Pollution Sensory Bin

Earth Day is April 22, and this year we are focusing on what pollution does to our planet. This is more of a pollution activity than a sensory bin but, Madison played in the mess after so I'm including it as a sensory bin.

 

This was so easy to set up, I put a container of clean water in front of her and had garbage, (vegetable) oil, and I also added some crackers for Madison to crush up! 

She had to test it to make sure it was plain ol' water. 

Everything set out and ready for her to "pollute" the water! 

  

 The idea behind this activity is trying to clean the water after it's been polluted. To really get the full effect of everything that you litter or throw in the water effects the water, you want to use stuff that's hard to clean as well as things that your child can just pick up.

Crumbling up crackers into the water. 

Adding in the oil

Madison's final mess. 

After everything is in your water, it's time to try and clean it up! For this part, I highly recommend your child NOT be wearing a white dress! ;)

Some thing were easy to clean up, like the bottle and other garbage.

Other things, like the oil, food coloring, and cracker crumbs we could not get out. We talked about things we could do to clean the water and how much extra effort and money goes into these.

April Reads

What are we reading in April?

Madison and I are currently working on the latest American Girl, Lea's book, Lea Dives In. We are hoping to continue on to read Lea Leads the Way and Lea and Camila depending if I can find the books. Madison had asked to take a small break from The Magic Treehouse series so, I was so excited she asked for the next one on our last library trip. We'll start Midnight on the Moon as soon as we finish Lea Dives In. She also requested the next Judy Moody book which is Judy Moody Declares Independence. With such a heavy read aloud curriculum, these are possibly going to be the only chapter books we'll get through this month but, we are constantly picking up new (and well loved) picture books from the library as well. 

As for me, I'm currently rereading the entire Harry Potter series. I'm in the middle of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and plan to finish out the series this month. In my Kindle library, I also have Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid. I just recently discovered Amazon's Kindle First program basically, if you are an Amazon Prime member you can get one of six editor's picks a month before the official publication date, either at free or a reduced price.  If you have Prime you should totally check it out! For the month of April, I downloaded The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes. I am so excited to start reading this one! I'll let you know in the April Reads wrap up how it was!!

What about y'all? What are your kids or yourself reading this month?! Let me know in the comments! 

Celebrate May!

In our house, we use any excuse to celebrate and have fun with silly, goofy holidays! I'm going to start a 'Celebrate the Year' series with easy, simple ways to celebrate all these silly holidays! (I will also include some more serious holidays as well.)

                                                        ~CELEBRATE MAY~

May 4-- Star Wars Day

In my house, we don't have any Star Wars fans but, I know y'all are out there! Have a movie marathon, make your own light sabers, put together a Star Wars Lego set, or find one of the many Star Wars themed printables on Pinterest to add some fun, themed learning to celebrate the day!

May 5-- Cinco de Mayo 

Cinco de Mayo is a day that has come to celebrate Mexican pride but, you can teach your children about the Battle of Puebla when the Mexican army defeated the French.  Cinco de Mayo is also the perfect day to pull out the paper mache supplies and make your own piñata! Another fun thing to do is find a guacamole recipe and attempt to make your own. If you're not a guacamole fan, you can never go wrong with chips and salsa!

May 8-- Mother's Day

Most of you probably have plans already for Mother's Day, perhaps taking your own mother out? However, if it's just you and your family have them make breakfast for mom! Kids of all ages can help with some part of breakfast! And if you're lucky enough to get a break on Mother's Day, enjoy your relaxation mom's, I'm totally envious!

May 13-- Friday the 13th 

This is the ONLY Friday the 13th in 2016! Break out the Goosebumps books and movies, this is the time for things to get a little scary! If you have older kids, you can have a scary movie night but, for littles, we plan on talking about superstitions! Don't let a black cat cross your path or walk under a ladder!

May 18-- National Museum Day

Time to visit your favorite museum but, check ahead and see if they're doing any special programs for the day! In the past our museum has done free or reduced admission!

May 20-- Pick Strawberries Day

I don't know if strawberries are in season where you live but, if they are I highly recommend finding a local U-Pick strawberry farm! My family absolutely loves going every year! There is just something about watching children pick fruit from the plant and pop it in their mouth!

May 25-- National Wine Day

This one is for all you moms (and dads!) I don't know about y'all but sometimes you just need that glass of wine after a rough day. This would be the perfect day to find a sitter and tour a local winery! Parents need to have fun, too!!!

May 30-- Memorial Day

The unofficial start of summer! Almost all those pools, water parks, amusement parks, etc. are open now! Anything summer and outside can help make the most of this day (and weekend!) We usually spend our weekend at the lake but, we always have plenty of bubbles, swimming, fishing, boating, and camp fires!

