November Construction Sensory Box

I know that November is almost over, but I never got a chance to post this earlier since my camera cord was missing until a couple days ago! Our theme this month was construction. Here are pictures of inside the box and all the contents:


What is included in the box:

The bottom is oatmeal (safe for my toddler- he won't put it in his mouth like the rocks)
Construction vehicles (five in a pack from Wal-Mart)
Large cone from The Dollar Store
Small misc signs and orange cement mixer from The Dollar Store
Medium sized cone and sign from miscellaneous toys

The kids loved this but unfortunately like most sensory boxes the bottom part ended up on the floor (but the oatmeal is very easy to clean-up since it can be vacuumed!

Homeschool Revamp

After a couple of months into homeschooling I realized I have taken on a undetaking and have decided (out of necessity) to scale it back. I was preparing a new snack every day for our letter theme, a new book, a new craft, an activity for our theme and a Bible activity. It got to be too much since everything that I was doing was ideas I was coming up with or ideas I found on other blogs that I researched for hours. So while I am trying to still do fun activities I am trying not to put so much pressure on myself. I have bought a Bible cirriculum that so far (one lesson into it!) I am very happy with it. It has activities that are already there to go along with the theme. We are using Favorite Bible Heroes by Rainbow Publishers.

I am trying to use fun activities for preschool that go along with the letter theme, but instead of spending hours coming up with them or researching them I have decided to go with the activities from three of my favorite blogs: 1+1+1=1, Confessions of a Homeschooler, and Mama Jenn. They have awesome printables and fun activities. Carissa at 1+1+1=1 also has new kindergarden printables (Angry Birds is already a favorite) and great sight word printables. I would encourage anyone homeschooling young children to check-out these blogs. I am hoping to start-up my weekly re-cap again soon (I am going to have to find my camera first- as it was lost in the move).

Button Sorting Busy Activity

My three year old daughter absolutely loves this activity! It was so easy to put together and occupies her for a while (aren't those the best type of busy ideas??) I had a bunch of leftover buttons from my hairbow making days and the tray is from her Melissa and Doug bead set. She can sort the buttons by color, size and shape. The tray is really fun to use since it has a lot of sections that are different sizes and keeps the buttons (mostly) contained.

I'm Back

After a few weeks away I am back! Things have been totally crazy we bought a new house, I made a trip with the kids to see my husand, then we found out we were going to close on the house in less than two weeks so I went back early from my trip to pack-up our house and tie up all the loose ends. Then my mom had surgery and we ended-up taking an unplanned "fall break" because of moving everything and all the craziness. We still need to sell the other house and I still have a bunch of things to settle but hopefully most of the craziness is over.

Farm Sensory Box

Our sensory box for October is the farm. We will be doing a mini unit on the farm later this month so I decided to make a farm sensory bin to go along with the unit. The bottom of the box is filled with cracked corn (this idea is from Counting Coconuts). I wanted to fill it with corn kernels, since they are less messy but I figured they would be more of a choking hazard for my 20 month old.


The rest of the box contains:
Felt Barn (Target Dollar Spot last year)
John Deere Tractor
Toob Animals- Petting Zoo set (Michaels)
Farm Animals (Target)

The kids are already enjoying it, but it is definately not mess free!

Fun Busy Activities

My husband was relocated a few months ago and is currently living 8 hours away from us, so we travel to see him about every couple of weeks. Since we spend a lot of time in the car (the trip is 8 hours for my husband to drive, but I have not been able to drive it in less than 9 1/2 hours with the kids- most trips are well over 10 hours). My children are 18 months, 3 1/2 and 5 so they cannot occupy themselves! I hate having them watch hours of movies on the trip so every time we travel I try to put together new busy activities for them (when we are finally moved down with him and do not have to make such frequent trips the activities will be homeschooling busy bags!) Here are our activity bags from our last trip:

All the bags neatly in a large storage bag (they did not look like this after we arrived!)

Two large superheroes from a garage sale

Barrette and hair band matching from My Montessori Journey

Markers, crayons, construction paper and foam stickers

Laminated paper dolls (they have velcro on the back of the clothes and on the front of the dolls), they also have magnets on the back of the dolls to stick to metal cookie sheets.

My little gnome dolls (you can see my post here)
Clip art pictures printed and lamintated with magnets on the back

Homemade lacing cards (you can find the printables here and here)

Pasta lacing on pipe cleaners

Easy reader books for my son

My children really enjoyed these acitivities, but I will admit whenever I bring them a bunch of activities in the car all they want to do is watch television but whenever I only bring a few they want more- I can never win!!

School Week 4, Letter D

This week my 19 month old played with:

Baby Einstein Neighborhood Animals, a soft fabric book about Bible animals, Fisher Price Noah's Ark and some sensory blocks.


Preschool:

Here are our preschool bins:

Fishing game, Scooping beads (both are from here but the fishing pole is an old toy I repurposed)

Sorting Fall leaves (Dollar Store), Pushin pins into foam

Letter D objects, Double Trouble Shape Match (from here)

She also did some pages from an old preschool book my son did not finish last year.

The letter D:

Do-A- Dot (from Confessions of a Homeschooler)

"Dirt Cups" (AKA pudding, crushed oreos and gummy worms)

We also made daffodils out of muffin liners and pipe cleaners and read the following books:

Go Dog Go (Eastman)

Daisy Head Mayzie (Seuss)

Dragon Pizzeria (Mary Morgan)

Dog Breath (Dav Pilkey)

Dogs Don't Do Ballet (Anna Kemp)

Kindergarten:

This week we finished up our fall theme. We did the following crafts:

Fall Mobile (courtesy of the library)


Leaf Rubbings

Yarn Pumpkins

Fall Trees

We read the following fall books:

Fall Leaves Fall (Zoe Hall)

The Scarecrows Hat (Ken Brown)

The Apple Pie Tree (Zoe Hall)

In Bible we memorized Psalms 37:4: Depart from evil and do good.

We studied Noah's Ark and made a collage (I did not realize how big these animals were!)

We also used Mama Jenn's color wheel when we talked about the rainbow.

I am linking this post here: