Make Your Own Preschool Morning Board

I had this light bulb moment... maybe I can get the kids into a "school mode" if I engage them with something like this pocket chart to start the day.  Most classrooms start with a circle time and something similar right?  So let's give it a try.  

HOLD THE PHONE!!!  I don't have the money to drop on one of those fancy pantsy pocket charts! $50 for a good one.... $70 for an awesome one.  No way.  I am much too frugal.

So I made my own, (didn't see that coming did ya?  oh, you did?  yeah I figured).

I got a piece of foam poster board and calendar pieces from the Dollar Tree, bulletin board trim for $1 at Target, and a weather wheel for about $.60 on clearance in Walmart (but that is easily DIY too).  

The most expensive part of this was buying velcro for all the calendar pieces.

I covered the board with leftover pieces of felt, piecing together different colors to represent different circle time topics.  

Dark blue on top is all about the day.

Light blue is sight words for the week.  This is an experiment.  Not sure if he is ready for this at 3 1/2, but he's bright, so we'll see how it goes.

Green is for the letter and number of the week.  We will use worksheets from various activity books that correspond to these after we finish with our morning board gathering.

I got sick of cutting velcro squares for every piece, plus the word cards are double sided, so I opted to use clothes pins here...as if you couldn't tell.

The whether wheel is self explanatory.  It's actually my kid's favorite part.  He loves looking out the window and moving the arrow.  I did have to add velcro pieces to the arrow and each "slice" so that gravity would stop declaring every day "snowy".... we've got a heat warning going on here for Pete's sake! 

I used a hot glue gun around the edges of felt, now that it's all said and done I might have used something like Hi-Tack all purpose glue to adhere the entire piece of felt so it doesn't pull away from the board as you remove the velcro pieces from it.

The only thing left to do is decided whether I am going to mount it onto some wall space (shout out to command strips...holla!!!) or attach some ribbon to the top so I can move it around and hang it on door knobs or nails or whatever is nearby in whatever room we find ourselves in.

Now I just hope we use it!

Finding our Homeschool Groove: PART 1- The Home

My husband is too sweet and patient to complain... but I'm pretty sure this is what he's thinking:

Once the weather was nice I decided to makeover the basement playroom so there would be a distinct "classroom" area.  But I never got it totally organized so the kids took it back over as a play area.  In fact, it has become the "construction site"and if I attempt to re-home the blocks and miscellaneous work trucks that have landed in the middle of my classroom, I am thoroughly reprimanded.  Also, the kids are distracted by the play side of the room.  

The living room was toy free for only the briefest of periods.  I had visions a REAL living room... you know- one that looks like adults live there and we're not running some Lord of the Flies type establishment.  (Full disclosure: I have started that book so many times and just can't read it).

Lately though, I've come to the realization is that homeschooling is a lifestyle and our home is inevitably going to reflect that.  While the kids are young and homeschooling is new to us, convenience is going to be the main in factor in deciding the WHERE and HOW of it all.  It happens to be more convenient to transition right from breakfast to an activity with a quick swipe of the dishes in the sink.  It's more convenient to keep tossing toys into the messy playroom and set up lessons and more directed play in the living room.  A morning circle board and the kids art will fill our walls instead of one of those gorgeous Pinterest DIY portrait galleries.

Do I wish we had a room that was solely the school room?  Heck ya I do!  But right now our priorities are to live within the means that will keep me home with the kids so I can learn them good... and that means making the most of our small house; which, in turn, means that any and all available space shall be put to use!

I definitely need to figure out how to best stay organized, and to do that I need to nail down my homeschool style, which I haven't quite done yet.  We have good days, we have bad days.  I am becoming more accepting of the very good possibility that we are un-schoolers,  finding educational opportunities and teaching moments when and wherever they present themselves... yet I find plans and timetables so appealing that I haven't totally given up on trying to find a system that works for us.