May 31-- National Macaroon Day

In our house, we love macaroons and we can not wait to celebrate Macaroon day! We are lucky enough to have a macaroon bar about 45 minutes away! If you're not as lucky, hop on over to Pinterest where you can find tons of different recipes! Even if you're not a fan of classic macaroons, I know you can find something you can like!


Does anyone else have special days they love to celebrate in May? Share your favorite May holidays and how you spend them in the comments! We won't be celebrating all of the ones listed above but, I'm sure we'll discover more ways to celebrate as we go along!

Frog Cycle Sensory Bin

 Frog Cycle Sensory Bin! 

Today, we learned all about frog cycles with a new sensory bin!  

To set it up I used blue and green water beads, the Safari, Ltd. Life Cycle of a Frog set found here, and I cut a few lily pads from green foam.

I also included some laminated life cycle cards that are made by Curriculum Castle that I found here.

This was such a fun sensory bin that was easy to set up and really reinforced the frog life cycle we've been talking about all week!

Zoo Passports

Yesterday was our first zoo day (of many) of the year! 

To kick off the start of zoo season, I really wanted to do something fun. I know most people do scavenger hunts at the zoo and we have in the past but, I wanted to shake it up. That's when I found the zoo passport! After hunting around Pinterest for hours I finally found one where the link actually worked, would work for my daughter's skill level, and that I liked! 

 

I printed this off education.com, it is a free printable. All you need to do is create a free account at education.com. The passport is found here

The printable has several pages with a variety of animals. I knew not all of the animals in the passport were at our zoo. I did take out quite a few pages and left several blank pages for drawing unique animals not found in the passport. 

On the back cover, I just double-sided taped some small star stickers to use as the marker. 

She found the first animal! 

I loved that the pages also has a small amount of writing. We're still in the stages of getting her use to having a pencil in her hand and the process of writing. Writing each animals name was the perfect amount of writing for a zoo day wither her. She's only four, she doesn't have the patience to write all about each animals habitat, eating habits, etc. 

I love that our zoo will have some of the animals just walking around the zoo (with a zookeeper of course)! It's so cool to be searching for the next animal and find an animal encounter! 

She loved when the animal signs were at her level! She could prop her passport up on the sign and copy the animals name. 

While taking a break, she decided to go through her passport, counted up all the animals we hadn't seen yet and talked about all the animals we'd already marked off! 

The entire month of April at our zoo, is about being in bloom. They plant over 100,000 tulips each year. They also have over one million daffodils, hyacinths, flowering trees, shurbs, etc. It's absolutely gorgeous this time of year. 

 The last thing we always see is the zebras. They are in a hard to find, dead end path and I always forget them. Until we're almost out the doors and Madison reminds me we forgot them.

 I've already got some awesome ideas about how to spruce up and change the zoo passports! I'll be having my first FREE printable!

Earth Day Sensory Bin

Its April 15, which means we have exactly one week until Earth Day! The perfect time to set out an Earth Day themed sensory bin! 

Talk about an awesome, open-ended invitation to play! 

In the bin, I included new Play-Doh (I wish the store would have had brown but, as a last minute shopper I'm stuck with black), two different types of rocks, some seeds, and some fake worms! 

My little one immediately got to work! She started by flattening the play-doh to create the ground. 

Then she counted and lined up the worms. 

It wasn't long before she decided that we needed a pond. 

Thankfully, I had some blue water beads that I had started the night before! Stay tuned for another Earth Day themed water bead sensory bin! 

She then decided that we needed some grass! Our "grass" is green-dyed oats. This is why I always try and save our sensory bin fillers. These oats are leftover from our St. Patrick's Day sensory bin! It's probably going to be a huge pain to pick all the oats out of the Play-Doh but, completely worth it. Using her Learning Resources Hand Tools she was scooping, pinching, and developing those fine motor muscles! 

Diving into sight words

So, we have officially started working on sight words. I'm so nervous for this transition. One of the only things I was worried about when we decided to home school was teaching Madison to read. Just thinking about it still makes me get worked up. The English language is so difficult, I know everyone has seen that poem where it talks about all the ways English is ridiculous. If not, here's a link to one article 21 Reasons why English sucks.

Anyways, back to us beginning our sight word units. First up... play-doh!!!

We use Preschool Prep, which is an awesome resource. I just picked 5 sight words to start with and I put the coloring sheets in page protectors. 

And then she formed each word with Play-Doh! 

After all five words were done we played some games. First up, she was behind each word and as I called each word out she would jump behind the word. 

The next game we played we spread the sheets out some and Madison would jump over each page while saying the word. Kind of like a sight word version of hopscotch! 

I made this awesome clip sight word activity that I found on Pinterest. I wrote each sight word on a popsicle stick And then put each letter on a separate clothespin.  

I laid this activity out and Madison jumped right in with no instruction! 

She was so proud finishing each word! 

Both of these ideas were super simple and a great way for us to start on sight words! I'm still extremely nervous to teach reading but, we're diving right in!