Preschool Parable of a Sower/Garden Theme Mon 3/4/13

Background on the "week" so far:  Well, here it is, another week!  I'm so excited so far and it's only Tuesday! I didn't get on here on Monday to update this blog, my littles would not sleep last night!  I also had to prepare the rest of my stuff for teaching a class at our morning co-op and then we had a meeting for our new afternoon co-op.  I know two co-op's sounds crazy, but the first one we've been doing Feb. 2010, at a church nearby.   Our church just started one in the fall for 5 and under.  We were not able to join in on the fall one because I was teaching and the co-ops were basically at the same time.  They time changed for the one at our church, which I am so thankful for! We enjoy our morning co-op very much, but it is also nice that J and K can do a co-op/playgroup with the kids from our church that they've known "all their lives".

Easel I had orange, green and brown paint.  Several reasons: we were going to read Curious George and the Perfect Carrot, we did plant carrot seeds, carrots are orange with green stems, they grow in the brown dirt and brown is our color of the week! J got so into the painting he created a "house" complete with a beach, sand, water and a sun - all in those colors!  I wouldn't have known that was what it was if he hadn't told me all about it!  I loved it! I'm loving watching him develop all of these wonderful skills!!

Here is K painting at the easel!

Here is J's "house"... so adorable!

 Writing Center was supposed to be decorating blank seeds packets I printed off the computer.  I never got the chance to cut them out, so they'll be there for another day!  We did workbox stuff instead, that took up our table space.  Tomorrow (Wednesday) I'll have them ready!

 Here is J putting pics in order to make his own flower shape and color book.  I had him put them in the order he wanted, this kept him busy while I quickly cleaned up the kitchen and schoolroom messes.

 This is his finished set up... he enjoyed doing this.

 Below is him gathering them to staple.

 Here he is, great big grin and a finished book, not yet stapled!!  This also from homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com.

 Stapling the book.. he had to do it all by himself..I held it in place though!

 Here he is writing his letters m and s.  Worksheet from donnayoung.org.  I've started using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons, until we begin MFW K.

 This was his Parable of a sower activity.  Putting the pics in order after hearing and reading the story. I showed him pics that I had printed while I read.  He then cut and glued.

 Science tray (we not longer have a table, our table was not actually a table, it was a big box that when turned upside down looked like a table, so I used it for a while, now I need to get a table) I had a seed packet sorting game.  K loved this and she did so great with it!  One side you placed flower seed packets, the other veggie seed packets.  These are tiny though, I printed off the Garden theme stuff from homeschoolcreations.com.  J did not get to this activity, but I will have it out either at the science tray or in his workboxes.

 Here is K with her Winter page for her Season's book!

 Our texture box/sensory box does have soil in it, but first we did plant our seeds.  What an ordeal!  J is not too bad, more patient, able to wait and follow directions and is careful when necessary (most of the time).  K, well, she's two!  Need I say more!!  LOL!  We, the seeds, the box and the kitchen made it through! YEAH!  At first I had pieces of egg carton in there, four egg holders for each kind of seed.  I realized very quickly that I needed to remove two and work on two kinds of seeds at a time (one for each side).  J and K were on separate sides of the box and had to pull chairs up to it.  I had it pulled over near our garbage can, which is right near our vacuum cleaner - quick for clean up, because as expected, soil ended up on the floor!

 Art was homemade carrot stamps, one in orange paint and one in green paint, on brown paper.  K kept pulling one of the carrots off the clothespin (not the pinching kind), I had hot glued it too!  J did this only, K didn't do it, I'm not sure she saw it though. J was the only one who tried this!  I showed him how to do it, he gave it a try.

 This is J's artwork too!!  Chalk on our chalk board, the other side of our easel. Not sure what happened with some of these pics!

So, this was our Monday!!  BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!!!

In addition to all of the above I added some Garden themed, laminated printables with a dry erase marker to our literacy center boxes.  I added a vegetable puzzle to our math center boxes.  Busy littles keep my very busy!