Wind and Insect Release

What a great day to start talking about wind today!  There were gusts of strong wind and some mild wind throughout our class time. We made kites, talked about the letter W and read books about wind.  We learned that wind is made by the hot air going up and the cold are coming underneath it. We played outside flying our kites and running around until the sandbox was just too tempting to stay away from.  We headed inside and learned all about dimes and practiced our songs for our upcoming end of year celebration.

This afternoon we started our day by observing and writing about our now full grown butterflies.  We completed our regular reading lessons and then headed outside to release ladybugs and butterflies.

 We had a great time watching them and holding them, catching the ladybugs again after they flew off our hands and trying to keep them from crawling down shirts, up pants or in hair :).  We spent tons of time with one butterfly who enjoyed a nice long snack of grape juice and everyone that wanted to was able to hold the butterfly on the grape.  It was wonderful!  I'd highly recommend cutting a grape in half and then scoring the inside to see if you can hold the butterfly for a while when releasing.  The other 3 butterflies weren't interested, so it may not work, but we had a good 10 minutes of passing around this one butterfly.

In math today we counted all the way up to 100, but we didn't count normally.  We said each number according to place value.  So we'd say "Six tens, three units. Six tens, four units." and so forth.  I even drew the unit house the tens house on top of the plastic on the hundreds chart occasionally.  I think we had a break through lesson today and I can see the place value number sense kicking in!

Circus and Insects

We had a blast learning the letter E with our Elephants and Circus theme this morning.  We started by playing with blow up elephants, a circus tent, and Starfall on the SmartBoard.  Each child got a turn to get their face painted and had the opportunity to pick through different designs to get one that matched what they wanted.  I love how they all turned out.

 We read books about the circus and choral read "Hiccups for Elephant".  There are many words in that book that your little reader should be able to read to you.  We practiced lifting weights like the letter E and saying /e/.  We did a dot-to-dot alphabet page and learned all about the cone shape.

 This afternoon we started our investigations of the insects we're raising in preschool.  We learned what insects are are pretended to use our finger antenna to smell just like insects.  We read a few books, did some observation of the live insects and then drew pictures and wrote words to match.

 We did our baggy book reading and finished our math booklets.  We drew pictures to represent quantities up to 20.  We also practiced sorting out the first two rows of the 100 chart.  Eventually we'll be able to take all the cards out of the chart and put them back in order!

Caterpillars and Insects

What a fantastic day of school!  We loved talking all about caterpillars today.  We read the letter C book and learned about the stages of a caterpillars life.  We even got to see a live caterpillar thanks to Lil'S bringing in her pet!  We were just like C the Caterpillar in art today.  We cut leaves!  This class needs A LOT of cutting practice and this would be a great activity to do at home this week while it is still warm.  Just head outside with a pair of kid safe scissors and let them cut all the leaves into confetti.  We also learned more about rhyming words today as we came up with rhymes for "at" and "am".  During math today we went outside and practiced "near" and "far".  The kids ran "near Miss Amanda" and "far from Miss Amanda".  They ran back and forth over and over until they were completely exhausted!

 In the afternoon we talked about the letter I and did a shared reading of "The Big Bug Dug".  It had many letters in it that we haven't talked about yet but most words are phonetic and we were able to read the majority of the book with help on a few advanced sight words.  We practiced reading in our reading groups and played the "i Word Machine" on Starfall.com.

 We continued working on graphing today in math.  Today we colored in different graphs.  We also had oodles of fun with the do-a-dot markers and insect stickers during art time!

Insects

For the start of November we're introducing the letter I.  We love talking about insects, who doesn't? So, though most insects are starting to hide from the cold, we're happily playing with plastic bugs of all sorts.  We learn different facts about insects, such as they use their antenna to smell and they have compound eyes.  Imagine a group of preschoolers wearing glittery antenna and "smelling" everything around the room.  It was so fun!  We also got to go on a bug hunt.  Our cute ladybugs had letters and sight words on them.  As we found them we got to read them to the group. Check out our Insects lesson plans for all 43 pages of the printable goodness :)

 We practiced reading our letter I book from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  It's the first really "hard" book that we encounter.  Every page isn't exactly the same anymore and we really have to pay attention to what we're reading.  We also introduce the sight words "I" and "my", which also make the book tricky.  As we were practicing our reading one-on-one the other kids were playing a "Catch those Bugs!" game with tweezers.  They LOVE that game!  Today we also cut, glued and handprinted the letter I insect. Our cutting is really improving!  Keep up the practice at home!

 Throughout November we talk about rhythm in music.  Today was the first day that they got to play with the rhythm sticks and explore playing them fast, slow, loud or quiet.  We also had fun playing with insects in math and exploring a Montessori style insect matching board.

Ladybug Release and Giveaway!

Be sure to scroll all the way down to enter the Ladybug Land Giveaway!

We had such an awesome day today.  Our ladybugs had finally arrived in the mail and we had a friend over for dinner that enjoyed releasing the ladybugs with us.  We first read a book about ladybugs from one of our science reader sets.  All three kids had great questions and were so interested in the details!

