Australian Animals Week - Preschool Homeschooling

Given where we live (semi rural area) Mini Miss has seen Kangaroo's since she was born on a daily basis. They are nothing new to her, but suddenly her interest was peaked by watching 2 young males having a fight in our backyard. 

The idea of Aussie Animals week was born.

We started off with something fun, an animal dice game. She rolls the dice, and whatever animal it landed on, she had to imitate...

Making Pancakes is learning too - Green Goo Pancakes!

Mini Miss woke one morning and decided that it was a baking kind of day.

I went with it, choosing something easy, so she could help me. I do, afterall, love to cook!

Welcome to Green Goo Pancakes!

Domino Maths

Doing child lead learning sometimes leads to lots of fun! 

Mini Miss was very keen to play with the dominoes last week. I was busy trying to clean up, so I tipped them out in an out of the way place. I told her that we would build the dominoes up to knock them down, once she sorted them into colours.

Mini Miss was very excited by this, and set about sorting the colours. As I worked, we talked about the colours. She then counted the number of each colour.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities - Part 1

So Mini Miss needs to be challenged and constantly wants to learn, be taught and understand. I try to do this through a mix of guided learning, and more importantly, play, art and craft. 

I decided we would look at the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. 

If you haven't read this book, then go out and buy it! Now! Go!! Especially if you have kids! Its an endless source of educational points, and kids just LOVE it! The illustrations are colourful, the story simple but entertaining, and Mini Miss LOVES the ending! 

I read it to Mini Miss, who immediately insist that we read it again, and then she wanted to "read" it to me. Being able to retell a story is a great skill, and she did a fantastic job using the pictures as guides for her story!

Then we got stuck into a couple of craft activities! 

Egg Carton Caterpillar

Materials Needed:

Egg Carton

Red and Green Paint

Pipe cleaners

Googly Eyes

Mini Miss loved this activity. As I said, I don't often do a guided activity, but I also find value in following step by step instructions to make something. We started by painting our caterpillar just like the Hungry Caterpillar in the book.

Then, when the paint dried we stuck on his Googly Eyes, and I put small holes in his head and his body using a skewer, and Mini Miss added antennae and legs.

So simple, yet a lot of fun for miss almost 3!!

Then sticking with the slightly messy theme, we made some

Painted Butterflies

Materials Needed:

Coloured construction paper

Paints in the colour of your choice

Pre cut butterflies (I did these beforehand as Mini Miss is not yet ready for scissors)

This was as fun as it was messy! Mini Miss LOVES paint! The hardest part was convincing her to just put the paint on 1 half of the butterfly! I got her to put some blobs of paint on the butterfly, then fold it in half. We used 2 or 3 different colours each time, so we could look at how colours mix to create new colours. These butterflies also help us talk about mirrors and how things can be the same on both sides.

 

These were 2 simple and fun activities, and a great way to start looking at this book. As she is SO obsessed with the story, and insists on reading at least 3 times a day, I figure we will continue with some more activities based around the story tomorrow. Some more advanced, possibly challenging activities. Will post these next week! 

Letter A Day

So Mini Miss is almost 3 years old.

She knows her shapes, her colours, how to count to 20, how to count to 100 by 10's, she knows the alphabet, she can recognise and sort of write her name....this isn't me boasting, she is just a sponge, and ALWAYS wants to be learning something! 

It's like she is ready for school!!!

Except, of course, she's not even close.

So where to from here? Normally with this age groups we are looking at learning all the things above! So we are moving forward a bit. We are looking closely at each letter, we are reading books and doing craft based on them. Basically, we are doing early reading learning....which is scary!! 

For those who are interested, I have joined a couple of great websites that focus on homeschooling. They have amazing resources and are a wealth of knowledge! 

Free home school deals
The Kinder Corner
Teach With Me

For more pages, check out my Education & Activity Monday boards on Pinterest!

So first up is the Letter A. Seemed like a pretty obvious place to start, but nonetheless, she knows this letter well, so introducing her to some more in depth learning, discussion and crafts was easier done with a letter she already knows well (at least, I thought so. To be honest, I have no idea what I am doing here, I'm just making it up as I go!).

So I printed off some craft worksheets, simple easy ones for us to ease into this new phase of learning. I encouraged Mini Miss to fill the letters, both upper case and lower case with pom poms. We talked about the 2 different types of A, she traced them with her finger, and it is really good for her fine motor skills, something she has a lot of work to do on!

When she was done, I wrote her name in the corner and Mini Miss wanted to copy it, so I gave her a pencil and was very surprised at the results!

She needed help with the M, but the rest was all her! 

Then since she was very focused and interested in doing "more A crafta mummy" we continued, colouring in an Apple tree and tracing more letters. Then, finally, using her favourite paddle pop sticks, we made some letter A's and glued them onto paper.

Mini Miss loves this one on one time. She knows Mondays are "her" day, where we do lots of activities together. I put aside housework, chores and errands and spend time with her. We read, we do craft, we play with toys. Its our very own special day. The fact that I am helping her learn at the same time is just a bonus!! 

*Please note, I am not paid, nor affiliated with any of the websites I have shared. I just share them as I find them valuable resources*