Aug. 26, 2005
Insect/Spider 5 Day Plan
Posted in September Unit Studies
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Monday Math - Ladybug game Reading - bugs and insects, eric carle, Science - bug/spider anatomy Crafts - ladybug necklace Misc. - scavenger hunt Tuesday Math - Bug walk/graph Reading - insects, insects work together, i know an old lady Science - types of insects Crafts - paper mache insects Misc. - grasshopper jump Wednesday Math - Tarantula game Reading - spiders, spiders lunch, little miss muffet Science - types of insects Crafts - make spider web, tarantula Cooking - curds and whey Misc. - relay race, little miss muffet pages Thursday Math - busy bugs Reading - dangerous insects Science - fruit fly Crafts - wasp chamber Cooking - buzzy bees & ants on a log Friday Math - map Reading - insects, eric carle Crafts - jumping grasshopper Cooking - Bug cake Misc. - Bingo |
Aug. 25, 2005
Asia 5 Day Plan
Posted in September Unit Studies
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Monday
- Panda Crafts - Panda craft, color map of Asia Math - file folder games, math workbook Science - cut out pictures of asian people, make paper, look at the panda cam Reading - Asia, Tiki-tiki-tembo, Ancient China, reading lesson Tuesday - Tigers Crafts - tiger puppet, color coloring page Math - file folder games, math workbook Science - wild thing Reading - Where the wild things are, wildlife, nepal, tigers Wednesday - Cobra Crafts - paint coloring page, make snake from tie, paint japan flag Math - color patterns on snake, math workbook Reading - Japan, scary animals, reading lesson Cooking - Japanese lunch Thursday - Leopard Crafts - make patterns from potato prints, color page, fill in spots Math - go on a pattern hunt, math workbook Reading - How many spots, China, reading lesson Friday - Yak Crafts - color page, build great wall of china Math - math workbook Reading - reading lesson Cooking - Canton Corn Soup |
Aug. 23, 2005
Neighborhood - 5 Day Plan
Posted in September Unit Studies
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Another schedule for a week of preschool. On nice days, take walks around the neighborhood and visit stores/bank etc. Monday - Firemen/Policemen Science - water experiments Crafts - Fire collage, fire painting Cooking - Fire truck cookies Math - do pages in book Misc - fire safety Reading - Firefighters, police officers, community helpers, do a reading lesson Tuesday - Grocery Store Math - play grocery store, work with money flashcards Crafts - 3 men in a tub craft, baker TP roll craft Cooking - bake some muffins Reading - Rub-a-dub-dub, Richard Scarry, do a reading lesson Wednesday - Post Office Math - Mail Carrier Crafts - make a mailbox out of cardboard box, make stamps, mail letters Reading - Richard Scarry, Mail Carriers, do a reading lesson Misc - Work on learning her name and address and phone number. Thursday - Bank/Restaurant Math - matching game, play with money cards Crafts - Make traffic light, play with cars, make a menu Cooking - help with dinner - play restaurant Reading - do a reading lesson Misc. Get play money and checkbook/atm - play Bank Friday - Library/Garbageman Math - draw map of the neighborhood, math pages in book Science - make compost piles with different types of items. Watch how they decay. Crafts - paint coloring sheets Reading -community books, librarian, garbage, do a reading lesson Play Bingo to review |
Aug. 23, 2005
Africa - 5 day plan
Posted in September Unit Studies
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Another schedule for a week of preschool. Monday - Ostrich Color the map of Africa, look at it on Google Earth. Paint the ostrich coloring page. Math - Ostrich eggs. Reading - Africa book and Ostrich book, zoobooks, Do a reading lesson Crafts - African Drum Science - listen to sound of an ostrich. Watch a video clip of it running. Tuesday - Hippo Color coloring sheet with markers Math - do pages in math book - practice writing numbers Reading - Hippo books, Do a reading lesson Crafts - texture paint Music - listen to African music Cooking - Sweet Potato Cookies Science - listen to sound of hippo, watch a video on Africa Wednesday - Cheetah Color coloring sheet with pastels Math - Jaguar Spots, running like a cheetah & measurements Science - animal coverings, listen to african languages Reading - cheetah books, animal camouflage, zoobooks, Do a reading lesson Crafts - Rain Stick Cooking - Cheetah cookies Thursday - Elephant Color coloring sheet with crayons Math - pages in math book Science - listen to sounds of an elephant. Make habitat. Crafts - using salt dough recipe, make some elephants - bake and paint them. Cooking - Ginger Root Beer Music - fingerplay, play along with rain stick and drum to african music Reading - Elephant books, Do a reading lesson Friday - Zebra Color coloring sheet with colored pencils Math - Zebra matching game Reading - Zebra books, Africa book, Lion and the Mouse, Do a reading lesson Crafts - stamp with rubber stamps Color a map of Africa again, and mark where the various animals live. Review the week. |
