Showing posts with label workboxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workboxes. Show all posts

Friday, October 28, 2011

More fun work

Most of these activities were found on my quest for worksheets the other day. I put them all together this morning for some at home fun work. I did not get much sleep last night and am hoping to have an easy, relaxing day with the girls. I don't even have to cook dinner tonight as my Granny is dropping some off -- even dessert!

Pin Poking Pages
(a great activity to develop fine motor skills and concentration)
from Confessions of  a Homeschooler - letter of the week P
from abcteach

Fun with Power Magnets
(one to one correspondence and just plain fun)
I also printed one from COAH - same idea - different picture, and some of the other ones from 2 Teaching Mommies. So now they have a choice. These sheets can also be used with Do a Dot paints but somehow those always end up in a mess. I'm trying to avoid a mess today. We'll just have to see how that goes ;)

Pumpkin Pie Scented Play Dough
I made this a few days ago and let it rest overnight. It always seems better the next day. I used the play dough recipe from My Montessori Journey and scented it with Pumpkin Pie Spice. I like a lot of scent so I used about 2 tablespoons. I also added some colouring to make it more orange-y. The pumpkin pie spice adds colour too so it's came out as a pumpkin pie orange -- perfect.  We've already played with it yesterday and I am sure it will be revisited today.
Pumpkin Graphing Game
from 1+1+1=1
Amy is kind of obsessed with graphs.  I give her the one that goes up to 10 and Rose the one that goes up to 5. That usually works out evenly on time and they like to do it together and discuss their graphs and make predictions as they go. There are many styles of these available on the website and the dice are very easy to put together.

Monster Craft
I have a few of these left that I bought AGES ago from Oriental Trading. Years even. There are several monster styles packaged in kits. Everything is pre-cut and you just glue them to create a monster face. They always come out funny looking and everyone always enjoys this craft.

I also expect to have the kids ask to play with the Halloween Sensory bin again, so we'll enjoy plenty of sunshine today as well - as that is an outside activity, which will lead to more outside games I'm sure!

I've also already had one request to print more cutting strips from the other day since we used them all up. So I imagine there will be some more cutting and gluing today once I get that accomplished.






Halloween fun work

I have been doing my best to keep the girls entertained this week. I am not too keen on taking Emily out and about too much as she's only 3 weeks old so we have been working on fun activities at home. Here's a few things that we have done so far.

All of these activity ideas were found on Counting Coconuts. I lack the time to be creative on my own right now!!

Cutting tray
I purchased these graphics here and then made some very simple cutting strips. All three girls enjoy cutting so this was for everyone to work on. I didn't realise how much they loved cutting and I had to make tons more strips. Heidi chose to cut directly through the pictures and then cut her paper into 100s of little pieces, Rose cut hers neatly on the lines, and Amy cut out around the objects. Then I gave them all another sheet of paper and some glue and they glued their cuttings.

Tweezing Spiders
Amy was not interested (not surprised), Rose enjoyed this for about 5 minutes and wanted to cut paper again, and Heidi played with it a little bit and mostly used her fingers. Still a fun activity.

Lacing spiders
These little plastic spiders are getting a workout this week! Very easy activity and everyone is excellent at lacing but they still thought this was fun.

Pencil Sharpening
A family favourite activity. I only had two Halloween pencils around so only Amy and Rose had a turn. Heidi didn't seem to notice.

I also went online and found several different Halloween worksheets - colouring, cutting & pasting, patterning, etc. I printed some from abcteach and Enchanted Learning where I have memberships,  plus 2 Teaching Mommies, Confessions of a Homeschooler, and 1+1+1=1, This photo shows a few of them. If you are looking for some fun worksheets and activities,  I recommend all of these sites - not just for Halloween.
I should mention that our house does not have an area set up in the Montessori way with these trays all laid out in a certain spot. I do however appreciate the value of using a tray to define their workspace and contain all of their work items so we use them often for crafts and activities. They are especially practical for cutting activities and activities with a lot of parts. So on this day I set up the trays and put them all on the table and let them have at it.
I have some other crafts & activities planned so hopefully I'll have the time to get out my camera and share them! 


Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Sick day workboxes

Even though Amy was at home sick today, it was really just a day to rest so to I filled a few workboxes that she could do to keep entertained if she was feeling better. I didn't make a schedule strip or number them and it wasn't formal. I just left her to do them as she pleased. I went in to work for a little bit today and Daddy was at home - so it helped him out a bit too since he didn't have to play lego ALL day :)

Amy is Pre-K I think in the US system, last year of preschool in our system. These workboxes were filled with some fun things she likes to do, but I guess you could call them Preschool boxes? I don't homeschool - Amy goes to a Montessori school and Rose goes to a nursery school. During the school breaks I use the workbox system in a slightly lax way. More to keep the girls engaged in appropriate activities - but I also put things like watch a DVD, computer game time, play outside, chores/clean up etc on the schedule. It also helps me with planning my day. Occasionally I do it on a Saturday or Sunday too but that's usually if there is bad weather about - it also keeps the girls from begging to watch TV constantly if they can see a list/schedule of fun work to do instead. No one says "I'm bored" in this house !!

Heydon the Heart from Carol's Affordable Curriculum February
 It's cutting, pasting, colouring & stickers - her favourite things to do!

 I don't buy every month of CAF but a few here and there. We do the obviously seasonal projects on time and save some of the others for a rainy day. I like having short, fun crafts on hand where everything is all together and it doesn't take up a ton of room in the house. I really love CAF and would use them all of the time except shipping to Bermuda is a bit crazy (not their fault - it just is!) so I go with a few months here and there - it works out perfectly for us.


Handwriting without Tears
This is the same program they use in the classroom and it's just handwriting practice.


wooden pieces and letter formation cards
I took a couple out of the box so you could see what they are. This is also from the Handwriting Without Tears program. I don't think they have the wooden pieces at school. I think Amy is a little beyond this now but she still likes to make the letters out of the wood pieces. She asked me to put it in today, so I did, since it's all about fun work not challenging work today. There is a card that shows you how to make the letter and then you use the correct wooden pieces to replicate it on the blue foam mat. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! That's what she says after each one  - LOL.


reading/spelling
The words are from Dolch List 1. The school sent them home as lists to read - I just printed them out on coloured paper and put them on a ring for easy practice. She likes to read them and then spell them out with the little plastic letters. This was also by request today! She can read words on the other lists but I don't mind using the first list for this activity. She sometimes misses words like "that", "they" & "said" so it's good practice/review.

Counting Game - from Lakeshore Learning
This is just a bit of counting fun - I put it in since I realised there wasn't any math work today and I like to keep it a bit more balanced than that - even for fun work days. She can count well over 100 so again not challenging work, but it is still a fun game.


Reading Books
These are her actual school reading books that she brought home to read from the classroom library on Friday. She only had to read them 3 times and return by Monday but since she was out sick she just read them a few extra times. I suppose I could have chosen new ones from our book shelf but I didn't since the school books were right there.

I should have included something that we could work on together for Amy to take for show and tell on Friday. The class is learning about birds, specifically Bermuda's birds. Last week we did some investigation of the Eastern bluebird and it's life cycle. I found a fun program online and it was a painting program so she painted a picture of the bluebird and printed it (about 5 times !), then we also found some good photos of the life cycle and the first 16 days of growth for the baby bluebirds online and she cut and glued them on to some construction paper to take to school. Show and tell must be something that everyone can learn from (and I usually encourage Amy to think of something related to the current unit of study) so we will come up with something bird like - we're usually more organised by now! We did see a bluebird mobile online that she wanted to make - maybe I'll print that and we can do it over the next two evenings. Her last ballet recital is on Thursday night so it will have to be today or tomorrow to be finished in time for Friday.

Anyhow, that was a little peek into our sick day workboxes - now I'm off to make dinner; meatloaf, steamed veggies & mashed potatoes :) YUM!