Weeding

We just finished up our Down on the Farm theme with Experience Preschool, which offers a complete preschool curriculum.  Each month is a different theme.

We spent a day learning about weeding.  Ronan, like most preschoolers, loves play dough.  We "planted" straws and pipe cleaners, both of which were provided in our monthly preschool curriculum box from Experience Preschool, and then Ronan "Weeded" them out of the play dough.  He really enjoyed putting them in and pulling them out, and it's a great fine motor exercise.  

We moved onto bigger weeds.  I threaded dish cloths through our laundry basket, a suggested activity from Experience Preschool, and Ronan had to pull them out.  Ronan is receiving physical/occupational therapy to help improve his gross and fine motor skills.  This activity was a great way for him to work on some of the bigger arm muscles as well as his finger and hand muscles, plus he thought it was fun.  

One of the great things about Experience Preschool is that it is a complete preschool curriculum in a box.  Everything you need (minus a few basics like paint and play dough) is included.  We looked at a picture of a plowed field, and then Ronan used a comb to drag paint over paper.  Then he added some sand to give it texture.  He loves to paint.  There was another suggested activity for the day that we didn't get to.  It was a little too advanced for Ronan so we read some extra books and played a bit longer with the play dough.  Experience Early Learning just came out with a new Experience Toddler curriculum this year, which I am excited to have been given a chance to use next month.  

Preschool Curriculum-Corn

This month with Experience Preschool, formerly Mother Goose Time, we're learning about farms.  We spent week 1 learning about farm animals, week 2 was about farms, and week 3 is about food from a farm.  

We spent the day learning about corn with Experience Preschool.  We started by using a sheet to make a parachute and crumpled up balls of paper to throw on it.  We pretended the paper was popcorn and shook the sheet to make them pop off.  All kids love playing parachute.  

The complete preschool curriculum from Experience Preschool comes with all the materials you need  for crafts, minus basic things like glue, scissors, markers, paint.  The kids used bubble wrap to dip in paint and make corn kernels on the corn cutouts that were provided.  There was also green paper to use to make the husks and corn stalks.  Ronan loves to paint and after he finished his corn he painted the newspaper.  

All good preschool curriculum come with math activities.  Right now Ronan is just learning to count, so far he can count to 5 in English.  He used the pig manipulatives to work on one to one counting.  Elli did the harder math problems that were included on the story math cards this month.  She was very proud that she didn't even need to use the pig counters to get the answers.  After math, Ronan and Elli played with the pigs for a while, along with some other farm animal counters we have.  I love that Experience Preschool sends new manipulatives in every monthly box.  The pigs were a big hit, even though we already had a set of them.  

Ronan and Elli worked together to color a mini book about corn.  Elli used the book to practice her reading, and Ronan was able to practice holding crayons the right way.  

We finished up with some farm books.  Experience Preschool gives recommended books for every day, that are great if you're doing a farm themed preschool curriculum.  Unfortunately our very tiny library rarely has the recommended books, but I've food lots of farm books that we're reading this month.  

Chickens

We just started a new month with Mother Goose Time, which means a new theme.  This month is down on the farm, and we started day one with chickens.

Every month starts with a new name tag.  Ronan can't write his name, or even trace it at this point.  I write his name on the name tag and hopefully that will help him with recognizing it later.  He's working on holding crayons and pencils the right way which is what we practice on the name tags.  Elli likes to help Ronan "do school" so she used her white board to write her name and draw a barn with animals.

The kids played a game where they took turns rolling the pocket cube and moving a baby chick around the game board to the coop.  If they rolled the fox before the chick made it home then they had to start over.  The girls really liked playing this game with their little brother and helping him move the piece and roll.

Ronan was given an egg that he could use to paint a picture, but instead wound up finger painting the egg and his paper.  He LOVED the paint and was quite happy getting his hands dirty with it.  

We finished up by reading Blue Chicken.