What's On the Shelf? July- Dinosaurs

Preschool this year has been a hodgepodge of bits and pieces and trying different things to see what works and what doesn't.  Mainly because my preschooler is very different to his older siblings.  He has some unique needs and consequently, what worked for them doesn't always work for him.  So it has taken us 6 months but I finally think I have found what will work best for him.  The bonus of this is his 2 year old brother can also join in.

So we have moved to doing monthly, Montessori inspired thematic units and getting rid of all the sit down "schooly" type work that my big kids loved at his age.  I moved around all our toy storage and turned out two 8 cubed storage shelves into our Montessori work shelves.

Our new plan starts with circle time for all four children.  We sing songs, read a story and do our Bible lesson together.  Then the older two go off to do their independent work and the two littlies and I head off to the toy room and spend about and hour playing/working together.

Our theme for July has been Dinosaurs.  Below is a look at the items on our shelves for this month.  As well as the items pictured we also have an art and craft table with playdough, paints, dot paints and lots of collage and boxes that are available to all the children whenever they are feeling creative!

This is our new set up ready for our Dinosaurs theme.  The shelves on the left contain activities mostly aimed at Sam and the one on the right is for Nathanael.  I don't stop them using the others, but when I sit down to do an activity with them I will choose from the appropriate side.

Our salt dough dinosaur fossils.  First we made imprints of various dinosaurs into the salt dough.  Then we cooked them and then finally we use them to match the dinosaurs back to their imprint.  we also use it to talk about the different characteristics of each dinosaur and learn their names.

Scooping activity.  I tend to change this every other week, using different bowls, spoon and filling to keep it interesting.  Nathanael loves this and the pouring activity at the moment.

As mentioned above, our pouring activity.

Threading cotton reels.  Samuel makes patterns with the different colours like abab or abba etc and Nathanael just threads them

Adding peg "spikes" to our stegosaurus for 1 to 1 correspondence.  Samuel patterns them as the pegs are in two different shades.  Nathanael just pegs them on any old way.

Cutting dinosaur tails.  Samuel is way beyond this in terms of cutting but he thinks it is hilarious to cut up dinosaur tails!

Developing fine motor skills by transferring pom poms with the tongs.

Matching dinosaurs to our 3-part cards.  Nathanael just does the toys to pictures.  Samuel matches the words too.

Stamping!

Practicing our numbers by counting dinosaur eggs and pegging the correct number and then matching upper case and lower case letters.

So far this has been the favourite.  Cleaning dinosaurs with a toothbrush in some dish detergent and then drying them.  Our dinosaurs have never been cleaner!!

Feed the dinosaur counting game.

We still have a letter box which has nothing to do with the theme.  I change this box each week to another letter.  It has sandpaper letters and salt try for writing, a few little puzzles for each letter, books, pictures and other odds and ends beginning with the target sound.

This box looks really boring, but is for our I spy game, learning to identify initial sounds in words.  It is actually a favourite despite its sad appearance.

Cutting and sticking dinosaur pictures.

Our foam dough, dinosaur sensory box.

Linking up to the Preschool and Kindergarten Community at Homeschool Creations.

Tot School

So I haven't posted a tot school post for a while and this one is quite late, but we are still going strong. We have been doing lots this week between Christmas activities, montessori activities and cooking we have plenty of pictures to show!


We have done plenty of building with the big blocks from the resource centre.




MAking Christmas stockings


Nativity sets


I have seen this bead bouquet activity on several sites and just had to try it. Both kids pick this one several times a day.



Lacing is still popular, although Liam still thinks he just threads one hole and then he is done!


I introduce colouring mixing with the eye dropper this week. Liana really enjoyed making and discovering new colours. Liam enjoyed dumping all of the colours into one cup.


Cooking is always a favourite.


And lastly, playing on the bouncy castle. We don't have any nice flat grassy area big enough at this new place to set it up outside, but the lounge room with its high ceilings works perfectly.




For more tot school posts check here.

Our First Montessori-ish Day

I say Montessori-ish because we are by no means true montessori sttyle. what I have done is taken the bits of this philosophy and many of the activities and changed other bits and pieces to meet our needs. Today was our first day using this new structure and I must say it was a success!!!

Because of all the new activities today was a lot of me demonstrating an activity to Liana then one to Liam, then back to Liana, the.....well you get the idea but both of the children worked really well on their activities and even Liam soon learned the idea of having to complete his activity, pack it up and put it away before moving on to another.

The good thing about the kids wanting to just do each activity one after another was that I could see what worked, what didn't and what I needed to change. I had to alter a few activities on the spot becasue they were either too easy or way too hard and I learned that flour is not a good option for the letter tracing tray. I quickly changed that to rice!

I forgot about the camera until about half way through, but as they worked on their activities for 1.5 hours I still got a few good shots. Liana worked solid this whole time and I had to make her stop for lunch. Liam worked on and off stopping to go and play with his trains every now and then and then coming back for more.

So I officially call today a success and am looking forward to tomorrow. Here are a few photos of some of our activities today.

Montessori

So after much thought and lots of googling and reading, I have found that I am heading back towards the place I began my homeschool journey - Montesorri. I have decided to change my plan and head away from the classical road and back towards a lot of the Montessori ideas and activities. I am slowly converting our games room and making and printing off all the materials I saved back when I first decided to homeschool 2+ years ago.

Tonight the kids spotted one of the activities I was preparing and were busting to have a go, so I let them at it! They played with it for over 30 mins before I insisted the have a shower and go to bed. You can see the response I got from Liam at this suggestion. I think this activity is going to be a winner.





The idea is to use the tongs to place a marble in each section of the ice cube tray. We then moved onto 2 in each. It is amazing how many times they wanted to repeat this. Great for fine motor, hand eye co-ordination and 1 to 1 correspondence.