FIAR - Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Five in a Row - Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

April 29 - May 3, 2013

O and E: 4.5 years old

** Because this blog is just my personal way of keeping track of our activities so I can do them again with younger siblings I am not going to link to everything that I used. If you'd like the link to anything specific, just let me know!**

That said, here's a link to my Pinterest board for lots of my inspirations for the week

Preschool is coming to an end and it feels like the weeks are just flying by. It's hard to fit in everything that I have planned with the boys, but we're making it work as best we can. Once we don't have weekly commitments over the summer I think our rows will go a little smoother - but maybe that's just a pipe dream!

LANGUAGE ARTS:

This was our first week for the boys to retell the story in their own words. It was so funny how they would remember certain sentences word for word, then skip whole chunks of the story and move onto another part. I typed up their stories and then they drew a part of the story on the page. Our spelling words this week were the -IKE family (Mike, bike, pike, spike, like, strike) and their journal prompt was to write one thing they would like to do 'better and faster' like Mike and Mary Ann. Owen's was 'I would like to run better and faster than Blake' (his cousin) and Eli's was 'I would like to swim better and faster than bull sharks' (his obsession!). We concentrated on Long I vs. Short I sounds, made a little book where they had to read the sentence and fill the dump truck with that many rocks, and made a little book about squares.

MATH:

I found some great construction themed pages on Teachers Pay Teachers for this week! We used a construction cone page to practice patterning and used a page with directions and trucks to practice ordinal positioning. I also cut up several pieces of construction paper and the boys had to put them together like a puzzle to make squares. We went through magazines to find pictures of square items and made a collage. We played a dice game (not pictured) where you would roll the dice and use that number of blocks to build a skyscraper. The person with the tallest building wins!

SCIENCE:

I saw an idea about steam power that we tried and was a total bust. We made pinwheels out of paper and then let a tea kettle get to a boil so it would shoot steam out of the spout. It's supposed to turn the pinwheel, but we couldn't get them to spin! We used 'wind power' instead and just blew them : ) We did watch 'The Way Things Work' about Steam Power though, so hopefully that helped explain it better than a failed science experiment!

FUN!

While looking for my ideas for the week I came across a picture of this cake and knew we had to make one. I used my chocolate zucchini cake recipe (on my Pinterest board), chocolate frosting and mini chocolate chips - delicious!! We also made bulldozers and drew the picture around the machine and watched the Bob the Builder movie when he meets the real life machines.

What boy doesn't love big machines?! They loved this row! I wonder how Madeline will go next week? ; )

Easter Eggs: Shrinky Dink Style!

This week in Tot School we're going to focus on Easter, eggs, ovals and Jesus. I was trying to think of a way to show the boys decorated eggs and the shape of ovals without using real eggs and this is what I came up with.

I used a cookie cutter to trace the shape of an oval on the shrinky dink paper. Then I made two of each style egg. That way, the boys will each have a set of their own to play with, but we can also use them for matching activities in the future. I punched a hole in each egg before shrinking them so we could practice stringing them on pipe cleaners too.

I had forgotten how fun it is to watch Shrinky Dinks!! I did these ones while the boys napped to avoid them being around the oven opening and closing, but I sat there at the window in the oven and watched them work their magic the whole time. So cool!

Here's what they look like before and after they shrink...

And here's our finished set!

Tot School - Shapes Review

Tot School - Week 3 - Theme: Shapes Review

Owen & Eli: 18 months old

Last week was supposed to be Triangle Week, but since we were struck with a terrible round of respiratory problems, breathing treatments, ear infections and puking, Tot School was on hold. Instead of pushing everything back, we pressed on this week with Triangles and the review of Circles and Squares. I mentioned in my first week of Tot School, I wasn't expecting the boys to be able to say 'circle' or 'square' and I wasn't even sure if they would get to the point of recognizing the shapes in such a short time, but they totally can!! If I show them two different shapes and ask them to identify one of them, they can choose the correct shape each time. It's pretty exciting to see the activities starting to pay off!

