I thought this was going to be a REALLY fun craft.....I found out that it was a really lonely craft! Little Guy would absolutely not participate! He doesn't like to be messy/sticky/dirty, so I suppose I should have anticipated that, but I guess I was hoping he would get into it since it was Halloween related. Wrong.
You will need:
angel hair pasta (spaghetti would probably work just as well)
wax paper
glue
black pompoms
pipe cleaner (cut in 3 parts)
hot glue gun
Start by boiling the pasta. Drain and rinse with cold water (so the noodles don't stick together).
Fill a paper plate with glue and dip each noodle in, covering it with the glue. Lay out the noodles on the wax paper to make a web shape.
Let dry overnight.
Hot glue 2 pompoms together to make spider body, then add pipe cleaner parts to underside for legs.
Peel web from was paper and hot glue spider to the center.
Once dry, place where you like for a cute Halloween decoration! I hung mine up!
Since Halloween is next Monday, I thought this would be the perfect week to talk about the letter H. Little Guy was sick on Monday, but still wanted to do school time anyway. It's usually his favorite time of the day, so I wasn't surprised when he wanted to do it even though I said we could skip it if he wanted.
That's also where I found these adorable Monster Matching puzzles:
You can see Little Guy found his letter H object to bring to school with that helicopter!
We did a really cute Spaghetti Spider web craft that you can find here. It is really adorable, so I hung it up as a Halloween decoration!
I made an easy Halloween Board Game that we have been playing ALL WEEK! Little Guy absolutely LOVES it! We've played it pretty much everyday, a few times a day. It's great because it's reinforcing Little Guy's counting skills, while teaching him patience, and how to be a good sport. It's easy enough that he doesn't get overwhelmed by too many directions or it taking too long to reach the goal. I think I'm definitely going to make one for each month/holiday. I used Halloween cookie cutters for the outline of the ghost and haunted house, and then drew the path between them and colored everything. We use a toy die and some Halloween erasers that I found while rummaging through our big pencil box.
I saw the most adorable idea for a Frankenstein Math game at No Time For Flashcards and completely copied it!! Little Guy really liked it! You just cut and paint toilet paper/paper towel tubes and straws. Number removable stickers and stick one in front of each Frankenstein. Your little one places the matching number of straws in the Frankenstein and there you have it! A fun Halloween number matching game!
We also did our usual math worksheets and mazes, along with our Find the H's story and our Letter Tile Matching page.
We also took another walk to the pumpkin patch and carved a Jack o' Lantern!
Tonight we are going to paint these adorable masks I found at Michael's for $1 each!
The books we read this week are:
"Halloween" by Gail Gibbons
(Basically lays out a quick history of Halloween and how it works)
"Mouse's First Halloween" by Lauren Thompson
(cute little story about a mouse who is afraid of things he hears in the night, only to find out they are made by things that are not so scary after all)
"Ten Timid Ghosts" by Jennifer O'Connell
(a counting story)
"Halloween Safety" by Laura Alden
(In my opinion it was too old and out of date. I don't need my child to know the safety tips for trick or treating alone because that will never happen.)
"The Night Before Halloween" by Natasha Wing
(Got a round of applause at the end from Little Guy)
Lucky for us, there is a pumpkin patch within walking distance of our home, so we started off our Pumpkin themed week with a walk to the pumkin patch!
We chose one for carving and some smaller pumpkins for painting. I couldn't get over how theraputic it is to paint. Your mind just kind of stops running a million miles an hour while you paint. It was great! Little Guy had such a fun time mixing colors and trying to cover every space on his pumpkin. Here's a pic of our painted pumpkins.
We started off our week with the Spookley the Square Pumpkin story and a craft. to go with it.
I found these Halloween themed pompoms in the dollar bin area of Target, and knew they would be great for a sorting activity. We sorted them into compartments of a plastic container by small, meduim, and large.
I just love this pic of Little Guy concentrating on his letter tile matching page.
We also made a 5 Little Pumpkins book from Prekinders.com I had Little Guy color one page every day, then on Friday we cut it and stapled it make a book.
When I was browsing Pinterest I saw this cute little pumpkin made of scraps of paper, and I knew I had to add it into our Pumpkin themed week! Little Guy ripped up pieces of orange paper (which is great for building muscles in his little hands), and then painted a paper plate with glue. While he got to work adding the bits of paper to the plate, I cut out 2 triangles and a mouth from black construction paper. He glued them on, and tada! A cute mosaic jack o' lantern!
(In case you're wondering about the pig - aka: Evil Dr. Porkchop, I let Little Guy bring something to school as long as it starts with our letter of the week. It's a win, win because he's happy to be able to have a toy with him, and I'm happy he's scavenging the house for something that starts with our letter!)