Aug. 21, 2005
Insects/Spiders Unit Study
Posted in September Unit Studies
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Another preschool unit
study. A lot of these ideas I got off of a very well done insect
unit study I found online. I printed it off a few months ago - I
can't find the site again, either. If I come across it, I'll post
it. I hope I can find it - it was great - color coded and
everything. Some tips from doing this one: Don't use Elmer's glue for the ladybug necklace. It's too easy to rip the felt out of the caps. If you're going to do the paper mache insects, it is a week long project. Fun, but a long project. And you'll need to use sturdy glue to glue them together. I also used toothpicks in between each section to hold it together better. For the bingo cards I made, I made them 1 inch by 1 inch. I should have done 2 inches square instead. And the puff paint spider web wasn't that cool. The puff paint bottle was hard for the kids to squeeze, and when it was all done....it was cool to touch since it was dimensional, but the paper was flat. I had been picturing the paper a bit more dimensional along the folds, but it wasn't. So nothing spectacular there LOL. Reading I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly Little Miss Muffet Eric Carle insect books Bugs and other insects / Bobbie Kalman & Tammy Everts J 595.7 K Dangerous insects / Missy Allen, Michel Peissel J 595.7065 A How insects work together / Jill Bailey J 595.7156 B Insects / Anna Claybourne J 595.7 CLA Insects, bugs, & art activities / Steve Parker & Polly Goodman J 595.7 PAR Spiders, centipedes, and millipedes / Sally Morgan J 595.44 M Spider's lunch : all about garden spiders / Joanna Cole J 595.44 C Math Tarantula's Bananas Duplicate tarantulas and bananas. Color, laminate and cut out. Have her match the number on each tarantula to the correct group of bananas. Ladybug Game Duplicate 5 copies of ladybugs, and number 1-15. Color, laminate, cut out. Have her look at the number on the back of each ladybug, and then place the correct number of black beans on the back of each ladybug. Give the kids each a magnifying glass and a notebook. Go outside/on a walk and mark down how many bugs they find. When we come back inside, make a graph of the kinds and amounts of bugs they found. Do the activity cards with Busy Bugs Practice adding with rubber bugs. Draw a map of our neighborhood. Take a bug and figure out how to get from one place to another, following the roads. Science Identify body parts of insects Learn about metamorphosis Learn about the types of insects: decomposers garden helpers edible insects pollinator herbivore carnivore Fruit Flies Take a ripe piece of fruit and place it in an open glass jar. Put it near an open window for a couple days. Place a cap on the jar and leave it in a warm area. Watch what happens to the fruit. (In a few days, fruit flies should emerge - gag) Listen to sounds of insects on the computer/by cd Food/Cooking Make curds and whey - either the real way by making homemade yogurt, or heat 2 cups whole milk until just boiling. Remove from heat and add a tablespoon of vinegar and stir. Buzzy Bees Fill a drinking cup with juice (nectar). Make large paper flowers and tape them to a drinking cup. Put a straw in the glass (so it comes out the center of the flower). Drink the nectar from the flower like a bee or butterfly would. Ants on a Log Fill a celery stick with peanut butter, and put raisins on top. Bug Mountain Cake Bake a dome cake and a rectangle cake. Place dome cake on top of the rectangle cake - frost with chocolate frosting. Cover with 2-3 cups of crushed chocolate cookies. Arrange rubber bugs on top of cake, crawling down the mountain. Crafts stamp with my insect rubber stamps Make a spider web - fold a piece of black paper in half lengthwise, widthwise, and diaganolly. Open up and lay flat. Trace with white puff paint over the fold lines. Make a spiral circle over that with the paint, let dry. Ladybug necklace - Paint backs of 2 bottle caps red. Draw black dots on one of them. Glue a strip of black felt to the insides of both, to make a hinge. Glue a photo inside. Put yarn around the hinge for a necklace. (this will make more sense when we make it and I post a photo) Paper Mache Insects ( dh and I think this is the coolest project....I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of big insects around the house LOL) Blow up balloons and tape them together to make body shapes. Tear newspaper into strips about 2 inches wide, and dip them into a 50/50 flour and water mix. Cover the balloons with the newspaper strips - let dry for an hour or so inbetween layers. The more layers, the sturdier the insect. When you are all done, let dry for a couple of days. Pop the balloon with a needle. Paint the insect, and attach pipe cleaners for antennae, and whatever else you want for eyes, wings, etc... Make a Tarantula Cut out a spider body and attach