D is for Ducks

E's latest letter focus was the letter D. She did a Dd 'dot' painting that I'd drawn up for her and made a collage of things beginning with D. We made a dice using a wooden cube and a permanent marker. We did some dancing. And we did this duck craft:

To make your own ducks, you will need:

• 2 cardboard tubes (empty toilet paper rolls)
• yellow crepe paper
• glue (we used a simple homemade paste)
• orange card
• white card
• pencil
• black marker
• clear sticky tape

Here's how to do it:

• Cut one of the tubes in half so that you'll have one tall duck and 2 shorter ones.
• Smother the outside of each tube in glue.
• Paste on some yellow crepe paper.
• Cut some smaller pieces of crepe paper and glue a few to each duck for tail feathers.
• Let the paste dry.
• On the orange card, draw 3 pairs of feet and 3 duck bills.
• Cut them out and draw some nostrils with the black marker.
• Tape feet and bills onto your ducks.
• On the white card, draw 3 pairs of eyes (using black marker).
• Cut them out and glue them onto your ducks.
• On the white card, draw 3 pairs of wings.
• Cut them out and tape them onto your ducks.

All done!

E enjoyed this craft. She loves gluing things and she loves ducks. She even got to practice cutting with scissors. She later drew a pond for her ducks to play in.

-Polly

R is for Robots

E came home from her latest trip to Scitech carrying a box. Inside was a build-your-own spider robot kit that her dad had bought for her. It was labelled for 10yrs+, but it's what she really wanted. E and her dad built it that same day. She's actually getting pretty good at following instructions and identifying parts.

Now she has fun watching it scuttle around the house.

Obviously E is a big fan of robots, so it was a logical choice for some letter R activities.

Here's a picture we did together some time ago (I did the drawing and E did the painting):

And more recently we did this 'Rory the robot' picture:

Again, I drew the robot and this time E decorated it with pieces of aluminium foil. This is part of a series we're doing to help remember letter sounds and identify letters in a sentence.

-Polly

Making Faces

This is what E might do when asked to make a silly face:

Recently she was learning the names of body parts and when we got to the face, I made her this face puzzle to play with:

E has also been drawing faces lately, including portraits of myself and her dad, as well as this self-portrait on her chalkboard:

-Polly

Feelings

A while ago I discovered the tot packs at 1+1+1=1, so E had some fun with some of the "feelings" pack. We used the "How are we feeling?" game and the little book.

E collects this type of activity in her scrapbook, so we didn't use a file folder, but put the pieces in her book instead.

E also had fun posing with different expressions. I love her "thoughtful" look:

She then drew how she was feeling (happy, can you tell?) on a paper plate, which we also added to her scrapbook. She was a little disappointed that her "smile mouth" didn't look smiley enough.

So that was our little look at "feelings".

How are you feeling?

-Polly

More Apples

Here are some more apple activities that we did recently.

A fun art activity was printing using cut apples and poster paint:

Having seen many "do-a-dot" pages online, and not having any daubers, we decided to try using one with a circular sponge dabber and paint. I found this page [here].

E seemed to like it. She likes any excuse to use paint. I imagine this method is a little messier than using bingo daubers.

I made up a game for E to play which was simply a picture of an apple tree and each apple had a number written on it. I supplied a pack of number flashcards (spectrum brand) and a pack of colour flashcards (home-made). She would randomly pick one of each and use crayons to colour the apples the corresponding colour. She loved this game, so I ended up drawing more worksheets with more numbers and one with lower-case vowels which we played the same way.

A couple of weeks later we headed to Donnybrook for the Apple Festival and a play at the Apple Fun-Park.

Apples are fun!

-Polly

Apples

E recently spent some time learning with and about apples. We spoke about different types of apples and I found a chart online with pictures of many of the varieties grown here in Australia. We went to a local shop and bought three different types: fuji, gala and granny smith. We cut some open to see the flesh and the seeds and had taste tests. E's favourite was the granny smith.

"Ten Apples Up On Top" by Theo LeSieg (Dr Seuss) was read a few times during our apple theme and is always good fun. E liked trying to balance an apple on top of her head like the animals in the story.

There are a lot of educational pages and packs online with an apple theme. We used this size sequencing activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler:

and this puzzle from the 2 Teaching Mommies Apple Tot Pack:

From that same tot pack, I printed two copies of the "apple match" page and we used them for some patterning as well as having extra pieces for colour-matching.

We had some fun in the kitchen and E learned how to use the spiral cutter:

We also made some apple pikelets using a recipe from a book called "Du jour: Easy but Glamorous Recipes for Every Occasion".

E requested an apple colouring page, so I found one at www.activityvillage.co.uk. We made our own little booklet sequencing an apple from fruit to tree. I also made some little vocabulary cards to go with our booklet, with pictures for E to colour. There were words such as 'pips' and 'core'.

