Reindeer

Today we talked about reindeer.  My son named his hand print reindeer "Cutie" and "Goodie".  Be sure to check out www.reindeercam.com to see live footage of some reindeer and Santa stops by sometimes as well.

I know my posts this season haven't been overly interesting, but around Christmas time we pretty much do the same things each year so to keep my focus on the activities and not blogging so much I will give links for my previous posts.  :)

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Candy Canes

Today we talked about candy canes.  My son was really excited about this topic!

He enjoyed hanging some on our Christmas Tree.

He also enjoyed painting a candy cane green and red.

I didn't take pictures of the rest of our candy cane activities, but you can look at previous posts for the activities and links to them.

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2010

Thanksgiving Preschool Theme

Today was our Thanksgiving Preschool Theme.  We enjoyed reading this printable booklet that you can color as well called "The Story of Thanksgiving". 

I have not been taking many pictures lately, but I do have a great list of resources for a Thanksgiving Theme to share with you.  Here are some wonderful printable packets:

3 Dinosaurs Thanksgiving Pack

1+1+1=1 Thanksgiving Pack

Our Little Monkey's Thanksgiving Tot Pack

Homeschool Creation's Thanksgiving Pack

You can also check out previous Thanksgiving Posts of mine (with more pictures)!

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2013

We most likely will be taking a preschool break next week, but will be back for lots of December fun!

Turkeys

Today we talked about turkeys!

I actually didn't take any pictures today other than the one above with my son and his paper plate turkey, but I have lots of links to share with all kinds of turkey activities.  We did some, but not everything.  There are a lot of fun ideas to go along with this theme. 

A Teaching Mommy's Turkey Pack

Lawteedah's Thanksgiving Tot Pack

Lovely Commotion's Thanksgiving Pack

Kindergarten Fever's Thanksgiving Printable

All Our Day's Thanksgiving Printables

This Reading Mama's Cut it Out turkey printables

Confessions of a Homeschooler's T is for Turkey Printables

Here are some more turkey crafts:

Paper Plate Pop Up Turkey

Turkey Puppet

You can find over 170 turkey crafts at this link

Pattern Block Turkey

Paper Plate Turkey Wreath

You can also check out my turkey post from 2013.

Mail Carrier Preschool Theme

Today we talked about Mail Carriers!

Confessions of a Homeschooler has a Mail Carrier Unit that includes the hat above, the activities pictured below and some others as well.

 We watched this video that describes what a typical day for a mail carrier could be like and issues that they may have to deal with.  This topic is also a nice time to talk about writing letters, your address, and what it takes to mail a letter.

My son helped write a letter for someone and put it in the envelope.  Then when it was stamped and ready to go he dropped it in our mail drop box.  

My son hasn't felt so great the last few days so even though there is a lot more you could do with this fun theme I kept it basic and he had a good time.  Another idea I think is fun is to is to have children sort mail and set up a little post office.  They could sort letters by color or shape or number. 

Family Preschool Theme

Today we talked about one of my the best things in the world, family.

 I helped my son go through pictures of our family members and pick some out to make a collage with.  He enjoyed gluing the pictures onto the small poster board we had and then we hung it in his room.  As we did this we talked about the different members of our family and how each family is different.  Some families have lots of kids, some don't have any, some only live with one parent, some are mostly boys (like ours), some our mostly girls, and so on.

The Little Critter books are a great place to look into books about families.  We read a couple of the ones we own.

We also sang a lot of songs.  Our church's Children's Songbook includes lots of songs about family.  They learned a new song at church this year called, "The Family is of God" and we enjoyed singing that together.  My son knows the chorus pretty well and I helped him on the verses.

Last year we made a family tree and did some other family activities as well.  You can check it out here.

Last night we did this little family craft to hang up for Thanksgiving time.  It is a nice time of year to focus on being thankful for our families.

Pumpkins Preschool Theme!

My favorite Fall Theme is pumpkins!

We went to a pumpkin patch as a family last night so we were all ready to talk about pumpkins the rest of the week.  My older children will be out of school Thursday and Friday so we won't have formal preschool then, but we will be painting our pumpkins.

 Here is my son at the pumpkin patch.  He found a cute little pumpkin that he thought looked just the right size for him.

We measure the pumpkin in all the ways we could think of.  How tall it was, how wide, how long the stem was, and so on.

