Homeschool preschool: horse theme

In January, I started doing additional structured activities at home with Ellie. These follow my ideal way of learning for her: it's child-led, theme-based, and play-centered.

Each month, she chooses a theme. I find or create activities for her in that theme, around broad educational categories. Many of those overlap, but I try to identify a primary learning objective for each one and hit a number of categories each week. Each day we (usually) do one or two activities, depending on our schedule.

We're on month three, and it's working because I'm planning and prepping EVERYTHING the month before. I've tried planning without prepping beforehand, and then I end up quitting after a few days because I get behind.

Here are links and photos of month 1, week 4!

MONTHLY THEME: ANIMALS

WEEK 4: HORSES

Literacy: Uppercase/lowercase horse-barn match

Math: 
Horse race game

Measure things around the house in hands

Science: Horse anatomy

Music: Rhythm cards

Fine motor: Clothespin horse color matching (she discovered these could stand up!)

Geography: Dress up a horse (File 1 and File 2. So. Much. Cutting. So worth it.)

History: Horse gait flipbook with early photography

Cooking/kitchen: Carrot-apple-cinnamon oatmeal (Ellie peeled the carrots and measured the oatmeal; Sam dumped in the ingredients)

Homeschool preschool: dog theme

In January, I started doing additional structured activities at home with Ellie. These follow my ideal way of learning for her: it's child-led, theme-based, and play-centered.

Each month, she chooses a theme. I find or create activities for her in that theme, around broad educational categories. Many of those overlap, but I try to identify a primary learning objective for each one and hit a number of categories each week. Each day we (usually) do one or two activities, depending on our schedule.

We're on month three, and it's working because I'm planning and prepping EVERYTHING the month before. I've tried planning without prepping beforehand, and then I end up quitting after a few days because I get behind.

Here are links and photos of month 1, week 3!

MONTHLY THEME: ANIMALS

WEEK 3: DOGS

Literacy
Alphabet construction to spell dog breeds (using prompt cards)

First letter sound sort (I put pieces of paper on the ground with initial sounds for "bowl," "leash," "food," "treat," and "collar." She had to place those items on the right letter).

Math: Patterning with dog food and treats (we discussed AB, ABC, and ABB patterns, and she experimented with creating her own)

Science: Dog hair under the microscope

Engineering: Design a machine to feed the dogs (I was quite impressed. It was a simple drawing but a great concept!)

Art: Paint with dog treats

Music: I made the worst-ever (don't judge!) color-coded sheet music, then put post-it note flags with the corresponding color on our piano keys. We learned how to play B-I-N-G-O (or E-I-Ban-Gee-Oh as she calls it) on the piano.

Geography: Placing breeds on their country of origin on our big world map

Cooking/kitchen: Homemade dog treats

Homeschool preschool: seahorse theme

In January, I started doing additional structured activities at home with Ellie. These follow my ideal way of learning for her: it's child-led, theme-based, and play-centered.

Each month, she chooses a theme. I find or create activities for her in that theme, around broad educational categories. Many of those overlap, but I try to identify a primary learning objective for each one and hit a number of categories each week. Each day we (usually) do one or two activities, depending on our schedule.

We're on month three, and it's working because I'm planning and prepping EVERYTHING the month before. I've tried planning without prepping beforehand, and then I end up quitting after a few days because I get behind.

Here are links and photos of month 1, week 2!

MONTHLY THEME: ANIMALS

WEEK 2: SEAHORSES

Literacy: "Mr. Seahorse" by Eric Carle

Math: Seahorse size sequencing

Science: Seahorse anatomy 

Technology: watching how seahorses move

Art: Bead and button seahorse

Sensory: kinetic sand (aka, moon sand) play

Fine motor: seahorse transfer (I set up a 6-section chip-n-dip serving tray from the Dollar Tree with water and mini seahorses. Ellie would roll a die and use a spoon to move that many seahorses. The goal was to get them all in the middle together.)

Geography: Clay landforms and bodies of water (we made a peninsula and an island). We did this for about two hours! She loved playing in the clay, talking about what we were making, and then using our mini seahorses to hide in the ocean! 

Cooking/kitchen: Seahorse-shaped sandwiches, and I gave the kids fruits and veggies to make an underwater habitat. Ellie loved making seaweed and coral!

