Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Week 6: Thanksgiving and Turkeys!

We have spent the last week-and-a-half learning about Thanksgiving and specifically turkeys!

Our week began with our first field trip with our co-op to a turkey farm in Eden, NY.  Here is Haier's Turkey Farm Facebook profile.  What a great experience for the kids!  Mr. Haier was amazing and incredibly welcoming to our little group of 5 kids and 3 babies.



So neat! If you say, "Gobble, gobble, gobble" to a turkey it will talk back to you! The kids and adults got a kick out of this. Turkey calling...


Here are some turkeys in the loft.


 Muffins the cow.



It was a fabulous cold day with flurries!


After a tour of the barn we went into the garage where all the, ahem, turkey prep is done.  I found that part very interesting and tried not to get too caught up in it.  All the birds were going to be prepped for sale a few days after we left. Haier's Turkey Farm is probably much quieter right now! I'm pretty sure there were around 1800-2000 Turkey's at the farm.  They will all be on someones Thanksgiving Day table this year.

The kids got a snack from Mr. Haier. 





Turkey week was full of crafts, the first one being a turkey made from a paper bowl, construction paper, finger paint and glue.  Anything messy is always fun!  My cousin helped out taking pictures and supervising this activity while babysitting one day. 




Our printables this week were from 1+1+1=1.  Here, my daughter is tracing the path from the pilgrim to the turkey. She is getting really good at tracing and I have seen a huge improvement since we started school.


More cutting practice.


The letter of the week was T of course! I had the letter T on the window all week with the letters underlined. The kids also worked on a T worksheet where once again we saw a big improvement in writing.  Plus we are learning to color in the lines. Bonus!


Here is a serving tray filled with only letter T items.



Placing Cheerios on the letter T.




One evening before bed I taught the kids about small, medium and large.  This took a bit to get the hang of, but they did understand the size concept after a few minutes.



Here they are painting their "Thankful Wreaths". Just a paper plate, with the middle cut out then painted green with different color leaves pasted around the edges. Earlier in the week I explained what it mean to be thankful and they began listing all the family members they are thankful for. I also got a few cute responses such as "I am thankful for eggs, suckers," that type of thing! I wrote what they were thankful for on the leaves of the wreath. 


All finished!




Of course we had to create the classic children's Thanksgiving turkey from handprints! 



The 15 month loved this project too! 



We read My First Thanksgiving by Tomi Depaola


 Turkey-making kit from Target




Mommy's little Pilgrims!  I found this kit at Wegmans and meant to use it for our co-op Thanksgiving feast.  We were supposed to host a wonderful little lunch for the kids in our co-op.  Low and behold with the Turkey in the oven and potatoes peeled I find something funky in one child's throat! UGH had to cancel the feast and we were all bummed.  Gotta love this time of year and the constant sicknesses going through the household.  At least I had dinner all made at 10:00am that day.


We hope everyone has a blessed Thanksgiving! We are onto some more BFIAR next week and Christmas activities. 




















Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Week 5: Runaway Bunny

Back to the BFIAR curriculum this week with The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.

The Runaway Bunny read on YouTube


This is a very popular children's book about a little bunny who tests his Mommy.  The bunny wants to run away from home and gives his Mommy different ways he could run away by using his imagination. Each time, the Mommy bunny explains that no matter where he goes she will always find him.  

Finally after a month we were all able to get together for co-op day! First we had all the kids sit down at the living room table so they could listen to Runaway Bunny.  The kids pointed out the pictures and loved the book.



The letter of the week was B for Bunny. The kids were given paper plates with the letter B on them. They had to use the B items on the tray to create their own bunny. 




Butter cookies for the body.



Here is some banana for the ears and feet.




Broccoli for the tale and blueberries for the eyes




The kids did more eating than bunny creating. I can't say I blamed them, it was a great snack.



Next we went outside for a surprise activity.  At one point in the story the little bunny goes into the garden to try to hide from his Mommy. He says, "I will be a crocus in a hidden garden." So the kids planted some crocuses for the spring.







