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...

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 Solar System

If you follow my FACEBOOK page, then you would know that recently I have become very interested in homeschooling my muddled kids!

Miss Teen is already set up with Distance Education and is doing much better with her work in 2 weeks than she did all last year at school!

Mini Miss, watching Miss Teen do her work, wanted her own "school work", so I have reintroduced Activity Monday into our everyday lives. I am actively schooling her through craft, play, science experiments, tv shows, ipad apps and even YouTube videos. We also do worksheets when she insists on being just like her big sister! 

I am letting her lead the way to a degree, so when she started to show a big interest in the Solar System, I thought we should explore that interest further.

First we did some craft.

We made a name rocket, using THIS original idea. This was great building the rocket, spelling out her name, gluing (one of her favourite things to do) and decorating it.

Then we moved onto the Solar System. We watched some You Tube videos using these links from Natural born homeschoolers. 

Then we built our own solar system. We talked about all the planets, their position in the solar system. We talked about the sun and how its a ball of gas and super hot. Mini Miss was just soaking it all up and asking lots of questions.

Then finally we finished off with some free craft time using printables from Picklebums. As Mini Miss pasted her cut outs, she told a little story to me about the astronaut taking the aliens space ship and how they worked out how to share. Very cute!

So our first experience with focusing on homeschooling = success. 

Do you home school? 

Do you have solar system activities or videos that your kids love?

Feel free to share below!!

Activity Monday - bubbles, my bubbles!!!

Monday was a public holiday this week. Which is awesome. It meant everyone was home on a week day for a change. 

It also meant I was not prepared for Activity Monday. Again. 

"oh well" I said, "I will just move Activity Monday to Thursday this week"

"No, don't mess with the routine" said Muddled Hubby
"No, I want do some activity" said Mini Miss

So it was fly by the seat of my pants Activity Monday. Again.

After a quick peruse of my favourite site Pinterest (<---- you can follow my boards there if you want to :0) I decided on doing Bubble Painting.

I found a great link HERE about bubble painting that inspired me. I also used my own experience as a daycare teacher and student teacher, from MANY MANY moons ago! 

I set about gathering supplies. The good thing about "Fly by the seat of your pants Activity Monday" is that if you want to do it too, you should already have everything you need in your cupboard!

Basically, for those who are not visual, here is a list!

• Dishwashing Liquid
• Food colouring and a little paint (not pictured, oops!)
• Water (no excuses here, we are on tank water and we had some!!)
• Straws
• some containers (Im sure you have a hideous Tupperware cupboard like me, don't you? Please say you do!)

Firstly I put a good squirt of dishwashing liquid in each container (i had 3, one for each colour) then topped them up with water. Then I added a good splash of colour to each container. Then about a tablespoon or so of paint and mixed.

That's it. Easy!

Then let the kids go for it! 

They blow lots and lots of bubbles, just like this

Then put your paper over the top and Voila! A beautiful, swirly marbley bubbly painting! 

A couple of rules I highly recommend:  

1. Its important that they understand to BLOW and not SUCK the liquid. I used the water and NON TOXIC paint as inevitably, despite knowing this, Mini Miss was bound to suck, which she did, once. It tasted awful, obviously, and she didn't do it again!
2. In my opinion, this is obvious, but play outside! This is going to get messy! Unless you have ample drop sheets and want to do loads of clean up, keep it outside! 
3. Food dye can stain. Clothes on a hot day, like it was on Monday, are optional! If you do need clothes, make them old ones or wear a paint shirt over the top, just in case! Most food dyes come out, but I don't need an angry rant from that one Mum who decided their brand new $60 Pumpkin Patch outfit was perfect for this activity! OLD CLOTHES people!

Mini Miss was having so much fun even Miss Teen decided to join in, sort of! She blew bubbles, but wasn't so much interested in the painting side of things! 

When we were done with the bubble painting, which was about the time Mini Miss decided that blowing bubbles wasn't fun enough anymore, and she was wanted to paint with her hands, feet, hair....you get the idea, we cleaned up! 

I quickly whisked away the bowls, and gave Mini Miss a bowl with just water and a bit of soap

.

Then let her play in the wading pool. She had so much fun with that, that I decided to fill up a second bucket with warm soapy water to see what she would do. 

A lot of fun was had!

But the fun thing about Activity Monday is that you never know where it will lead.The planned activity usually leads on to another and another. Part of that is because I love to let Mini Miss lead the experiences, and also because I can see an extension opportunity....and there was so much more fun to be had.....

