Winter Play Idea: Modeling (Sticky Foam) Beads

The Dollar Tree had these a few months ago and I thought they would be a great idea for our rainy day bucket.  Our rainy/icy days have been...frequent as of late, so we pulled them out!  I am not a professional artist by any means, but it satisfied my 6, 4, & 2 year olds...:)  We had so much fun!  But warning, they are sticky.  And even going through the wash on clothes, they still are sticky.  After we pulled them all out and mixed them all together, we ended up sticking it all in a giant Ziploc baggie for next time!  $6 well spent!:)

One More Free Winter Preschool Printable

Here is one more winter themed worksheet!  Enjoy!

We'll branch out a bit more in the next week or so!:)

Download Here

And in my perusal of more ideas for my kiddos I found this site that looks like it has a plethora of fun activities and crafts for winter time with our little munchkins!:)  Happy learning!

Free Preschool Winter Printables

I have been going a little crazy creating fun worksheets for my kiddos for the upcoming snowman week, but on the bright side, you all get to be part of the fun!  Here are three more free printables for you and yours to enjoy and share!  Just please leave me a comment if you decide to download them and let me know how you like them!:)

 Download Here

I thought these snow friends would make a great puzzle if printed onto card stock and cut into pieces- even have your little one help make it into the puzzle and then put it together!

 Download here

Download Here

A is for Alligator

I originally wrote this in September, but due to issues of the technical and stressful manner, I am just getting around to posting it now.  Sorry for the delay.:)

Hi there friends and fellow moms!  This year my oldest started kindergarten and my next one is in his second year of preschool and rather than do the co-op and community preschool that my older son did last year, I have opted to do homeschool preschool with him, and let me tell you I AM LOVING IT!  We are having so much fun doing all sorts of wonderful activities, and I thought I would share most of them with you.  I have even figured out how to share the documents that I created to go along with the themes.  As usual, I will try my best to link you to the original source of my inspiration.  Some of it came from places other than Pinterest, though- like my own head!;)  So hope you enjoy!

Our first day we studied A is for Alligator!
This is the worksheet that I made to start the day.  They traced and colored the letters, then cut and pasted the 'teeth' along the bottom to turn this

Download Here

into these:

(sorry, not the greatest picture, but you get the point.)
 Inspiration found here through Pinterest.

We also picked up some books from the library and learned more about the American Alligator through National Geographics' amazing kids website!  I love finding stuff like this!:)

SNOWMEN: {Let's Try Sharing a Document!}

Hi There Friends!

So I have created quite a few printables that I would like to make free for anyone, and so I am trying out some different options.  Here are the first few!  Please leave a comment so I know if you are liking it and if it is easy to access!  I used Google Docs sharing, so hopefully it runs smoothly.:)

We are talking about all things winter for our preschool time and I kinda have a thing for snowmen!  So for the littler ones I help cut some of the smaller stuff or at least roughly cut them apart and then let them do more and then glue it onto a piece of construction paper!  Hope your littles love it as much as mine!:)

Download here

Download Here

Download Here

My kids are all about measuring tapes and how long things are, so here is a great way to encourage those math skills!  As an additional challenge, you can have them guess or ESTIMATE and then measure and see how close they are!:)

Download Here

Week Six: Transportation

Having boys, I couldn't resist doing a transportation unit for our summer camp!  We cleared out the front room and the boys helped me set up a city with masking tape on the carpet (used two rolls of masking tape and a roll of painters tape, which was actually lots easier to clean up and the blue was extra fun, so next time...)  We added the map from IKEA and our own HotWheels race track for some serious fun!

I made the following two pages using Scrapbook Factory Deluxe.  The kids cut out the vehicles from page one and sorted them, then glued them onto page two...

 

I don't have pictures, but we watched a few clips of vehicles on the computer sporadically throughout the morning, when I needed a minute or two to set up for the next activity.  You can find them here, here, and here.

 Snack was not ornate this time.  Apple juice and animal crackers I believe.:)

I cut out {what felt like} a million shapes out of different colors of felt and each of them got to build their own train, car, or other vehicle...  They loved it!

I found a kit to make foam airplanes (that actually flew quite decently) at Hobby Lobby and so they each got to make their own...

I made these clothespin airplanes (inspiration here) to clip all of their pages together when I sent them home!  What a fun day we had!!

Week Five: Water Fun!

