Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Bird Beaks and What They Eat (Fine Motor Skills)


You can tell a lot about a bird by looking at its beak - like what it eats! Our oldest son has a love of all things avian. So when he came home from a trip to Grandma's house with a hand-drawn cheat sheet of various shaped bird beaks, I seized the opportunity to expand on the learning potential.

The first thing I did was recreate my Mom's pencil drawings. I turned the cheat sheet into a wheel showing five of the most common types of birds and the foods they eat.

I glued the two pages to an empty cereal box, cut out, layered one on top of the other and pushed a brad through the center.

Download a free 2-page PDF here
to make your own birds and what they eat wheel.

When my oldest son turns the wheel, he can see one type of beak/bird and their diet. Now when he looks through books at bird pictures, he can try to draw his own conclusions about whether they eat seeds, insects, nectar, or other animals.

Next, I gave both of my sons three types of pretend beaks (a chip clip, clothespin, and metal ID badge clip). I spread pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, short pink chenille stems (aka pretend worms), and small plastic frogs and lizards in a small tray.


I told them to use the different "beaks" to pick up the food, as if they were birds. This was a great fine motor exercise that both our boys (ages 8 and 4) loved! Our youngest even got in some counting practice since he counted each "worm" as he grasped it with a pretend beak.


This great idea came from PreKinders.com.

We read some great books to go along with this activity. My oldest and I read an excerpt (pages 26-28) from Edward R. Ricciuti's book Our Living World: Birds and for my youngest, we enjoyed Anne Rockwell's Our Yard is Full of Birds. The latter focuses exclusively on songbirds, but since those are the birds my four-year-old sees most, I thought it was a great introduction for him.

Monday, October 28, 2013

After School Linky Party (10-28)


Welcome to the After School Linky!


Bloggers that linked up last week have fall fever. The linky was full of great 
fall and Halloween-inspired crafts and learning opportunities. 

Here are just some of the phenomenal ideas shared at the 10-21 link-up.


Snot Shot Coordination Game at Crystal's Tiny Treasures.
(Perfect game for when kids need a brain break.)



(A wonderful way to help kids understand the family budget.)
http://everystarisdifferent.blogspot.com/2013/10/emergency-preparedness-financial.html


Halloween Fun with Sight Words at Learning is Messy.
(Two games that engage Halloween-lovin' kids in word work.)
http://getdownandgetyourhandsdirty.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/halloween-fun-with-sight-words/


Alphabet Balloon Pop at Makeovers & Motherhood.
(Balloons with letters on them are so fun to pop! This is a great letter recognition game.)
http://makeoversandmotherhood.com/2013/10/alphabet-balloon-pop/


Spooky Spiders: 3 Ways to Spin a Web at The Inspired Treehouse.
(Fine motor and gross motor skills get some practice with these spiderwebs.)
http://theinspiredtreehouse.com/scary-spiders-3-fun-ways-spin-web/


Whooo's Having an Owl-Fall Lot of Fun at Preschool??? at For the Children.
(Science, craft, exploration, and gross motor combine in this comprehensive lesson on owls that any age child would love. The picture illustrates kids playing opossum [i.e. playing dead] when a predator owl is near.)
http://msbarbarasblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/whooos-having-owl-fall-lot-of-fun-at.html


Cohosted By
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.


Friday, October 25, 2013

Spin & Spell {Gross Motor Spelling Practice}


Spelling can be B-O-R-I-N-G. Practice consists of me saying the word and my son reciting the letters … blah, blah, blah …. yadda, yadda, yadda.

Recognizing that my son is a kinesthetic learner, I thought it might be fun to practice spelling in a more active way.

I still recited the words.

But what came next was a whole lot more fun.

My son took a turn with the gross motor spelling spinner I made, flicking the metal paper clip that I threaded through a brad inserted in the center hole.

Whatever it landed on, he did: spelling the word while doing jumping jacks, making arm circles for every vowel, or skiing down imaginary moguls one letter at a time.

This gross motor spelling practice exercised the body AND the brain, and it was fun too!



Download a PDF of the spinner here. Print on sticker paper or glue to a recycled piece of chipboard (e.g. cereal box). Cut out, punch a hole in the center, and use a paper clip and brad to make the spinner. Voila!

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Spider Toss and Tally {Multiplication and Letter Practice}


It's shocking how much fun you can have with black electrical tape and a plastic spider. Just ask my boys! Or my husband for that matter (he even got in on the action with this activity).

