Noodle Sculptures

The temperatures keep climbing; this weekend it was 112! Now I'm a Texas girl, but come on, can we get a little break. Do you know how hard it is to keep an almost 3 year old inside most of the day? Almost impossible, unless you want to go crazy by the mid afternoon. So with that in mind, I've been trying to find activities that keep us cool enough to be outside...even if only for 15 to 30 minutes. Today resulted in Noodle Sculptures. These are simple & so limitless. Great for indoors or out. Take a pool noodle cut it into sections, then add some toothpicks and let the creativity begin.

 Simple sculpture.

Placing the toothpicks in.

 The second B started this, I thought 'that looks like a birthday cake.'

Adding a few more toothpicks.

Look Momma, 'I made a cake with candles!' Yes, he thought this up on his own.

I just happened to see the same thing in the sculpture he was building. Like mother, like son. ;)

Tugboat pushing 'barges'.

He was trying to make a dinosaur, and got most of the way. I helped him finish with the mouth

& 'spikes' on it's back. B had fun making his floating dino chase boats in the pool.

*If you use the toothpicks in the water,

after 10 minutes or so they do start to splinter easily when pushing them through the noodles.

We tried to keep them out, but some how wound up with a floating pile in the water.

First day of school...

Well it's finally here, the first day of school for many kids. However, in our house, it was quiet a different scene; a scene I look forward to for the next 13 or so years. There was no morning rush, packing of bags or teary farewells. Instead we lounged in pajamas and played. Then after breakfast and finally getting dressed, it was time to make our way outside for some serious fun.

Chalk Paint - Here are the items you need.

mix equal parts corn starch to water, add food coloring.

Note* (if your child still fits in them) Pull-ups work great, if you don't want to try and clean food coloring out of clothes.

As you can see, we didn't measure the food coloring. B decided how much to use.

Mixing the solution.

 Note* it does get clumpy, so an adult may have to finish mixing it.

Our paint waiting for the artist.

Loading up the squirt tube.

 We got this from the dollar store & he has a blast with it.

Ready, Aim,

Squirt!

"Momma, look at my paint splatters!"

This was by far the BEST way to spend our first day of school. B was so excited, and has asked repeatedly about doing this again. I don't blame him, I'm excited about what other ways we can use this solution! Note to self, buy the largest box of corn starch available because you will go through it. ;)

If you try this, let me know how your experience goes.

Ducks live at the Pond

We continued this past week with Ponds, and moved our focus to ducks. Here are a few of our activities involving ducks.

Coloring & glueing feathers.

Color sorting & counting feathers.

Before the extremely hot temps hit we got to visit a pond, unfortuntly this week was just to HOT to revisit it. Here are a few pictures from the cooler day.

Turtle with the bread B was tossing.

Watching the fishes and turtles fight over the bread.

One of the many ducks at the pond.

Pond - fingerplays & songs

B LOVES music, every day he is singing something...many times it's his own made up song, to the rhythm of another one. So music is an easy way to slip in learning with B.

Here's our flannel board with Five Little Speckled Frogs. We also used it for Frog.

Five little speckled frogs,

Sitting on a hollow log,

Eating some most delicious bugs,

Yum, Yum.

One frog jumped in the pool,

Where it was nice and cool,

Now there are four speckled frogs,

Glub, glub.

Frog

Croak said the frog,

With his golden eyes.

Sitting on a lily pad,

Catching flies.

I have a sticky tongue,

It's as fast as can be.

I catch the mosquitoes,

1-2-3.

Here is our turtle & the song we sang with him.

We also had a few duck songs & fingerplays too.

Five Little Ducks -- kididdles 

Six Little Ducks --  kididdles

Little Duck

tune: "I'm a little tea pot"

I'm a little duck that goes quack, quack, quack.

And I've got lots of feathers on my back.

When I go down to the lake

I wiggle & I wobble & I shake, shake, shake.

And when I go to sleep at night,

I close my eyes very tight.

But in the morning when I wake

I wiggle & I wobble & I shake, shake, shake.

