E preschool ideas

We sat down with some books and looked for things that started with the letter E.  Then we made a list of them.  Here is a rundown of some of the words we found:

• elephant
• eagle
• egg
• earring
• envelope
• eel
• electricity
• easter
• elmo

We read: Where's Elmo? A peek-a-boo book, Easy Street, The dumb Bunnies' Easter, and The best mistake ever!  We took a walk after reading Easy Street, to the construction area, and looked at how they make a road.  We talked about sequencing by discussing how the men first smooth dirt, second they smooth gravel, third they smooth the asphalt, and fourth they paint the lines. 
With The best mistake Ever!, we discussed what foods are healthy and which ones are junk food. 

 We did two crafts with construction paper.  We made an Elmo with red, white, and orange construction paper, and a hand print elephant with ink and a black marker.  First we pushed my daughter's hand into an ink pad until all her fingers were covered and then we pushed her hand, palm down onto the construction paper.  The trunk is made from her thumb, while the legs come from her fingers. 


Then we practiced writing big letter E.  First I wrote the letter with a highlighter and my daughter traced over it.

Story Spinners Writing Contest

The Ontario Community Library is hosting it's 5th annual writing contest.  Both my school aged girls are excited to enter the contest, because, the grand prize..... is a Kindle.  I figure if they are encouraged to write a story through bribery, it is o.k. with me. 
The theme this year is: A Library Memory, and can be fictional or not.  Both my girls are opting for the fictional aspect.  Ask your kids what their favorite library moment is.  Share it with us in the comments below.  We would love to hear what kinds of things you do at your public library. 

Dinasour Preschool Activities

Since we are focusing on the letter "D" this week, we had to discuss dinosaurs.  Almost every preschool child I know loves dinosaurs.

1. We put together a giant floor puzzle.

 

  2.  We read a couple books, My first Dinosaur touch and Feel and Dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles. The book on the right belonged to my husband when he was a little boy and we enjoy looking at all the pictures he drew inside.

 

3. We even wrote our own story fashioned after the stories written by Laura Numeroff.  She has written several books, one we recently checked out at the library was, If you give a Pig a Party.  This is a great activity for teaching sequencing.   

Our Story:

If you give a dinosaur a Danish

If you give a dinasour a danish...

he will want a glass of milk to go with it.  When you bring him into the kitchen and get him the milk,

he will dip the danish in the milk and gobble it up.

 

But, he will accidentally spill the milk because his arms are so tiny. 

Then he will ask you for a napkin.  When he see's the napkin he will remember that he also needs to clean up in dinosaur-ville.  He will go back to dinosaur-ville and help all the dinosaurs clean up.

 

Try making your own stories up.  It can be a lot of fun.

4.  We also made patterns using the Melissa and Doug dinosaur stamps. For example, blue triceratops, red spike tail, blue triceratops, red spike tail.  What comes next?

Fall

It's preschool time for my little one.  We looked into a local one, but it cost way too much money, and this is my last year at home with her before she heads off to kindergarten.  They grow up too fast, so I decided to do my own preschool.  I have a degree and access to the local library where we go for craft and story time and some interaction with other kids. 

This week is Letter D.  We are going to have "dog" day.  Read stories like Dogerella, Go Dog Go, What is love Bisquit?, and Dr. Suess ABC.
Practice writing the letter D with washable markers and a clear plastic protective sheet over tracing pages. 
Sing silly songs.  And of course cooking day.  Where we will try to make donuts. 

Hippopotamus birthday cake!

My daughter is hippo crazy! So I came up with this cute pond for a hippo to lounge in, complete with grass near the shore. The only problem was when we lit the candles. The heat from the flames started to curl the grass and I was afraid we might catch it on fire, but all was well when the birthday girl blew out the candles! Good thing we sang extra fast. If you plan to use this idea, please be very careful with flames near plastic grass.

Mineral Point

We took the girls on a hike called Mineral Point. It was a 4 mile round trip hike which I thought my girls could handle. Only, I didn't plan on the wasp sting that LuLu got, on her neck, about one and a quarter mile into the hike. I wanted to see what mineral point was and ran until I got to this sign. I thought once we got to Mineral Point we would see Lost Lake. This sign states that Lost lake is still 3 1/2 miles from Mineral Point. I realized at that point we will have to give the trail to Lost Lake a try another time.

This trail was very fun and scenic. We went through patches of red cedar trees and then back out to the ridge where we could see Lake Pend Oreille.

Near the parking area is a location for camping and this beautiful beach.

New City

We moved to a city that has three grocery stores (not counting that big box store whose name I can't mention).  The dog was allowed to come with us.  The cat on the other hand was left in the caring hands of a good friend.  My husband thinks we should just sneak the cat here.  The town is on a lake, a big one.  Here we are at Garfield Bay, but without any lasagna or Odie.  We unpacked out belongings, met some of the neighbors, went swimming, hiking, biking, and got the kids enrolled and started at a new school.  I'm proud to be back in the potato state!

Sunny Baudelaire

My daughter went through a stage where she bit things. Random things, like the foam in her bike helmet, the nose on her stuffed elephant, and the Magic Eraser? What kid bites magic erasers? It reminded me of Sunny Baudelaire from the series written by Lemony Snicket. If you have a grade school aged youngster, these books may interest you, but "If you are interested in reading a book with a happy ending, you would be better off reading some other book." After reading the books we enjoyed the hilarious movie, where Jim Carey plays Count Olaf.

Swirling in terminology.

I need respite from the vast lexicon required for taking the GRE. Words like syncopated, venal, unstinting, sinuous, promulgate, and insipid are taking up space on my i-pod. I am too lethargic to deselect my podclass files. The girls are taking swimming lessons, we drive daily to town and on the way home, stop at the orchard to pick cherries. I feel relieved to have my test out of the way, but wish that I had a couple more months of preperation under my belt before I took it.

Here's to lovely summer evenings, I hope yours are great. Wouldn't it be fun to make a chair like this?

My First 5k!

I entered the local 4th of July 5k run. It was such a great run and my daughter joined me too! My man was kind enough to be my paparazzi. The course was down to the Columbia River and back. The weather was gorgeous. Here's wishing you all a spectacular 4th of July.