Our Heart

What do most of us think of when we think of February? Valentine's Day, but I decided I didn't want to spend an entire month on those crafts, books, etc. While we will cover that, don't worry ;) we are spending a week on our real heart. You know the one that pumps blood to the rest of your body and keeps you alive. Yep, that one. I know it's slightly advanced for a three year old, but he has been very into his doctor's kit he received for Christmas. So the heart seemed like a good starting spot, especially since it's February.

Here are a few of our Healthy Heart activities...

Number matching with heart stamps.

Listening to his resting heart before we played a game. (I know it doesn't look like it's on his heart...he moved as I snapped the picture).

Jumping on numbered hearts, afterwards we listened to our active hearts to hear the difference. 

We also read books and talked about how our heart works.

Freeform fingerpainting of a heart.

Another freeform art heart; he squeezed painted onto a piece of paper, folded it in half and flattened it. This was the result.

We had a fun scavenger treasure hunt, looking for letters all over the house. Each heart has a letter that spells B's name. After we found each one, B would tell me the letter, what sound it makes and what starts with that letter. When he found B, he said B that's starts my name. He was right, once all were found we worked on what it could spell. He wasn't so impressed that the 'treasure' was spelling his name, so we had to find a better treat. Thanks to our neighbor girl scout, we had just the thing! Thin Mints ;)

This week has also been all about the letter H. I found this worksheet on first-school and wasn't sure how B would respond to it, but he surprised me. He was actually having fun making H's and matching the words.

Here's B's first real attempt at writing letters.

Tracing the letter 'H' with hearts. 

Our hearts need healthy food to stay strong and we learned about what foods are healthy and bad.

and we even made some heart shaped and heart healthy food.

Heart PB & J - a fun way to make a favorite even better!

We were also in luck this week because one of our local hospitals had a mock surgery event. They opened up the entire teaching hospital for tours, presentations and a few hands on activities. While this was really geared for older children B got to use some interesting equipement.

Paging Dr. B...you're needed in surgery!

Taking the staples out, after he got to staple the stomach together.

Using a instrument for brain surgery.

Checking the blood pressure.

Touring the Starflight unit.

One of the many machines used in open heart surgery.

We even got to visit Elmo who was recovering from surgery.

What is there to do in the Winter?

Our adventures continued with all the fun activities that happen in the Winter. How many can you think of? Sledding, Skiing, Ice Skating, Curling, Hockey, Snowboarding, Bobsledding...

Of course we can't forget one of the best things to do on a snowy day...build a snowman! Ok, so we're not really building a snowman, more like decorating him. I found a Frosty the Snowman image & printed it out on card stock, which we used as a counting game. Simply roll the dice and put the number of buttons on Frosty.

Another snowman math activity was a clothespin matching game.

Our do-a-dot B is for Bobsledding.

Writing practice, taking a skier home. Found at 2Teaching Mommies who have a great Winter packet. 

Alphabet practice with ice skates, B really liked this game.

Actually the next two are probably the ones B enjoyed the most. First we used a straw, coffee stir stick & a skier print out. Tape the skier to the stir stick, insert into straw and blow. This will launch the skier across the room. Next we took B's tape measure and found the distance from where he started to where the skier landed. He had so much fun with this, I would catch him sneaking into the school room to play with it...and it wasn't just to shoot the skier across the room, he was actually measuring it every time! So he can't read numbers over 10, but he'd pick out a random number and say that's how far it went.

I'm sure this one would have been a repeat too, but I only made one. I didn't know it would turn out to be so fun. We printed out a hockey player and stuck him in a Dixie cup filled with water and froze it. While this was mostly a fun game of sliding the hockey player back and forth; it was a great way to teach friction, then as the ice melted (from the friction) we talked about why the table was all wet, where did it come from. This and all of the other printables on this post are from makinglearningfun.

Sliding the hockey player to Daddy...can't you tell how much fun he was having!

*if you do this activity, make sure to make multiple hockey players and be careful

once they start melting the slide fast and will break when hitting the floor.

Hope you enjoyed our Winter Unit as much as we did.