 Did you know a ladybug's wings are yellow before they get hard and turn red?  And their dots are the equivalent of freckles on a person.  Each lady bug is different.

 We talked about what ladybugs eat (aphids) and how that is good for our garden because the aphids eat the leaves and plants that we want to eat.  We happen to have a few extra aphids hanging out in our greenhouse on the lettuce right now so we took our bug jars and captured a few.

 Then the ladybugs came out to play.  They can live in your refrigerator for up to 3 months because they can hibernate and live off their body fat.  We decided to dump out about half of the bag and save the other half for our Little Learners - Summer Bugs activity day with our home school group LEARN in August.

 Just a quick tip - if your spritz the ladybugs with a 50/50 water/soda mix it creates a temporary "glue" that makes them unable to fly for a few days.  This way we were able to observe them and then transfer them to the garden where they will make their home instead of flying off right away and leaving our cute little space.

 I love that DH was able to join us.  It's fun to have him participate in the fun activities that we do.

 EMan was constantly brushing ladybugs off his neck and arms.  They were so "tickly" to him and he kept squirming.  So cute!

 Miss Katrina was so nice to take photos for us (she's generally the one behind the camera if I'm in the photograph).  I used the camera though for a few shots to let her get in on the action.  I love the sleeping LittleMiss in the ergo :)

We had a fantastic time learning about and observing our ladybugs.  It was definitely worth the investment and I'll most likely repeat this activity every year.  It's a great science activity and then when we're done they're great for our garden!

Now for the fun stuff!  I have one Ladybug Land to give away.  It comes with an order form to order your very own ladybugs!  Just leave a blog post letting me know who you'd use it with and why you'd be excited to use it.  Then click the enter button below.  You can also like us and share about Little Adventures Preschool on Facebook.  Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Praying Mantis

A number of months ago I ordered seeds for our garden. In their catalog they had two beneficial insects: the lady bug, and the praying mantis. I thought I'd get them because they'd help the garden and the boys would get a kick out of them.

So I also put a mantis kit in my wish list on Amazon so we could watch a few of them grow in our home. Well, I finally ordered it (I needed my cart to make it to $25 so I could order a few arrows - that blasted add on program :). It arrived a day or so ago and has been sitting on the piano. Steve was over by the piano tonight and his eyes got all big and super excited about it. I hadn't shown it to the boys yet since our Mantis eggs won't arrive for a few weeks, but they jumped on it and CJ said, "I want to watch a movie about those!" So, enter YouTube, the perpetual teacher.

Maybe in a few minutes I'll pull out the Praying Mantis book I ordered when I ordered the eggs. I'm sure they'll eat it up.

That, my friends is how you learn without a curriculum.  It's learning for life. Take interests from life, real life, and learn to read, process math, write, grow a garden with beneficial bugs or shoot a bow and arrow.

You'll notice over the next couple of months a few changes coming to the blog.  Thursday's will boast reviews and giveaways.  Be sure to check out the "My First Science Experiments" post coming next Thursday.  There are also giveaways for a subscription to ABCmouse.com, book giveaways, curriculum giveaways, and much more coming soon.  Be sure to follow us on Facebook or by email to stay on top of all the great stuff that will be happening!

You'll also see "Nexus Academy" starting to pop up on the blog.  Nexus Academy is what I've decided to call our homeschooling adventures.  It will take us into the high school years much better than "Little Adventures Preschool" would.  So, Little Adventures Preschool, meet Nexus Academy.  Both preschool and Nexus Academy ideas will be posted here throughout the years to come.

Let me know what types of things would be helpful to you by leaving a comment below.  Together we can educate the next generation of world changers.

Happy Learning!
-Miss Amanda

Tot School Thursday - Pets (and bugs!)

We had such a lovely last day of Tot School Thursday today.  We got to talk all about pets.  First thing this morning we started coloring and putting together our TP roll pets.  Everyone made a dog today.  Some of them ended up as striped dogs and some were left more white because other fun things were happening :)

 We practiced sitting on our green mats and listening to stories.  We read all about pets and practiced petting and gently scratching our stuffed animal pets.

 Then we headed outside for snack time of pretzels and applesauce.

 We learned how to sit on the bug bouncers even though we have little bodies.  It was so fun to watch them play with these!

 Still working on snack...

 We also played with the play-dough and scissors.  Keep practicing those scissor skills at home!

 We learned how to play the bug spray game for the bug party tonight.  We needed to fill up the bugs with water and spray off the bugs on the chalkboard.

 We also got out our sensory activity.  Today we played with water beads.  They are really fun to explore.  They're all squishy and wet yet feel a little like marbles.  I think everyone liked them.

 Ye-ha!

 I tried to get a class picture toward the end of the day but it didn't go so well.  I should have done this first thing before we were tired from the day.  They still are so super cute!  "Cute as a bug" you might say.  I'm so glad I get to have so many of them join me again in the fall.  Have a great summer little ones!