

Worldsapart - Wheel School Letter B Interactive Notebook Pages, free printable. Also, B is for Bike printable pack and lesson plans and B is for Bus lesson plans with free printable game.

Sara Dean - Fish Number Match free printable game.

Action Alphabet - Wheels on the Bus coloring page with moveable wheels.

Homemade Preschool - Wheels on the Bus free printable. This website is a new love of mine. They have super cute worksheets and such- all for free, no sign up required.

Rita Mitchell - Fishing by Size free printable game.

Growing Kinders - Kids on the Bus 5 frame free printable.

Pacheco's Bilingual Patch TPT store - free printable Row Your Boat Hat craft.

A is for Airplane

Kaleb was chomping at the bit on Monday to start school. He was so excited, constantly asking when was it his time for school? We started with the letter A - A is for Airplane Unit that I created for Wheel School last year.

I planned about 5 or 6 activities for each day and placed what I needed for each activity in a ziplock bag. The bags were then put in a blue rubbermaid container to keep all of his school things together. I had originally planned to buy some plastic drawers for his school stuff but with all of our moving around, decided to wait until we get more permanent.

We started out with capital and lowercase letter A's. He traced the A's with airplanes. These blank letters will then be used for other activities.

He then traced the letters using the foam blocks that I found at the Dollar Store. He decided to use all of the circle blocks to trace the lowercase a.

Using his planes, he played the shape parking lot game. He threw the die and "landed" his planes in the correct spot. I took this time to talk about the color of each shape (this is on his learning goals that I wrote up before he started school this year). I found this free printable game on Happy Brown House (link below).

I found some chopsticks that look like a clothespin at the Dollar Store and this free cloud math printable from Miss Kaili Bug TPT store ( link below). I added some cute blue and white pompoms and had a fine motor activity. I wasn't sure this activity would be liked but it ended up being a hit! He loved it and we played for awhile, taking turns. He would only let me place the white pompoms on the cloud while he worked with the blue.

The last activity for the first day of school was a new sensory bin. I colored rice blue using food gel to represent the sky, added foam clouds, white/blue pompoms, airplane counters and letter A's to the mix. I have to say coloring rice with food gel gave the rice and awesome blue color - the only downside was when J played with it, the blue came off on her hands. It washed right off but I am not sure why the color didn't stick.

My parents gave these cows that spit little balls out of their mouths to the kids for Christmas last year. They are so cute and what better to knock the cups off the stool? I wrote capital and lower case letter A's on the cups and had Kaleb knock them to the ground. Then, I would ask him if the letter A was big or little.

Kaleb worked on a roll and graph page that I created for my A is for Airplane tot pack. He used mini-airplane stickers to keep track of what picture he rolled. Since we didn't stick the stickers, he can reuse the graph another day.

Kaleb was so excited about school all week that he even took the time to work with an airplane sewing card.

Another sensory project was to "paint" with shaving cream. I added a drop of blue food coloring to make clouds.

We worked on our colors by sorting large buttons into colored cups.

He also worked on learning his name. I created a simple sheet that he can trace the letters of his name and match letter tiles as well. I made a second set of name letter tiles and then hid them in the noodles. He had to find each letter and match them to his name.

One last activity was to stick airplane and letter stickers to our capital and lowercase A's. We used the letter print outs all week and this was a good ending project for preschool. It was great to see the enthusiasm for school from Kaleb. I pray that it doesn't leave. He was so thrilled to be part of our school day that he literally begged for it. We are on to the letter B - for boats, buses, and bikes. See you soon.

Links:

Wheel School: free printable A is for Airplane tot pack and preschool plans.

Wheel School - Letter A interactive notebook pages, free printable.

Happy Brown House - free printable Parking Lot Shape and Number Game.

Miss Kaili Bug TPT Store - cotton ball cloud counting free printable.

House of Burke and My Small Potatoes - both blogs had great ideas for the airplane sensory bin.

Mucky Ducks Printable Pack

Another of my tot's favorite books is Ducks in Muck by Lori Haskins. We have both the board book and the easy reader versions. Both books have been well worn due to multiple readings. What is better for a boy - mud, trucks and ducks! This book has been on my tot bag creation list for awhile. I have researched and worked hard on this title (some are easier than others). But I have finally finished my tot bag for Ducks in Muck and I even made a printable tot pack that I named Mucky Ducks. I hope you enjoy the activities that I created.

Mucky Ducks tot pack contains:

play dough mats

seek-n-finds

letter tracing cards

strip puzzles

2 part puzzles

size sequencing

roll and graph

find the ducky game

math mats

just to give you a few examples.

Download the Tot Pack HERE.

And since I have a kindergartener, I also created a kindergarten printable pack to go along with the book. 

Mucky Ducks Kindergarten pack includes:

addition math mat with ducky counters

skip counting puzzles for 2's, 5's, and 10's

seek-n-finds

roll and graph activity

word tracing cards

word family -uck mat

where's the duck game focusing on blends and -uck words

Download the Kindergarten Pack HERE.

