Letter I/Igloo Preschool Theme

 Today we talked about the letter I and igloos!

The main source that I used for this theme came from 1+1+1=1 with her letter I igloo printables. These are some of the great activities including in the pack of printables.

We also made an igloo.  My son had a great time cutting pieces of white paper and gluing them on to a page.  I drew some lines to make an igloo and he pasted the pieces of paper in those lines.  Then he wrote a letter I over the top. I got this idea here.

We enjoyed watching these video clips about igloos that you can find here and here.

Here are some other links to igloo and the letter I ideas from Pocket Full of Posies and from Totally Tots.

Now I am ready for some warmer topics.  Haha.

Letter B/Bear Snores On

Today we talked about the letter B and read "Bear Snores On" by Karma Wilson.

"Bear Snores On" is a favorite bear book in our house.  Making Learning Fun has some cute printables to go along with the story.  My bear printed out with purple stripes because I was low on ink, but they work great.  We went through the book and I had my son point out all the letter b's he could find.

3 Dinosaurs has a printable pack to go along with this book.

Most of our activities for today came from 1+1=1.

My son really enjoyed cutting out some bears and pasting them to a letter b.

We also did a letter B bear craft.

Polar Bears Preschool Theme

 Today we talked about polar bears.  Since we talked about the letter p last time and I plan on talking about the letter b next time with bears I thought polar bears was a nice way to link them together.

We learned about polar bears by reading "National Geographic Kids Polar Bears". We also visited National Geographic Kids website to see some facts and watch some videos on polar bears.

We did this little activity.  There are more you can find at www.kidssoup.com.  You can also find this cute movement activity to do with your preschool here.

This Polar Lands printable preschool pack has some cute polar bear activities included in it.

I came across this free printable of a long list of sight words with cute polar bears pictured with the words.  I know my son doesn't know too many words, but I printed them off anyway and we had fun seeing what he knew.  He actually read 26 of them much to my surprise and he had fun doing it.

This is a cute idea using facts about polar bears and what a polar bear's foot print might look like.  I asked my son to remember some things that he learned about polar bears and we wrote them down.  The first thing he remembered is that they are good swimmers.  The second thing he remembered is that they like to play.

Since we don't own the cute book "Polar Bear, Polar Bear.  What do you see?"  I found a video of it for us to watch.

We also visited www.wegivebooks.org and read "The Three Snow Bears" by Jan Brett.

Then we made a little polar bear using my son's hand print, white paint, and blue construction paper.

Letter P/Penguin Preschool Theme

Today we talked about the letter P and penguins!

We have some penguin lovers in our house especially my kindergartener, but my preschooler also enjoys them as well.  We read "National Geographic Kids Penguins!" book.  All of their books have fun pictures, great facts that are easy for kids to understand, and even jokes.

We also look through a Zoo Book magazine about penguins.  The magazines are geared toward older kids, but there are some fun pictures throughout and it helped us remember things we learned about in the other book.

We also read this online book about penguins on Starfall.  This is even more basic than the previous two sources so if you have a pretty small audience or one just not interested in penguins then it is a great one. We also did the letter p things on Starfall while we were there.

Here is a fun coloring page about penguins and the letter P.

Here is an entire printable pack P is for Penguins that includes another cute coloring page pictured below.

2 Teaching Mommies has a Polar Lands pack with fun penguin printables like these below.

It also includes this fun "Feed the Penguin" activity.  Instead of actual feeding the penguin I made some word strips with some basic sight words and the names of our family members for my son to read as he "fed" the penguin.  I have noticed that he recognizes a lot of words that I have never taught him so it is fun to see what he knows.

The words I used were basic like, "to", "the", "see", "go" to name a few.

Here is a pattern for a penguin mask craft.  Ours looks a little different.  We started making it and my son thought it was kind of creepy so we don't have a beak or any of the extras and decided to do something else instead. I did get him to use the mask long enough for a picture.

 A couple of years ago I made an edible penguin with my middle son I when the mask wasn't working out I decided to do that again with things I had on hand.  I didn't have the exact things on hand as I did before, but some of the same things.  Last time I used a hershey kiss for the head.  This time I used a rolo for the head, oreo for the body, and starburst for the feet and beak.

Here is a close up of the edible penguin.

National Geographic's website has this fun little online game as well as videos of penguins that we explored as well.

You can also check out our penguin activities from 2011 and from 2012.

Letter S/ Snowman Preschool Theme

We are going to go through the alphabet again, but this time we will not be going in order.  Today we talked about the letter S and snowman!

There are a lot of fun activities to go along with a snowman theme.  We reviewed the sound the letter S makes and did several activities from Confessions of a Homeschoolers Letter S Snowman Pack.

