Our local museum is having a special exhibit of works by artist Nathan Sawaya – The Art of the Brick. The exhibit features large sculptures made out of Lego bricks. The kids had a great time viewing the sculptures (they were amazing!) and then heading down to activity stations where we could make our own Lego creations.
Vicki made one little display and lost interest in building. Instead she played with some of the other toys that were in the classroom.
She tried to interest Georgie in the dragon but he told her he was too busy making his art.
Georgie and I made some houses for a Facebook picture contest the museum is sponsoring.
The museum is having a big Toy Festival the week after Christmas that I’m hoping to take the kids to.
*This is my first post using Windows Live Writer. (Thank you to Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations for the suggestion). I’m still getting the hang of it but I definitely think its a much easier way to write blog posts.*
During our camping trips, Georgie had a great time coloring and doing activity books. It made me realize that I don’t bring out art supplies for them to just play around with often enough. Having to keep things locked up makes them harder to get to so I tend to just forget about them. So I set up two bins. The idea was to have some things I could pull out for the kids to do on their own that didn’t need constant supervision. I wouldn’t leave them alone for more than a minute or two but these are things that they couldn’t make too much of a mess too quickly. The first one is a general art bin except for no paints (since paint can make a BIG mess very quickly). Included in this bin (all washable) are markers, crayons, colored pencils, regular pencils, stampers, stencils, scissors, Cricut cut-outs and glue. They were also provided with a bin of various colors of paper. I made the separate cubbies by taping together plastic cups which I then stuck in a plastic tote.
Of course, messes are relative. As usual when Vicki gets a hold of markers and stampers, she likes to color herself.
But they did manage to do some nice pictures as well.
Vicki’s:
Georgie’s:
The second bin I set up was for stickers. This is for when I have something to do that may keep me from checking up on them quite as often (think dishes and laundry) or when I really don’t want any mess but still want to give them a chance to be creative. I set up cubbies with all different kinds of stickers. To start we have: paper stickers and an assortment of foam stickers – patriotic, Easter eggs, alphabet, shapes, glittery butterflies and general shapes (moons, suns, dinosaurs). Each in their own individual cups (I don’t expect them to stay that way).
The kids had a great time with these. Notice the paper bag I taped to the side for the garbage? Notice the little pile of sticker backing paper on the floor? Vicki didn’t quite get the idea. But, picking up sticker paper is a lot easier than scrubbing marker and crayon off walls and furniture.
I am planning to pull out our paints more often as well. I printed off a bunch of magnet pages for Vicki to do with our dabber paints (or stickers) while Georgie is working on his work. Many of our planned History and Science projects will also involve lots of painting, molding and gluing. I just can’t wait.
To see what others are doing visit Preschool Corner & 5K too at Homeschool Creations.
We continued with our Art unit without doing any actual art. Neither of the kids was interested in sitting down to do arts and crafts but both were very interested in reading (the complete opposite of how it usually is). So, we skipped the hands-on activities I had planned and did reading and discussion instead.
We read Harold and the Purple Crayon and pointed out all the different lines he used. We named curvy, straight, wavy, horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. We looked at People and Dog in the Sun by Miro and The Purple Robe by Matisse and read the appropriate sections in What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know.
We discussed warm and cool colors by looking at Tahitian Landscape by Gauguin and Hunters in the Snow by Bruegel. George had a little trouble with this concept but enjoyed making up stories about the paintings. He thought it was cold in Tahitian Landscape because of the clouds in the sky but then decided the mountain was a volcano which was going to explode.
We did MEP Lesson 8 for our Math. I used Unifix cubes to make number strips and discussed how many 2's in takes to make a 4, how many 3's to make 6, there's two 4's in 10 with 2 left over, etc. After doing the Lesson, I just let George play with the blocks and he did some on his own including some subtraction (if you have 10 and take away 2, you have 8).
To keep Vicki amused and mostly out of his hair I gave her some of the Unifix blocks that had numbers printed on them. She would take one and match it up to the number lines we have posted then call out "Mommy is this a seven?"
