March Week 1: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This weeks unit is going to be based around The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We currently have 5 caterpillars in chrysalis preparing to emerge as Painted Lady Butterflies.


--Memory: Butterfly match game. We have a beautiful one that I ordered from Eeboo a couple years ago. But, before I remembered that (yes, I sometimes forget about great materials that I ordered, shut it ok) I was going to make a simple butterfly matching game. You could cut out different color butterflies from construction paper, use stamps to make patterns, etc. and play a memory game with those just as easily.

--Gross Motor: Move like caterpillars, and then move like butterflies

--Craft: Egg carton caterpillars: paint an egg carton, punch 2 holes in the first cup, thread a pipe cleaner through to make antennae, add googly eyes and you have a cute caterpillar.

--Craft: Coffee filter butterflies: Use an old fashioned clothes pin (the non-pinch ones) and wrap pipe cleaner around the top for antennae. Paint a coffee filter (you could also use colored tissue paper if you don't want to paint) and after it dries fold it and slide it into the opening at the bottom of the clothespin and spread out the wings.

--Math: arranging caterpillars from smallest to largest. I'm using these: http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/TheVeryHungryCaterpillar.html (There are MANY awesome things for this book on this site, you might find something else you think your kid would like there...check her out!)

--Math: addition Ex: on Monday the caterpillar ate one apple, and on Tuesday he ate two pears...how much food did he eat on those days? And so on, you get the picture.) I printed this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9DbWcozSA54/S8vlZpkCSZI/AAAAAAAABCY/ePukoAGOPPk/s1600/Caterpillar+Food.png to use as counters for the math problems.

--Math: Count how much food the butterfly ate ALL week.

--Cooking: Make cupcakes, and form them into a caterpillar. Enjoy!

--Lunch: Butterfly sandwiches--cut the sandwich into triangle pieces, and arrange them points in to look like butterfly wings, use a pretzel rod, carrot stick or pickle (or anything you think of!) as the butterfly's body

--Science: Life Cycle of a butterfly (We've been watching this first hand, as we ordered caterpillars from insectlore.com) Print out sequencing cards and put them in order. I used these: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/butterfly/sequencingpl/

--Science: Did the caterpillar eat healthy foods? Which ones weren't healthy? The caterpillar got a stomach ache, what might give you a stomach ache?

--Science: Sort the food the caterpillar ate into food groups-meat/veggies/fruit/grains. Brief discussion of how much of these foods boys/girls should eat.

--Science: Purpose of butterflies (2ND largest pollinators next to honey bees,) found everywhere on the planet except Antarctica

--Science: Sense of taste. Butterflies taste with their antennae.

--Language: Before/After--"What did he eat BEFORE the oranges?" "What did he eat AFTER the plums?" (I will use story sequencing cards from http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/hungrycaterpillar/sequencing.htm for this)

--Language: Days of the Week

--Muffin Tin Monday: I'll be using foods from the book to create Monday's Lunch! :) We'll be out all morning on Monday, so I'll make it ahead of time so it's ready and waiting when we arrive back home at lunch.

Best Laid Plans....

**I apologize for the formatting of this, but I've edited it 4 times and it just won't stay.**

Sometimes Three just blows my plans out of the water. LOL We started on the President's Day ideas, and well....he wasn't really feeling mama's best laid plans. He does like money, so he liked sorting the money, talking about the names of the money, and arranging it by size.




Doing crayon rubbings of the coins, not so much his thing. He absolutely refused to do the wig craft. BOOOOOO. I was most excited about that one. He had no interest. Oh well!


One and Two recently got their own laptops. I have been pretty adamantly against this for sometime. About a month ago, their bio-dad asked if he could get them their own computers. Hmmmm, let me think. I decided yes. And, now, I can't figure out WHY I fought this so hard! It has been GREAT. They are doing more of their work ON the computer-increasing their typing skills/speed. It is easier for them to get the things done (at least for Two who has writing...issues.) They don't have to wait for each other, or me, or Three to be done with the computer in order to do their work. They can share their google docs with me, so I can check them easily.




Why was I so against this? Live and learn. Live and learn.




Over the weekend, I will post another week's lesson plans. We've been so sick this month, that we've really not done much. Seriously we had the flu, then a stomach bug and have been sick non-stop since Feb 1. Is it March yet? Our next unit will be based on "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" book, because we have 5 caterpillars in chrysalis right now! Three is OVER THE MOON excited. I imagine they'll emerge next week sometime, so we'll be doing a unit on caterpillars and butterflies.

2nd Catch Up Picture Post

Three pouring water. This activity began because I brought out a pouring activity for Four, who is currently VERY interested in pouring things.

Four pouring colored pasta.

N is for Noodle (during The Napping House week.) This is a foam letter N I cut out, and Three glued on dry colored noodles.

Finished porduct.

Letters that Three made (spontaneously) out of his pretzel sticks.

One at a 4H competition, she made fruit bars. You can see some of her fab fashion sense in this photo as well. :)

Two at the 4H competition.