 My son wanted to roll the pumpkin across the kitchen floor and measure how far it rolled so we did that too.  :)

We love to do "Five Little Pumpkins".  I usually do it once with these visuals and then again and have them do the finger actions and roll around like a pumpkin at the end.

 We talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin using sequencing cards.  I have not been able to locate the link I found these cards at years ago, but this is a fun idea we actually did last year with the pumpkin life cycle.

 There are some really great Pumpkin Packs out there.  Here are a few Confessions of a Homeschooler's Pumpkin Printable Pack.

 1+1+1=1 and  A Teaching Mommy has a pumpkin printable pack.and  also have Pumpkin Printables.

 Lawteedah has a Halloween Kit with pumpkin printables.

3 Dinosaurs also has a free pumpkin printable pack.

My son also enjoys visiting Starfall's website and building his own pumpkin. We also watched this Super Why clip that shows how to spell "pumpkin".

You can check our more ideas from previous years.

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2013

 (there are three parts for 2013 year so be sure to check out the links after this post)

Ghost Preschool Theme

Today we talked about ghosts.  Sometimes you have to embrace the time of year it is and do silly little themes like this just for fun.

 Three Ghost Friends is hand down the number one place to go for all your ghosting activities.  Seriously, it is awesome.  Here are just a couple of the awesome activities in the picture below.  Dressing up your ghost in costumes and ghost shape matching.

I also told my son the story of the "Five Little Ghosts"  they disobey their mother and eat things that aren't white and turn different colors.  Here is one version of the story.

My son traced around a ghost template and made eyes and a mouth with a pen.  I helped him a little with the cutting around of the ghost.  We poke a small hole on the top and put some fishing line through it and we now have a little ghost hanging up.  We used some vellum since it is sturdy, see through, and I had some on hand.  You could use tracing paper or regular white paper.  My son does good imitations of things, doesn't he?  ;)

You can check out our ghost theme from 2012 that I did with my middle son.

You can also check out what we did for our ghost theme in 2013.

Spider Preschool Theme

Today we talked about spiders!

A Teaching Mommy has a fun spider printable pack that includes activities like this life cycle puzzle.

This pack also has a fun game where you "swat the spider" when a letter is named.  Always a hit in our house. 

 This is our spider that we put together when talking about how many legs a spider has.

 Of course, you have to sing "Itsy, Bitsy Spider" and do the actions.  These are also fun visuals to use with the song.

 This is a fun, free printable with a little poem to go with it.

 This is a little spider matching game I made a while ago.

 I have a hard time getting my son to do arts and crafts sometimes so today I just encouraged him to draw a picture of a spider.  I think it turned out pretty cute.

We don't own "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle, but I found this video for my son to watch where a child reads the book.

Posts about spiders in the past can be found in the links below.

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2013

Bats Preschool Theme

Today we talked about bats!

My favorite book about bats is "Stellaluna".  I read this book to my son and then we used these printables to figure out the order that things happened  in.

 This bat flyer is a fun printable that you cut out, fold in the right spots and put a paper clip on it.

The picture at the top shows the bat unfolded and here is my son with him all folded and ready to fly.  He wanted bat ears which is why he has his fingers on top of his head.  :)

 3 Dinosaurs has a Bat and Spider pack.  I used some of the bat activities with my son.

He had to get his bat in on some tracing action.

 Here are some rhyming cards that end in -at.

 Check out my bat themes from previous years.

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2011

Owl Preschool Theme

Today we talked about owls for preschool!  I find this a fun theme to do in the Fall.

 I find this Owl Tot-Pack so cute and it is filled with great activities as well.

Here is one of the activities, matching the shape in the tree with the bird that has the same shape on it's stomach.

 I decided to see how my son did with a simple word search for something different.  It went well.  He found it challenging, but not so difficult that he gave up.  You can print it off for free here.

 We had fun counting to 100 by 10's with these cute owls.

My son is not big into coloring, but he does enjoy making puppets.  I think he really likes playing with them once they are made.  He glued on pieces to a paper bag to make a cute owl and colored a little bit on it.

 The paper bag owl was inspired by this idea.

We also enjoyed some videos about owls.  Here is a video with a song called Ten Little Owls.  This video called Lovely Owls shows different species of owls.

You can check out our 2013 post about Owls and my 2012 post with my middle son.

Totally Tots has a collection of fun owl ideas with the letter O.

If you are looking for more owl craft ideas check out the links below.

Paper Plate Owl

Another Paper Plate Owl Craft

Here is a third Paper Plate Owl Pattern Craft

This site has a few owl crafts