F Week

This Week's Work

Letter Formation/Pre-Writing

Tracing the letters with his write and wipe cards.

Practicing writing in his sand box.

Building some Fs with his foam blocks.  (Templates free here)

Q-Tip Painting (from 1+1+1=1)

 Using his Build a Letter Templates and HWWT pieces. First he built the letters on the templates, then he built them by themselves.

 Letter Maze

 I love catching him reading books to himself!

Literacy

Cut and Paste Phonics Hunt

Doing the letter F of the Cut and Past Phonics Hunt.  This was his first time using a glue stick... it was a bit of a challenge.

Doing a couple of pages from Raising Rockstars Kindergarten

Math

Working through our Teddy Bear Counting book with some sorting bears.

Art

Painting some Fs with feathers... as well as just dumping paint on them.

Science

We're still doing our Alphabet in Simple Science, and this week was F for Float!  You can check out the post here.

Sensory Play

Apparently you do not need a sensory tub to have fun with your sensory tools...

 Building towers on his light table.

Preschool Backpack

Here is what was in this week's Preschool Backpack:

Oreo Matching Middles Game

Spelling Puzzles

Template and pieces from his Construction Truck Sort and Match

Word and Picture Puzzles

Worksheets (full list used here)

2 Books for him to read aloud

Just for Fun

This week Xander spent a ton of time playing with his Magnetix!  I didn't interfere, but he spontaneously did lots of sorting and "patterning."  I love watching to see what catches his interest.

Apple Theme

This week we took a short break from our normal routine to do an apple themed week.  I think Xander really liked it!

The week started off with a trip to the apple orchard!  He loved it except for not getting to drive the tractor.

I made just a couple of printables, which you can download here.

Instead of a letter maze, I created a word maze.  He did a pretty good job of using his Do-A-Dot marker to find all the letters in the word "apples."  His Saxoflute pretty much went with him everywhere this week, which is why it is in the picture.

I also made a math worksheet that he completed with his number tiles (not ready to write yet).

Apple Sensory Bin

I made a very simple apple sensory bin.  The base was oatmeal and I threw in some cinnaomon sticks, some acrylic apples (vase fillers), some plastic apples, and a cute little watering can from Michaels. 

Apple Painting

The internet is full of beautiful prints made from apples.  This is not one of them.  He made a big smeary mess.  However, he had fun, so I can't complain too much.

 Doing some apple sequencing puzzles from All Our Days.  He really enjoyed them and asked to do them a few times.

We also got this apple picture puzzle game from the same pack.

Since we had a bunch of apples from the apple orchard, I had Xander help me make apple pie.  I peeled and sliced the apples, and then had him use an apple slicer to cut the sections into smaller pieces.  He had one bowl for apple pieces and one for cores.  He did a wonderful job sorting them.

Pouring them into the pie.

Learning the Life Cycle of an Apple with cards from Preschool Printables.

Not apple themed, but working on a 6 piece puzzle.

Apple Theme Books

He particularly loved Ten Red Apples!

Preschool Backpack

Here is what was in this week's Preschool Backpack:

Craft Stick Pattern Cards

Construction Dry Erase Mazes

Alphabet Spelling Puzzles

Spanish Vocabulary Puzzles

Printable Word Game

Worksheets (full list used here)

2 Books for him to read aloud

This Week's Work

E for Evaporate

See what we did for other letters in the Alphabet in Simple Science.

E for Evaporate

Background

I felt that to be able to understand the concept of evaporation, he needed a little background on Solids, Liquids, and Gases.  I started by reading him States of Matter which does a pretty good job of explaining them clearly.  We read it multiple times (in fact, I like the series so much, I'm planning on getting some of the other books).  Then we went around the house and talked about whether things were solids, liquids, or gases.  The bathroom had a lot of great liquids to explore (soap, lotion, mouthwash, toothpaste, etc).  He's getting pretty good at identifying the differences.

 Evaporation Investigation

Materials:

Plates or cups, water

Procedure:

We used a twisty dropper to squirt just a little bit of water on two plates.  We put one plate inside and one plate outside.  Then we let them sit for a couple of days.  We came back every once in a while to make observations.

The Conversation:

Evaporation is kind of a tough concept for a little guy.  When we first put the water out, I asked him what he thought would happen to it.  He wasn't sure, so I asked if the puddles would get bigger, smaller, or stay the same.  Every time we came back, I asked him what he noticed.  When he said the puddle was smaller or had disappeared, I asked where he thought it had gone.  He was not so sure, so I explained that it evaporated, and that meant it turned into a gas.  I do not like that I had to do so much explaining for him with this investigation, but I figure it was still good early exposure to the concepts.

The water spot had gotten smaller after a day or so.  The plan was to let it sit on the counter until it all evaporated, until Xander sipped up the water from the plate...

Feeling that all the water was gone, even though there was a water spot on the plate.