Playing Mitten Match

Warehouse club shopping is solely for the benefit of my boys, who ALWAYS get to paint the large boxes.

Happy President's Day!

Here is what One and Two will be doing today:

http://www.education.com/activity/article/write-letter-president-president-day/

and

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=2888

And for Three:

We'll look at pictures of the first presidents and then do this craft.

Presidential Wig (from www.everythingpreschool.com/themes/presidentsday/art.htm)

What You Need:
Paper Bags
Packing Peanuts or Cotton
Glue
What You Do:
Talk to your children about how the president's uses to wear white wigs then have them make a wig. They do this by simply cutting one side off of a small lunch bag and then gluing packing peanuts or cotton all over it. When it dries your children can look quite presidential!

Also from everything preschool:

Do You Know? (Sung To: "Mary Had a Little Lamb")

Do you know who's on the penny? On the penny? On the penny?
Do you know who's on the penny? Abraham Lincoln.
Do you know who's on the quarter? On the quarter? On the quarter?
Do you know who's on the quarter?George Washington.

Note: Continue with other coins if you wish

We'll also look at the presidents on the coins (talk about the names of the coins too) and do coin rubbings. We'll put the coins in order from smallest to largest.

We'll locate the capital on a map.

We'll talk about the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, and do a coloring page of that.

The catch up picture post....

When I plugged my camera in, there were 179 photos. Yikes. That actually didn't include any of these. I'm a little behind. So this is the "catch up" post, which will probably come in 3 parts. This is "The Snowy Day" unit we did, with the exception of 3 pictures (2 of Two doing some neat projects I managed to work in in January) and the very last one that has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that my kids are awesome and love each other to pieces. :D


Two is making a cell model from play-doh.

This is instant mashed potato flakes. Three played in them dry (practicing the letter S.)

Then he added the water:

And dove into them wet.

Did you know that if you lick things they will stick to marshmallows? Three built a marshmallow, chocolate chip snowman.

A project to go along with a quick lesson the printing press, I wrote out a code and Two had to use stampers to stamp out the hidden message.

Number matching game.

After gluing the snoman together, Three practiced writing the letter S.

He LOVED this game. This is the "It is Snowing..." song from the lesson plan for The Snowy Day. He asked to do it OVER AND OVER AND OVER. It was a HUGE hit. Here he is all dressed at the end of the song.

Three is making 3 different sized snowballs, to see which one will melt the fastest. We hypothesized about it, and Three's guess was the middle sized snowball.

Maybe that was his guess because the sun was shining on it? LOL I actually moved them, so it wasn't the case.

Four playing with some of the snow.

One made this super-hero costume for Three out of some fabric scraps. Cute, huh?

February Week 2

The Napping House is the book basis for this week's unit.

http://www.brighthub.com/education/early-childhood/articles/61207.aspx

http://www.kizclub.com/stories3.htm

Put the characters on index cards. Sequence the story using these cards—also use left to right progression. As a 2nd activity with the cards, have child arrange them from smallest to largest.

Make a rain stick. (music/art)

Paint a picture of your house. (art)

Build a house from paper bags. (Gross motor/problem solving)

“Ten in the Bed” song (Music)

Discuss all the different words for sleeping in this book. (Vocab)

After you've read the story once or twice, go back to the first illustration and ask your student if he can spy the other animals. They are there! It may take a little bit to find the mouse and flea, but they were in the room from the beginning of the nap.

Discuss: Nocturnal animals (science)

Life Skill: Making the bed.

N is for NAP!

Have pajama day! (Thanks to the flu, we've had lots of these!)

N is for Noodle--three glued colored noodles to a foam letter N

Other stories: Time for Bed; Goodnight Gorilla.

Valentines Craft Links (sharing a friends blog!)

My friend over at grahamcrackerbabykisses shared several Valentines Craft links on her blog, and I want to linky to that. :)

http://grahamcrackerbabykisses.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/craft-time-valentines-ideas/#comment-15

Our flu situation will determine how much fun stuff we can do this week leading up to V-day....the boys are on Tamiflu, so I'm hoping that will shorten/lighten their flu experience and allow them to still get to do some fun stuff.

Enjoy!

Slacker, that's me.

I've not been posting, because well, we haven't done much worthy of posting. We've veered from our lesson plans, and have only been squeezing in work book pages and unrelated crafts here and there. I've been focusing more on Three's social needs, by getting him out and about in group situations more often, but that leaves less time for "school." I am fine with that, as I did sporatic units with the girls until they were around 3rd grade level, and they have turned out just fine. We did a TON of social activities (lots of which were learning activities as well) when they were small, and that is an area that has been more difficult for me because of Four needing to nap. The girls were so close in age that their schedules were almost always exactly the same.

I do have another weekly plan to share, AND I have a ton of pictures to share, and I may get to those in the next couple days. Three and Four have the flu, I think hubby has the beginnings of it, Two went to bed last night complaining of the same symptoms One had in the beginning. It all started with One, 6 days ago, so she's on the good end of it now. This may give me extra napping time from the kiddo's and I may have a few extra minutes for blogger.....or not. We'll have to see how that plays out.