Preschool Syllabus: Birds

The last several weeks have been a little crazy around our house. Husbandie has been traveling a lot but I can't really use that as excuse; I honestly just haven't been doing very good a sticking to a routine. Starting a whole new unit for the month of April seemed like an impossibility so we just moved over in the animal kingdom a little bit and slowly shifted our focus from reptiles to birds. There is debate in the scientific community about to whether dinosaurs are more closely connected to reptiles or birds so Big Buddy was all for this transition.

We've continued to use a lot of our reptile trays but I also threw together a few new ones.

bird/reptile venn diagram
skills practiced: classification, scientific knowledge, comparing
i have made the cards' pdf available here

bird nomenclature cards and figurine matching
skills practiced: one-to-one correspondence, scientific knowledge,
comparing, vocabulary
*i have made the pdf available here - cards created to align with
safari ltd's exotic bird toob and the birds included in the farm toob

bird reptile sorting
skills practiced: sorting, comparing, scientific knowledge

parts of a bird nomenclature cards
skills practiced: scientific knowledge, identification, vocabulary
* pdf via montessori materials
*when working with these cards big buddy also finds the
corresponding part on a bird figurine

bird and reptile x-rays
skills practiced: scientific knowledge, comparing, matching
*x-rays from discount school supply
*you can view our suitcase turned light box tutorial here

painting with a feather
skills practiced: coloring mixing, fine motor, creativity

I also pulled out a few trays from our previous units. From our farm unit:

the chicken game
skills practiced: social, scientific knowledge (life cycle of a chicken)
*borrowed from our local library

scooping bird seed into numbered cups
skills practiced: fine motor, numeral recognition, rational counting,
volume

From our Thanksgiving/Turkeys unit:

"Turkeys" and feathers counting game
skills practiced: fine motor, numeral recognition, rational counting

Animals are currently of great interest to Big Buddy. He especially enjoys learning their characteristics and comparing them to one another. I think we will most likely continue to capitalize on this interest and move on to insects next. If you have any insect activities that your children enjoy, I'd love to hear about them.

P.S. Check out our homeschool page for more theme units and educational ideas.

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

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Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

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Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

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Comments

Ashley at flats to flip flopsMay 1, 2012 at 9:10 AM
A little love for you today on my blog!
Ashley
Jamie EricksonMay 1, 2012 at 11:53 PM
What a fun unit! I especially liked the Venn diagram. Here from ABC/123. www.theunlikelyhomeschool.com
Rachel @ The Philosophers WifeMay 2, 2012 at 7:11 AM
Wow, you have put such thought and car into each project. I am super impressed.

The only thing that we've done insect-wise is flashcards. Sadly, I dream about cockroaches and earwigs now.

I'd love it if you'd link up at my Teaching Time for Toddlers Tuesday party.

http://philwife.blogspot.com/2012/04/teaching-time-for-toddlers-tuesday.html
Katie from ABC&123: A Learning CooperativeMay 5, 2012 at 8:42 PM
So many neat ideas! I am intrigued by your suitcase turned light box! Clever. Thanks for linking up to Show and Tell this week.
dear oliveSeptember 8, 2012 at 5:27 PM
Wow, these look incredible. All your ideas look so fun. Can we come to your homeschooling preschool too?! Kellie xx
MyBright FireflyApril 7, 2014 at 1:06 AM
I love ALL the activities! Thanks!

Joyfully Weary

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