There were more activities that we did on this theme, but this post is getting long so I'll share them another time. :)

-Polly

Seeds and Sprouts

It's just a weed, but isn't it cute the way that lupin sprouts and discards it's seed casing above the ground?

Over the past week or so, we have been looking at seeds. We collected different types of seeds for E to examine and compare. We found them in the pantry, in foods we ate, in the garden and in our store of 'to be planted one day' seeds. E liked finding weed seeds in the garden, but I think her favourite method was cutting open fruits to see what the seeds inside were like.

Seeds have been used for counting and for sorting. We collected and dried some rockmelon and chilli seeds from our garden produce to be added to our 'to be planted one day' collection.
I set up a tray with a few different types of seeds for E to play with. It had kidney beans, pumpkin seeds, red lentils, sunflower seeds and mustard seeds. I also included a few empty cups to encourage pouring and exploring. It didn't take long for it all to be mixed together.

Once E started to get bored with her seed tray, I introduced some playdough to the activity. The playdough became the base for seed pictures and creatures with seed faces and some seeds were tucked up into a playdough bed.

E learnt a little about growing seeds, too. We talked about how the plants in our garden started out as seeds and we planted some cress seeds in little egg-shell 'eggheads'.

I also pulled out the dried corn from a few weeks ago and we sprouted some of the kernels in a zip-lock bag with a damp paper towel (thanks to an idea from "Science is Simple" by Peggy Ashbrook).

We finished up by watching "Life of Plants" (narrated by David Attenborough). E liked the time-lapse scenes and pretended to be a plant growing up and up.

-Polly

There's a Wocket in my Pocket

"There's a Wocket in my Pocket" is one of E's favourite Dr Seuss books. It's often requested and rarely read just once in a sitting. She already understands the nonsense of it.
"Did you ever have the feeling there's a WASKET in your BASKET?"
E's standard response is "No"

Here's some activities that we did to tie in with "There's a Wocket in my Pocket".

The first was a toy for E. I drew a wocket on a piece of cardboard and cut around it. E coloured it with pencils while I sewed the pocket from an old pair of jeans onto a fabric-covered, cardboard page. We then added a stick to the wocket so that it could play "peek-a-boo" in the pocket.

I got the idea for our second "wocket" activity from "Make and Takes". I collected some photographs of objects that we have around the house and E made little collage and drawn creatures that might live on, in or behind the objects. She glued each onto a separate page and we made up names for all the creatures. I wrote in the words and stapled the pages together into a little book. E loved reading her own version of "There's a Wocket in my Pocket" over and over.
Here's the pages before I wrote on them:

There's a ZIANO on the PIANO and a FLOBE behind the GLOBE. There's a MIN in the BIN and a NENT in my TENT. There's a DOASTER on the TOASTER and a WATH in the BATH.

What's your favourite Dr Seuss book?
-Polly

The Cat in the Hat

I read somewhere that today is World Book Day. Perhaps E knew that, as for the last couple of days we seem to have been reading non-stop. It's a good thing that she loves books so much.

Last week, as part of our "Dr Seuss" theme, we read "The Cat in the Hat" and then made some cat-inspired hats. We had previously painted some cardboard rolls red, so we used those and glued on some strips of white paper. At first, E wanted to cover the whole cardboard roll in paper, but she soon got the hang of leaving gaps to form the ABAB pattern of the cat's hat.

We taped on circles (or, more accurately, doughnut-shapes) of white card to form the brims and they were ready to be modelled - on our own heads and on those of various toys. (See also the skeleton in the first photograph).

Then we read "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" and made some hat-inspired desserts. Our desserts were simply raspberries and vanilla ice-cream layered in tall glasses. We made paper coasters to look like the brim of a hat.

As we ate them, the ice-cream turned pink - just like the "cat-ring" and the snow in the story. :)

-Polly

Green Eggs and Ham

March 2nd would have been Dr Seuss's birthday, so there have been a lot of Dr Seuss ideas floating around the internet. E has a whole box of Dr Seuss books that we read regularly, but over the last week we have spent a few days doing some activities to go along with them.

After reading "Green Eggs and Ham" together, E had some fun balancing a green, plastic egg on a spoon and walking to different parts of the house. It took her a while to get the hang of it, but she was quite proud when she did. Perhaps I should have weighted the egg like Megan did at Coffee Cups and Crayons. Our egg kept breaking open when it was dropped, so that would have meant rice all over the floor unless I taped it shut.

We also made our own green eggs. Here's the recipe, although we didn't actually measure anything:

GREEN EGGS
Ingredients:
6 eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
handful baby spinach
small bunch parsley
1 tsp american mustard
a drop or two of green food colouring (optional)
salt and pepper

Method:
Hard-boil the eggs. Cool and peel.
Carefully remove yolks and arrange whites on a plate.
Finely chop spinach and parsley. Add to yolks in a small bowl. Mash together with mayonnaise and mustard. Add food colouring if you want a little extra green-ness.
Spoon or pipe mixture into egg whites and season with salt and pepper.