Down at the Pond

Tune: “Down At The Station”

Down at the pond
Early in the morning.
See the little ducklings
Swimming in a row.

See the mother duck
Dive for her breakfast.
Up, down, up, down
Watch her head go!

Down at the pond
Early in the morning.
See the little ducklings
Swimming in a row.

See the mother duck
Flap her wings just so.
Up she flys
Her ducklings in tow!



Ponds - sensory & art projects

There is to much to cover in one post on what we did with ponds this week, so I'm breaking it up. I may get better at this and actually post every few days, then they won't be crazy long post. Until then, here are some of our sensory and art activities with ponds.

Our sensory tub, complete with lily pads.

B suggested we take the pond animals outside to some real water. They eventually made their way to pool.

Who can blame him, it was another 100+ day again.

Making a snail...

The final result.

Stamping pond animals.

The full pond; many of the animals were riding on turtles backs.

Frogs & Ponds

Who lives in the pond? That's what we've been talking about this week, thanks to our little toad friend from the garden. We started with another lapbook, here are a few of the activities.

Matching insects and non-insects.

Counting pond animals.

Fun find the frog hiding in the lily pad game.

We also added in letter, number, shape and color of the week. This is something we will continue throughout the year, just may not always post about it.

I know there are many animals that live in a pond, and so many directions we could go with any of them. However, this week we focused on frogs and wow there are a LOT of activities that have something to do with frogs.

Here's our language board, we are learning Spanish & ASL.

I say we because DH & I are trying to remember the Spanish we learned & ASL is new to all of us.

Learning the parts of a frogs body.

Feeding the frog...this was a hit. He was very interested in the different types of insects that frogs eat.

Matching the (colors) frogs and dragonflies.

Look who's hiding in our garden.

We started our garden in the spring and have had several of our regular visitors (lizards, wasps, & bees). We even had a snake, due to the hot weather! Thankfully, we haven't seen him again.  ;)  Instead we found a new friend...

Do you see him?

It's a toad! Ever since I saw him in the garden, I've been thinking of doing a pond unit...just didn't get around to it. After he hopped out at me the other night, I was reminded of the afore mentioned thought. So I got our unit together and thanks to 1+1+1=1 Preschool Packs and 2 teaching mommies who had tons of free printables! I'll post more on this unit at the end of the week. Until then, here's another one of our regulars hanging out in the garden.

Camping starts with C

B spend last weekend camping with his Grandparents...in an air conditioned RV, because it is way to HOT to be in a tent. He had a blast! So this week we're expanding that experience to learn more about camping and the letter C. First here are a few shots from his camping trip.

He's leveling his trike.

Doesn't he looks so proud. ;)

Cooling off in the pool.

On a hike with Papa.

We I made a camping lap book. The first I've ever made, so it was a learning experience. I've seen these done in other blogs (can't remember where, right now, there are tons of blogs on this); but this week it seem like a good option for us. These help focus on colors, counting, letter recognition, reading, matching, spelling and other general interest for the topic.

Here are some of the sleeping bags that were inside the tent.

Fishing for the letter 'C' - He had fun catching the letter 'C', but I think he liked catching the other letters and telling me "that's an 'X' (or what ever letter it was), not a 'C'".

One of his learning trays this week was building a forest with playdoh and pre-made images. I drew trees, flowers, rivers, animals on card stock & then attached them to tongue depressors...super easy, right. Throw in the playdoh, and he spend 20-30 minutes creating forest.

Another learning tray activity, was helping the animals find their homes. Again this was super simple. I drew a tree, cave & burrow on card stock and taped each of them to a seperate container. I also drew animals that would live in each of the homes.  He wasn't as interested in this activity; I'll have to rethink it and try it with another unit.

We did focus on the letter 'C' more than it sounds like, but most of that wasn't picture worthy. I was surprised to learn that B was able to tell me many things that started with 'C', just by the phonetics. I think Mommy may have a little jumping ahead in some areas, she wasn't quiet expecting yet. :)