Prep is simple. Grab a roll of black electrical tape and some scissors. Cut pieces and place them on the carpet in the shape of a large spider web. Our web had 18 negative spaces between the electrical tape lines.


Multiplication Practice
I made 18 multiplication fact cards (the majority of the problems are the fearsome 15 that often trip kids up). I put one answer each on 18 sticky notes. I placed one note inside each of the spaces in the web.

Now, with a scratch pad and pencil and one big plastic spider, we were ready to play. My oldest son turned over the first multiplication fact card, answered the problem, located the answer in the web, and gave the spider a toss. He got two points for correctly answering the problem and if he could land the spider on the space in the web with the answer, he got a bonus point. 

This was harder than you can imagine. You'd think our spider had springs in his legs, the way he bounced!


We took turns, and made tally marks on our paper to keep score. When we'd gone through all the problems, we counted our marks to see who won.

Download a 3-page PDF of the 18 multiplication problem cards for free from Google Drive here. Answers: 56, 36, 27, 12, 63, 42, 24, 18, 72, 48, 28, 21, 54, 32, 24, 64, 49, 81.


Letter Recognition (PreK)
For our 4-year-old son, I removed the numbered notes from the web and replaced them with notes that had upper and lower case letters. Since he's still struggling with letter recognition, we just used the letters A through D. I printed cards with these letters.


When he turned the card over, I told him the letter, asked him to repeat it with me, and walk up and find it on the spiderweb. Then he tossed the spider and tried to get it to land there.

He could care less about keeping score, and simply loved running around our basement each time he landed the spider on the letter he'd drawn! I love his enthusiasm!


You could play this so many ways. Have the cards kids draw be upper case letters and the web's notes be lowercase, or have all the letters be from the child's name. Pick whatever letters you like. The PDF I made includes all 26 in both upper AND lower case. Download it free here from Google Drive.

It's simple, but so much fun! 

Monday, October 21, 2013

After School Linky Party (10-21)


Welcome to the After School Linky!


The 10-14 After School Linky had LOADS of Halloween-inspired activities and was chock full of great free printables too. It's not too late to peruse all the great ideas shared there.

A few of my favorites are featured below.


6 Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities with a DIY Activity Set at My Little Bookcase.




 Counting Hands -  Math Activity at JDaniel4's Mom.



 Human Body Unit - Week 14 - The Ear at Highhill Education.



 Halloween Printmaking Project at ArtChoo.





Cohosted By
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Pasta Apostrophe Catastrophe


Say that three times fast.

The apostrophe is SUCH a hard working piece of punctuation. To review how it's used in contractions and to show possession my son and I grabbed a great book and some elbow macaroni.

I wrote a fun story for my son about Punctuation Pete who acts out by stealing apostrophes from Marley's town. By showing kindness to him, the apostrophes are returned and grammar is restored to the city. Friendship mends the apostrophe catastrophe!

The story was segmented into 15 cards and the apostrophes were eliminated from the text. A number (i.e. 1, 2, or 3) was added to each card to indicate the number of apostrophes that are missing. I printed, cut apart, and scrambled the order of the cards.

Download a 5-page PDF of these segmented
story cards from Google Drive here.

Before all this grammar greatness could ensue, we read an incredible book, which served as the inspiration for this activity.

The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why You Can't Manage With Apostrophes! shows kids how the use (or lack of) an apostrophe changes the meaning of a sentence.


For example, one 2-page spread shows the difference between "Those smelly things are my brother's", where children stare and point to a pair of filthy sneakers, and "Those smelly things are my brothers", where a group of children with clothespins clipped on their noses run away from two young boys playing among dirty trash.

My son spent a long time studying the pictures and the sentences to really understand the way one simple punctuation mark could make such a huge difference.

After we were finished reading Lynne Truss' book, I pulled out the segmented story cards. With some school glue and dried elbow macaroni (the pasta apostrophes), my son added the missing punctuation. 



And then put the story in order as best he could.


This was a simple review of one very important piece of punctuation. It was fun too!

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Westward Bound! {A Lewis & Clark Board Game}


Our oldest son loves all things history-related. I wanted to teach him about the Lewis & Clark expedition and the group of adventurers (the Corps of Discovery) that explored the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and the Oregon Territory.

It took a little more work and research than I'd planned, but at long last, the board game I made to retrace their steps and learn expedition facts was complete. It was time to play!

What you need is a die and small game pieces. We used two different colored glass babbles. Small buttons would work great as well.

I'll supply the rest. Well, except for the paper. You'll need paper. Eleven pieces to be exact.

