Halloween Fun Giveaway

With Halloween approaching I like to include some Halloween fun without talking gory talk! We keep it simple and fun! Not scary at all. At our house we do the Halloween thing but to my kids that is dressing up in a character that is not scary and go get candy. We do not celebrate the real meaning of Halloween.

So this year I came up with my Halloween Learning Pack. It is simple fun and can be used as alternative activities to the normal day activities. 

This is a 30 page Learning Pack filled with spooky fun just for Halloween! 

Activities include:

Haunted House Color by Number

Make a Pumpkin

Make a Monster

Writing Prompts

Counting Circle

Three Part Puzzles

Alphabet Match

Candy Corn Counting

Memory

What's Missing

Size Sort Pumpkins

Shape Ghosts

Color Candy Sorting

Book Summary

 You will notice a few old activities from my Halloween Tot Kit (no longer free) and a bunch of new fun activities! 

You can get it HERE and I hope you all enjoy this fun learning pack!

For a little fun, post a comment and Tomorrow 10/12, I will pick 2 winners randomly!

Circle Time Journal

We have started school officially today! 

I wanted to share a little about what we started today with focusing on our Circle Time. 

This is where we start our day. We sing songs, read a book, do Calendar, talk about our focuses of the day such as Letter, Number, Color, and Shape. And we have one focus on a topic, like today's was "What makes you special?" and we talk about it. 

To go along with our Circle Time I wanted something that would help prolong this time just a little bit and to also reiterate on our key points of the week. 

Each day after Circle Time.

He will start with writing his name at the top. 

( I am pretty proud of where he is with this as he has never done this before)

Next we determine what we had just said was the Day of the Week and he colors in the appropriate rectangle. 

Then I write the month as he is not at that point yet and he fills in the number of the date for that day. 

Then we discuss what our letter, number, color, and shape of the week are and he fills them in on each box on the paper. 

Then we discuss what we talked about was the weather outside and he colors in the square that goes with the weather that day. 

Here is the final page from today. 

I have the pages printed and hole punched to fit in a binder with the cover that is in the printable I will share below. 

This will be a daily journal that we can look back on and review with at the end of the year. 

You can get these printables for free HERE or HERE.

I know there are many versions of these printables out there but I needed to make something that went with our Circle Time exactly so I hope you all Enjoy this printable! 

Classroom Pictures!!!

I am thrilled to say our schoolroom is complete except for our Art wall which will come as he completes art work! 

I have been working on this room since before Summer. 

Now on to the pictures! 

When you walk through the doorway this is what you see.

My desk and planning area.

Here is a bit of a better picture of my area. The area above my desk is our Art Wall.

To the right of my desk this is what you see.

Our bulletin board, Numbers 1-30, Colors, Table from IKEA, Our Trofast System from IKEA and Word Wall.

To the right of the Word Wall is our Ordinal Numbers at the top, Schedule below that and our Calendar in the orange square.

Just to the right of that and on the left side of the door are our shapes.

 

 And between the entrance door and bathroom door is our Alphabet and Geography area on those white boards, and the bin on the bottom is our Sensory Bin.

I am in love with our room and can't wait to start our Curriculum on Monday as we are ready to go now!

Hey Diddle Diddle Nursery Rhyme Preschool Pack

It has been awhile since I have made a preschool pack. This pack is not near as big as my usual ones as we are only using it as a mini-unit this year. I am introducing nursery rhymes to Dylan one a month or so as he memorizes them. Our first one is Hey Diddle Diddle. So I figured a nice set of printables would go great with it to help with his memory and to keep the key parts fresh to him.

The pack contains nine pages.

Included:

Nursery Rhyme Page

Alphabet Letters

Numbers

Prewriting Practice

Patterns

Tracing Letters C and D

Which One is Different?

You Can Download it HERE or over at Teachers Pay Teachers for Free

Enjoy!

School Supply Table Top Caddy

This is another thing I found on Pinterest and knew it was something I had to have in our school room. I like that it keeps all the important supplies within arms reach.

What you need:

1 Lazy Susan

4 or more tin buckets (check Target’s dollar spot)

Screws or Magnets to hold the tin buckets down.

And a drill or a handy man to help

 

My Lazy Susan that we bought was brown and would not go with our school room so first up I painted it with primer and white spray paint.

Once dry I place my tin buckets on to get an idea on how many would fit and placement so my husband could screw them on.

Once I had them where I wanted them my husband screwed them into place. (note: make sure your screws aren’t to long because they will go through all the way. Trust me.)

Once that is done add your supplies and give it a spin. Just not too hard as you don’t want crayons and markers everywhere!

Can’t wait to see what Dylan thinks of this being on our table and so easy for him to access the supplies he needs so easily.