The books we read this week are:
"Pumpkin, Pumpkin" by Jeanne Titherington
(Nothing spectacular, but introduces the stages of the growth of the pumpkin)
"The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin" by Joe Troiano
(A wonderful book about not judging a book by it's cover. Great lesson about how being different doesn't mean you can't be destined for greatness. Little Guy even clapped at the end!)
"The Pumpkin Fair" by Eve Bunting
"Pumpkin Soup" by Helen Cooper
(Great story to teach little ones about taking turns and giving others a chance)
"Franklin's Pumpkin" by Sharon Jennings
(We just love Franklin in this house.)
This week we've been working on the letter P and all things pumpkin! Today we read The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin. Such a great book! Little Guy even clapped at the end! So in honor of Spookley, we made our own square pumpkin using Little Guy's fist and thumbprint. It makes a cute little Halloween decoration to hang on the wall.
Here are the materials I thought I'd be using:
fingerpaint (red and yellow so we can mix to make orange)
a purple pipe cleaner (for the hanger)
a black foam vegetable tray (saved and washed)
some orange puffy paint I found in the dollar bin at Target
I let Little Guy do the mixing of the red and yellow and we observed how they make orange. Sort of a review, but he always finds it fascinating.
Once we got started, I realized the fingerpaint was just not going to work. It was much to thick and didn't transfer well (we had done a test run on a piece of paper). So, I got out some acrylic paint, which worked much better.
Little Guy dipped his fist into the paint, pressed it down onto the foam tray, and voila! Square pumpkin. He immediately went to wash his hand off (he hates being messy), and then came back for the thumb print. Use green to make a thumbprint stem!
I got to work painting the year at the bottom while Little Guy washed his thumb. He came back to the table and informed me that Spookley needed googly eyes. Everything is better with googly eyes, so I obliged. If he had googly eyes, he needed a mouth and nose, so that was that! While I was adding a face to Spookly, I let Little Guy go wild with all that paint! He had a blast! Especially with the puff paint. Something about squeezing out gooey paint is just thrilling to the little ones. Who am I kidding? It pretty fun no matter how old you are!
I used the puff paint to add Little Guy's name at the top. While that was drying, I heated up my hot glue gun to glue the purple pipe cleaner to the back in a U shape so that I could hang it for Halloween! I think it turned out pretty cute!
And here's a pic of Little Guy's artistic creation:
Of course we had to have a pumpkin themed lunch too!
Last week we learned about the Letter U. Monday was a holiday, so we had a 4 day school week. It worked out perfectly, since there are not too many things I could come up with for the letter U.
We glued some pompoms on letter U's and put together a picture of an umbrella.
Little Guy really loves doing our letter tiles pages!
Every day we read a book that has to do with our letter during school time, and then books that Little Guy chooses at nap and bed time. Our letter U themed books were:
"The Umbrella Day" by Nancy Evans Cooney
(Little Guy sat through it, but I could tell he was not interested)
"Short U and Long U Play a Game" by Jane Belk Moncure
(Little Guy absolutely LOVES these books! We choose which sound we are going to be and then read the story to find out who finds the most words with their sound!)
"Me and My Place in Space" by Joan Sweeny
(We talked about the Universe afterward and drew a picture of it on black paper)
"Umma Ungka's Unusual Umbrella" by Barbara deRubertis
(The Animal Antics A to Z series is great! There is a book for every letter, and the stories are really cute!)
We also watched "Up" one afternoon!
We do what Little Guy calls "worksheets" almost everyday too. I don't really push them, but he is constantly asking for them. Every week we do about 2 pages from The Kumon My First Book of Tracing workbook, a page from Active Minds Preschool 101 Things to Know About Math, and a page from Active Minds Preschool 101 Things to Know About Reading. We also have a huge BrainQuest preschool workbook, and we use the pages out of it that correspond with our letter of the week.
Honestly, Little Guy just loves doing workbook pages, so I only use pages that fit with our theme during "school time." That way he doesn't feel overloaded and they never turn into WORKsheets. I want him to keep thinking they are fun rather than work. Stay tuned for a post about all the great workbooks we use!
It's been a month since I began home(pre)schooling my 4 and a half year old son, and.....I've decided to create a blog! This might be a ridiculous idea, seeing as how since we've begun our little homeschooling adventure, I've already been running out of time for things that used to be daily routine. For instance, Hubby had to...dum, dum, dum.....make his OWN lunch today! So, here's to finding the time to add another badge on this Supermom (ha! sure) sash!
I really wanted to create a blog to chronicle our homeschooling adventures. I have started taking pictures and saving Little Guy's work, but I think this will help to keep it all together for me, and for him to look back on.
I'm also hoping this might be a help to other moms like me who have absolutely no idea what they are in for on a homeschooling journey. I have been all over the internet since I began planning our "curriculum." Scouring other blogs, websites, and pinterest for handy information. I'm really glad I decided to start this for preschool though, because I'm looking at this school year as a sort of "trial run" for next year when the real deal begins!!
