Our preschool ~ U is for umbrella

~ Sunshine Girl is 47 months until next week! ~

Letter of the Week ~ U is for umbrella

Umbrella idea from No Time for Flashcards ~ links listed at the end of the post.

Sunshine Girl spent last week learning about the letter U. We always start our week with an art project using a template from DLTK (link at the end). I had watered down the paint so she could “rain” onto the letter U but Sunshine Girl asked if she could just paint it! She is so much like her Mommy! We glued a cotton ball rain cloud on the top.

Sunshine Girl also did a crayon resist project. She colored a design on the umbrella using crayons and then painted over it with watercolors. Since she used dark colors, it didn’t quite work out but that’s ok. She had fun anyway!

We read Rain by Robert Kalan. I thought this page was neat with the white house and all! We were going to play in the rain with an umbrella too but the only day that we could was on a Wednesday night as the family was heading out to church. Not to mention, there was thunder and lightning. So I nixed that. Hopefully we’ll have some gentle showers soon so Sunshine Girl can play in the rain.

Game from Home Grown Hearts ~ link at the end of post

Eating Scrabble Cheese Nips (& searching for our letter U) while completing umbrella ABC book from Childcareland ~ link at end

Theme of the Week ~ Weather and Rainbows

Our Weather Graph with pictures from Making Learning Fun. Our graph didn’t get much further than this because Baby Boy kept removing our pompons.

Sunshine Girl’s older siblings also learned about weather and made a tornado in a bottle. She tried her hand at making a tornado.

Color Mixing while we learned about the colors of the rainbow.

Catching a Rainbow experiment

Making rainbow crayons.

I used an old muffin pan and I’m glad I did because had I read the directions, I would have seen that you needed to use aluminum foil to line the cups.

If you’re interested in doing these:

Use old crayons and soak them in water overnight to remove the paper. (That only worked for about half of them.)

Line a muffin tin with aluminum foil and place crayon pieces into the holes.

Place into 300 degree oven for about 5 – 7 minutes. Watch closely to avoid colors from running into one big ugly mess!

Allow to cool about 30 minutes and remove from pan.

To remove, I had to tap the bottom of the tin with a knife. I also placed them into the freezer to help the wax release since I didn’t follow directions!

Directions found in Disney’s Family Fun Crafts

Even though we talked a lot about rain, most days our weather looked like this:

And we enjoyed every second of the beautiful spring weather!

Links that helped us this week:

No Time for Flashcards ~ Letter U

DLTK ~ Letter U template

Home Grown Hearts ~ Letter U activities ( I saw where she has recently posted more printables that could be use for this theme also.)

Making Learning Fun ~ Weather

Catch a Rainbow Experiment

Confessions of a Homeschooler ~ Rainbow printables

Childcareland.com

For other Tot School posts, be sure to visit 1+1+1=1.

Preschool ~ N is for nest, noodles, numbers, & nature

~ Sunshine Girl is 47 months old and Baby Boy is 20 months old. ~

What a fun week we had with the letter N. Here are a few of our activities from the week:

~ N is for Nest ~

Sunshine Girl and I discussed birds and how they make nests to lay eggs. We took a walk outside with a little paper bag basket that we had made and gathered straw for our nests like the birds do. Actually, we saw some birds gathering straw from our garden this week. Sunshine Girl glued the straw to a nest on the letter N and painted a bird and some eggs to add to the nest.

We played letter N games from Confessions of a Homeschooler, made & ate Rice Krispie nests, dyed eggs using natural objects, and planted grass seed in egg shells. (Read more about our adventures with eggs here.)

We played an ABC game using an egg carton. I had written letters that Sunshine Girl has worked on in each space of the carton. We placed a pompon into the egg carton and shook it up. Sunshine Girl would open it and see what the letter was and then find the letter puzzle piece and its match on the floor.

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~ N is for Noodles ~

Using the letter N template from DLTK, we painted and glued noodles to the letter N. We played and scooped noodles too. We were going to paint with noodles but it just didn’t happen for some reason.

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~ N is for Numbers ~

Using nest cards from Confessions of a Homeschooler (link at the end of post), Sunshine Girl would count the eggs, match the number with the same number of jelly beans, and then we would write the number. She wanted to write a few herself as you can see. She copied my numbers on the cards except for 2. She did that one on her own. Yes, the one that looks like 5. It’s backwards but it was so precious that I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

That led to her wanting to write on her own with a permanent marker. That’s a really big deal around here. ;)

We also played number games with eggs. I saw this one somewhere online but I can not remember. So if you know who this game came from or if you stumble across it online, please let me know so I can give credit to her.

