Hoppy Easter to all our Peeps!

We made a quick and easy Easter lapbook today. Some of the content was borrowed from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Some was borrowed from Squidoo. And some was just plain Googled and put together by Me!

We sorted Peeps, and then made Peep Patterns. The Punk had no idea what a Peep was, so I must make a mental note to get him a pack of Peeps for his basket.

We played the Egg Matching Game, and I was amazed at how well he did. Some of the patterns/colors are very similar, but he matched every one of them correctly.

We then helped the chocolate bunny find his way into the Easter Basket. this is a Word Template I created and I change the clip art to/from for whatever suits our lesson. He's getting much better at staying on the lines. I feel bad that he gets so frustrated with himself when he goes out of the line, but he's so darn proud when he does a good job that I keep giving him more chances to work on this.

Our first maze EVER. Look at that kid! He traced the path with his finger the first time, and then he "knew" how to get there. He is very excited to show Daddy this one.

Our cutting work today was a lesson on "fringing". It was hard for him to not cut all the way through, he loves snipping and shredding paper. He finally "got" it when I showed him we were making Easter Egg Grass.

I printed a simple egg template from Google images, and had him decorate some eggs. We picked his favorite ones, and hid them in the grass he had cut. Then we drew some happy clouds, and he asked me to make "some gwitter-y ones!", so I added a few glitter glue clouds to the back.

The lapbook came together fairly quickly this morning. We ended the lesson by reading Happy Easter Little Critter before his nap.

I Greater than Three this Craft!

The Punk and I made hearts for Valentine's Day today. This craft took me to a happy place. Melty plastic, bright colors, hearts... love! They are called Perler Beads at most craft sores, but I (of course) bought ours from IKEA. We also bought the shapes set that goes with the beads. I sat up late last night and picked out only red, white and pink beads and sorted them on one of the Punk's crafting trays. We got started right away, and we both had a lot of fun picking out each bead to go in each spot. This is a GREAT way to work on fine motor skills, and it's fairly difficult (even for me) I was proud of him for having the patience to stick with it.

After we set our beads in place I melted them. The Punk was safely in the living room playing Hotwheels, and I went at it. Parchment paper, iron and a washcloth was all I needed (The IKEA directions just show a stick figure and an iron, so I Googled some better instructions).

Paper under, paper over, press with a hot iron.

Voila!

We ended up making 3 hearts today. I am thinking about gluing some magnets to the back so they can have a bit more purpose.

We talked about patterns, colors, heat, all kinds of interesting stuff. And while he's not able to do the magical-amazing-melting part of the activity, I can still see it being something we work with again and again.

Hog the Ground

I was super proud of myself for this one - I pretty much created a lapbook on my own to celebrate Groundhog Day! There wasn't much out there in the preschool blog world about it, so I Googled some images, and borrowed from a few places until I had enough info to help explain the Holiday to the Punk. I bow to the Home Schoolers who do this type of thing with multiple children, it's no easy task (but it is kind of fun).


It contains: Groundhog poem, hibernating animals, Groundhog mini-book, sequencing Groundhog shadows, Matching animal shadows, tracing the Groundhog's path back to the burrow, and practicing his name letters, whew!

We made a little Groundhog puppet that pops up and down (and then watched for it's shadow). Then we watched Punxutawney Phil via webcam, and found out that he predicted that Spring will be here soon!