Our new two week unit for April 10th-April 23rd will be based on the book The Little Rabbit by Phoebe Dunn
This is our first unit that will be covering a holiday so I am experimenting a little. The first week from April 10th-April 16th will be mostly covering Easter related activities, and the second week from April 17th-April 23rd will be covering Spring. I'm sure there will be some overlap between the weeks because we have a few Easter activities to attend to outside of totschool. This is sure to be a fun unit!
We are going to be doing some Peep STEM experiemtns (super excited about this!!), painting with our plastic eggs, lots of bunny hopping (gross motor skills for the win!), and of course, hiding and finding eggs!
Next week we are going to be talking about birds (we have so many robins around!), worms (for the birds, of course), and we will be doing a kite counting activity, and practicing arranging flowers in a vase.
Stay tuned, I should have the shelf work post up in a few days!
Time to do a conclusion post for Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom. It's crazy how fast two weeks goes!
We have been so busy these past two weeks working on our independent skills, and basic self care. We've also been super busy doing our shelf work, and playing with our grocery sensory bin. We didn't get to any art that was related to the story this week, unfortunately. The weather has been much nicer so we've spent a lot of time playing outside. I do have some fun art projects planned for next week though!
Let's get on with our hits and misses for this unit.
As for the activities E wasn't as interested in, definitely patterns still. She wasn't as thrilled with this story either, so I might be making a few more changes to our curriculum so as not to include any more BFIAR books that she hasn't already been acquainted with. I think that was why our Brown Bear unit was such a hit, because she loves that story. I know she will enjoy ALL of our summer units, so I am super excited about that.
I decided to keep our sensory bin easy and mess free this week so E can pull it out and play whenever she wants to. This was probably a good idea since keeping her play food in a container for a whole two weeks has probably drove her crazy (she LOVES to play with her kitchen set).
I used the printable from here (as seen in our shelf work post). I have most of the pieces in play food to go along with the printout but not all, so we just skipped the ones we didn't have. I would call out a food for E to find in her box, and she would find it. Very simple! Then I let her cross it off her list, like I do at the grocery store.
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This was a great exercise for her to learn a few new vocabulary words (hotdog turned out to be her favorite new word!), but it was also a fun i-spy type game as well. You can watch us play with it in the video below:
E is just in the beginning stages of learning her alphabet. I thought this would be a fun matching game for our next few units (The Little Rabbit, and The Carrot Seed).
I didn't take pictures during the entire process, but I will best describe how I created our carrot patch alphabet board. I used two packs of these paper carrots that were purchased for $1 a piece from the Target dollars spot.
I wrote the alphabet, in capital letters, on the leafy green tops of each carrot. Using a blue poster board (the largest size I could find at Hobby Lobby, this kind was also a bit thicker than the kinds you find at Walgreens, etc) I created a carrot patch. I folded a brown piece of construction paper in half lengthwise, then cut 1 inch off on one side (to create a pocket with a larger piece in the back. I glued my 'dirt' pockets to the poster board and ta-da! Carrot patch!
I went ahead and wrote the whole alphabet in the 'dirt' so that E could match the carrots correctly. If you have an older child, this definitely isn't necessary. But, like I said earlier, E is just in the beginning process of learning her letters so this will make it easier for her to put them in the correct order.
In my introduction post to Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? I explained that we would be covering a few different topics for this unit. I'll group our shelf work together by these topics. The first is healthy eating. In the book, Jesse Bear is shown eating his lunch, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about healthy eating. We are mostly focusing on fruits and vegetables because there are more of them to discuss than grains, dairy, etc, but we will also touch on the other various food groups.
Watch the video to see the activities in action!
Fruit and Vegetables Poster
I created these two posters that I positioned near our shelf work. I realize some people will argue with me over my choice in vegetables, as some are technically fruits. I took a culinary approach to it, and consider many of these to be vegetables (as in what we use for cooking), despite them having seeds. If you would like a copy of these, let me know in the comments below or email me at stayathomewithus@gmail.com and I will send them to you. 😊
Apple Counting
Apples are one of E's favorite fruits so I knew I had to incorporate them into this unit. This printable came from here. It is a black and white printable that I colored, and laminated. I am trying to teach E to count to five so we are pretending the pom poms are apples. I often sing "Way Up High in the Apple Tree":
Way up high in the apple tree
Five little apples smiled at me;
I shook the tree as hard as I could,
Down came the apples,
Mmm, they were good!
It keeps E interested and entertained. There is a cute fingerplay associated with the rhyme, if you would rather do that than using manipulatives to count apples.
Fruit Graphing
This printable came from here. She has a link in her profile to her drop box where you can find her printables. I used a brad and a bent paperclip to create the spinner, E spins the spinner and then we stick a colored dot in the corresponding square. This is great for dexterity since it takes practice to get the sticker in the right spot. I bought my stickers for $1 at Dollar Tree.
Fruit Sorting
I cut small colored circles out of construction paper and stuck them inside of a muffin tin. Using E's play food, she has to sort the fruit by color into their respective cup. This is great because it's also reinforcing colors, which we learned in our last unit.
Fruit and Vegetable Match
Printable can be found here. The idea is to hide the small cut apart squares in a sensory bin and then attach them to the control sheet. I might try to do this with E later, but for now we're just using it as a matching game, I am using it to for vocabulary and color recognition.
Fruit and Vegetable Do-a-Dot Pages
We are using the grapes, apple, and carrot pages found here. I made some pom pom magnets by hot gluing pom poms onto some thick round magnets, so we are using those this week instead of do-a-dot markers. This way E can do this activity as often as she likes. I have to say, this is a HUGE hit so far.