To focus just on Triangles, we used a few of the same activities that we had used for circles and squares so the boys already knew what to do. They could match the paper shapes to the outline (but I had to limit them to only two shapes; three seemed to be too many). We practiced using colored popsicle sticks on triangle outlines to create the shapes and we finger painted (with baby food) for a texture activity on our triangle sheets. Contact paper cleans up nicely! We tried out do-a-dot markers for the first time too, but they were much too excited to stamp as much as possible and couldn't be bothered to stamp inside the triangles.

As for the review of circles, squares and triangles, we played with foam blocks, using the triangle pieces as slopes for their cars and the cylinders for both color matching and filling the squares with the circles. We played with the shapes puzzle, matched lids for the pots, made balls with play-doh (not pictured), used flattened marbles to fill the white holes on the shape pages, and...

... the biggest hit was using Cool Whip and their shape sorter pieces as a stamper and finger paints. At first they didn't know what to make of it, but pretty soon they had a great time!

This upcoming week we're focusing on Easter (and ovals for the egg shape!) and we're travelling to Michigan to visit family. I'm looking for some toddler friendly Easter crafts, so please send me a link if you have any ideas!

Tot School - Squares

Tot School - Week 2 - Theme: Squares

Owen & Eli: 18 months old

Tot School went really well again this week, though finding activities for toddlers relating to squares was a little more challenging than it was for circles. We started off the week with matching the squares to the correct size, like we did with the circles. There were three different sizes to match, which I think was a little too challenging for them. Once I took one away, they did much better with it.

In the 'fine motor skills' category this week, we played with dried beans in different sized square Tupperware containers and transferred them from one container to another with spoons. Does anyone have any ideas on how to keep them from dumping the beans all over the floor? We also played with monkey stickers by sticking them inside a square outline. Owen loves stickers, Eli gets mad when he can't get them off his fingers : ) Pipecleaners were a big hit too - and the boys were surprisingly good at stringing square buttons on them.

I made a sheet for the boys so they could match up their little square books like a puzzle. They were really good at filling up all the squares with books. We used the same sheet with magnets on the refrigerator too, though that seemed to turn into a 'rip the paper' exercise, much to my frustration ; )

I found these square nesting blocks at a consignment sale this week and the boys love them! With very little instruction, they figured out both uses for the blocks: stacking as a tower and nesting one inside the next. Hours of entertainment!

Two books that we read over and over this week were Pa Grape's Shapes and Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings. Both books include all the different shapes, not just squares, but between the rhyming and the textures, both books were a great addition to the week.

Triangles are next week! Send me any ideas you might have and thanks for visiting our week in tot school!

Tot School - Circles

Tot School - Week 1 - Theme: Circles

Owen & Eli: 18 months old

This was our first week of Tot School and it went really well! I tried to come up with multiple activities involving circles to try to introduce the boys to shapes and I think it was (at least mildly) successful. They don't talk yet, so I wasn't expecting them to say 'circle' or draw a circle or anything like that... the goal for the week was exposure and I think we achieved the goal!

I made a very simple 'flashcard' with two different sized circles and the word 'CIRCLE' on it. I gave the boys a set of pipe cleaners, cookie cutters and paper circles that matched the different sizes and they were pros at matching little with little and big with big.

To work on their fine motor skills, I gave them the case that the play-doh came in and they put the canisters into each individual circle slot. They also put pompoms into muffin tin circles and dropped individual propel packets into the circle opening of an old juice bottle. We played with stacking cups (always a favorite), the shape sorter, and multiple sizes of Tupperware circles and their lids. I bought a sheet of baseball stickers and drew a baseball (circle) for the boys to put the stickers inside. The fatal flaw with this was that the stickers were even hard for ME to peel off the sheet, so I had to hand them each one individually, but they really seemed to get the concept.

We completed a few 'art projects' too! I drew pig faces and bunches of grapes (made primarily out of circles) for the boys to color, we made balls out of play-doh, and we 'painted' with sponges on tissue paper. Did you know that the colors bleed into the white paper making an almost stained-glass finished product? I found a 100-pack of tissue paper at Hobby Lobby for $5.99 and got every color in the rainbow. That'll come in handy for future holidays and projects!

To celebrate the end of our first week of Tot School, we made circle shaped sugar cookies to decorate together. The boys spent the rest of the evening saying 'cookie!'

Next week's theme is squares - let me know if you have any good ideas! If you're new to my blog, thanks for stopping by : )