The verdict? E says "I LOVE green eggs!"
We didn't attempt green ham, but E did have a SPAM sandwich the other day which she rather enjoyed. Ew.

-Polly

Chinese New Year

February 10, 2013, began the Chinese year of the snake. Leading up to this festival season, I thought would be a good time for a "China" theme. We did some Chinese New Year themed colouring pages and quite a few themed crafts. E learnt how to find China on her globe and how to say "Ni Hao". We made a few paper decorations, like the "fu" banner to the left.

We learnt a bit about some Chinese inventions, including the abacus. E had lots of practice counting on her's. I also made a cardboard tangram puzzle for her to try and she has been having fun with it ever since. She also did a simple Chinese flag puzzle, but that wasn't nearly as fun. We made (and ate) some Chinese style foods including spring rolls, noodles, and a sweet & sour stir-fry.

Thanks to an idea from lightly enchanted, we made some goldfish kites (see right) to hang up around the house. E loved this craft and wanted to make more and more!

Lastly, we made some dragon puppets to dance around with. For these I simply printed the dragon head and tail pieces to colour in. Then we cut them out and glued them together with a long piece of folded paper in the middle and taped on a couple of pop-sticks to hold.

-Polly

Baking Australia

As part of our recent Australia studies, E and I made a shortbread map like the one by the kids at Creekside Learning. We used the basic shortbread recipe from "Cookery the Australian Way". Here's E checking the instructions:

E got her hands sticky rubbing in the butter and then she rolled the dough flat.

I helped to get the right shape using a printed map and cling-wrap. There was just enough dough left over for E to use cookie-cutters to make her name. Then we baked it all in the oven.

E wasn't up to adding landforms or state lines like the cookie made by the Creekside kids, but at least we included Tasmania. E chose to make purple icing and we spread that all over our shortbread.

We added smarties in the approximate positions of each capital city and E had fun covering the whole thing in sprinkles...

and then we invited Daddy to help eat it. Yum!

-Polly

Australian Animals

As part of our "Australia" theme over the last week, we did a lot of animal themed activities. Australia does have a lot of unique animals.

E has a block-puzzle that has pictures of different Australian animals and we had fun putting the pictures together. E also likes to stack the blocks and find all the pieces with animal heads on them.

We did some arts and crafts, including a dot painting of a gecko:

and a paper-plate kangaroo with a joey:

I found some animal songs on youtube. This exercise song would have been better if the video showed children doing the actions instead of just pictures of the animals. Don Spencer sings many classic Australian animal songs. I used to listen to the "Feathers, Fur or Fins" album when I was young. The only ones I could find online were this video which includes "Please Don't Call Me a Koala Bear" and the Play School version of "Feathers, Fur or Fins".

E had plenty of fun pretending to be different animals. Her favourites were a bouncing kangaroo and a squawking, flying cockatoo.

We read some animal books, too. After reading "Koala Lou" by Mem Fox, E pretended to be a koala using a mask from Wildlife Fun 4 Kids:

Echidnas were made using play-dough and pop-sticks:

I knew that bag of pop-sticks would come in handy one day. :)
-Polly

Australia Day

Happy Australia Day (for yesterday) to all the Aussies out there!

For the last week, E has been doing a lot of "Australia" themed activities. Here's just some of them:

We looked at maps of Australia in our atlas and E learnt where on the map we, and other relatives, live. She also learned how to locate Australia on her new globe.

E did some Australia themed colouring pages and we read some Australia themed books including "A is for Australia", "Wattle Babies" and "Possum Magic". We, of course, ate Vegemite sandwiches and lamingtons. :)

I printed out a simple map of Australia that showed the state lines. E coloured it a little and then I gave her cut-outs of each state (on thin cardboard) that she could place on the map as a puzzle. This also helped her to start learning the names of each state and territory.

We did some activities based on the Australian flag. E made a paper flag using this puzzle from Lessons Learnt Journal and some glue. I also made a slightly more detailed flag puzzle using thin cardboard.

I printed a series of Australian flags in different sizes so that E could sort them from biggest to smallest or smallest to biggest. She found this activity fun, but easy.

Lovely Living do some great, free printables. They do ask that you donate to one of their preferred charities using links on their page. Together, E and I made their Australia Day Bunting and hung it in the window above E's desk.

Yesterday, which was actually Australia Day, we put on our Australia bucket hats (mine has a flag design and E's has lots of little Australia maps) and headed to a friend's place for a BBQ and a swim in the pool. We also painted our toenails in green and gold:

I printed this little Australia Day book to take along. E and another little girl coloured it together.

I hope all Australians are enjoying the long weekend.
-Polly