Frog Unit

This spring we are doing several mini units. One of the first I wanted to do was frogs, and I had even bought the books I wanted so we could get started. What I hadn't planned on was my dear friend Michelle dropping off over a hundred tadpoles, and making our fun unit fabulous!

Here is a close up of what our tadpoles looked like when we first got them back on March 25th. They had just hatched from their eggs the day before this picture.

 

Here is what they look like today (April 22,) almost a month later! They have grown a ton but no little legs yet!

Right now they eat lettuce that we washed, cut up, and froze. Here Naomi is chopping them up some fresh lettuce to freeze.

I'm not big on having pets, so both kids have been particularly thrilled and fascinated by the tadpoles. They love to feed them and then watch them eat.

 

Here both kids are doing their "work". If you check out my Frogs Page on Pinterest, you will see links to some great YouTube videos, and frog learning sites and printables.

 

Here is a close up of the site Naomi was on about frogs. It taught all about a frog's life cycle, and then had some games to reinforce the concepts. It was great!

 

I found a template online I used to make the pieces of a felt frog.  The purpose was to illustrate the stages of a frog's life cycle. It went from egg, to tadpole, to froglet, and finally frog. I had NO IDEA how much Naomi would LOVE this! She had so much fun telling the story of "A Life of A Frog" and did it over and over again. What great storytelling practice, and reinforcement of the concept and vocabulary terms!

 

The picture on the left is the froglet since it still has it's tail, and the one on the right is the mature frog. The piece of blue felt is supposed to be the pond. ;)

 

Here Naomi is doing the felt frog again. This picture of her was too cute not to post! For some reason I can't get videos to upload on here or I would have posted her telling her frog story! Check my wall on Facebook as I will try to upload it there instead.

 

This was another simple thing that we ended up doing over and over again. It was mostly for Nathan but Naomi had fun with it too. I just printed off 5 frogs, and had the kids pretend that our pocket chart was a log, and the the hamper a pool. Then we sang "5 Green and Speckled Frogs" and practiced counting forwards and backwards to 5, by having the frogs jump from the log into the pool. Simple, but they LOVED it!

 

Nathan also had fun putting the "pool" on his head and running around in circles. hehehe

 

We used the same frogs and pocket chart for Naomi to practice her ordinal numbers.

 

Here is a peek at some of the frog themed pages we did.

 

We watched several videos on YouTube of frogs eating bugs. The kids were fascinated by their long, quick tongues. Here they got to try eating like a frog! I put a Velcro dot on the end of this party blower, and then cut up some little bits of felt to make "flies".

 

They thought this was hilarious!!! They both took turns "eating" flies until the blower finally broke. It was fun, and I don't think either of them will forget anytime soon how a frog catches its food!

 

 The average frog can jump 20 times its body length in a single hop. Using the frogs we made for a craft, we counted 20 lengths of the frogs body, and then measured it. Naomi was very impressed with a frogs jumping ability!

 

 Then I got out two of our carpet squares, and we pretended they were lily pads. We started off with them right beside each other, and then jumped from lily pad to lily pad.With each jump we moved them a little bit farther apart, and measured the distance. All was good, and we were having fun, until....

 

Naomi realized she couldn't jump as far as a frog. Then she cried. My daughter isn't competitive, nope, not at all, especially not with a paper plate frog.... What can I say, she comes by it honestly! ;) She got over it fairly quickly and we moved on to something else. That was the end of jumping like a frog though. *grins*

 

Here are the paper plate frogs the kids made. I think they turned out so cute! They are from DLTK and you can find the link to them, and everything else on my Frog Page on Pinterest.

 

Here is a peek at our tadpoles new home. We moved them to this bigger bin with rocks, so they would have something to climb up on to once their legs grow. I will try to post pictures when they turn into frogs!

We really enjoyed our week on frogs, and I felt like we all learned a lot! In addition to the things I showed, we read a lot of stories about frogs. We read "The Frog Prince" and many of the books from the "Froggy" series that we have. There were also many stories about frogs that Naomi listened to on the "Tales 2 Go" app I have on my phone. We LOVE that app and we all enjoyed the variety of frog stories. This was a fun mini unit and I'm pleased with the large number of subjects were were able to include in it. Until the next time!

