Sklyanders Preschool Theme

We had a Sklyanders theme today.  My son loves to play Skylanders on the Wii.  There is a great collection of printables that you can find here.

Angry Birds

Carisa at 1+1+1 made a really fun kindergarten Angry Bird pack that I thought my son would have a lot of fun doing so that is what we did today.  

 There a lots of great activities in this pack.  I didn't print them all out.  This is a kindergarten pack and while I think my son has moved past a lot of activities in a preschool pack some of the things in a kindergarten pack are still a little above him.

 Here he admires his work.  This activity has you color the picture based on the word.  Red, yellow, white.

 Here is a fun sorting game.  Sort through the birds and pigs.

 This activity is matching up what the word says with the right color of bird.  My son is starting to read pretty well now and was able to do this one his own.  (Yay!)

Then we played with our own Angry Birds that my mother-in-law made my sons.  You can find a tutorial on how to make these and others here.

I love being able to take things that my children are interested in and make them educational and fun!

The Little old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

Today we read The Little Old LAdy Who was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams.  Then we did some fun activities that went along with the book that I found Making Learning Fun.

Food Pyramid: Meat and Beans

We made it through our Food Pyramid lessons.  It was interesting.  I wasn't sure how my children were going to take to it and it was a stretch for me which is part of the reason I wanted to try it.  My oldest son who will be five next month seemed to enjoy each day.  He can't name all of the groups, but he know for example that bread is in the orange group and things like that.  He knows that the green group is the vegetable group and the blue group is the milk group.  My main goal was to try and help my children learn about why we need to eat healthy foods and have candy only on occassion.  My three year old seemed uninterested in this topic.  It could be because he is such a picky eater, but mainly I think he is just too young right now to grasp an abstract topic like this.  He was very disappointed today when he realized we were doing another group in the food pyramid instead of turkeys!

Meat and Beans was a hard group for me to plan for.  I didn't want to just focus on one animal or go into detail of eating these cute little animals they love.  :)  Overall, I don't think today was overly successful except for the peanut butter play dough.  They loved that!

Gathering Time:

Point out where the meat and beans group is on the pyramid

Have pictures of different animals that give us meat and talk about each one

Have a picture of eggs and talk about where we get eggs

Sing  “Beans are good for you”

Focus Activities:

Make chicken nuggets (for dinner)

Coloring page

Peanut Butter Play dough

Make a meat and cheese or peanut butter sandwich (for lunch)

Other Possibilities:

Online games

RESOURCES:

http://www.drpbody.com

http://members.tripod.com

http://www.songsforteaching.com/

www.por4kids.com

Food Pyramid: Milk Group

I decided I wanted to focus on the Food  Pyramid this month and got busy planning, but soon realized I was going to have to cram things in if I also wanted to have some Thanksgiving focused preschool lessons.  I knew that we were going to be out of town for a day and a half this week (yesterday and this morning) so I kept this lesson pretty low-key (or in other words kind of pathetic).  To top it off my boys were a bit uninterested in doing preschool today, but I carried forward anyway.  It's unfortunate because I think this lesson has a lot of potential.  I'll just have to do it again in the future.  :)  That's just life sometimes...

Gathering Time:

Point out the Dairy section on the Food Pyramid

Read “Thank Goodness For Cows”  Booklet

Five Dairy Cows Finger play

Watch Dairy Farm Virtual Tour

Focus Activities:

Dairy Basket

Taste Test different Dairy Products- We ended up only having cheese.

Color the “Thank Goodness for Cows” book- I guess they were worn out from our other coloring activities because they had no interested in coloring this book, but it is a cute book that we used in our Gathering Time as well.

Make own Dairy Cow Finger puppets

Other Possibilities:

Make our own butter

RESOURCES:

http://www.mypyramid.gov

http://www.first-school.ws

http://www.nutritionexplorations.org

http://www.dairyfarmingtoday.org

Food Pyramid: Fruits and Vegetables

Gathering Time:

Point out the fruit and then the vegetables on the food pyramid

Fruit or Vegetable

Surprise Bag

Sing, “Fruits and Vegetables are Good for Me!”

Focus Activities:

Make green smoothies with fruits and vegetables- I can not for the life of me get my 3 year old to even try fruits or vegetables, but he'll drink these.  Today we had spinach, strawberries, a banana, water, honey, and flaxseed oil in it.  I don't measure them generally and you can add other things in it. 