Preschool Workbook Sheets
Both of these pages are taken out of our preschool workbook. The first is a scene from a grocery store. I am going to point out items E doesn't know, and have her tell me the ones she does. Then we'll point them out to each other when we go to the real grocery store. The page on the right, E is going to name the fruits, the colors they are, and color them.
Preschool Worksheets
The page on the left is from our preschool workbook. We are going to have a teddy bear picnic this week and talk about what food we want to bring with us. We'll draw lines from the food to the basket and talk about how cake is a sometimes food. The page on the right is from here. It is a grocery list scavenger hunt. My plan is to use it at home with our play food for a recognition tool. I think E will get a kick out of it, since she loves to 'read' my list at the store.
Putting Away Groceries Activity
Printable from here. This comes with a sheet for the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. It also comes with a printable set of foods to sort, but I opted to cut mine out of our local grocery ads because I wanted food E would recognize, that we typically purchase. I laminated the pieces and stuck magnet tape to the back. This is also a good practical life activity, E is able to practice (with my help, of course) figuring out where food goes. She loves to help me put away groceries so this activity has been great!
This next set of activities go along with our 'all about me' theme.
Girl/Boy Sorting
Got the idea for this from Sorting Sprinkles blog. The idea is to sort the pictures (cut from a catalog, so she doesn't know these kids, so it's a bit harder) into girls and boys.
Tooth/Mouth Activity
My spacing on these dots is terrible, but the idea is to glue marshmallows (to resemble teeth) onto the pink dots. We will also use this as a counting activity. But mostly we are talking about our mouth, tongue, teeth and basic dental hygiene (ironic since we are using marshmallows, eh?)
Betty Boo Boo Magnet Sheet
Printable from here. I stuck this to a baking sheet, and laminated the bandaids + stuck on a magnet so this would be of added interest to E. I call out a body part that needs a bandaid and E sticks it in the right spot. You can see above that the bandaid is on an elbow and knee. This is to work on our body part recognition.
Counting Bear Patterns
Saved from last week. Colored counting bears used to create patterns.
Button Shape Matching
Also saved from last week. Shape flashcards are from Dollar Tree, they are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. E has to match the color and shape buttons to the corresponding flashcard. I kept this in the mix for this unit because there are shapes on Jesse Bear's carpet. Also, shapes are still pretty new to E.
And of course, these last few activities are to go along with our book.
3-Part Cards
These next three printables are from here. Same concept we have been using, some of these words are new to E this week so hopefully she is able to master them. In a few months I plan to start cutting the word cards apart, as E starts to recognize more letters.
Tracing Sheet
Always working on correct marker holding techniques and practicing our straight lines.
Pattern Page
E is getting really good at pointing out the patterns, so hopefully she will be able to do this activity on her own soon. Yay!
Melissa and Doug Wooden Bear Dress Up Puzzle
I bought mine from Amazon. I was hesitant to purchase this, but E has been having a lot of fun with it so far. As I mention in my video, I think it would be easier to write a M on the back of Mama Bear pieces, B on Baby Bear, and P or D on Papa Bear. E gets frustrated when she can't figure out which bear the pieces go on, and she doesn't keep them organized in the box very well. But other than that, she keeps wanting me to help her dress her bears. 😅
Hope you enjoyed our activities for this week! Make sure you check back soon to see our art projects, sensory bin, and practical life skills that we are working on with this unit!
Hi there! Welcome to my introduction post on our new two week unit: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom.
This is one of the books to make it into our reading pile that was on the Before Five in a Row list. Let me confess something: I had not heard of this book before I started researching BFIAR. I also bought this on blind faith that it would make a good unit for our curriculum based on the book summary and reviews. So this is one of the few books we will be working on that E does not have any prior knowledge of (we hadn't read Ask. Mr. Bear either). So I am hoping this will catch her attention.
This is a book that can go in so many different ways as far as a 'theme' goes. For us, we are going to be focusing on a few points these next two weeks.
First, we are going to be working on our independent life skills, and care of self. These baskets/activities will not be part of our regular shelf work, but will be incorporated into our every day routines. I am going to start making it a point to have items more easily accessible to E so she can work on her independence.
As far as 'schooling' goes, we are going to be working on an 'all about me' theme. This means, working on naming more body parts (she already knows a good amount of them), practicing saying our name, and recognizing it written. Learning about healthy eating (this will probably be a bulk of our vocabulary as well), exercise and gross motor skills (using our body), we will also discuss weather a little bit (this is a separate theme for later) and what to wear during different types of weather and seasons.
I think this is a good time for us to do this unit, E has shown a lot more willingness to learn about chores and is always trying to help, so I think this will be a good fit for her. Stay tuned for my video/post on our shelf work.
I am going to miss this unit! It has been so fun exploring colors with E these past two weeks and really hit home for me why I am doing this for her. She went from knowing a few colors at the beginning of the unit, to learning all of her primary and secondary colors (plus black, white and pink). More importantly, she had fun learning!
Lets talk about our favorite activities and our least favorite (I try to keep it real here!).
I was very lucky that we didn't have too many fails this week. E was less than impressed by stringing beads on pipe cleaners, and our pattern pages are still a bit over her head. I still think they are good practice for her though, so they will keep coming up. I just don't push them much yet. I let her explore on her own after I show her what she is supposed to do. She'll get there, and I am so proud of her this week!
