Noah's Ark Preschool Theme

Today we talked about Noah's Ark.

We have the Noah's Ark Little People Play set that is a lot of fun to use for this theme.  To tell the story I used the set.  I hid the animals around the living room.  When it came time for Noah to gather all the animals I had my son find the animals and put them in the ark.  After all the animals were gathered we put Noah and his wife in the ark.  Then we swayed the ark back and forth and used our hands to pretend it was raining.  Then when it was time we let all the animals out and my son found them new "homes".  Of course, he wanted a turn hiding the animals and telling the story too.

I also read Jan Brett's "On Noah's Ark" board book.  It has great illustrations and is not very wordy so it easily keeps small children engaged in the story.

Our main source for the day was from Living Intentionally.  She has a huge Noah's Ark pack that we enjoyed several activities from.

Here my son is drawing a picture of a penguin.

This link has several coloring pages like the one below.

You can find this printable book and more Noah's Ark activities here.

You can find more Noah's Ark ideas here and here.

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

Shared with

The Mitten by Jan Brett

One of our favorite books to read during the winter is The Mitten by Jan Brett.  It is a fun book that I love and my children love too.  If you have never check out Jan Brett's website, it is fun of activities to go along with her wonderful book including the mitten and the animals you see below.

I let my son put the animals in the mitten as we read the story.  Then we went back and he told me which order the animals went into the mitten.

 A fun activity to with this story is a lacing card mitten.

 My son painted a blue mitten for himself.  He enjoys painting so I am trying to pull those out more often.

 Homeschool Share has a great lap book download that I came across and so we did some of those activities as well.

 This is a file folder game I came across and made a few years ago about mittens and matching colors.

1+1=1 has some cute printables to go along with this book as well.

Also you can check out what we did with this story last year and in 2010.

Gingerbread Baby

We read "Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett today.  We have been doing this story with activities since my oldest was nearly 2 (he is about to turn 6).  I try to do one or two different things each year, but they enjoy the core activities so I don't go away from that too much.  In fact, I had to reassure my oldest that we would save the most exciting activities for after he was home from kindergarten.

This year I found a fun Gingerbread Baby Printable Pack by Homeschool Creations.  It included a lot of fun activities including this pattern game, as well as some other fun things.

 This is a little game that I made a while back.  Match the baby gingerbread with the larger gingerbread.

 This year I found some gingerbread marshmallows at the store so we used our larger gingerbread men and my son put the right amount of marshmallows on each man.

 We always decorate gingerbread people to hang on our tree. Click here for the recipe.

 We also make cookies.  We have made gingerbread cookies in the past and no one is a huge fan of them so we make sugar cookies instead.  Then we decorate them.

 The gingerbread house tends to be the main event of the day.  We added one of the gingerbread marshmallows in front of the house so our gingerbread baby could have a house, just like in the book.

Here is a fun file folder matching game.

Jan Brett's website also is a must see for activities for all of her books.  It includes a virtual gingerbread house and some fun videos.

If you are interested in seeing what we've done in previous year's you can check out 2010's here and 2009's here.

Shared with:

Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett

I've been reading this story and doing activities with my oldest since he was 2 so now he expects to do it around Christmas time.  Good thing I think it is fun.  You can see my post of what we did last year here. 

Gathering Time:

Read “Gingerbread Baby” by Jan Brett

Sequence events that happen in the story (felt board pieces)

Sing “Ten Little Gingerbread Babies”

Watch Jan Brett video #1, video #2

Go on a hunt for missing Gingerbread Baby

Focus Activities:

Make gingerbread house (I can never decide if it is better to do a graham cracker house or an actual gingerbread house.  The gingerbread house won this year.)

Make gingerbread ornaments and decorate (1 ½ cups of cinnamon, 1 cup of applesauce, 1/3 cup of glue Mix ingredients together then roll it out and cut out shapes.  It takes up to 24 hours to dry)

Make gingerbread cookies and decorate

Matching Game

Other Possibilities:

Jan Brett virtual gingerbread house

Another virtual gingerbread house

Gingerbread count matching game

RESOURCES:

http://www.janbrett.com

http://www.jennybharris.com

http://www.makinglearningfun.com

Preschool Activities January 25-29, 2010

The Mitten by Jan Brett

Language Arts- Read "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. Have child help the second time using visuals.
Math- Mitten Matching File Folder Game

Science/Cooking- talk about how it can often snow in the winter and about seasons.

Music/Gross Motor- Sing "The Mitten In the Snow"

Art/Fine Motor- Give child paper cut out in a mitten shape and let decorate
Letter "S"



Language Arts- Build a Letter Template S then trace over it with finger


Math- Shoe Ordering: Big shoe to little shoe


Science/Cooking- Sink and Float game


Music/Gross Motor- Sing "I am Like a Star"


Art/Fine Motor- Paper Plate Snake


Snowmen

Language Arts- Snowman Letter Match

Math- Snowman Lacing Card

Science/Cooking- Snowman Snack

Music/Gross Motor- Sing "Once there was a Snowman"
Art/Fine Motor- Make a snowman using cotton balls


White

Language Arts- Name white things we can find around the house

Math- Laundry Time

Science/Cooking- Sugar/Salt Taste comparison

Music/Gross Motor- Sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb"

Art/Fine Motor- provide black paper and use white chalk to draw a picture

Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett

• Read "The Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett
  -use felt board visuals
  -use recipe book (this is just a picture recipe book I made)
• After we read the book I will hide the felt board gingerbread baby and we'll go on a hunt to find him.
• We will make our own gingerbread cookies
• Make a gingerbread house -graham crackers, frosting, candy
• Frost and decorate cookies
  
  • File Folder Matching game (My son decided he wanted a matching card game unstead of the file folder version)
  
  
  My son has literally been asking to do gingerbread stuff since July so we're going to kick off December with that. We're going to divide these activities into two days.
• Make gingerbread baby ornaments
  -1 ½ cups of cinnamon, 1 cup applesauce, 1/3 cup glue
• Make paper bag gingerbread house
  Play with virtual gingerbread houses here and here.