We did some scissors practice using paint cards (I don't remember where I found this idea). Georgie usually resists using scissors but he loved this. He liked the idea of cutting on the white line in between the colors. I did get him the Kumon Cutting book but he's been so resistant that I wanted to get him some general practice before giving him the book since I didn't want it to be a total waste.
After lunch we took a walk and looked for signs of Spring. It's a beautiful day in the 70's so absolutely perfect. We saw lots of squirrels, which Vicki called "very pretty chipmunks" and heard lots of birds including mourning doves (about the only ones I can identify by sound), a woodpecker and something going "tweet-hoo". Vicki loved stopping to listen every few feet to "hear the birdies". We'll have to check with Grandpa Charlie (our family bird watcher) on what some of the most common birds are that we hear around here. We had to take down our bird feeders last year because of the bears but hopefully we'll be able to set up something this year. We saw a robin.....
some flowers just beginning to grow, and some crocuses already in bloom.
Vicki kept bringing me interesting things she found including an acorn cap, pretty rocks, sticks and leaves. She was much more into the nature walk idea than Georgie. He just wanted to "win the race" even though noone else was rushing.
By the time we got back home (we walked about 1/2 mile, part of it with Vicki riding piggy-back) we were ready for a rest.
Everything we read today:
To see other Preschool and 5K ideas, visit Preschool Corner {& 5K too} at Homeschool Creations.
We started our Art Unit by talking about Primary and Secondary Colors, and color mixing. We read the stories A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni and Mouse Paint and discussed how red and blue make purple, red and yellow make orange, blue and yellow make green. Then we did a dabber paint rainbow (from Making Learning Fun) using only the Red, Blue and Yellow dabbers. The only bad thing about the page was there wasn't a arch for purple.
Then we made pictures using only Red, Blue and Yellow paints. Georgie painted..."a dancing alien. That's why his foot is up, he's doing a dance with one foot up then the other. Like a penguin. He's a penguin alien."
We used color paddles I had from Oriental Trading to make different colors (red paddle and blue paddle make purple, etc.) and also to view different parts of the room and see how it looks.
We watched Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow which discusses how white light shines through a prism and is separated into all the colors. It also shows how light will bend when it hits a mirror or reflective object and how objects are different colors because only that color is reflected for us to see.
We played with a prism trying to make rainbows on different parts of the walls and table. It wasn't easy to shine it in a specific place since we were using the sunlight from a skylight but we were able to shine it so we could observe the rainbow. We discussed how many colors we could see and what order they were in. We discussed whether the order of the colors changed when we moved the prism around. Georgie kept sticking his hands (and face) in the rainbow.
We finished up by doing a science experiment from Science Experiments for Young Learners about categorizing objects based on how much light shines through. We looked at: a clear plastic cup, a light colored plastic cup, a dark plastic cup, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, waxed paper and tissue paper. We held each item up to the light and decided whether it let through a lot of light (transparent), a little bit of light (translucent) or no light (opaque). We then looked around the room to find other things for each category. Transparent (windows, fish tank) and opaque (just about everything) were easy. Translucent was harder.
I'm trying to make sure we do Math and Reading everyday. I reviewed greater than and less than with Georgie by playing a slightly modified version of War. We each had approximately half the deck of cards. We'd each put one down and then he would choose which symbol would go between them =, < or >. He did really well with this so we moved on to finishing up our MEP Lesson 7. Instead of having him write on the worksheet I let him use stickers on a large piece of paper to do the assignment. He had to put the correct number of stickers in circles to make the symbols true. He did really well with this also.
For Reading, I took some of the sentences from our current Progressive Phonics book and made a poster to hang on the wall. We will be able to review these frequently throughout the day. We also played our Short A sounds UNO that I downloaded from Kellys Kindergarten.
Our final activity for the day was Physical Education. After 4 straight days of rain, we had a gorgeous sunny day so Daddy took the kids to the park. I found the first crocuses popping through the mud.
To see more fun Preschool Ideas visit Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.