One day I tied a piece of rope to the staircase and had the kids pretend it was a tightrope.   In the book the Bunny wants to run away to the circus. There is a sweet little picture of the little Bunny on a flying trapeze and his Mother as a tightrope walker in the book.  All week my daughter wanted to be a tightrope walker! This was her chance. 







Grammy had to babysit this week so I left two projects for her to work on with the kids.  One night after bath I traced each of the kid's feet on white construction paper. I instructed Grammy to help the kids make a bunny out of the tracing.  The bunnies came out great!




The other project was to make crocuses out of handprints. Grammy traced the kid's hands on colored construction paper. Then you cut out the hand, tape or glue the finger to the thumb, and you have a flower resembling a crocus!



One day I read the kids Psalm 139.  Since my twins are almost 3, expecting them to sit through a long bible reading and understand it is impossible! So when we read from the Bible I make them repeat certain phrases and words.  Psalm 139 was perfect for this book.

Last but not least the kids recreated certain scenes from the story using clipart.






Another great week of home-preschool under our belt! 








Thursday, November 8, 2012

Week 4: Noah's Ark

Week 4 turned out to be very interesting for a few reasons:

First, it rained ALL week.

Second, Daddy was home ALL week due to the rain. (This was fantastic!)

Third, we were not able to get together with our co-op group.
Therefore, I ended up making it a "light" week of preschool and chose Noah's Ark.

We have the Noah's Ark story in a few different children's Bibles and since hurricane Sandy was blowing through the area it was the perfect theme for our week.  



A few months ago I picked up a Noah's Ark magnet set from a local five and dime store.  These type of sets work wonderfully on cookie sheets. The letter and number sets for the fridge are also fun. 






Next we worked on the colors of the rainbow.  I played an "I Spy" type of game with them.  The object of the game was name the color I held up and then find something in the kitchen or outside that was the same color.  Simple game, they thought it was the greatest!


I printed out a few different Noah's Ark boats, which they colored.



This was my favorite activity of the week.  Fruit loop rainbows! Ifound this craft idea on Teaching Tiny Tots.  Just simple Fruit Loops (I had to send my husband to the store on a special mission since Fruit Loops is not a cereal we eat every day), a paper plate, and regular school glue worked great.  My daughter was very interested in this craft and enjoyed actually putting the different colors on the template I drew. My oldest son ate most of his.  The 15 month old thought they were a great snack as well! 



Since Halloween was also in the middle of Noah's Ark week here are their costumes.  It was raining so I let the kids dress up and stay up a little later to help hand out candy. 



Once again Grandma was here for the cooking lesson. On the menu: Peanut Butter Haystacks. Grandma briefly explained to the kids that Noah needed to have food on the ark and he could have had a lot of hay aboard.  If you like peanut butter, you will love haystacks. Easy, no-bake cookie recipe.  My intent was to also go into detail about other foods the animals would have eaten on the ark but we never got to it.  There will be plenty of other opportunities to discuss that topic though.




We have a really great app on our iPad called Noah's Ark. It is an interactive version of the Bible story written by TabTale.  It was $1.99 but a lot of their other interactive stories are free to download and work on iPad or iPhone.  The kids love playing with the iPad and often ask if they can play "Noah's Ark". 

Last, but not least, the kids played with a really interesting toy called Tier Toys Stackers Noah's Ark.  The object of the toy is to build Noah's Ark.  There are 12 layers and within each layer different animals get put into place like a puzzle. The toy comes with 22 different animals, two of each, 44 pieces total.  Noah and his wife are also included and fit on top when the ark is assembled.  I loved this toy because it took us a good half hour to forty-five minutes to complete. It is currently sitting on the shelf in our living room and because it locks closed I do not have to worry about them bringing it out whenever they please.  I would definitely recommend this toy and I will be looking into others made by this company.  I saw quite a few other Tier Toy Stackers on Amazon.com.



With week 4 under our belt I was more than happy to move onto to week 5.  We are currently working on Runaway Bunny. Already I feel this has been a much more productive week than the last.