pipe cleaner legs. Make it lifesize - 10 inches across, legs extended. Queen Wasp Chamber Paint 9 toilet paper tubes brown, and glue in a pyramid shape. Glue one grain of rice in each tube. Make a wasp out of yellow clay - use pipe cleaners for legs and antennae. Draw on details with black marker. Place wasp in one of the chambers. Jumping Grasshopper Cut out a 3 cup section of a cardboard egg carton. Paint the outside green. Put a rubber ball in the middle cup, pushing a straight pin through each side to hold it in. Cut out legs and wings from green construction paper, and glue to the sides and top. Add eyes. Music  Ants go Marching 1x1 (I hate this song  )I Caught a Baby Bumble Bee Listen to Flight of the Bumblebee Bible Verses Prov 6:6, 30:24, 25, 27 Exodus 8:20-32, 10:1-20, Joel 1:2-4 Psalms 105:31 Misc. Activities Go on a scavenger hunt. Give them a list of insects (use pictures or stickers for the list), and as they find them, mark them off. Grasshopper Jump - make an obstacle course of things for them to jump over. Relay Race - Have them race each other, doing things like the caterpillar/inchworm crawl, grasshopper hop, etc. Bingo Make a 5x5 card, with images of insects or numbers on the squares. Either call out the name of an insect and she has to find it and put a marker on it, or ask a question with a numerical answer, and she has to find the number and put a marker on it. Ex - How many legs does an insect have? Or have a pile with matching pictures, and flip over the pile, one by one and find the matching image - first with 5 in a row wins. Links: Insect Worksheets Lots of Insect Coloring Sheets Itsy Bitsy Spider craft ideas Awesome Insect clip art Books I used: Crafts for Kids who are Wild about Insects - Kathy Ross |
Aug. 20, 2005
Asia Unit Study
Posted in September Unit Studies
Here
is another almost finished ideal unit study for our first month of
school. It was hard finding stuff online for Asia, and I need to
make another run to the library for a few more books for
ideas. But this is a good start. I'm
nervous and afraid at the same time to start - it will be nice to see
how this plays out in reality, and where I'll need to tweak it.
Not to mention how this will work with a 2 year old running around  Look at Asia and Great Wall of China on Google Earth Coloring map of Asia Lots of maps I converted these to black and white with the photocopy option in Photoshop. Animals to study: Panda Bears Tigers - coloring page King cobra - coloring page Yak - coloring page Snow Leopard - coloring page Math Color the snake with patterns Go on a pattern hunt. Walk around the house, finding things that have a pattern on them. Science Have her cut out pictures of Asian people and animals from magazines and glue to paper. Talk about how God made different kinds of people. Wild Thing Pour powdered Plaster of Paris into a ziploc bag - add a little water. Close tightly. Have them squeeze and twist the bag into a 'wild thing'. Let dry, remove from bag. Paint. Talk about what happened to the liquid and the dry, what it felt like, etc. Experiment with other wet/dry mixtures - wet sand - what happens to the liquid? Evaporation/condensation Reading These are very good books: China: the people / Bobbie Kalman J 951 KAL China: the culture/ Bobbie Kalman J 951 KAL China : the land / Bobbie Kalman J 951 KAL Japan: the people / Bobbie Kalman Japan: the culture / Bobbie Kalman Japan: the land / Bobbie Kalman Ancient China / Judith Simpson J 931 A Tiki-tiki-tembo How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have? Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak Asia / Malcolm Porter and Keith Lye JR 950 POR Are tigers ticklish? : see God's character in His creation / Debby Anderson E A The kids' wildlife book / by Warner Shedd J 591 S Scary animals / by Jean de Sart J 591 S Japan / Adele Richardson J 952 R Into wild Nepal / John Woodward J 591.95 INT Crafts Panda craft Page 2 Make a snake What you will need: Old ties, polyfil stuffing, wiggly eyes, glue, wire (from a hanger) What to do: Potato prints - make patterns with them. Make a cobra out of clay Build the Great Wall of China Mix 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 1/2 cups of water. Knead it and shape it into bricks that are 2x3 inches, and about 1 1/2 inches thick. Bake in a 300 degree oven for 30 min. Then stack, and build. Make a tiger puppet with paper plate and popsicle stick - decoupage orange tissue paper onto plate, paint on black stripes and face. Rice Paper Fold a white piece of tissue paper in half. Open the paper up and lay it on top of smoothed out plastic wrap. Arrange pressed flowers and leaves on one half of the tissue. Fold the other half of the paper on top. Use a paintbrush and coat the entire piece with a 50/50 mix of glue and water. Let paper completely dry, then peel off the plastic. Food/Cooking Japanese lunch Ramen Noodles Matchstick Carrots Pea Pods Shredded Lettuce Chopped Onion Sliced Mushroom Heat 2 TBL oil in wok or lg frying pan. Stir in all