This is truly my first printable pack that I created. I have been wanting to do something like this for awhile and I was finally able to figure things out. I am still new to this so if you see some mistakes, please e-mail me and I will correct them. Stay tuned for my Ducks in Muck tot bag which includes some of my printables as well as a visual planner for my Mucky Ducks week packed with fun things to do.

The clipart used in this pack were provided by:

The Enlightened Elephant and Graphics by Ruth and Chantelle.

Thanks so much!

ABC Review Pack

I have been investigating all aspects of preschool learning for my tot for the new school year. I know, I know - this year is not finished but I am a teacher/planner at heart. First, I had decided to create my own "boy" centered preschool activities, full of messy experiences and "boy loves" such as bugs, dinosaurs, and cars. I planned on avoiding the alphabet (since he is not quite 3 years old yet) and just focusing on fun themed activities. But Kaleb has changed my mind.

He has recently fallen in love with letters and numbers and is able to distinguish the difference between the two. So I decided to add learning letters into my school plans. I still wanted to keep with the "boy theme" but wasn't sure where to start. Then, I stumbled across Royal Baloo's Zoomin Movin Alphabet series. Her letter printables are awesome and they are free! The Zoomin Movin Alphabet series is all about vehicles - cars, trucks, which is right up Kaleb's alley. He loves anything with wheels. Royal Baloo has posted free printable packs for the first five letters of the alphabet, each with a new vehicle and she plans to create a pack for each letter of the alphabet.

I have been wanting to try my hand at developing printable packs for my tot as well. Since there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, I thought it would be good if I created several review packs to go along with Royal Baloo's series. These, in no way, are to detract from her series. They are to be used in addition to her packs as a form of review.

So...(trumpet fanfare)....here is my first ABC review printable pack!

I have tried to add a variety of activities that would aid in the review of each letter, number, and sight word. This is my first printable review pack. My plan is to add a new review pack for every three letters. This will give you an additional nine weeks to your preschool schedule. Since I will also be homeschooling a first grader, I was trying to include Kaleb into our 36 regular school weeks.

I have included....
letter/sight word play dough mats
roll and graph the sight words and letters
search the letters magnifying pages
letter/picture match game
milk jug labels
missing letters
clothespin number cards
letter/sight word tracer cards
number/letter strip puzzles
number cards and more. 36 pages of review centered around the transportation theme.

I hope this pack is helpful to your preschool plans. And if you haven't already, visit Royal Baloo to download all of her printable packs.

Download ABC Review Pack HERE.

We will most likely not use all of the activities included in my free pack. I like to have a variety of activities to pick and choose from to keep things new. There are a span of different abilities in this printable pack. Some things may be easy for your child and others may be challenging. You know your child best, do only the activities that interests him/her. Every child is different. I am in no way endorsing school for all tots. My tot has watched his sister only to be disappointed when he can't do school as well. That is why I have begun planning learning activities for him.

All Graphics were purchased from

I really should be packing....

I really should be packing but I saw this post about creating finger puppets and I just couldn't help myself. I was really just looking for things to do during the flights, since I will be iPad-less :(,  and I thought finger puppets would be fun. Then it got a little involved with looking for graphics and such. But I did it, I created finger puppets for the Three Little Pigs. Hope you enjoy them. We will be using these on one of our three flights or layovers in the airport. Wish me luck!

The template is from LilCountryKindergarten and the graphics are from Mrs. Patton's Patch. Thanks! Click on pic to take you to the file.

Culture Kit

This summer I am participating in a Culture Exchange with several other families. Living abroad is an ultimate learning experience for any child but for those unable to travel, culture kits allow the world to become a little smaller. These allow children to experience a taste of a a culture/country that they may not know about or may only dream of visiting. This is my first cultural exchange so I was unsure of what to put in my kit. Hopefully what I have chosen will offer a view of the country we live in. This is what I will be sending my other families.

I created a mini book which discusses many of the wonders of our country. It contains maps, pictures around the country, mini T lessons on colors, numbers and sayings, customs, recipes, etc... I added packages of Salep which is a drink made from orchid bulbs, a mini rug, and a keychain of the eye that is very popular here.

I bought some postcards of familiar sights here, added a balloon with the national flag on it, and an array of coin money that we use.

I was lucky to find a puzzle of some of the famous sites. I added a paper doll craft, a coloring book, and a seek-n-find in T.

Lastly, I added some fun chocolate cookies and some tourist apple tea. I truly wanted to add T Delight but I was unable to find small packages. I may still add another sweet before I send them.

I am hoping this kit will allow the children who are receiving it to experience a little of the country we live in. If you would like to do your own Turkey country study, you may check my pinterest board. It has links to different sites with recipes and crafts. If you would like a copy of my mini book, please leave me a message and I will email it to you. It is a personal book with my daughter in it, so I won't post it as a download. I hope this post will encourage you to experience new cultures and possibly participate in your own cultural exchange.

 Worldwide Culture Swap is a good place to start for ideas on culture boxes and for joining a swap.