So apparently I didn't take any pictures of week five.  Probably because we spent most of the time in the water and I didn't want to destroy my camera.  So this isn't really a "fun" post but I wanted to at least note for myself that we did talk about the water cycle, played in the pool and with the slip n slide, and had a grand old time together.  That seems to be the general trend.:)

Week Four: America the Beautiful!!

What better way to ring in Independence Day than by celebrating all things Red, White & Blue?  My thoughts exactly!  So on July 2, we talked about all things America...  Well, not ALL things, but a lot!:)

Let's be honest, I don't remember everything that we did.  That is one of the disadvantages of being crazy and procrastinating for over a month (but I was out of town for three of the weeks, so give me a little slack, all right?;).  But here is what I do remember!  We had fun!

One of the highlights were the cookies!  I let them help cut out the stars, then used the leftover dough to make cookie swirls (inspiration found here).  I let them frost and sprinkle to their hearts desire!:)

I used the recipe here to color noodles, which turned out much better in color than I anticipated!  They each got to string a necklace with red and blue pasta!:)

Saw an idea to make these centerpieces here and then we used construction paper and dollar store stickers to decorate them!:)

Found this printable here and we talked about the fifty states and which ones we had all lived in!  They got to color them however they chose.

They each got a blank white page and a red page to cut out strips.  I cut out the blue square, then each glued their own together and used a white crayon to make 50 stars...  Some flags had a couple less than that...;)

I found this cute pinwheel pattern here and decided to just make them myself and send one home with each of them rather than have them make their own...

We watched a video of two little kiddos saying the Pledge of Allegiance and attempted memorizing it.  Apparently a couple of them had already mastered that feat.  Also watched another video of the Star Spangled Banner with some typical Americana photos (bald eagle, etc) flashing by.  Can't find it now of course...  Loved celebrating our country and freedoms with these kiddos!

Week Three: Our Bodies

For Week Three of our Summer Camps, we learned all about our bodies!  We practiced flexing our muscles and looked at some pictures of the different layers of our bodies.  After that we put together a puzzle of our bones!!  They were just the right size!  (Found here).

Then we focused on what we do to keep our bodies healthy.  We had races in the back yard and played basketball inside, discussing the benefits of exercise.  Then we watched a video of the Magic School Bus on YouTube that has since been removed.  It talked about the digestive system and turning food into energy...

Then we talked about how everyone is different and how each body is great!  And I had previously cut out a bajillion faces from magazines and they each cut parts of the faces out to make their own collage..

We had a great time and I think that everyone learned something new about their bodies!:)

Week Two: Dinosaur Camp!!

I am going to try really hard and reference where I got all my ideas, because I want to give credit where credit is due.  If I miss something, we'll just have to chalk it up to human error and my brain being dead today!:)  And these activities are not in the correct order at all.  Not even sure what order I did them in to be honest. :)

I made Dinosaur fossils from a basic salt dough (she did the microwave version, I doubled the recipe and baked it since I did it the day before and had plenty of time...).  Then we rolled it out and squashed dinosaurs and tracks and plants into it...

One of our activities was matching the dinosaurs to their tracks and shapes on the baked dough.  They had a great time and it was a great activity to entertain all in the age span (2 to 7.5 this week).

As one of our snacks, I saw this cute idea to make dinosaur biscuits and I thought that was a great idea, but changed it a bit for me.  I made snickerdoodles (I'll post my mom's recipe sometime) and instead of squashing them with a fork like I normally do, I made this potato stamp and let the kids stamp a T-Rex footprint onto their cookie!!  They loved it!:)

I typically have an independent activity for them to do while we're either waiting for the rest of our friends to arrive or in between activities while I set up, etc.  I really love 3dinosaurs.com and think that they create some wonderful activities for kids, especially pre-k.  So this is the gang doing some dinosaur puzzles that I had found there...

 Another activity was painting some dinosaurs that I had made from plaster.  I did them the day before also because I wasn't sure about setting time...and I wasn't sure I could handle extra helpers...:) 

While half of the kids painted, the other half made dinosaurs and fossils with play dough, then we switched...

 We also did a dinosaur maze and then we drew around that dinosaur what we thought their home would have looked like around them...:)

 Our other snack for the day were Dino Chips!  (Tortilla shells cut into dinosaur shapes with a dino sandwich cutter and then baked for a few minutes.)  I let the kids put cheese on top if they wanted.

We also watched the Dinosaur Train song about dinosaurs A to Z, this video explaining what fossils are and how they form, and a fun Dinosaur Song video as well.

We all had so much fun at Dinosaur Camp this week and can't wait for more adventures next week as we learn more about our bodies and how we can keep them healthy!!:)