Karla

Alphabet Eggs

Now that Nathan is older, there is no way that he wants to miss out on the fun when Naomi and I do "school". I put school in quotes because really, with as much fun as we have, it seems almost wrong to call it school! :-) I DO call it school though, especially the fun stuff, because I want the kids to have a very positive attitude towards school, and who doesn't love doing hands on things and having fun? Anyways, I digress!

Since Nathan wants to do school with us, I make a big effort to always have something ready for him to do as well. One of my very favorite sites, No Time For Flashcards, is starting a new series called "Alphabet for Starters". I am THRILLED because I know the type of activities they come up with will be tons of fun, and perfect for where Nathan is at. Here is the first post in the series, and as soon as I saw it, I knew we had to do it! Here is what we did.

First I got some of our larger Easter eggs, and filled 8 of them with the magnetic letters from our Leapfrog fridge set. Then I put them in this cute bucket, and put it on a cookie sheet so they would stick to the tray. Since letters are pretty new to Nathan I added the device the letters go into so he could hear the names of the letters from it and from me.

I added in one sweet boy, and he got right to work opening up the eggs. Opening up the eggs is a great workout for their little fingers too!

 

As soon as he opened up an egg, he put the letter in the box to  hear what it was. He could get them in but as you can see by his frown, it took a little concentration!

 

He liked hearing what letter it was, but then he quickly wanted to move to hearing the ABC song again, as you can see by him pushing that button.

 

Nathan enjoyed this so much that we're going to do it again, only I'm going to put some of our different shapes in it. I want to end this by saying in no way did I drill Nathan on his letters, or do I think that is appropriate for a 22 month old! This was a fun activity that gave he and I something special to do together, and was a great way to expose him to some letters. We talked about the letters as he opened the eggs, and moved them around on the tray, but that was it. Fun and exposure it what I think it's all about at this stage!

Karla

Resurrection Eggs - Day 1

On Tuesday we opened our first Resurrection Egg! If you are not familiar with Resurrection Eggs, here is a quick run down. Basically, they are a dozen plastic eggs, each filled with some type of item that is a reminder of the Easter story. The first egg has a donkey to remind us of Palm Sunday, and Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The second egg has some coins, to remind us of Judas taking the 30 coins to betray Jesus, and on it goes! I just ordered them here from Amazon. If you want to make your own Resurrection Eggs, you can go here to get some free printables. They are not expensive, and to me, well worth the cost to have the real items the kids can feel in each egg. In addition to the eggs, comes a little devotional with what scripture to read with each egg, and discussion ideas. We are already on egg/day #4, but I thought I would share what we did on the first day so you could get an idea of the types of things we are doing each day leading up to Easter!

Here Naomi was getting ready to open the first egg. She was VERY excited!

You can't really see it, but in the first egg was a little donkey. We happened to have a book about the donkey Jesus borrowed, so we read that too. We also learned a song about Palm Sunday! I didn't get a video to post here, but I will try to put one up on Facebook.

Here the kids are cutting out the palm branches to make a path for Jesus to Jerusalem. We aren't doing crafts to go with the eggs every day, but this one we couldn't pass up! Naomi did the cutting, and Nathan did a lot of the gluing, with help from sister too! I was pleased how nicely they worked together on this.

They were very proud of their finished work!

A close up of the finished product. I got the idea for this from Christian Preschool Printables. I have a love/hate relationship with this site. I LOVE it because they have tons of great ideas and free printables. I hate it because it's hard to find anything, and I think that the graphics they use are creepy. I would give you the exact link for this craft but (shock!) I can't find it on their site again!

Here the kids are playing a counting game using the dice. They would roll the dice, and then stamp that many palm leaves on the path to Jerusalem. Nathan just stamped wherever he wanted, but they both still liked it! I got this printable, and tons of great discussion ideas from 2 Teaching Mommies. Be sure to check out their ideas for resurrection eggs!

