Olivia’s Kindergarten: Apples, Toy Story, & Review

This week I decided to take a little break from our norm in order to extend our Apple theme unit, incorporate some Toy Story printables because Olivia is all about Toy Story right now, and to review some skills – especially math skills.

Apple/Fruit Theme

Again, I don’t have pictures of everything we did. But I wanted to extend our Apple unit theme so Olivia could make a Fruit of the Spirit Lapbook. It was a simple Lapbook from HomeSchool Creations. One day she colored the cover page and reviewed the memory verse, the next day she glued down the mini-books while we talked about what each fruit means, and then on the final day we glued down Role Playing cards where she was given a situation and we discussed how the Fruit of the Spirit could be displayed. We also talked a lot about the Fruit being a gift from God and not something we can produce ourselves. We talked a lot about ways to stay connected to Jesus the vine so He can produce the Fruit in us – praying, reading the Bible, praising.

Two of my favorite things this week was our Apple Sensory Bin and baking apple pie. I did get a lot of pictures from baking apple pie! We used the recipe in the back of our book “How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.”

Olivia measuring apple pie filling ingredients.

Olivia stirring the ingredients. When we started, we were using these red Gala apples, but ended up changing our minds and using tart Granny Smith apples…turned out to be an excellent and yummy decision.

Olivia did awesome…she peeled/cored/sliced 3 of the 6 apples we used.

We cheated a little on the crust…we bought pre-made. Here’s Olivia unrolling the crust…

…putting crust in pie plate. Again, I was really impressed with Olivia’s skill here…she did great…

…dumping in the apples. I helped her spread them evenly around the crust…

…on goes the top crust. We worked together to pinch the top and bottom together…and then she was done…

…so I put slits in the top, sprinkled with sugar, and baked…

…and then we all ate it topped with vanilla ice cream. Very yummy school project!

To finish up our MFW's Apple unit we taste tested 4 different apples, and she made observations: color, size, feel, smell good/bad, and taste sweet/salty/sour; and we cut in half an apple around the circumference to observe the 5 star pattern and make apple prints on our "If I stay in Jesus I will have much fruit" tracing page.

Math Review

For our math review we worked on counting backwards. I created some Buzz Lightyear number cards and had her blast him off to Infinity & Beyond.

We reviewed even and odd numbers. I created inserts for our Education Cubes. In one cube I had dot cards and in the other cube I had number cards. She threw one of the cubes and then had to match it to the other cube. Finally, she had to decide if the number was even or odd. She tracked how many even and odd numbers she threw with tally marks on a piece of paper.

Finally, we reviewed solving equations with the help of the abacus. Again, I created inserts for our Education Cubes…she’s always excited about an activity if it involves throwing these cubes. And I do have pictures of this!

First, throw the 2 cubes…

…one cube had pictures of Jessie from Toy Story, and the other pictures of Bullesye. She wrote in one column how many Jessies she rolled and in the other column how many Bullseyes (this was awesome because I was able to see how much help she still needs on writing numbers…lots more writing practice coming up!) Then she used her abacus to help her solve the addition equations.

Other

We also learned about two poets – Christina Rossetti and Robert Louis Stevenson. We were supposed to do this lesson the week before, but never got around to it. We read some of their poems, talked about when they lived, and found on the world map where they lived. Finally, we talked about rhyming words and ended our activity with a rhyme worksheet where she had to read the poem out loud and then dot paint the rhyming words.

And finally, she reviewed the French alphabet, numbers, and fruits using an awesome iPad ap and finished up a project we had started the first week of school, but never got around to. It was a busy week! Busier than I had anticipated, but it was fun too.

This coming week is Fall Break for Cottage School, but we’ll be moving forward with Home School so we can take two full weeks off at Thanksgiving when JP will be home!!! Olivia is already counting down the days until he gets “to come home and rest.”

Sensory Bin: Apple Pie

I love sensory bins! And if you’re not familiar with sensory bins or why they’re so great, head over here to read the Montessori Minute: Sensory Activities post. Carissa at the 1+1+1 Blog also has a lot of great ideas for sensory bins, and is great about posting links to other sites with great ideas. On her blog go to “Theme Printables” on the top, choose a theme, and then dig in…it’s a treasure trove of ideas!

This school year we’ve had a a few really great sensory bins – Creation, Space, and this week’s Apple Pie theme that I’m highlighting here. And I had one giant of a flop one a couple weeks ago for our Leaf unit (I’m going to try and reinvent this one next week for our Animal Homes unit…we’ll see how it goes). I tell myself to try, try again; and then I scour my favorite blogs and get some great ideas.

This week’s sensory bin came directly from Delightful Learning. I was so excited to find this post because we were also reading the book How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World from our MFW science unit.

Our bin contained the following:

• Wheat berries as the base.


• 2 red and 2 green apples I picked up from a fruit vase filler pack at Target.


• Apple Pie spices: cinnamon sticks, whole All Spice, Apple Pie Spice, salt shaker filled with salt (and a cotton ball stuffed in the top).


• Salt shaker filled with wheat berries.


• Dried sugar cane reads I picked up at Hobby Lobby.


• Dried wheat I picked up from Hobby Lobby.


• Contents from the Down on the Farm toob (I didn’t get this Melissa & Doug Bundle; but I think it’s pretty cool…they have a whole variety of them).


• Two Thomas & Friends trains.


• Measuring cups.


• Cloth World map.

Most of the time we just set it out and the three of us sit around and play. I follow the kids’ lead a lot to see how it sparks their imagination (our space sensory bin turned into a whole new planet called Opitizi where all the astronauts and aliens ate rice and beans for every meal and said the word “wanga” for everything). And it’s great to just run your hands through the wheat berries, pick them up, and then let them rain down on everything…it’s messy, but I love how the three of us can enjoy it together.

I also try to direct some of the learning. Here’s what I did with each child (sorry for the lack of active pictures, but I find myself a lot of times too in the moment to grab my camera).

Olivia…with Olivia’s imagination, most of the time she just wants to free play and make up stories, but I was able to get in a few other activities too:

• Math: I had her point out the different size measuring cups, and then using the wheat berries, she determined how many scoops of each size it took to fill up the 1 c. measuring scoop.


• Geography: As we read the story “How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World” we laid out each ingredient on the specific country on our world map.


• Home Economics: We talked about the different ingredients that go into making apple pie and where they come from. For example, the wheat in the pie crust comes from wheat berries off of wheat stalks which then need to be ground into flour. The butter in the pie comes from milking the cow and then churning the cream. Etc…

Isaiah:

• Colors: discriminating between the red and green apples and naming the colors. He’s awesome at this!


• Counting: lining up and counting the apples. He can already count past 10, but the one to one correspondence hasn’t come yet…but he tries. Often times with our four apples he counted all the way up to 10 apples.


• Patterns: Just beginning to plant the seeds of patterns…red apple, green apple, red apple, green apple. At not even 2 years old, he’s a ways away from mastering this skill.


• Scooping and pouring: I add spoons and various containers for him to practice.


• Animal identification and animal sounds.


• Sound discrimination: we shook the salt shaker of salt, salt shaker of wheat berries, container of whole All-Spice, and the dried wheat stalks to hear the different sounds.

Together we smelled and even tasted the different spices. Olivia said, “Yech!” and Isaiah said, “Mmmm, that’s good!”

So, that was our week’s fun with the sensory bin. It was a big hit with the kids, and Olivia even asked to play with it one night before bed!