Do you have one of these? If so share! I love seeing what others do to spiff things up!

Colored Rice

I have seen this many times but always sat and wondered is this something I really want to do. How messy is it going to be to make and then what kind of mess will my kids make out of it in the end that I will have to clean up? Putting those thoughts aside I decided the experience and the things Dylan will get out of it for school are much more important. So this weekend I went ahead and bought a 20 pound bag of white rice. Yes I am sure people at Wal-Mart thought I was crazy and wondering if I thought there was going to be a famine of some sorts soon. I grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and gallon size Ziplocs as well. Then headed to Hobby Lobby to get some of the good food colorings as I wanted some pretty bright colors.

I have no actual recipe to this experience as I basically squeezed the bottle of alcohol three times. Squeezed the food coloring four times and added four to five cups of rice at a time. I did this process two times per color as I had a ton of rice to cover. I mixed it all together in the Ziploc bag and shook it like crazy! Note to self make sure you zip them closed or you may end up with rice everywhere. Luckily I caught myself before I had food coloring everywhere. Once you have all the rice covered from shaking, you lay it out on a pan or like I did on paper towels and it dries pretty quick.

Then I just added it to some shoebox sized totes that I had. And I will pull it out when it is Sensory bin time.

The end process was great and it wasn’t messy at all to make as long as you can keep the kids out of it as you are making it.

Now I have to decide if I am going to mix it all together or use the rice over several sensory bins over the next year.

Alphabet and Number Poster

As I have said in the past few posts I am working on redoing our school room before we start in the middle of August. So as I create things for our classroom I am sharing them here for anyone that wants to use them. 

This week I worked on a couple of posters or what some will call pictures. I had seen huge walls of alphabet letters which was my inspiration but since I don't have that much room I went with a simple poster instead. 

Download the posters HERE

The posters are 8x10 so you can print them at home or like I am going to do have them printed at our local Walmart. Then I will frame them to go on our school room wall! You will see them in our classroom preview in just a few weeks! 

Hope you enjoy them! 

Target Dollar Spot Again!

We headed to Target again today as we were getting my oldest his school supplies for public school. I of course can't go without checking out the Dollar Spot. There is always stuff in there I need. So I grabbed a few things for Dylan for this upcoming year. 

I grabbed a new Alphabet Puzzles, Alphabet Flashcards, Number Flashcards, Color and Shape Flashcards, and a couple sets of Foam Alphabet and Number Stickers!

If you haven't been to your local Target now is the time to stock up on fun new learning supplies for cheap and that you kids will love! 

Check out the background in this picture to get a hint of what color our new school room is! 

Be back tomorrow with a couple new printables! 

Thanksgiving Preschool Add- on

I wanted to make something that I could put with my Thanksgiving Tot Kit which can be found HERE. 

So I made a Preschool Add-on.

You can download it HERE


Printables included:

• Thanksgiving Book Summary
• Thanksgiving Cutting Practice
• Thanksgiving Lacing Card
• Turkey Maze
• Turkey Prewriting Practice
• Thanksgiving Roll and Graph
• Thanksgiving Silhouette Match

Enjoy!

Tot School

(Dylan is 41 months)

Last week for school we focused on the letter C, Number 2, Color red, Directional words like over and under, and Animals and their young. 

 Letter C coloring sheet.

Number 2 coloring sheet.

Directional word worksheet. He had to circle the things that are over the rainbow a certain color as well as circle the things below in a different color.

Working on his animal worksheet. We talked about the different names of the baby animals.

 Dylan coloring his red worksheets.

We have also taken a field trip to our local zoo. Dylan got to hold a bird for the first time!

The meerkats.

The red panda's in the tree

Dylan loved the chimpanzee was hiding under a bag. 

We also got to see the new baby elephant.

And the boys enjoyed getting to see what the animals in the Herpetarium eat. 

We had a great week!

Color of the Week: Yellow

Here is our 2nd color of the week worksheets!

This weeks color is Yellow!

 

 (click image)

Enjoy!

Halloween Counting PowerPoint

I know its only September but I just got Microsoft Office and since it has PowerPoint I had to give it a go! 

So I went with a Halloween theme that will match up with my Halloween Tot Kit

You can get the PowerPoint HERE

I hope you all enjoy the PowerPoint and would love to hear your feedback so please leave a comment if you liked it. If I get a good feedback I will be working on more!

