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!

Tiny Tot Time

Isaiah is currently 22.5 months

As the year is going on I’m getting better and better about Isaiah and his activities. I’ve even printed off a couple Tot School Printables for him. I’m still a long way off from my vision…I want lots more one-on-one time with him…but everyday I make progress For the most part I am extremely blessed that he likes to play independently. Even so, he does love to sit at the table with us, he loves to scribble, and he loves it when Olivia gets to do her school by teaching him something.

“Coloring” his a is for apple page. A couple days later he did letter stamping on a new a is for apple page.

I showed him how to draw a line between the pictures, and he even did it…once. Then he went back to “coloring.” He also really enjoyed the fruit stickers. I took them off for him, named the fruit, he took it from me and repeated the name of the fruit, and then stuck it down on the paper. At one point he even pretended to eat the fruit off the paper saying, “Yum, yum, yum, yum….”

I cannot tell you how much time he spent with this puzzle…it seemed like hours! He is an expert at it now though, and loves to say the word “octagon.” On one of our walks I pointed out the stop sign as an octagon, and so now he is starting to point them out wherever he sees them.

In the background you can see a corner of his toy shelf. Sometimes he plays with these and other times he goes and finds his own toys. The past two weeks our theme has been fruit and he loved playing with the cutting fruit I laid out for him. We even tried a matching activity. I printed out pictures of fruit and showed him how to match up his toy fruit with the picture. He did pretty good with it, though it didn’t hold his attention more than a couple minutes.

Letters, letters everywhere! Isaiah loves letters! He points them out…actually shouts them out….wherever we are. So, I indulge him and give him as many letter toys as I can. He loved the flashcards from our MFW Kindergarten curriculum. I don’t use them for Olivia, but they were perfect for him!

Olivia’s favorite way to practice her phonograms is to be the teacher for Isaiah…and he loves it too. It involves a lot of laughing, a lot of screams, and a whole lot of silliness.

We all love the iPad! And we love daddy for buying it for us! One of us is always using it…well, not literally, but we do use it a lot! Someday, I’ll do a post on our favorite educational (and non-educational) aps.

Climbing on everything!

Sensory Bin: Space

I wanted to go ahead and share a little bit about our sensory bin from our Space unit a few weeks back. It was such a big hit and inspired so much creativity in Olivia that it is actually still being played with. We currently have two sensory bins out…this one and our most current one Apple Pie.

This sensory bin came directly out of our Creation unit sensory bin. I just added a few space things to it and voila…

• The base is black beans and rice…I discovered the vacuum easily picks up the rice, but leaves all the black beans behind.
• Small gold pom-poms for stars.
• A big yellow pom-pom for the sun.
• A bouncy glitter ball for the moon (I actually had 2…one for each kid).
• Glittery silver and gold star foam stickers.
• Space Toob (I didn’t get this Melissa & Doug bundle, but would have if we hadn’t already had the puzzle).
• Toy Story Lego Planet Pizza set.
• Spoons and various containers for scooping and pouring.
• Giant tweezers for Isaiah to practice fine motor skills. The idea was for him to pick up the pom-poms with the tweezers…long way to go on this skill.
• Magnetic letters s-u-n.

Olivia blasting off! This bin became her imaginary world of the Planet Opitizi.

Olivia claiming her planet…became a good lesson on sharing. 

Read more about sensory activities and the fabulous benefits of sensory bins at this Montessori Minute post.

Sensory Bin: Creation

This was our very first sensory bin this year…way back in August! I wanted to post about it though because I have benefited so much from reading posts about other sensory bins. And this one was a big success for us.

My goal for this sensory bin was to follow along with the days of creation and each day add in more stuff. We did pretty good for the first 4 days, but then I admittedly slacked off. I was still trying to get in the groove of our schedule since it was our first week of home school. But still it turned out great, and this bin morphed into our Space sensory bin a few weeks later.

• We started with a base of black beans and rice for day 1 of creation representing day and night.
• Magnetic letters C-R-E-A-T-I-O-N
• Magnetic numbers 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
• Spoons for scooping and containers for scooping into.
• I don’t have pictures, but for days 2 –4 I added a blue scarf to represent water, a brown scarf to represent land, some toy trees, gold pom-poms for stars, a big yellow pom-pom for the sun, and star stickers.

The kids really loved playing with this, and Olivia asked for it over and over again!

Field Trip: Cottage School Pumpkin Patch

Today we got to go to the Pumpkin Patch with Olivia’s Cottage School Kindergarten Class. The wind almost blew us all over, but the kids didn’t seem to notice and had a great time!

The field trip consisted of both the morning and afternoon Kindergarten class. And since the wind was so terrible (50 –60 mph gusts) the teacher wisely delayed our departure so we wouldn’t have to spend so much time out in it. Here is the fall craft the kids did while waiting.

While the “students” were working on their craft, the siblings got to play on the Friendship Carpet. Olivia was super excited to have Isaiah with her and was showing him off to everyone!

All the kids!

   

Maze.

Olivia on tractor ride with Mrs. D…her class tutor.

      

 

“Mommy, it’s just like Angry Birds!”