Preschool at Home: Letter D Week

I mentioned in a previous post that I do learning time with Boo during the week. My intentions when I started these home preschool lessons at the beginning of the year were to work through one letter of the alphabet each week, and by the end of the year to have circled through the alphabet twice. Well, I totally overestimated our pace and as the year comes to a close we are just now finishing up the alphabet...for the first time. Whoops! Life with two little ones is busy and I've learned to not feel guilty if we don't get to our learning time some days. There are plenty of other ways Boo's learning every day.

Anyways, here is our Letter D Week Lesson from several months ago.We learned about what doctors do. I wanted to take Boo up to the hospital to see Daddy at work but we ended up doing that several weeks later insted.


We read the story of David and Goliath from a children's bible and I had Boo do a little craft to correspond with it. I tore out little stone shaped construction paper for him to glue near the stream where David found a stone. He was only 2 1/2 at the time and was really into gluing things on by himself.


We made a drum from an old oatmeal container. Boo had fun decorating his drum and then playing it. We made crescent dogs for a picnic lunch one day and dubbed them Diggity Dogs to go with our letter D theme. Boo helped wrap the dogs in crescent rolls before I popped them into the oven.
We read about dinosaurs and Boo painted a small wooden dinosaur plaque with acrylic paints.

Throughout that week (or two) we practiced Spanish words starting with D: dinero, durazno, diente, diez. We also made a peach {durazno} crostata, and Boo learned his letter D bible verse: Psalm 34:14.

Snowy Day Crafts

Despite the fact that it's warm today, warm enough to be sitting on my back patio barefoot, I thought I'd post a few of the simple crafts we did two weeks ago when we were stuck inside because of a crazy snow storm. Boo was particularly into doing crafts after only one day of being cooped up inside. He did three in a row!

We were working on the letter U so he made and "up" arrow. I cut out a bunch of small arrows and gave him the task of gluing them all on pointing up.
He made this umbrella. {sorry it's blurry} He had to piece together the umbrella stripes, connect the dots to make the handle, and glue on raindrops all over.
For another letter U umbrella craft, see Allie's here.

And after those two, he wanted to do more. I drew an oval on a piece of construction paper and cut out various parts of the face. He also had some cut yarn, pom poms and google eyes. He created a face with all of the pieces. He had to think about how high up to put the ears, where the lips are in relation to the chin, etc.
It was fun and he was so excited to show off all of his crafts when Daddy got home.

Preschool Co-Op: Thanksgiving Theme

I taught our preschool co-op today. I loosely based the theme on Thanksgiving, focusing more on fun turkey stories and the feast than the historical elements. We have two more weeks before the actual holiday and no doubt the other moms will emphasize the historial significance and spiritual characteristics. Plus, I had a migraine last night and didn't get my lesson together until early this morning. Talk about putting things off until the last minute.

Anyways, on to the lesson...

We started our circle time discussing the upcoming holiday and talking about what a feast is and the foods we like to eat at Thanksgiving. Then, we read A Plump and Perky Turkey.

Such a cute book! We've had that one checked out from the library a while now and it's been fun to read and reread.
After we read that, we talked about how Pete and the other turkeys in Squawk Valley were disappearing around Thanksgiving time because they didn't want to end up as dinner. I drew a turkey on our chalkboard easel and told the kids that they were going to help our turkey drawing disappear too. They got to decide which parts of the turkey to erase {disappear} first but they had to tell me a rhyming word instead of the word itself, i.e. street instead of feet, weather instead of feather. They needed a little help with this at first since it's a new concept to them but they were getting it pretty well by the end.

For our turkey craft, we went on a walk to find maple leaves. We gathered several and came home to make our turkeys. The children glued their turkeys together. {I found the template here and cut out all pieces on construction paper beforehand.} They did an excellent job putting their turkeys together and gluing on the collected maples leaves as the feathers. It amazes me how much more independent they've become in just the last 9 months. When we first started this co-op we had to help them a lot with activities like this. Now they listen to the instructions, see the example, and try on their own before asking for help. It's such a joy to see the progress!

We read another book, Run, Turkey, Run!. It's a fun book and the kids got a kick out of the turkey running from the farmer, trying to hide with all of the other farm animals. I had originally planned to go outside after reading it so the kids could pretend to be turkeys like the one in the book, running and hiding to see if the farmer (me) would find them. But we ran out of time.

Back to the "feast" part of the lesson, I had the kids sit down at our kiddie table for a little Q&A on table manners. I asked them questions about how they chew {with mouths closed}, what the polite way to ask for more food is, where they should put their utensils when they're not using them, etc. I gave them each construction paper place mats that had place settings drawn on them. I told them about how to set a table and gave each of them a full place setting to practice with, using their place mats as a guide.

We talked about how we thank God for our food before we eat and that everything comes from Him. One of the little girls taught us a new prayer she just learned for mealtime.

We learned how God gives us so many good things, including the wonderful foods we get to eat. I made cornucopias out of lunch bags with our verse of the day written on them, Psalm 145:7. The kids scooped out popcorn, dried cranberries, raisins and chocolate chips to fill up their cornucopias.

Holiday Handprint Placemats

We started a tradition last year of making placemats during holidays. We use our handprints to create the art on drawing paper and then laminate it for the kids to use as placemats. It's fun to see how the kids' prints grow and to look back and remember who was celebrating with us. We make everyone present participate!

For Christmas last year, we had so many I had to make two placemats to fit them all.

I've found that the best way to ensure clear handprints is to use a foam brush to paint the acrylic paint onto people's hands.
For the turkeys, I had a separate foam brush for each color and quickly painted the fingers and palms different colors before pressing them firmly on the paper.

I use thin construction paper or computer paper for the handprints. Then, once they're dry, cut them out and use a glue stick to arrange them on your drawing paper. This way you can collect several handprints without anyone accidentally smudging the art.

Another suggestion is to have each person do more than one print, maybe even with each hand. That way, when you sit down to turn it into art you have more options for creating your design.

As for turning it into a placemat, Office Max will laminate anything smaller than 11 x 17" for around $2 per sheet. Check your drawing paper and trim if needed to keep it smaller than that size. If it's bigger, you'll have to have it roll laminated which costs more than twice as much.

This is a great craft to do with your children around the holidays and my kids love pulling out the placemats year round to use during mealtime.