An Educational Christmas

Last year I had preschool plans all the way up until the week of Christmas, but I found them impossible to fit in.  This year, we had regular preschool plans through the first week of December, and the rest of the month was educational Christmas activities whenever we could fit them in.  

We read Bible passages from our Advent calendar and sang Christmas carols every night.

Parker stamped up some Christmas cards.

Made a gingerbread family.

 I made this felt Christmas tree for him two years ago. He still likes it =)

We still did handwriting activities and reading lessons.

 These little cards were fun.  He could match up the characters, or mix and match.

 We colored ornaments.

Nothing says Christmas like cranberry-orange bread!  He loved juicing and testing the orange.

 He strung pony beads on a pipe cleaner to make a candy cane.

 We did this last year, too. I love this scrapbook paper tree!

A scratch-off Rudolph.

And a sticker nativity scene.

We had a playdate with friends where we made cut out cookies and played Christmassy games.  

It was so much fun!

We read a TON of Christmas books throughout the month, we really tried to emphasize the true meaning of Christmas - the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ!!

Merry Christmas and happy learning!

The Arctic

I have to be totally honest...I have really been fighting the temptation stop blogging about preschool.  We are still doing fun activities, Parker is learning a lot, and I am more proud of him than ever, but I just can't seem to find a time to blog in this busy season of life!  Then I started looking back through the weeks and I just can't quite.  So, I've decided to simplify things and mostly show pictures of what we did throughout the weeks.  Finding the pictures of the books and is the most time consuming part, so I'm eliminating that.  Sorry to disappoint!  

We are continuing to learn Psalm 23, graph the weather, and work through reading lessons.

We played a math game where we took turns rolling the dice and put that many blocks in our mason jar.  Whoever filled theirs up the fastest won.

Then, he counted his up and line them up.  

I did the same thing with mine.  

We lined them up next to each other to see how many more he had than me.

The theme for the week was "The Arctic."  Our neighbor girl came over for Penguin day.

The kids tried waddling with the "egg" on their toes.

They tried passing it back and forth without it touching the floor, but it was hard!  Then we read a book about Penguins, and learned about how their skin repelled water because it was waxy.

The kids colored a penguin with black crayon.

Then they dripped water on it to see it bead up on top.

Finally, the book we read compared the size of the six different kinds of penguins.  We measured them out on the floor.  And figured out which one was the tallest and which was the shortest.

Then we saw which penguin Parker was closest to.

The next day we read about Polar Bears, and did this number matching activity.  Each unique polar bear sticker was assigned a number.  Then he had to match the correct stickers to the correct numbers (11-15).  Adley was coloring, too =)

We read about the blubber that polar bears have.  Parker dipped his bare hand in ice water.

Brrr.

Then we put a baggie over his hand and coated it with crisco (gross).  

He dipped it in and it didn't feel near as cold.

Lastly, we did our first ever handwriting practice.  I gave him his pencil with his grotto grip, showed him how to hold it, and he loved it!  He did like 5 of these pages =)  He seems so OLD working on handwriting. I remember working on handwriting at home with my mom.  Crazy.

Thanksgiving

The week before Thanksgiving, we did mostly Thanksgiving-related activities.  Check them out!

Day 1

We did our weather graph and continued learning Psalm 23.  Then we reviewed number 11-15, and did a math activity.  I had numbers on a paper plate, and bowl of cranberries.  Parker put the correct number of cranberries on each plate.

Then I asked him which field the farmer would want - the one with four cranberries or the one with 11.  He chose 11!  This is our first exposure to greater than and less than.  It was fun!

Then we watched a cool video on harvesting cranberries.  We talked about how it was different and similar to the way Papa harvests corn and soybeans.  Then we made some cranberry sauce.

And we read

We did a reading lesson, and we ate our cranberry sauce on some turkey panini's that night.  Delish!

Day 2

Today we read

and made a Thanksgiving bracelet to help him remember the story of the first Thanksgiving.  

Finally, we talked about all the things we are thankful for.  We have a long list!  Thank you, God!

Day 3

We started by making a pattern block turkey. I had him start with a hexagon and he took it from there.  

He cut out the turkey body and we glued on eyes, a beak, and feet.

We reviewed his Thanksgiving Bracelet, and read

We also went to the library this week, and Parker got to play on the Early Literacy computers for the first time.  He thought it was pretty much the coolest thing ever.

Happy Thanksgiving!