Our Five Senses

This week was a short one for us, so we decided to work on something that didn't require much prep time and that was an easy unit to cover just the basics. So I came up with the 5 Senses, since we are entering the holiday season we'll be on sensory overload soon.

Above is our repurposed learning trays, into sensory trays.
 Each tray had a picture of a sense and an activity to expaned on it.

Here's our sight tray...

we used a magnifying glass to look closly at the detail on objects we found on an afternoon walk.

Exploring with our eyes.

One of our touch activities. I placed all these objects in the empty tissue box and B would try to figure out what he felt in the box. We talked about objects being hard, soft, bumpy, squishy etc.

Another one of our touch activities: I filled sandwich baggies with different objects, such as sand, salt rocks, shampoo, & jelly. You can't really go wrong with it, it's all about describing textures. I have heard of putting small objects inside the others (glitter, small toys, sea shells etc.) sort of like a hide & seek. *Make sure you tape the top of the baggies, so little ones don't try to open them and make a hugh mess.

This is our funny felt man for five senses. We have differnt noses, eyes, ears, & mouth so B was able to come up with some funny faces. You could also use Mr. Potato Head for the same kind of activity, if you have multiple facial pieces.

Here is one of our review of the 5 Senses activities. Each page has a sense on it & we looked through magazines and papers to find objects that we either touch, taste, hear, smell or see. This was meant to be a cutting activity as well, but B kept cutting through the pictures he wanted and was becoming frustrated...it had already been a rough day, so sometimes we compramise. Instead he'd find the pictures and Mommy would cut them out.

Here are some of the other sensory activities we did but didn't get a picture of...

Smell: Sniff bottles, we used old spice contaniners and dropped a cotton ball with different smells in each (vanilla, lemon, orange, garlic etc.). We made popcorn (covers many senses).

Hearing: We listened to music and then played different instruments. We also read a short story & then I asked questions to see if B was listening. (what kind of food did the boy cook? popcorn, ice cream or apples)

Taste: We sampled different kinds of foods and talked about how they tasted; were they salty/sweet/bitter/sour.

 There were a lot more activities I wanted to cover with this unit, but since our week was short we'll just have to review the 5 Senses again some time.

Of course, we used multiple senses on many things all the time, so we made it a game of "what senses do we use for ___ ?" This game was so fun Daddy even got in on it.

Here are a few of our books about the senses. We even looked at abstract art books, which B really seemed to enjoy...wonder where he gets that from. ;)

Halloween

We've spend a few weeks learning about Autumn or Fall and all the things that occur during this season. This week we've added in Halloween activities, to keep in the 'spirit' of things. 

Making flannel board jack-o-lanterns.

Pumpkin size sorting.

This was a fun and tasty game. You place a candycorn on each number (1-12), roll the dice and match the number. Then eat the candycorn that was on the rolled number. B loved this game, mostly because he got to eat candy. ;)

B had a lot of fun with this too. It's simply using a hammer and some nails to make holes in a pumpkin. I was going to give him dots to aim for, but instead just let him nail where he wanted. I was hoping that the holes would be big enough to let light out, but they weren't. I've heard you can use a drill to do this too.  We may try that another year.  

We played with playdoh and halloween cookie cutters. He also had a little help making a fall tree.

Our skeleton friend...so he's really hard to see, but isn't he cute! This project turned out to be more work for mommy than B. It's definately an older child's activity. However, while I was cutting everything out, B was asking all kinds of questions about bones and where all of those were on his body. Patterns for this cute guy can be found here.

We played 'hide and seek' for Little Ghost, while enphasising colors.

Little Ghost, Little Ghost

Where are you at?

Little Ghost, Little Ghost

What color is your house?

(knock on door) Little Ghost are you in the (red) house?

Then move the house to see who's hiding underneath. We hide other Halloween items, like a bat, jackolantern, & pumpkin under the other houses, so there was always some kind of surprise.

Part of our family tradition is to make fall peanut butter shaped cookies.

and pumpkin shaped pizza.

B loves helping in the kitchen, especially when they're special treats.

Another fun activity we tried was putting glow sticks/rings from the dollar store, in at bath time and we let the fun begin.

Some fun Halloween books to enjoy, sorry some of the images are blurry...

Happy Halloween!

Carving Pumpkins

 B has been asking to carve our pumpkins for over a week since we went to the pumpkin patch to pick them out, but we had to wait for Daddy to come home from a business trip. So this evening we spent carving our pumpkins... love making holiday traditions with this little guy!

Scooping

B did not like cleaning the pumpkins out. 'It's yucky!'

So while Daddy worked on the bigger pumpkins, B got to decorate his own small one with felt stickers. He made an owl and was very proud of his little pumpkin.