The kids LOVE opening these eggs each day, and this has provided us with lots of great discussion opportunities. The activities we've been doing to go along with have been so much fun too. I love how this has really kept us focused on the true meaning of Easter.

Karla

4 Easy Easter Crafts

I didn't get any shots of us actually doing the crafts, but here is the finished products! These were four, easy Easter crafts we did, that the kids really enjoyed. Just click on the link below the picture to find detailed instructions on how to make them!

Paper plate chicks! I think these turned out cute, and were perfect for even Nathan to make. I got the idea from here!

I love Easter Eggs, so these were perfect because we could leave them up for several weeks without worrying about them spoiling! I got the idea from this post at No Time For Flash Cards (my new favorite site!), and modified it to accommodate the supplies I had. Naomi decided on her own to do a pattern with her pompoms, and Nathan had fun just sticking them on (as long as he didn't get any glue on his fingers!).

We had made Valentine's Day wreaths back in February that were similar to this. They turned out so cute that I just had to do Easter wreaths with the kids. I got this idea in February from No Time For Flashcards, and then just changed it to work for Easter!

I saw these little egg holder lambs on Pinterest and just had to make them with the kids. I think they turned out soooooooooo cute! I made the face for Nathan's lamb ahead of time, but other than that, he did the rest! Naomi enjoyed it too, and was very pleased the lambs could stand up on their own. See the tutorial at Crafts by Amanda if you want to make these yourself.

If you are looking for more inspiration for Easter Crafts or activities, there are tons of cute ideas I've pinned on my Easter Board on Pinterest. Happy days leading up to Easter!

Karla

Money and Store

As much as I'd like to be one of those bloggers that is totally on top of it, and shares all the wonderful things they do, I've realized that one or two posts a month is what is more realistic for me. Therefore, I want to share one of our highlights from the month of March!

I wanted to introduce Naomi to the concept of using money, and coin recognition. I could think of no better way to do it then to set up our own store! Sitting down and doing a worksheet on money = not so fun. However, setting up a store where you can buy and sell things = SUPER fun! If there is a fun way to learn a concept, I'm all for it!

What do you need for a store? Well, start with....

a daily specials board,

a produce section,

a wide variety of items from your pantry, divided by category and labeled of course,

those little sticky dots so you can put a price on everything, (I did everything in either 1, 5, 10, or 25 cent increments since we were working on coin recognition)

and a cash register with scanner!

Add in a couple of shopping carts, two cute kids, and you are ready to open up your own store, learn about money, and have some fun to boot!

Naomi was super excited and wanted to be the cashier first. In addition to learning about money, it was an excellent opportunity to learn and practice some shopping vocabulary.

Nathan was more than happy to be the first customer!

He went right to the soup section and started shopping.

I had filled their purses with change ahead of time. Nathan would pick an item out of his cart, Naomi would scan it, and look to see how much it cost (by looking at the sticker). Then Nathan would give her a handful of coins, and she had to find the right one. I had introduced Naomi to the coins that morning, and within 5 minutes of playing store, she could recognize and name all the coins. Not bad if you ask me! We didn't work on adding coins together as I didn't want to overwhelm her.

After taking a turn as cashier, Naomi was ready to shop!

She was excited that the fruit was on sale, buy one get one free!

 

Nathan took a turn being the cashier. Naomi had to look at the price on her item, then find and give Nathan the correct coin.

I was the bagger and put all her groceries into an eco-friendly bag!

As I was bagging Naomi's groceries Nathan wandered away. After a minute he came running over shouting, "Tower, TOWER"! He had made a tower out of the soup cans and was EXTREMELY proud of himself!

He couldn't reach to add any more cans to his tower on the shelf, so we moved it to the ground, and added some vegetables!

All in all our store was a huge success! We left it set up for over two weeks and played with it almost daily. Naomi learned to identify her coins, and most importantly, we all had a lot of fun playing together! I got the idea from this post on No Time for Flashcards, which is my new favorite blog! Take a minute to check it out!

Karla