Dylans 3 yr old Goals for 2011-2012 School Year

 This year I will only have one kiddo to school at home. Austin is starting Kindergarten at the public school down the street. Of course he will still have some stuff at home we will work on but his school stuff will most likely not be posted on here as much (maybe every now and then). So Dylan will get my sole attention the 2 hours Austin is gone each day! These are my goals for teaching Dylan this year. Some are the same as last year but that's because some of his goals weren't met as he just wasn't interested. This year we will focus more on the sit down and actually do the work until we finish as he will be in Pre-K at the public school the following year and I want him prepared. We will most likely still go the Tot Trays route but when he chooses a tray he will have to finish the activity first before he goes on to a 2nd tray.

Learning through play and fun is the route we are taking again this year.

Circle Time

• Opening Song
• Movement Activity
• Read a Book
• Daily Focus Learning Activity
• Days of the Week Song
• Calendar Time
• Weather

Alphabet

• Letter of the Week
• Alphabet learning toys
• Do A Dot Alphabet Pages

Number

• 1-10
• Counting in Order
• Number Puzzles

Shapes

• Focus on  8 Basic Shapes ( Square, Rectangle, Oval, Circle, Heart, Diamond, Star and Triangle)
• Shape Puzzles
• Shape Viewers

Colors

• Review Colors (Red, Blue, Purple, Yellow, Green, Brown, Black, Orange)
• Color Puzzles
• Color Sorting
• Color Bears
• Coloring with certain colors at one time

Art Projects

• Various Art Projects

Gross Motor Skills

• Hops on both feet together
• Marches
• Hops on one foot
• Catches a ball

Fine Motor Skills

• Scribble and Draw Circles
• Painting
• Cutting /Tearing
• Gluing
• Opening and Closing Objects
• Puzzles
• Pinching Objects between fingers/ Clothespins

Themes

1. Bugs
2. Human Body
3. Ocean
4. Seasons
5. Weather
6. Magnets
7. Farm Life
8. Candy
9. Birds
10. Transportation
11. Astronaut
12. Monster Truck
13. Pond Life
14. Batman
15. Peter Pan
16. Doctor & Nurse
17. Toy Story
18. Fireman
19. Policeman
20. Pirate
21. Nativity/ Christmas
22. Thanksgiving
23. Valentine

Others will be added as we progress into the school year

Sensory Bins (these will match our theme)

Field Trips ( Austin will be included in these)

• Zoo
• Miniature Golf
• Bowling
• Science Museum

I may add to this throughout the school year! 

This was kind of bittersweet as it's my last year planning for homeschool stuff and most likely the last year of this blog :-( makes me sad as I love connecting with the people I've met through homeschooling!

So here's to another great year!

Putt Putt Preschool Pack

This week for our Summer Fun Theme we are doing Putt Putt Mini Golf theme stuff.  

I made my first Preschool Pack to go with our theme.

 (click image to download)
 
 Includes:

Flashcards

Letter S and G Tracing Papers

Letter S and G Playdough Mats

Prewriting  Practice

Roll and Graph

Color Sorting Golf Balls

Which One Doesn't Belong?

Shape Tracers

Maze

Color by Number

 Cutting Practice

Word Matching - cut the Words from the pictures and help your child match the pictures and words
Word Tracers

Enjoy!

clipart from JW Illustrations

How to Teach Series Part #4

Gross Motor Skills

Gross Motor Skills are skills that improve the large muscles in the body.

Here are several activities to help with Gross Motor Skills

• Balancing- Draw a line on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk and have them try to stay on the line. Using a curb will also help or gardening edging would work as well. 
• Dancing- We like to play dance freeze here. I play music and they dance and when the music goes off we freeze. You can also do things like hokey pokey and songs like that.
• Obstacle Course- Make an obstacle course where they have to climb over things go under things you can even through in balancing and other fun things!
• Swimming- Kicking their legs in the pool and using their arms to swim is great for building muscles.
• Playing Pretend- Waddle like a duck, gallop like a horse, stiff legged robots, soaring like planes. 
• Riding a Tricycle, scooter, ride on toys
• Throwing and catching a ball
• Playing tag, follow the leader, red light green light, simon says, duck duck goose.
• Swinging, sliding, running, climbing, and jumping.

These are all really good for Gross Motor Skills!

If you can think of anymore leave a comment to share with everyone!

Next Tuesday we will go through how to teach Numbers.

Number's 11 - 20 Tracing Papers

Can now be bought in a set with numbers 1-20 HERE

This set contains number 11-20 tracing papers only! 

If you are looking for Numbers 1-10 you can find them HERE

Enjoy!

Number Mats 11-20

I was asked if I had any printables that were for numbers 11- 20. So I had been meaning to get these done! Here is the 2nd set of my number mats that cover 11-20.

(click image to download)

This set only has 5 pages as I love to conserve paper in any way I can. So just print them and cut in half.

If you are looking for Numbers 1-10 Number Mats you can find them HERE

Enjoy!

