The kids painted their birdhouse outside in the Fall sunshine today! I can't believe it's Fall already! Time for the ceremonial lowering of the Summer wreath on the door, and raising of the Fall one! I'm going to love coming up with seasonal Kindergarten/Preschool projects and lessons for the kiddos! I love everything Autumn: Crisp air, pears and apples, harvest colors, costumes, pumpkin patches, layering with cardigans and scarves... but NOT corn mazes. I once got stuck in one with my Bonus Daughter when she was about 7 years old for seemingly hours (I'm sure it was only an hour) but we were both tired and crabby and ready to just cheat and run straight through the rows until we found the parking lot! We made it out without corn stalks sticking out of our seams, but if I ever do one again, I'll bring a pen so we can mark every turn on the map.
Lesson 1: Art - Making an umbrella. We did two different styles of umbrella - a smooth cone-style, and an accordion-folded style. I drew the circles, and let the kids cut them out. My son (who is 3) didn't want his blue circle to be an umbrella - he cut his in half and said it was a Half Moon instead. For my daughter's umbrellas, I helped fold the first one as an example, and let her put the umbrella stick in. Then, she did two more on her own - one larger one for her full-sized Barbie (she is actually Jasmine from Aladdin), and one for her miniature Barbie.
Lesson 2: Kindergarten Activities - Home Made Play Dough! 1 cup salt, 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup water, and Play Dough is born! I started to add food coloring, but stopped at the kids demand, because they wanted it to look like cookie dough so they can play Bakery! They thought it was pretty novel that the Play Dough was actually dough-colored (they were used to the fun, bright colors the store-bought comes in)! The assignment from the Connections Academy was to decorate a Gingerbread person from the play dough - we had a bunny person shape, so we did that instead. My daughter had her bunny person hold the mini umbrella she made earlier - so cute!
Lesson 3 - Math: Unit Review. Today's Connections Academy Math assignment was actually a Test, and a Unit Review. SO, I decided to make our own Math lesson for today: Fractions using the play dough we just made! I had my daughter cut out a few circles with the Happy Face cookie stamper I have. Then, I drew on a piece of paper some of the most common fractions: Whole, Half, Fourths and Thirds. Then, I told her to cut her happy face in Half, and then Fourths, and then Thirds and put them in their proper place on the paper. I showed her how if you take one fourth away, we say 3/4; if we take one third away from the whole, we say 2/3, etc. It was just an introduction to fractions and we'll get more into the subject another day.
Lesson 4: Social Studies - Proverbs (cont.): Look before you Leap; It's raining cats and dogs; A place for everything and everything in it's place; and Practice makes perfect. I explained to her what each saying means, and then had her draw her interpretation of the Proverb. I especially liked her 'raining cats and dogs' drawing - she drew two HUGE raindrops among other large rain drops and drew a cat face in one, and a puppy face in the other.
Lesson 5: Language Arts.
After Neatly Noting Nn's Nonchalantly Narrowing Neighboring Nodes, we added to my daughter's All About Me book with a page listing all of the things she likes to play. Some of the activities were: Playing restaurant, playing with puppies, playing games, and smelling flowers when she passes by them. My son said that he wanted to make a 'Me' book too (he was not interested when I asked him last week), so I let him make one. He drew a picture of himself laying down in his bed on the cover (it was nearing nappy-nap time for him!), and he made sure to draw his belly button too.
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