Activity Monday - Dominoes

So this Monday was a little hard. After spending several hours at the hospital with a somewhat sick Mini Miss on Sunday night, I had no time to prepare our activity. 

So, a spur of the moment decision to pull out one of my old toys (yes, I still have somethings from when I was a kid....yes, I guess you could say they are antiques...), Dominoes.

At first I was a little lost as to what to do with them. Then I thought we will start with some sorting. Having a domino set in 5 different colours made this easy. I just got a large muffin pan out of the cupboard, placed one domino of each colour in each muffin and showed Mini Miss how to sort them.

We talked about the different colours, we matched different colours. So, suddenly, what was a simple idea had turned into an opportunity for sorting. 

Once we had sorted them for a while, Mini Miss decided to make up her own game. This involved her purposely putting a colour in the wrong spot and seeing what I would do. It quickly became a funny game, where Mini Miss would put it in the wrong spot, I would notice "oh no, thats not right! Where should it go?", followed by her putting it in the right spot and shouting "we did it!" (again, Dora, you have so so much to answer for!). So, the activity also encouraged Mini Miss to think outside the box and make up her own game rules, and gave her a chance to show her awesome sense of humour! (she really loves to make me laugh, which I also love)

Then we decided to count them. Mini Miss loves to count everything, so this didn't take much persuading. Just because she can already count one to one doesn't mean we shouldn't practice this skill regularly, and try to extend it further! She can currently count one to one up to about 10-12. There were differing numbers in each section, with one going up to 15. With a bit of encouragement, and fumbling on 13, (what is it with that number? Miss Teen used to always just skip it when counting, Mini Miss seems to get stuck on it too....must be unlucky or something) I'm proud to say she got there. 

Once all the "learning" fun was done, I decided to show Mini Miss what I, as a 10 year old, used to do with my Dominoes. I was given them to set up in fancy tracks, then knock them down and watch them fall. After setting it up about 100 times (I'm not as steady with my hands as I used to be) I finally set up a fun little track, and Mini Miss was more than happy to set it off! She cheered and clapped her hands in absolute delight as they fell down one by one in about 15 seconds. She then wanted to set it up over and over and over again. Sadly for her though, my patience was shot. After having her knock them down too soon, or knocking them down myself with my old person shaky hands, I decided to give up! Happily though, she went back to sorting, grabbed a measuring container and "poured" them into the individual muffin sections, and generally amused herself.

So, although I was completely unprepared for Activity Monday this week, it worked out well! The dominoes are still out and I will leave them out until Friday as Mini Miss still isn't 100% well and will be home from school all week! 

Now, what else to do to keep her amused........

 

Activity Monday - Alphabet Train

Today was activity Monday for Mini Miss and myself.

For me it started last night with some preparation....Printing a train and alphabet cards and cutting them out.

Then this morning we set up the activity together.

By this stage Mini Miss was very excited about the train. She had already noticed the letters on each carriage and had been pointing out all the letters she already knew.

This activity was designed to encourage her to explore the alphabet some more and hopefully learn and recognise some new letters. At the moment she can recite the alphabet and recognises about half the letters, particularly the letters in her name, which she can give me in the right order (small mummy boast there! What?! I'm allowed to be proud!).

Anyhow, I showed her the box of "oh circles mummy" and how they each had a letter on them too. I had to demonstrate what to do. The idea being that you matched the circle to the letter on the train. 

This activity was so much fun! Mini Miss even enjoyed sticking the blue tack on each circle to stick it to the train. As well as alphabet recognition, we had fine motor skills, lots of talk about colours and shapes and trains...so much talk about trains! Mini Miss has a LOVE of trains, ever since we were lucky enough to win that wonderful weekend away to Sydney thanks to the Coffs for Kids website.

I plan on leaving the train up for the week. She has already gone back and added more letters, and even some stars as decoration for the sky! I think we will continue to decorate, and when we are done, because the train and the circles are made out of cardboard, we will pack it away for another day.

But as always, the best bit was we spent one on one time together! 

We talked, we laughed, we played. The train went on an adventure to a magical world of Mini Misses imagining....

We did so so much more today. Went on another nature walk, fished for alphabet fish, went for a swim....but I guess that is for another post! 

If you want to recreate our Alphabet Train for your little one, copy the pictures below, print on A4 card, cut them out and then set up your scene. We went simple as I wanted to focus today on the letters, but it can be as decorated as you want. 

We used blue cardboard as a backdrop, and purple paddlepop sticks as the tracks.