How to Teach Series Part #1

 

I had this idea and figured it'd be a great resource for homeschoolers. And since I won't be on as much for the next 2 to 3 weeks as my mom is flying in to spend time with us. I figured I'd start this now and space some posts out for while I'm offline.

So the first part of my series is going to focus on the Alphabet. It will cover letter sounds, identifying letters, how to write letters, and fun techniques for teaching letters.

Identifying Letters

• Letter of the Week Activities - you can either buy the whole curriculum at once from COAH or under her Alphabet tab find each letter separately!
• Letter Coloring Sheets
• Letter Color by Numbers

 

Letter Sounds

• At out house we have a song for learning letter sounds. We kinda make up what word we use for each letter each time but it starts a-a-apple, b-b-ball, c-c-cat, d-d-dog, and so on just make up the word as you do it. Its fun for the kids and they don't even realize they are learning the sounds.

• We also just say the letter and sound with a word that begins when we have a letter of focus.

Writing Letters

• Letter Tracing worksheets
• Letter Writing Salt Box
• Letter Builders- uppercase- lowercase

Curriculum that focuses on Letters

• Raising Rock Stars Preschool
• Tot School Printables

Fun Letter Activities

• Alphabet Crafts
• Play-dough Letters
• Letter Collages
• Alphabet Do-A-Dot Pictures- Letters A-M, N-Z

Alphabet Movies

Several movies and show my boys love are what I am linking to.

I am sure there are plenty of great alphabet movies out there!

Leapfrog Letter Factory

Welcome to Word World (this is how Austin learned his letters)

_______________________________________________________________________________

The rest of the series will cover numbers, unit studies, science, getting ready to read, math, life skills, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, circle time.

See ya in a few days with another part of this series!

Easter Tot Kit

I promise I haven't abandoned my blog even though its been 2 weeks since I've posted. I honestly didn't realize it had been that long! Life has been so busy that the computer just hasn't been priority, I'm sure we all get like this from time to time. I'm working on scheduling blog time in and hope to be better about getting on here and posting more.

So that being said I have a new Tot Kit for Easter!

(click image to download)

Included in the Kit

• Flower Color Match- Match the top of the flower to the stem with the matching colored word.
• 3 Part Puzzles
• Silhouette Match
• Egg Shape Match- Match the egg with the shape to the shape word.
• Lacing Card
• Alphabet Tracers
• Chicken Numbers 1-20
• Size Sort

Hope your children will enjoy this fun addition for Easter! 

Enjoy!

clipart from JW Illustrations

Unit Study: Farm Life

April we will be focusing on Farming and Farm Life. We will cover animals and the names of their baby animals, We will discuss the animals habitats. Work on naming the animals on a farm. Discuss the Farmers role in Farming and upkeep of their Farm. We will also do a few crafts along with the Unit.

You can buy it HERE

clipart from JW Illustrations

The Unit Printables are

• Baby Animal Match Up- Match the baby animal to the mommy
  
• 3 Part Puzzles
• Flashcards with traceable words
• Farm Songs- Old MacDonald Had a Farm, BINGO
  
• and 2 Crafts:

1. Make a Farm Scene- Print the farm scene pages, Cut them out. Then on a Blue construction paper glue some green grass( green construction paper) to the bottom. Then have the child glue the pieces of their farm on. 
2. Pig in the Mud- Print the Pig on card stock so it will be sturdy. Then allow your child to paint with brown paint to create mud on the pig. You could also allow them to paint with chocolate pudding for fun!

Ideas for Teaching about the Farm

• Talk with your child about the animals and ask them what they think the habitat for that animal would look like. This would be a great drawing/ art activity as you could supply them with drawing paper and crayons to draw the animals habitat as you showed them the Flash cards above in the Unit.

• Discuss the Farmers role on the farm. That he feeds the animals. And he has a garden that he takes care of. Supply them with a small cup and a little potting soil and some seeds. Allow them to be the farmer and plant their own small garden. Remind them that they need to water it and make sure its in the sun on a daily basis as needed. And you could even chart the growth if you have older children.

• Make a Sensory bin. Include items like Easter Grass Filler, Corn Kernels, Beans, Oats, Plastic Farm Animals, Easter Eggs, Include a small shovel and bucket for pretending to scoop feed.

Snack Time Ideas

• Make Pigs in a Blanket
• Haystack Cookies: You'll need graham crackers, Chocolate Squares( Hershey's candy bar or something similar), marshmallows, and chow mein noodles. Let child place a Graham Cracker at the bottom then chocolate square, marshmallow and top with chow mein noodles. Microwave for about 16 seconds. Then Enjoy!

Other Items to incorporate in the Unit

 

Enjoy and Have fun learning about the Farm!