Do you have any other fun Winter activities we can try?

Chinese New Year

We added a little variety into our Winter Unit this week. In celebration of the Chinese New Year we spend a few days learning about China. It's the year of the Dragon, in China the dragon is quite special and very much revered. The dragon symbolizes power and wisdom.
To begin, we found China on the globe & looked at the map of China. I found a great book on celebrating the Chinese New Year at a local teacher supply store. It was the perfect amount of information for a preschooler.

 This is the national flag of China. It consists of a red background and five golden-yellow stars. It represents revolution. I gave B a star punch to make the small ones, the large one was pre-drawn.

We also learned about the Great Wall of China. Although B refers to it as 'Wall of China'. We used our building blocks (only the red ones) to build our own Wall.

 Practical life skill: B also tried using chopsticks to sort the red & yellow pom poms. It took a lot of practice but he finally got it.

 B's chopstick technique...not perfect, but it worked.

The Lantern Festival or Yuanxiao Jie is a traditional Chinese festival, celebrated on the 15th of the first month of the Chinese New Year.

The festival marks the end of the celebrations of the Chinese New Year.

This is a fun festival where people flock to the streets with a variety of lanterns under the full moon, watching lions or dragon dancing, playing Chinese riddles and games, and lighting up firecrackers. We watched a YouTube video on the dragon dances, since we didn't make it to the actual celebration in town. We also attempted to make our own lanterns, which turned out to be a little harder than I expected for B. Cutting multiple straight lines was not something he was interested in.

Then of course what would a study of China be with out eating Chinese food. We went to our favorite local Chinese restaurant and enjoyed a tasty lunch.

 

Hope you enjoyed our trip through China. We'll discover more about China when we focus on our global units.

Animals in Winter

This week we are learning where the animals go in the Winter.

Do they Hibernate, Migrate or Adapt? This sorting activity is from itsy bitsy learners. We also used our animal photos to find the homes (caves, burrows, trees etc.) that animals lived in the Winter. I forgot to take pictures of that. ;)

Hibernation game to help with number recognition. Sorry no link on this, I made it using clip art & a few other programs I have.  

We went ice fishing for numbers & letters. I ran out of time, but was going to make a box that B actually had to 'fish' through and make it white like ice; but he enjoyed it this way too. 

Polar animal patterns

Polar animal footprint matching game. You can find all the polar animal activities here.

Our creative art this week was super fun and simple. We made porcupines with playdoh & toothpicks. This was all B's work...I only supervised, isn't he cute! I did show him a photo of real porcupine and we talked about the animal, he was very interested in the quills.

Another free form art activity was painting with white paint on black construction paper, the simply gluing google eyes to it. Afterwards I asked him what animal he had painted he picked porcupine. I think I can see the quills. This is a great way to demonstrate abstract art.

Science experiment - how do animals keep warm when it's cold out? We felt an ice cube & talked about how cold it would be to live on ice/snow. B says 'we couldn't do that we'd freeze, we need warm clothes.' Then we felt a baggie with shortening in it. It was warm and thick. We talked about how animals had blubber just like this that helps keep them warm.

Then we saw what happened when we held the 'blubber' and put the ice on it. Did we feel the cold or was it warm? This was such a simple experiment; B is still talking about it.

Begins with Polar animals clip cards.

Our book this week was The Mitten;

it's about animals that try to make a mitten their home...all squeezing together. I found these cute print outs on janbrett, we used them as an interactive story by putting them on Popsicle sticks.

Do you have any fun activities about hibernation?



Snowflakes are falling...

"Snowflakes falling, magically making everything white" -  Music Together

We started January and our Winter Unit with snowflakes & Winter weather. Each week we'll learn something else new about the Winter season.

Our cutting activity, making traditional paper snowflakes. B wasn't quiet sure about why we were folding & cutting paper and what it had to do with snow. The look on his face was priceless when I opened it up and showed him what we'd made. 'SNOWFLAKES!!!...Let's make more Mama!'

Practical life - Placing snowflakes into a container with tweezers.

Using our counting cards to count snowflakes.

Letter tracing with buttons.

A few of our books on Winter