We hid eggs around our living room with slips of paper containing a number. Sunshine Girl would find an egg, open it, and place stickers corresponding to the written number onto the egg.

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~ N is for Nature ~

As the temperatures continue to warm, we are spending more time outside. We have also revived our nature table. This week we had a nest, a basket of our gathering straw for our nest, and books on baby animals.

~ Helpful links for this week ~

I am so thankful that so many people are willing to share information with us busy moms. Here are the links for some of this week’s ideas.

Confessions of a Homeschooler ~ Letter N activities

Simple Mom ~ Dying Eggs with Natural Dyes

Delightful Learning ~ N activities

No Time for Flashcards ~ N activities

Homegrown and Beeyoutiful ~ Egg Grass Activity

His Mercy is New ~ Rice Krispie Nests

DLTK letter template

~ For more Tot School posts, be sure to visit 1+1+1=1 ~

Preschool ~ K is for kite and W is for wind

~Sunshine Girl is 47 months and Baby Boy is 20 months~

Right now in our preschool, we are focusing on spring related subjects with our letters of the week. I was doing K is for kite with Sunshine Girl and then my mother-in-law suggested the idea W is for wind. They went together perfectly!

K is for kite

After decorating our K template from DLTK with popcorn kernels, Sunshine Girl painted a kite. The original plan was to paint the kite using watered down paint and blowing on it through a straw to represent the wind. But she was having a hard time with that so she asked if she could just paint it.

We then decided to paint like we were the wind. In the collage above, Baby Boy and I painted the blue picture and Sunshine Girl painted the bottom grayish picture. We painted in a carefree fashion like we were the wind.

We played many K is for kite games from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

We also flew kites but no pictures because the photographer was running around with four children trying to help get the kites into the sky. Trust me, you don’t want a picture of that. Plus, I was never able to get one into flight! :0)

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K is for kitchen

Sunshine Girl helped out in the kitchen by setting out carrots for lunch. Of course, she had to wear her apron!

Flower Girl and Sunshine Girl prepared these tasty playdough treats in their own personal kitchen.

Books we read for the letter K

Counting Kisses by Karen Katz

A Pocket Full of Kisses by Audrey Penn

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W is for wind

Above I mentioned how we painted like we were the wind. We also spent time out in the wind with our pinwheels and blowing bubbles into the wind.

We talked of how we can not see the wind but we can see the wind at work. We also talked about how we can not see God with our eyes but we can see God at work and we talked about things that God does for us and others.

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W is for water

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W is for wheels

Using wagon wheel pasta, Sunshine Girl decorated her white Letter W template. We also glued wheels to vehicles drawn by Sunshine Girl’s oldest brother.

In keeping with wheels and kites (flying objects), we discussed transportation. We talked about things that fly in the sky and things that go on the ground. I made a simple drawing of the sky and the ground. Sunshine Girl painted it with her poster paint pens and then classified transportation stickers by placing them in the air or on the ground.

We read books by Donald Crews:

Freight Train, Truck, and School Bus

We also read Bears on Wheels by Stan and Jan Berenstain

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W is for Wednesday

On Wednesday, we read Wacky Wednesday and Today is Monday. Then we sang our Days of the Week song:

(To the tune of “Oh my darling Clementine”)

There are seven days, There are seven days, There are seven days in a week

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Today is Monday by Eric Carle

Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Seuss

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W is for our last name

Our last name starts with the letter W so I wrote Sunshine Girl’s name on a page in a fairly large print. She traced over her name numerous times. When I taught elementary school, I did this for spelling and we have always called it rainbow words because the children use various colors for the tracings. By the time they are finished, the words look like a rainbow!

We had a great time learning the letters K and W. To see what we have planned for the weeks ahead, see this post on our planning for April.

To see other Tot School posts, be sure to visit 1+1+1=1

Preschool ~ The Letter Q

~Sunshine Girl is 46 months old~

I figured that Sunshine Girl had probably do the letter Q before it got too warm around here. It’s hard to talk about quilts when it’s almost 70 degrees outside!

Q is for quilt

Using the template from DLTK, Sunshine Girl placed scrap pieces on the letter Q.

Activity found here at Making Learning Fun

Activity found here at Homeschoolshare

Q is for quarters

Making quarter rubbings

Tossing quarters in the can

Someone kept moving the can…

Q is for queen

Idea for the queen found at No Time for Flashcards

She also dressed up as a queen but took the outfit off before I got a picture of it.

Q is for q tips

This large Q printable and other activities are found at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Q is for Quaker cereal

Q is for quite a mess

Q is for quick and quiet on a quilt

We had quite a good time with the letter Q!

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