St Patty's day activities

I decided to take this holiday as an opportunity to tech our kids about our heritage. My side of the family has some thick Irish blood and we are all very proud of it. Growing up I knew that I was Irish. My cousins and grandparents always talked about it,  but my dad never taught me about it. When I was older that I started learning about it on my own because I know that it's important to know where you come from. I have decided that I want my kids to grow up with a knowledge of many cultures not just the one we live in.

I tried to keep it as simple as possible seeing as the are still young. But we learned how to say hello in Gaelic and leaned about Irish step dancing by watching some youtube videos of it. (I am thankful for the internet to make teaching my children a little bit easier.) We also talked a little about Celtic crosses, shamrocks and of course leprechauns.

I also had some fun crafts to help us get in the st patty's day spirit. This year we opted not to try to catch the leprechaun and no fancy all green meal, I just thought that this year I'd give myself a little break, next year though I think we'll try to pick those two traditions back up. We did however attend the local St. Patty's day parade and this year Ziff was able to make it and our good friends and neighbors joined us also. It was a fun and festive day. A little chilly but all in all we had a great time.

Prepare for picture overload!

Making shamrock sun catchers

The finished project

Fine motor skills- Irish themed foam stickers (peeling the backs off are tricky)

Stamping with green peppers

We tried some Irish soda bread (one of my personal favorites)

I dyed some noodles and punched little holes in some shamrocks so we could make some festive necklaces

Waiting for the parade to start

Community Helpers Week

Home-preschooling has been quite an adventure for me. The longer we do it the more I learn and grow in how to teach them in ways they will be able to take away more than just academics. I want them to value the world around them and learn about the things that make it all up. This week our theme is community helpers. Our focus today was on Police officers and firefighters. We have done a fire safety week before, but it never hurts to review such an important topic and I was surprised how much the kids has forgotten in a years time.

First off in circle time I used a power point slide show to talk about a few different community helpers and the different tools they might use. The kids liked being able to see pictures to relate what we were talking about. Next we talked about what a community was. Community: a group of people who live or work near each other.

I wanted to also tie in a scripture for the lesson and so we used Colossians 3:23- And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.

We packed our morning full of activities:

We colored police hats and badges and practiced fingerprinting just like a real police officer might

Our sight work worksheet (this one is k's and I am impressed at our almost 3 year old and how much he has accomplished)

L's paper, she did great as always

Our fire craft: I used white paper to cut the flame shape and the kids glued on red, yellow, and orange paper and tissue paper. I asked each child one thing they learned about fire and then wrote what they said on the flames

Letter of the week: U- Traced over the highlighted U's uppercase and lowecase

Science for the day was about how fire needs oxygen to burn. What happens when a jar is placed over the candle??

Stay tuned for the rest of our preschool activities this week. We'll be doing more community helpers and also some St. Patrick's day fun.

If You Give a Moose a Muffin

I have been inspired lately to get more creative with the kids in our daily activities. I owe most of this to pinterest, an online idea pin board. For this particular day we used the book If You Give a Moose a Muffin as our theme. The kids thought is was so fun and still are reciting parts of the book.

We read the book, practiced counting and matching our letters, we made muffins and then ate them, we were going to also make puppets like they do in the story but we ran out of time. We ended up painting as our daily art instead.

I think the kids love themes as much as I do. It gives them something to wrap their little minds around and relate things back to. An added bonus is that it never hurts to incorporate books, into your day. Through creating activities that come from the book or relate to the story the kids understand whats happening in the story better.

The letter F

My turn to teach preschool came and went. I had a lot of fun thinking of what fun things I might be able to teach about. The other mommies had some really fun classes and Lilly loved them so I knew the bar had been set high. I racked my brain as to what topics might be fun and I decided to lead off with 2 topics I find to be of great importance. Fire safety and Friends/manners.

I tried to get as creative as possible with still keeping it preschool friendly. For fire safety day we talked about the rules of fire safety and practiced stop drop and roll as well as crawling low to the ground under smoke. We sang songs about fire truck and 911as well as did some fun crafts; a firefighter friend (made out of a toilet paper roll) and a fire truck made out of geometric shapes.

For our lesson on friends and manners we read books about friends (Bear's New Friend and also Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy), sang songs about using our manners, made friendship bracelets out of cereal, and made a hand print garden of friends. We used a paper heart and toothpaste to help us understand how words hurt and are hard to take back. And we had an amazing snack of friendship salad. Fruits of all kinds coming together to make one yummy treat.

It was so much fun and I learned so much as did the kids. Lilly told us in the car the other day that she really liked it when she had mommy as her teacher. Reassurance I must be doing something right.