We read "Snowman All Year" and since we do not own that book I read it online to my son through wegivebooks.org.  We also sang a favorite song, "Once There Was a Snowman" several times.  Here is a video of the song that I made in 2012 if you want to learn it.

Here is a fun freebie book that your child can color and help you read.

We also did a version of this name snowman that you can see here. I didn't want one so big so I cut out smaller circles and my son wrote the letters of his name on each circle.   Then he glued them onto a piece of paper.  He thought that tracing his hands to make stick like snowman arms was a good idea so I helped him do that.  It kind of makes the snowman look angel like, but I don't care because it was his idea and I think it is great to see that creativity come out.

We saw the new Disney movie Frozen at Thanksgiving time and we all loved it.  I came across this Olaf Snowman and new my son would get a big kick out of making his own.  I cut it out and he glued it on some paper.

We also watched the cute song that Olaf sings about summer time from the movie and talked about how snow melts when the weather gets warm.

Here are some more snow and snowman ideas:

123 Homeschool 4 Me has a Snowman Pack

2 Teaching Mommies has a snow and ice pack

Make your own snowman with shaving cream

Make a snowman with marshmallows

The Mitten Preschool Theme

Today we read "The Mitten" by Jan Brett.  It is a favorite Winter-time book to read at our house.

My favorite thing to do is to have a white mitten printed out with all the animals and as I read the book I have my son put the animals inside the mitten one by one. You can find this printable as well as many other on Jan Brett's website.

Here are a few other things from her website.

My son had fun doing a mitten lacing card that I made a few years ago.

Homeschool Creations has an entire printable pack devoted to this book like this tracing page shown below.

Preschool Printables has this fun mitten color matching file folder game.

Homeschool Share has a lapbook that goes with this book.  I didn't make a lapbook, but this activity is including in the printables.

If you are looking for more inspiration for this book you can check out what we did in 2012, 2011, and 2010.  You can also see 1+1=1 for some story props and activities. Teaching Heart also has quite the collection of Mitten ideas.

Gingerbread Activities

One of our annual activities this time of year is reading Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett and doing activities to go along with it.  She also has another gingerbread themed book called Gingerbread Friends. The first stop to make is to Jan Brett's website.  She has coloring pages, videos, and other activities to go along with all of her books and she even has some visuals you can print off to go with the Gingerbread Baby.

One of our favorite activities is making gingerbread men ornaments to hang on the tree.  You can do them any shape, but the brown color makes them look gingerbread like.  Mix together 1 1/2 cups of cinnamon, 1 cup of applesauce and 1/3 cup glue.  Roll it out and cut out your shapes.  Place them on a cooling rack and allow them to cool for 24 hours.  I always do it the day before we read the book.

 I have noticed the more you play with it the smoother it looks.  You can see cracks in my shape because this was one of the first ones I cut out.  Don't forget to put a hole somewhere if you are wanting to hang it on the tree!

 I like to buy glitter glue to use on these fellows.  It is way less messy than regular glitter and good fine motor practice.

Here are some of the gingerbread men we made.   They are drying and will be put on the tree tomorrow.

We also enjoy decorating cookies.  However, since none of my kids or husband like gingerbread cookies that much I usually make sugar cookies to decorate.

The other big thing we make are gingerbread houses.  At the end of this story the main character makes a gingerbread house for the baby to live in so we make our own too.  We did a little village I found on sale this year, but I found this graham cracker house with directions I would like to try sometime.  

We also did some other gingerbread related activities.

Here is a link to a coloring page of a gingerbread man and one of a gingerbread girl.

There is a couple of coloring page packets here and one of them has a gingerbread house.

We've also enjoyed Homeschool Creations Gingerbread Baby Lap book (although I haven't put it together as a lap book) Here are a couple of activities from there.

Here is a file folder gingerbread matching game.

Here is a fun gingerbread house word hunt

Gingerbread Counting Game

Virtual gingerbread house #1 and #2

You can also check out my previous gingerbread posts.  2011, 2010, 2009

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Penguins

We talked about Penguins today.  We went over the life cycle of a penguin.  You can find the printable we used here.

We practiced waddling like penguins.

 We did this fun dot-to-dot.  You can find it at Making Learning Fun.

 We did this fun coloring page that also had you practice writing the letter "P".

 This is a penguin maze that we found in 2 Teaching Mommies Polar Land Pack.

 Then we decided to make a little treat in the shape of a penguin.  This wasn't a previously planned activity so I just looked around the house for things we could use on hand (my husband is a candy junkie).

 Here is a close up of it.  We took a part an oreo.  I cut one of the sides in half so we could have wings.  Then we put a hershey kiss on top for the head and cut an orange startburst up and used it for the feet.  My son thought it was great.

"March of the Penguins" or "Happy Feet" are fun penguin movies to watch as well.