Homeschool preschool: bear theme

In January, I started doing additional structured activities at home with Ellie. These follow my ideal way of learning for her: it's child-led, theme-based, and play-centered.

Each month, she chooses a theme. I find or create activities for her in that theme, around broad educational categories. Many of those overlap, but I try to identify a primary learning objective for each one and hit a number of categories each week. Each day we (usually) do one or two activities, depending on our schedule.

We're on month three, and it's working because I'm planning and prepping EVERYTHING the month before. I've tried planning without prepping beforehand, and then I end up quitting after a few days because I get behind.

Here are links and photos of month 1, week 1!

MONTHLY THEME: ANIMALS

WEEK 1: BEARS

Literacy: Goldilocks sequencing cards

Math

How many bears in the den? 

Symmetry with counting bears: I made a line of symmetry with a bead necklace. I placed a bear, then she had to place one symmetrically. Then it was her turn to place a bear first. She began experimenting with facing different directions, stacking, etc.

Probability: I put 5 each of two colors of counting bears in a cup. We talked about probability, then she closed her eyes and pulled one out. We repeated over and over. This was good for subtraction practice too.

Science

Gummy bear science

Shortening and ice water experiment (mimics polar bear insulation)

Engineering: Moveable teddy (she did this 100% independently after I had the pieces cut out)

Art: "Old Bear" collage. We did a two-step art project. First, we did four large pages with two colors each, based on the colors in the artwork of "Old Bear" by Kevin Henkes. Then, we found pictures representing each season in nature magazines and made a seasonal collage for each one. Then, we read the book and walked our little model bear through each scene.

Music: I made a Spotify playlist of music from the 1900s, around when teddy bears were invented and became popular.

Sensory: Play-Doh teddy bear

Gross motor: Teddy bear toss: we collected all their teddy bears and tried different ways of tossing them into our laundry bin. 

Fine motor

Torn paper cave: Ellie hated making this because she was really bored. But she loved pretend play with it later!

Imaginets bear

Geography: Bear-habitat-map match game: I made cards to play a match game. We took turns turning over one card in each set. I wanted to focus on the geography part -- the habitat and map exploration -- more than the memory part, so when we turned them over, we left them face-up. If any of our cards completed a set, we could take them. Most sets wins, of course :-) We played this LOTS of times.

Cooking/kitchen: Bear-themed dinner of salmon, berries, mushrooms and a drizzle of honey

More healthy movie nights

As I said in my first movie night post, I'm a huge fan of the fun of theming movie night dinners. But eating healthy at home is super important to our family, and I've struggled to find ideas that work.

For us, eating healthy on movie night looks like:

• Appropriate ratios of vegetables, fruit, protein, and whole grains (when possible)
• Trying new foods
• Limiting high-fat foods
• Limiting sugar
• No food dye

Here are some more of our recent menus.

The Incredibles

• Mr. Incredible power protein pork
• Elastigirl twisty pasta with Jack-Jack’s fiery sauce (simple syrup + red pepper flakes -- the little bit of sugar balances out the red pepper and creates a nice spicy sauce kiddos will still like)
• Dash's fast fruit salad
• Violet's violet veggie stack (roasted eggplant, purple potato, purple carrot, cabbage force field)
• Frozone's frozen banana swirl (just blend frozen banana chunks until it's smooth like ice cream -- the kids have no idea there's no sugar in it. It's DELICIOUS)

Brave

• “Turkey” legs (chicken drumsticks)
• Carrot ribbons for Merida's hair
• Neeps and tatties (potatoes and turnips)
• Red pepper bow with asparagus arrows
• Sweet buns (cinnamon rolls)
• Chocolate teddy grahams

Sleeping Beauty

• Chicken cordon bleu with toothpick “spindles"
• Berry baskets
• Pretzel rod wands
• Broccoli forest
• Pink sorbet

Toy Story 3

• Woody’s badge star frittata
• Buzz Lightyear salad
• Mr. Potato Head baked potato with veggie faces
• Lotso strawberries
• Jessie’s braid Twizzler

Wreck It Ralph

• Felix's chicken pot pie
• Sour Bill peas
• Round apple slice medals
• Candy cars (Swiss cake rolls for the base, icing to hold stuff on, mini Oreos, etc. -- I bought what was on sale and let the kids decorate!)