Our finished Jack-o-lantern...B said he needed a square nose, ears & eyebrows.

This was another attempt at a free hand design, that ended badly. Especially since the carving knife broke midway through. :(   So we gave B some paint and let him finish it off. Maybe it's just a mom's vision, but I can make out a witch on a spooky Halloween night.

 Happy Halloween from our family!

Spider paintings

This is a quick an easy craft for Halloween or a lesson on spiders. I tied it into Halloween, but we may revisit this when we really learn about spiders.

We used black construction paper (we cut it to fit in an take away tin/lid from the dollar store),

a marble, white paint, pom-pom, chenile stick, glue & google eyes.

First we taped the back of the paper into the pan,

 added a few drops of white paint and a marble, then rolled it back and forth.

Then our paper looked like a spider web.

We let it dry and put together the other items to make a spider on the web....

I bet he's the cutest spider you've ever seen!

We did another quick spider related project using our Halloween spider rings.

I tied twine to two spider rings, then B wore the rings. He was really working hard on his hand eye coordination for this project, by dipping the twine in the paint & then dragging it across the page.

As you can see from the lack of paint, B was not very interested in this project.

Here are a few other fun spider crafts ... 2teachingmommies

Enjoy!

I'm a little pumpkin, Orange and round....

       This week we focused on pumpkins for our fall unit, plus part of the week we did a few fun Halloween activities (those will be posted soon).

This is our five little pumpkins manipulative...mini erasers and tongue depressors.

In case you don't know the five little pumpkins:

                                                                    Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, "Oh, my it's getting late!"
The second one said, "We don't care!"
The third one said, "There are bats all in the air!"
The fourth one said, "I'm ready for some fun!"
The fifth one said, "Let's run and run and run!"
Then Whoooooosh... went the wind,
And out went the light!
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

We recreated our 5 little pumpkins poem with stickers, construction paper and Popsicle sticks.

Learning the growth cycle of a pumpkin, with nomenclature cards. These are a little harder than simply matching a picture. First you match the picture, then you match the words. Since B isn't reading, he mostly match based on the first letter. He was not into this activity either, he was much more excited about the next box & what was in it.

Matching shapes on pumpkins. Find the patterns here.

Counting pumpkin seeds: we started at 10 and subtracted a few at a time (put a lesser number card where 8 is), this way once he made the seeds & card match, he got to eat the ones we took away. He was VERY excited about that.  

Matching fall themed cards; these are great, colorful photos that we'll be using through Thanksgiving. Matching Cards here

We made marbled pumpkins for our art project this week. We started with a template of six small pumpkins and a few drops of fall colored paint. Add a marble, roll, and...

you get this, which turned into ...

our cut out pumpkins.

B's pumpkins & leaves (from fall unit) were so cute; I decided we needed some fall decorations in our classroom. So during nap time, I punched holes in them and treaded twine through them. B was so excited when he saw his art hanging in the 'school'. He asked if Daddy's office had any, but we didn't make enough. ;(  Next year we will definitely make enough to decorate the whole house. They're so simple and sweet, and who doesn't like to save money when decorating for the holidays.

Okay, so these are bats, not pumpkins but the tray was pumpkins. B sorted the correct number of bats into the same numbered pumpkin. We are working on understanding that each number actually represents an amount.

Pumpkin books of the week:

The Pumpkin Patch Parable

is a sweet book teaches about how God made them new, full of light to shine in a dark world.

Leaves are falling...

Leaves are falling, softly falling, floating to the ground;

Red & orange, brown & yellow, floating to the ground...

Fall is here and we are learning about what this season means, from cooler weather, shorter days, harvest time, to leaves changing & falling.

Our fall sensory bin...

(what's in it: leaves, apples, mini gourds & pumpkins, spider rings...all from the dollar store; sticks & acorns from our nature walk & a rake, insect viewer, magnifying glass, & twizzers)

 

He has fun digging, raking & find all the hidden treasures in it.

especially the spiders!

Even the kitty was very interested in the spiders.

Our flannel board with story.

Counting the leaves on the tree.

Leave patterns. Find patterns here.

We made a falling leaves project this week. I printed a template of leaves & B painted them with fall colors.

I wish I would have cut them out first, because once there was paint all over the page I couldn't see the outlines. So I just cut leave patterns myself.

I love how the colors mixed together & he had textured brushes, so the leaves looked like real fall leaves.

I cut out a swirl, and we glued the leaves to it...now we have falling leaves in our classroom.

We also took a nature walk, where we collected acorns & twigs for our sensory bin.

The real fall ground.

A few books we've been reading...