Preschool ~ Fall

A lot of our activities this week have involved the changing season. It is finally starting to look like fall around here, with the weather cooling down, leaves falling, wind, and lots of pumpkins everywhere :)

Fall Theme

Smiley is fascinated by pumpkins (he already was last year). He completed this pumpkin cycle. I can't remember where I got it, but maybe from Montessori Now?

We then did the same with our Apple Cycle cards...

We baked our first pumpkin muffins of the season. Smiley was an excellent helper measuring the ingredients, pouring, and stirring.

And we all liked the finished product :)

We did quite a few puzzles this week as well...

Waldorf

I am beginning to like several Waldorf traditions more and more. One is oral story telling. I found a very cute apple story, that I told the kids. Smiley is very imaginative and LOVED the story. He even jumped in at several points adding some information to the story ;) I told the story LITTLE RED HOUSE, which you can find on page 103 of this booklet. In the end of the story, the little boy finds the little red house, with a star inside by cutting opening his apple, so this is what we did... We then used our apple star to make apple prints.

 One of the most important parts of our days is going outside. We go for a nature walk, a bike ride, a walk along the beach, or to play at the playground at least once every day, but we try our best to go out twice, once in the  morning and once in the evening. I find it so so so important to spend lots of time outside at this young age. My kids have plenty of energy and need lots of time to run around outside and explore nature. One of Smiley's favorite activities is to look for snails, worms and bugs :) He was thrilled when it rained this week and we went on a snail expedition (his name, lol). Another evening this week was spent on the beach. It was quite windy and chilly, which really confirms the change of the season...

Math
We continued to work on sequencing the numbers 10-20 and 20-30, with the help of these fun printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

On a different day, I drew a tree and had the kids make a specified number of play dough apples to put on the tree. I got this idea from Homeschool Creations...

The kids were only interested in this idea for a minute. Smiley then made a giant worm, which was much more fun than making apples, apparently. This happens quite commonly by the way, where we start a mama-led game, and after a bit, it turns into child-led play, which is totally fine with me. I think that at this age, kids learn best through play, anyways :)

 Fine Motor Skills...
In terms of fine motor skills, we worked on cutting this week. Smiley cut apart paint samples from a hardware store. His sister then matched them by color...

 After cutting all the pieces, he relaxed on the floor and kept cutting and cutting his pieces into smaller and smaller parts. He plaid that they were tags... He LOVED this. Again, this was totally child-driven and something he truly enjoyed and played for a long time.

Preschool ~ Apples

We continued our APPLE theme this week and did several apple inspired preschool activities.

MATH...

We laid out our number cards (from the Target dollar section a couple of years ago) from 0-25 and then counted out the according number of "apples" (cranberries from the target fall decorating section). Smiley is a hands-on learner, so he really enjoyed this activity.

We then added in his Lightning Mc'Queen car, who had to find the number that mommy yelled out. BIG HIT! I think Smiley really benefitted from seeing the numbers 11-20 laid out in order below 1-10. Before, he struggled with the order of 13-19, but seeing them below 1-10, really seemed to help him :)

We then built car tracks from one number to another and he enjoyed driving his car along the road...

Writing/Fine Motor/Sensory...

Smiley is not very interested in writing with a pen just yet, which is fine with me. He is still very young and lacks some of the fine motor control. But, he really likes writing letters in shaving cream :) We worked on the letters L and F. 

Again, a car was involved ;)

He washed his cars for about 20 minutes :)

The kids were really into building with blocks this week and worked on making towers several times this week.

On another day, we wrote our letters (again L and F) in some leftover yogurt. I am glad we did this on a clean tray, since my kids decided to lick the yogurt off their fingers (strange, how yogurt is so much more appealing this way...;))

Smiley used tweezers to transfer beans...

And then transferred the beans with a spoon to a baby bottle...

On another day, he transferred water with a little spoon...

READING...

Smiley has been doing a great job with his reading. He is SO into it and so proud after each little reader he reads. We're about half-way through the Hooked on Phonics Kindergarten program. I try to only do one new reader per week and lots of review to make sure he is really solid rather than rushing through it...

Coloring his new sight words "this, says, of"...

Decorating his sight words with cheerios, beans and lentils...

Fall Activity...
The kids helped me put together some fall decorations...

I try to integrate Smiley into cooking/baking a few times each week. Here he is cutting apples for a yummy carrot/apple soup :)

FIAR: How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World

We started rowing our first FIAR (Five in a Row, Volume I) book today, How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World. It was a huge success. I decided to start us off with a little trip around the world, following along with the book, to collect all the items for our Apple Pie sensory box.

We used a big map that we got from Costco a few years ago. We started by naming the different continents and oceans, something we have been talking about during our Ocean Study...

We then read the book and followed along on our own map. First, we took a boat to Italy...

 Once we were in Italy, we went on the Patio to cut some wheat grass that we had planted in the spring (and that was very dry by now).

We bundled our wheat and placed it on the map (Italy). 

 We then loaded the wheat on our train and road to France...

In France, we found some chickens (from our Baby Farm Animals Toob), which we also loaded on the train. 

Smiley decided to build a train track from France, all the way to Sri Lanka :)

In Sri Lanka, we picked up some cinnamon. We loaded all our good on a car and drove to England. 

In England, we found a cow. 

 We packed everything on a banana boat and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Jamaica.

On our way there, we picked up some sea salt...

We added some sugar cane in Jamaica (pretend sugar cane, since I didn't find any at the store)...

 Smiley loaded everything in his airplane. Loading and unloading the airplane was his favorite part, and he continued to play this over the course of the day...

He loved that we almost forgot our apples, and enjoyed shaking all the other ingredients out of the airplane over Vermont ;)

 We picked eight apples in Vermont and fed one to the cow, one to each chicken (Smiley thought it was unfair to only give one apple), and one to the child...

I then gathered all our ingredients and created a sensory box for the kids to play with. I used wheat for the bottom, added our what grass, our plastic chicken and plastic cow (with a little pitcher for "milk"), our child figure (from a Plan Toy), cinnamon, our pretend sugar cane with two raw sugar cubes, 5 apples under an "apple tree" and a salt shaker. 

I then added the vehicles we used on our trip and a few extra buckets, cups, bottles, funnel, and spoons and  let the kids get at it :)

They LOVED it!