With your printer fired up, download and print this free PDF. The first five pages are the game board. If you anticipate giving this lots of play, print on heavyweight cardstock for added durability.


The last six pages are the game cards. I printed mine on colored office paper, punched a hole in one corner, and threaded them through a metal ring. This kept them in order, but isn't a necessity.



Before my son and I played Westward Bound!, we read a phenomenal book by David A. Adler. This provided precisely the background my son needed to understand how truly phenomenal exploration of the western United States was in the early 1800s.


To play the game, we put both game pieces on the black circle near St. Louis, Missouri. We took turns rolling the die and moving our game pieces forward (westward) the number of spaces rolled. The number we landed on, determined the card we read (for example, if we rolled a six, we moved six spaces, landed on 33, and read the 33 card).

Encourage players to read the cards aloud so that all players learn more facts and milestones.


At the bottom of each card are instructions to either stay put or move forward or backwards. The player must move their game pieces if the card dictates. The player will not read the card for whatever number they eventually land on during their turn, though.

Play alternates between players until one player reaches Fort Clatsop in Oregon first. This player is the winner (which unfortunately, was not me). The good news, though, is that my son has already asked to play again!


DISCLAIMER: Is this board game perfect? No. Some of the dates and events don't match with the geographic location noted on the board. I did my best to match them up when possible, but in order to pace a child's progress along the westward route, and not have all the stops grouped together, sometimes it just wasn't possible. So while the events are historically accurate, the geography isn't always.

Monday, October 14, 2013

After School Linky (10-14)


Welcome to the After School Linky!



102 blogs were linked up last week. One hundred and two!! Do you believe it?!?
This After School Linky has some great momentum going. I love it!

Here are five phenomenal posts linked up at the October 7th party.








DIY Stethoscope Tutorial at Fantastic Fun and Learning.


 {Sight Word Game} Apple Tree Words at JDaniel4's Mom. 





Cohosted By
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Glow Stars and Sticks Constellations


It's been too long since our last space escapade. And while we've studied constellations before (check out If I was a Constellation and Oatmeal Container Planetarium), I wanted to keep the interest alive for my oldest son.


With packages of glow-in-the-dark stars and glow bracelets, it was time for star gazing. Our windowless laundry room provided the best spot for this afternoon adventure.

I placed the stars on the floor, making three constellations: Little Dipper, Orion, and Cassiopeia. I left the light on, to power up the photoluminscent stars. And I waited.


When my son got home from school, we read Constellations by Martha E. H. Rustad. It jogged my son's memory about these connect-the-star formations in the night sky and introduced a handful of the most popular constellations.



When he finished reading, I grabbed glow bracelets and we bent and cracked them to get the glow going.


Now we went into the laundry room with the book in hand. I explained to him that he needed to find the three constellations in the stars on the ground. Once he found the patterns, he placed the glow sticks between the stars to complete the constellations.

When he had trouble getting started, I pointed out that the Little Dipper has the North Star (which I had represented with the largest of glow stars from the package).


He referred back to Rustad's book often, flipping the lights on to review the number of stars in each constellation. This frequent on-and-off kept the stars charged up and glowing.

Having completed this activity, we'll be reviewing H. A. Rey's Find the Constellations book throughout the remainder of the week. 

Monday, October 7, 2013

After School Linky (10/7)

Welcome to the After School Linky!


Last week's party was chock full of ideas, activities, and crafts sure to inspire -
many of which are great ways to learn and create to celebrate autumn.

Here are some of my favorite activities from the September 30th linky.


Free Spelling Game for Fall at The Measured Mom.
(Anna has done it again, providing a fun and engaging way to learn while playing. Kids might actually look forward to spelling practice with this printable board game!)


Air Pressure Experiment for Kids at Kids Activities Blog.
(This is a great way to help kids see the force of air as it moves objects!)


(Talk about a great STEM activity! Kids will love making a water wheel out of some plates, egg carton, skewer, and LEGOs!)


Halloween Science Experiments at Science Sparks.
(Turn the Halloween holiday into a hands-on learning opportunity with five creepy experiments!)


(This is SUCH a wonderful extension to one of the phenomenal Magic Tree House books. I think ghost writing might be my favorite ... although the Raisin Raven is pretty awesome too!)


(Sharon lists five favorite books to read aloud with kids, even when they're old enough to read to themselves. This is a GREAT list!)


(What a great fall-inspired way to work on syllables!)

Cohosted By
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.