Pom pom sensory bin

Easiest bin ever. Have I said that before? Well, I lied. This one is the winner.

Here's what Sam (14 months old) got out of this:

• Fine motor skill practice: scooping, turning his hand over to dump a pom out of the spoon, pincher grasp, coordination
• Transferring
• Colors: matching, sorting, putting poms in bowls
• Counting (hearing me do it!)
• One-to-one correspondence (in the ice cube tray)
• Vocabulary development: empty/full, more/less
• Size: sorting, sequencing, vocabulary
• Gravity lesson: rolling a bucket of poms down the tilted lid
• Throwing!
• Persistence (those tongs were way too hard)

And for Ellie (3 years, 10 months), I also worked on patterning and addition/subtraction. 

Sam will play with this for 45 minutes by himself. Ellie loves using it for pretend play -- the poms have been cookies/muffins/ice cream scoops, rain/snow, party confetti, etc. 

Pom Pom Sensory Bin: pom poms (multiple sizes/colors), ice cube tray, metal tongs, various bowls and buckets. 

Side benefit, I owned everything (and you probably do too), so it was free!

PS, have I quit blogging? Maybe a little.

Healthy movie nights

I've been hesitant to post about our movie nights because I don't want to start getting wrapped up in clicks and views and pins and all that.

BUT, I've realized that I can maybe help other families out by posting some of our movie night menus. See, I'm a huge fan of the fun of theming movie night dinners. But eating healthy at home is super important to our family, and I've struggled to find ideas that work.

For us, eating healthy on movie night looks like:

• Appropriate ratios of vegetables, fruit, protein, and whole grains (when possible)
• Trying new foods
• Limiting high-fat foods
• Limiting sugar
• No food dye

Here are some of our recent menus. I hope these help your family!

FINDING NEMO

Bottom left: roasted asparagus seaweed with French onion whole-wheat linguine anemone

Top left: nitrate-free hot dog octopi and Swiss cheese shark teeth

Top right: apple crab (I cut holes and stuck raisins in for eyes), orange fish

Bottom right: sea turtle frittata (I used cucumber -- a chunk off the end, quartered, for the head, and slices cut in half for the feet). Those sea turtles were The. Cutest. Ever.

This dessert was inspired by these Squirt desserts. I wanted to cut down the sugar and food dye, so I used fudge stripe cookies, mini Nilla wafers, marshmallows, chocolate chips (I had regular sized but you should probably use minis!), and chocolate icing to hold it all together. OK, they're not QUITE as cute, but I felt a heck of a lot better feeding this to my 3-year-old!

TINKER BELL

Fruit fairy wands! Yeah, I know they don't have wands, but whatever. These are so much fun to make and super healthy. I had these plastic dowels from an Edible Arrangements bouquet, but any long, fairly strong skewer will work. I topped each with a slice of star fruit (which, side note, took FOREVER but was super adorable). We used blueberries (for Silvermist), strawberries (Rosetta), bananas (Fawn), blackberries (Vidia), kiwi (Tinkerbell), and peaches (Iridessa). 

I didn't get a good picture of the rest of the food, but we made peanut butter and jelly butterfly wings (cut a slice of bread in half, spread with peanut butter, and let kids decorate with jelly to look like a butterfly), and a flower made out of tomatoes and basil.

 CARS

  

I never knew I had so many things in my kitchen that could cut circles! 

• Top left: Mack-a-roni (I bought Annie's Organic, but I probably should have gone with the wheel pasta to be extra cool)
• Bottom left: Lightning McDogs on Historic Route Asparagus (nitrate-free hot dogs with cucumber wheels and cherry eyes, on a road made from asparagus). I would do these with hoagie-style sandwiches, but we had two hot dogs left we needed to eat up!
• Top right: Fillmore's stoplights (a slice of cheddar cheese, cut in half, with circles of tomato, banana, and celery. I cut the end off cherry tomatoes, then used the middle of my apple slicer to make the circles with banana and celery).
• Bottom right: Mater's Taters (using this recipe for seasoned crash potatoes. You will never cook baby potatoes any other way ever again. These are heaven.
• Top middle: Luigi and Guido's tire brownies (using a biscuit cutter and the end of a funnel to make the tires).