Today we learned about the letter P, Pumpkins and our sense of smell and the nursery rhyme "This Little Piggie." We started our morning by opening a pumpkin up and examining it first with our eyes, then with our sense of touch, hearing etc. The kids were not impressed by the guts. They barely touched them and declared them "super stinky." Next they did a pumpkin project by putting little squares of tissue paper on paper plates with modge podge.
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| New Fish/Buddy B |
I had intentions to check pumpkin themed books out of the library but ran out of time. We did read alongs on youtube. There are some cute pumpkin stories on there and the kids liked watching someone else read the story for a change. We also watched the life cycle of a pumpkin and talked about seeds. We sang pumpkin songs and did finger plays and looked at our calendar.
Next we did a little pumpkin face game of faces cut out of felt. (inspired by pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com) I was surprised how much they loved this little game. The girls have been playing it all afternoon.
We used this little montessori jars filled with different spices to explore our sense of smell. We tried to match them up by smell but that was a little tricky for the kids. They figured it out but it was a long activity- not a problem but interesting. They spent quite awhile smelling the jars even after we finished the matching game.
Next we talked about the letter P and colored letters cut out of foam.
We started working on number recognition. Turns out they already recognize most of the numbers. I knew they could count well but I didn't realize they recognized the numbers. We practiced with spider webs drawn on paper with a pile of plastic spiders ready to put into the webs. We also did some more sorting with Halloween erasers from the dollar store. I love the dollar store. The kids spent the last twenty minutes playing in our new spooky sensory bin. It was fun to sit back and listen to the games invented from their wild little imaginations.
Red Fish came home from preschool and immediately sat down to our homeschool activities as per usual. She enjoyed the pumpkin guts much more than the little kids. Then she insisted we had to carve the pumpkin. She did most of the carving herself with a knife made for kids.
Today was conference Sunday. My visiting teacher made a cute basket full of things to keep the girls busy last April and I copied it for this conference. It had things to keep their hands busy, treats etc. Each object in the basket has a picture of someone who would be speaking in conference. They have to match it up with the speaker. It's a good thing I made a trip to the dollar store and made the basket because as soon as I announced we would be watching conference today the girls shouted: "Horray! Where is our basket of surprises?" They happily munched on snacks, strung beads, counted bags of spiders and glued things on foam shapes and were quiet and somewhat attentive to the message. They were very excited about seeing the prophet on television. It's delightful to hear some of conference. I will still be reading a lot of it to fill in the holes but keeping the girls engaged certainly keeps the peace much more around here.
