Friday, September 25, 2020

Fall Preschool Week

 This week we took a break from our regular letter themed preschool activities to spend some time on fall activities. Unfortunately, a lot of what we did was read fall books (many many more than pictured) and that doesn't exactly photograph well or lend itself to posting. I posted what I could.

Desk area set up. His little shelf had a bunch of fall books and I hung some artwork above.
Fall theme shape "leaves" stamping trees for Preschool
Shape Trees to use with his stamps (free to print here)
Fall stampers and a tree outline.
I got out our fall sight words from last year and scattered them around the floor. We took turns picking them up, saying the word and running them to a basket. (free to print here)
Fall tractor sensory play with apples, pumpkins and leaves
Cloud dough (shaving cream and cornstarch) play
Fall tractor sensory play with apples, pumpkins and leaves
Fall sensory bin of bird seed, leaves, pumpkins, apples and sticks.
Oobleck play with a tractor, pumpkins and apples.
Similar sensory bin with oatmeal. He played with his animals in it.
We made some birdseed ornaments together.

Pumpkin pie playdough invitation to play
Pumpkin spice play dough with leaves, apples, pumpkins, apples and cookie cutters. He also used his little squirrel to make tracks all through the dough.
Playroom shelves this week. I used Magna-Tiles to make apples. I also put out a turkey, fox, squirrel and bear out.

Shelves on the left had Acorn Soup, Pom Pom "bushes," color sorting food, bead tree, a puzzle, apple tree roll and cover, disk sorting, a wooden plane set and a basket of cars.
Mommy fail: I had this cute idea to make apple trees with toilet paper tubes, pom poms and Velcro dots. When I tested it, the pom pom stuck to the Velcro. Fast forward to setting it up and the pom poms kept falling off! I guess I didn't test well enough, oops.
So as not to waste the materials, we now have apple "bushes?" With a one to one correspondence activity.
Fall leaves pipe cleaner fine motor activity
Pipe cleaner tree with pony beads.

Shape matching (free from Totschooling)
Fall vocabulary cards (free to print here). We hadn't really looked at these since last year, so I was glad he still knew all the words.




Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Exotic Birds Vocabulary Cards


Since we're using a flamingo theme for the letter F in our preschool activities, it was the perfect time to make some new Exotic Birds vocabulary cards. I used the birds from the Exotic Bird Toob, with a couple others. You can use them without the toys, though (as we will since we do not currently own that Toob)! You can read about how we use our vocabulary cards and print other cards for free on my Vocabulary Card Page.


 

Friday, September 18, 2020

Letter E - Elephant Week

These are our homeschool preschool activities for the Letter E and Elephants week. Archer was 27 months. You can see our full "curriculum" post here, but we will only use some activities each week. The majority of his time is still unstructured play.
This was his desk setup. I hung some bulletin board letters, some E/Elephant printables (from 1+1+1=1), a sign language card (from And Next Comes L) and his art from the week. The shelf had a letter construction capital and lowercase letters, a peg letter, an Alphabet Readers, a Meet the Phonics Letter Readers and a Letter D wooden train car.
His "Preschool Basket," had a magnetic tracing board, his Brain Games activity book (we just talk through together), My First Brain Questdry erase tracing cards, sandpaper letters and lots of books. 

I'm trying to include readers to read together, but also books about the week's letter or animal. We had an Animal Antics Reader, a First Little Readers book, a sight words reader and a book about elephants.
This was his shelf set up in the playroom. I used Magnatiles to make an E on his white board and added some magnetic letters. On top I have his Alphabet Soup Can,  his preschool basket and some elephant figurines.

Shelves on the left had dominoes and pattern cards, geometric solids, Elefun and a safari truck. Shelves on the right had beginner spelling cards, a safari puzzle, a shape/size sorting puzzle,  (something in a basket I can't remember), magnetic pattern blocks and a basket of cars.
Pattern block elephant. We used magnetic pattern blocks on our magnetic easel, because he seems to like that much better than doing these activities horizontal. He did it mostly himself, with some repositioning help from me.
Cut and Paste Phonics Hunt. He's getting more confident with glue, but still tends to glue everything on top of each other. I have to help him spread them out.
Alphabet sensory bin. Alphabet noodle base, toy elephants, cookie cutters, lacing letters and a wooden letter.
For play dough, we used cookie cutters and a letter stamper (similar to these) as well as a play dough stamping page for him (free to print here).
Letter Clipping Activity (free to print here). He likes the dolphin clips better than the regular ones, so we're sticking with them.
Letter maze (free to print here). Still a favorite. As soon as he finishes, he starts asking for the next letter (this week he asked for F), which means he has some idea of alphabetical order.
Letter construction (From Tired Need Sleep)
Letter sorting. He did ok, but still needed a little help.
Bottle cap page. He doesn't put the letters on in order (which drives Xander bonkers), but he gets them all in the correct place, so I'm happy with it. (Free to print here)
Once again, we used magnetic bingo chips for the dot page (free to print here). He really likes counting them as he puts them on the dots.
I have learned I'm not allowed to skip the number cards, because he asks for them. However, I didn't think to check to make sure I had all 0-10. Apparently, when I did this with Xander, I only made printed 0-5. He did them, but he was not happy I didn't have a card for every number.
Various E puzzles. I wasn't sure how he would do with the baby/mama elephant one because it is irregularly shaped. With only a tiny bit coaching and no physical help, he was able to do it. I think he liked it because he immediately did it again.
Beginner spelling cards. I only got out a few cards and the corresponding letters. I helped him sound out the words and he did great finding the letters. I'll definitely be getting these out more often.
Magnetic alphabet tracing board. This has been a favorite for a while.
Dominoes and pattern cards. No action shots this time.
I don't usually include pictures, but we're still using his magnetic calendar. He knows all of the days and months, but gets frustrated that the weather and season don't chance more. Sometimes he puts in random seasons or weather, just for fun.
Sometimes learning at home just means snuggling up in bed with a pile of books (in this case all of his Mighty Machines books).

See other Alphabet Posts:


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