veggies and cooked meat stirring constantly. Fry for aprox 2-3 minutes. Add the flavor pkts from the Ramen, sugar and boilingwater. Make a well in the middle of the veggies and meat and place noodles in the liquid. Cover and simmer 2 minutes. Stir and cook additional minute. Sit on pillows on the floor and eat with chopsticks. Canton Corn Soup Mix 3 c. Chicken Broth, 16 oz creamstyle corn, 3 TB apple juice and 2 TB soy sauce in pan. Bring to boil. Mix 2 TB cornstarch with 1/4 c. watr and add to soup. Separate 2 eggs. Lightly beat whites. Remove soup from heat, and add whites slowly, swirling with fork. Season with salt and pepper. Misc. Activities Practice picking up cotton balls with chopsticks. Paint a Japanese Flag Go to an authentic asian restuarant Music Chinese Children Songs mp3 Chinese Music Helpful Links Learn how to use chopsticks Unit Study Planning Sheet Books I used Instant Science for Primary Grades by Sam Ed Brown |
Aug. 19, 2005
Neighborhood Unit Study
Posted in September Unit Studies
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Here is another unit study for September. Later I'll divide this into 5 days as well. Topics to learn about: Grocery Store Bank Post Office Restaurant Garbage Man - Coloring Sheet Policemen - Police Coloring Sheet Firemen - 32 page coloring/activity book to print you'll need to do Image Resize and resize it to an 8.5x11 page - the pages are zipped and when unzipped, are only a couple inches big. Library - Coloring Sheet Math Mail Carrier Duplicate and cut out mail carrier hat. Copy houses and letters, let her color them. Laminate and cut out. Put the mail hat on. Line up the houses in a row. Look at the numbers on the houses, and find the matching letter. Deliver the letter to the house. Play grocery store with her play food. Use money to buy things. Play with her money flashcards. Science Have dh bring home some blueprints. Show her what they are. Learn what the lines and symbols mean. Learn about water. Gather various items that absorb water and items that don't. Put them in water and see what happens. Crafts Make a fire collage using red, orange, and yellow bits of torn paper. Rub-A-Dub-Dub Nursery Rhyme Paint a plastic bowl. Cut out images of 3 people and place inside the tub. Duplicate coloring page. Baker TP roll craft Fire Painting Directions: Using colors associated with fire (red, orange) squirt or draw thick lines of paint on paper and add a few drops of black paint here and there. Press clear plastic wrap onto the paper and squeegee the paint around. Pull plastic off of the paper using a strong vertical pulling action. (This will cause the paint to look like fire.) When paint is dry have the children glue a black cutout of a house (windows cut out) and/or a black cutout of a fire truck. Food/Cooking Fire Truck Cookies Ingredients Graham Crackers Black licorice Oreos Red icing Have her spread icing on cracker. Put oreos on for wheels. Put licorice horizontally, halfway down the cracker, as a hose. Bake some cookies or muffins Misc. Activities - Teach her our address and phone number. - Cut out a shape of a traffic light and a red, yellow and green circle. Use with matchbox cars. - Play "Red Light, Green Light" - Learn fire safety rules: never play with matches; if clothes are on fire, stop, drop and roll; to avoid smoke, stay low and go; keep away from hot appliances; and practice home fire drills. - Learn about 911 - Make a mail box out of a cardboard box. Make letters and 'mail' them. - Play restaurant - have her help with dinner, make menus, etc. Matching Game Find object or pictures that correspond with different community helpers (mailbox, dentist chair, firetruck, etc.). Additionally find pictures of community helpers in uniform. Let your children match which object goes with what helper. Baker Doctor Firefighter Mailman Books to Read: There is an excellent series I found, called the Community Helpers series. They are published by Bridgestone Books, and are perfect for preschool/kindergarten age. A lot of the Dee Ready books on this list are part of that series. You're a community helper / Karen Bryant-Mole J 331.7 B Community helpers from A to Z / Bobbie Kalman J 331.7 K Fire fighters ; by Dee Ready J 628.9 R Police officers ; by Dee Ready J 363.2 R Richard Scarry's busy workers E S Richard Scarry's postman pig and his busy neighbors E S Michael Berenstain's When I grow up : Oh, the things I can be! /E B My teddy bear at work / Irwin Jorvik, Ltd E M Mail carriers / by Dee Ready J 383.145 R Librarians / by Dee Ready J 023.2 R Garbage and recycling / Rosie Harlow, Sally Morgan J 363.728 H Where does the garbage go? / by Paul Showers J 628.44 S Field Trip possibilities: Visit a bakery Watch the butcher at the grocery store Have her go with me to a dr. appointment Go to the post office. Good Links Fingerplays and Songs Coloring Pages Unit Study Planning Sheet Community Unit Study links Books I used: Let Loose on Mother Goose by Terry Graham Instant Science for Primary Grades by Sam Ed Brown |