Until I have all that figured out (if ever!) I will be constantly moving furniture and supplies from here to there in an attempt to create the best possible (and most fun) learning environment.  In the meantime, I have a couple of great, smart, happy kids... I must be doing something right.

Celebrating the Fourth of July- Popsicle Stick Flags

I bought myself a plan book last week to try and get myself to be more of an organized homeschool mom. I found it challenging to balance the desire to get a lot done, and the danger of overwhelming my little scholars.  As it turns out, it wasn't so hard after all.  

My subject goals for the day where speech/articulation therapy, math, music, and social studies. It seemed like a lot, and I thought it would be a matter of spreading out mini lessons through the entire day, when in actuality we managed to cover it all in the morning by incorporating it into a craft.

I set out popsicle sticks, red and white paint, blue construction paper, star stickers, glue, and an American flag.

So here's the rundown of what we did today:

Speech/articulation therapy: 

Using the words assigned by his SLP, Mr. Three-year-old Chatterbox received a silver star sticker for every correctly articulated word. He added each sticker to a small blue piece of paper to be a part of our flag later. Today he worked on /h/ in the initial position and did GREAT! So proud of the progress he is making.

Sticker play is also a great activity for fine motor skills.  The size of the stickers we used today definitely proved to be a challenge for my boys.

Math: 

We counted the number of red stripes on the flag and the number of white stripes. We counted the number of popsicle sticks in each group before he painted them either red or white. When he had finished painting all his sticks (which turned out to be the hardest part of the morning... for whatever reason the kids were anti-mess today, go figure!) we put glue on a larger piece of construction paper for him to mirror the ABAB type pattern (in this case red, white, red, white) of the flag's stripes. He did great with the pattern, better actually than I thought he would based on previous attempts at recognizing patterns.  And when telling Daddy about his day and showing off his art at dinner he used the word "pattern" which made me very happy.

Once all his popsicle stick stripes were in place he added the blue paper with stars from his speech work.

Social Studies: 

During the morning's activities, I explained that the flag was a symbol to represent the country we live in. I also mentioned the significance of the 50 stars and the 13 stripes, but I didn't expect this to resonate with him at all, nor did it. My goal was to start teaching him the pledge of allegiance line by line throughout the week. So far I have met resistance to this, but we can give it another shot before bed (oh the beauty of an open homeschool schedule!)

Music & Movement: 

After finishing our popsicle flag craft, the boys and I marched through the house waving flags and singing God Bless America. Only the 1.5 year old appreciated my singing and "sang" along... in fact, he wouldn't let me stop.

The little big kid is already too cool for me and wanted me to "stop that! just march" (which, by the way, adds gross motor activity to the list of areas we covered today!)

Mud Art

One messy, squishy Saturday I invited my kids to Get Dirty.

While they were enjoying their sensory play with mud, I invited them to create some art that would further demonstrate the physical properties of mud.

I put out some construction paper for them to splatter with mud.  They got to see what happened they dropped mud, threw mud, and stamped the paper with their muddy hands.  A great visual element to their sensory play.

Even the dog "helped".

While the art sat in the sun, they got to see the mud dry and become dirt once more.

What, exactly, do you DO with mud art?  Hang it in the mud room of course!!!!

LINKING UP AT

Playing With Worms

Playing with mud in the backyard on a gorgeous Saturday, we came upon some worms.  

Big ol' worms just loving life in the compost pile!

Sensory discovery ensued...

The worms were cool, and slimy, and dirty, and tickley in our palms.  

Some moved fast, some slow.  

They changed shape as the moved- from fat and short, to long and thin.

So proud of my kids for being down with worms.  I loved digging for worms as a kid... and I still get a little too excited when we find a big one.

We've found worms before, but never really spent time exploring and playing with them in this scale.  Smarty Pants 3 Year Old and I talked about how worms eat dirt and make tunnels that are good for the plants.