Taste test fruits and veggies

Memory Game –use plastic food to help remember

Seed Packet Memory Game

Other Possibilities:

Online Games

More online Games

Grocery Food Game- My motherin-law gave this to my boys.  Each container has the corresponding fruits or vegetables in them (made out of felt like the tomato on top)  Each label has the name and how many their are.  This would be easy to replicate using clip art if you didn't want or have time to make the felt food.  My boys have a lot of fun with it.

RESOURCES:

http://www.kidssoup.com

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com

http://www.foodchamps.org

http://www.freshforkids.com.au

www.preschoolexpress.com

Food Pyramid: Grains

We will be spending the rest of this week and part of next week focusing on different groups in the Food Pyramid. If you missed our Food Pyramid Overview feel free to check that out.

Gathering Time:

Put up food pyramid and point out the grains

Name some foods in the grain group (show pictures)

Read “The Whole Grain Choo-Choo Train”

Hop, jump, run, and turn like each character in the book

Watch Whole Grains video

Focus Activities:

Bake bread

 

Color the characters from “The Whole Grain Choo-Choo Train”

Taste test different foods from the grain group

Pop popcorn in air popper and have for a snack

Other Possibilities:

 Watch White and Wheat Bread

Watch Pizzanator

Read “The Little Red Hen”

RESOURCES:

http://floridawic.org/

www.pbskids.org

www.starfall.com

Food Pyramid: Overview

I wanted to start teaching my children about why we should eat a variety of healthy foods and have treat only on occassion.  The food pyramid is a bit abstract to teach young children, but I thought I'd take a stab at it.  We are going to focus on different groups in the next couple of weeks.  That should be less abstract since they will be able to see the different foods. 

Gathering Time:

Put blank pyramid up and explain that it is like a triangle (has three sides and corners)

Explain that we have a food pyramid to help us know how much of different kinds of foods to eat.

Put up Food Pyramid (for children) and point out that each color represents different kinds of foods (name each color and food)

Using a Large Pyramid and different pictures of various foods have child pick a food and help them decide which group it belongs in

Have child do something active (run around, jump)

We need food to live and to grow.  The foods that are good for our body we need a lot of because they are going to help us have more energy so we can  do fun things like run and jump without getting tired as fast.

Do a food pyramid memory game

Focus Activities:

Color food pyramid (number code each section with the right color)

Make a healthy food collage

Pyramid People Project

Online Pyramid Game

Other Possibilities:

Watch pyramid video

Make a fruit smoothie (my children LOVE fruit smoothies!)

RESOURCES:

http://www.mypyramid.gov

http://www.fns.usda.gov

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com

http://teachers.net

http://www.foodchamps.org

Leaves

Gathering Time:

Fall Time Poem-  This poem is more about what Fall is than leaves, but it is still fun.  This is one I wrote during my college days. 

"It is Fall time shout Hooray!
It's time to put shorts and swimming suits away.
Fall is the time it starts to turn cold
When snow begins to fall, no one is told.
You'll find many clouds in the sky.
And the cool wind will quickly pass by.
Rain will come but have no fear
This just means winter is near."

Sequencing Leaf Cards

Raking Leaves

Sing, “In the Leafy Treetops”

Leaf Size Sort

Focus Activities:

Go on a nature walk and collect leaves

Leaf Rubbings

Leaf Observation

Leaf Lacing Cards

This are lacing cards I made years ago.  Just make it out of a leaf template and punch holes in for a lacing card!

Other Possible Activities:

Magnet Raking- use real or paper rakes with magnets on them to rake paper leaves that also have magnets attached to them.

Rake leaves

Resources:

http://www.preschoolexpress.com/

http://www.makinglearningfun.com/

http://www.stepbystepcc.com/

http://www.universalpreschool.com/

http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/

Dinosaur Week Continued

There are so many great dinosaur ideas out there!  I think I could spend months on a dinosaur theme and still not do everything I've found out there.  Here are a few of the things I chose to do with my boys.  They love dinosaurs so we had a lot of fun this week!

Gathering Time:


Dotty The Dinosaur story

Dinosaur Finger play

Dinosaurs movement activity

Focus Activities:

Dinosaur file folder game

Hand print Stegosaurus

Categorize types of dinosaurs- plant eaters vs. meat eaters
(using Luigi's new sets of Jumbo Dinosaurs  )

How Big are you? Online game

Other Possible Activities:

Dinosaur Shapes

Play with dinosaur finger puppets

Watch Dinosaur movie

Watch “Dinosaur Train” video clips

Field Guide

RESOURCES:

http://www.preschoolrainbow.org/

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/

http://www.preschoolexpress.com/

http://www.filefolderfun.com/

http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/

http://yellowmums.blogspot.com/

http://www.pbskids.org/