I felt secretly kind of sad for the worms as the kids dropped them into a container to take on their first ever fishing trip.  But I was honest with them about what we were doing with the worms... a little Circle of Life/Food Chain lesson.  And the next day they had no problem seeing their friends from the yard put on a hook for the fish.

Go on...Get Messy!

We were playing in the yard this weekend, and one thing led to another... we made a mud table.

I always promised myself I wouldn't be a mother who would shy away from a mess.  But lately I have been doing just that.  At the playground, after a rainstorm, my poor kid looked on longingly while the other kids were practically swimming through the sand box.  As grossed out as I was, I felt bad that I could just not commit to the mess at that moment. 

So on a day when there was nothing else we had to do, and a leaky hose making puddles and muddy patches in the yard anyway.... I invited the boys to GET DIRTY!

It was funny to see them hesitate at first.  I had to dig on in and give it a squeeze and a squish...even hand some over to them to get them started.  They soon got the hang of it as, I knew they would.

Elements of Sensory Exploration:

• Scoop and pour dirt into a bucket. We had some great dirt to use from our composted leaves.
• Explore the texture of the dirt.  Slightly moist, crumbly, sifts through fingers.
• More pouring, this time into shallow water. Added more dirt/water and observed the changes.
• More texture exploration, this time of the mud.  Squishy and schloppy and wet, doesn't sift through fingers, sometimes moldable. Pour it, rake it, pound it!
• Wash away mud in clear water.  The water becomes more and more dirty...hmmmm interesting observation kiddos!
• Talk about it.  We chatted about what happened to our dirt, and how rain makes our whole yard muddy!

We also turned our mud play into MUD ART!

And had some interesting sensory playmates... WORMS!!!!

This post is linking up at:

Book Activity - The Bridge is Up

Is that hell freezing over????!!!!!!

Oh no... wait...it's just the world's worst blogger throwing up a post... phew! Close one!

It's been about a million years since I've been on here, and since then the kids have grown into little giants, gotten way too smart for me, and racked up quite a few fines at the library!

Homeschooling Ryan Gosling

If you haven't died laughing on this site...do so now.  Oh man! hilarious!

OK, Back to business.

So we got all payed up with our bookies (aka librarians) and checked out a few books.  

My plan was to get a bunch of Donald Crews books since we read one of his books at our playgroup, my kiddo was upset we couldn't take it home, we have loved his books in the past, and pinterest has opened my eyes to the wonderful activity possibilities to go along with his simple books.

In addition to the D.Crews books we grabbed, the adorable one and a half year old who is at this very moment slapping my arm and shouting "Mommmmmmyyyyyyy!!!!!" pulled this book off the shelf.  Quite the score.

"The Bridge is Up" - by Babs Bell

Ignoring my mother's last words of cleaning advice as she walked out the door, I sat down with the boys to read this book.  After reading it together once, I left the big one to read it to himself as he requested, while I got some trucks together so we could do a more large scale reading together.  I mean, it was so simple and my kids love playing with trucks, how could I not?!

The text in the book is so simple and repetitive that both kids were able to "read along" and tell me which vehicle was next.  It was also great for some at-home articulation work, especially practicing those /k/ and /g/ consonant sounds, which are my 3 year old's bane.  Giving him something he loves (trucks and cars), and a physical task (queuing them up to wait for the bridge), makes him more willing to correct the sounds he is making without putting up a fight and giving up on me.

I want my kids to love reading as much as I do, (Ok, maybe not as much....lets be honest, I'm borderline suicidal when I finish a good book! "It rips my life away but it's a great escape....escaaaape." Ten bonus points if you can name that song), so I'm excited to find more and more books that lend easily to play and crafting ideas.  Which if you think about it, is just about every book.  And once again I avoided housework. 

What's that about kids not remembering how clean the house was, but how much time I spent with them and how much fun we had, yada yada yada.... That line better be true.  I'm totally banking on it!