Little House on the Prairie Cooking: Making Butter and Cheese

L and E (3 years old) love the My First Little House picture books (based on the Little House on the Prairie chapter-book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder) .  For our Cooking Day last week, we made two items inspired by these books:  butter and cheese.  This was the first time making butter and cheese from scratch for me too, and I think I had as much fun as the kids did.  I'm very proud to say that the results were quite successful.  Here's how we did it:

Autumn Tree Craft

We celebrated the first day of Autumn with this fall tree craft made out of a paper towel roll and colored paper.  I actually did this activity with the girls last year, and it is so neat to see how now as three-year-olds they can complete the project almost independently.  It was really easy, and I think the results are beautiful.  Here's the process...

Homeschool Preschool: Week 5

L and E are almost 38 months old.  We seemed to get our groove back this week with our Preschool routine, and fit in lots of fun and educational activities.  I've already shared many of our Preschool activity boxes on this blog, so I'll just include the ones that were new this week...

Learning About Frogs

The latest issue of Zootles magazine was about frogs, so the girls (3 years old) and I decided to learn all about frogs and do some extra frog-related activities.  After we read through the magazine, I got on YouTube and showed the girls various videos of frogs eating insects, worms, and even birds.  We found videos of frogs jumping in slow motion, and even male bullfrogs fighting each other.  The girls were fascinated and pretended they were frogs the rest of the day.  Here are some of the other activities we did on the topic..

Baby H Turns 1

Yes, there's a baby behind that gift.  And, yes, I used Christmas wrapping paper (he didn't know the difference).  When the twins were little, I couldn't wait for them to grow up, but I'm in much less of a hurry with Baby H.  My little 5 lb 6 oz baby is now a year old, and I just don't know where the time went...

Phonics Jumping Game (with Video!)

This morning the girls (37 months) helped me use painters tape to make letters on the floor.  Then we played a phonics reading (and jumping!) game that I made up.  It was so much fun that we ended up playing for over an hour and L forgot that she was on a reading-strike!  I even caught one of the rounds on video.  Here's how to play...

Homeschool Preschool: Week 4

This Week-in-Review post is pretty late, but we had a busy weekend.  Last week was very full for us, but mostly with non-traditional learning.  Here are some of the activities we managed to fit in:

Card-Decorating Station

The girls have had some sort of extracurricular class every day this week (gymnastics, swimming, music, dance), and I don't think they've been getting enough sleep, so the combination of extra excitement and lack of sleep as made them moody lately.  They both are enthusiastic about our Homeschool Preschool activity boxes, but then either end up fighting with each other over silly little things (like who is sitting in which chair, etc..), or end up being resistant to certain things (for example, we were making letters out of pieces of plastic drinking straws and L made the letters "T", "A", and "H" all on their own, but when I rearranged them as H-A-T and asked her to read the word, she yelled "It spells HAT, and I'm not going to read any more words!").  I've also been busy with my own personal project, so if the girls seem to lose interest with a 'school' activity, I let them play on their own while I work.  Anyway, although our typical schedule has not been as consistent this week as the previous 3 weeks, I always try to fit in some form of art activity - the creative tasks seem to occupy the girls for a long amount of time with limited arguing (except the occasional fight over not sharing the crayons).  Today I set up a Card-Decorating Station with dot paints, letter stamps, tracing, cutting, and gluing.  Here's what we did....

Intro to Writing Stories

After doing some painting last week, I asked L and E (3 years old) if they wanted to write stories about their artwork. I tried not to provide too much guidance - I just wrote what they told me to write. Here's what they came up with...

Open-the-Door House Craft

My mother gave me the idea for having the girls (3 years old) make their own interactive books with flaps to open, things that pop up, etc..  We started with this simple craft featuring a house with a door that you can open and close.  Although they needed assistance, I tried to let them do as much as possible on their own.  Here's the process..

Homeschool Preschool Week 3

L and E (37 months) have just completed their 3rd week for "Homeschool Preschool".  We're still trying to stick with a daily routine, but it's become a lot more flexible.  There are days when they clearly want to play without me, so I let them play while I get some work done.  Other days, L will refuse to call me "Mommy", just "Teacher" and both girls beg for their activity boxes.  We just go with the flow..  Here's a review of the types of learning experiences we've been doing...

Cute Stuff My Kids Say

I need to start recording all the neat things my kids have been saying lately.  Here are a few examples:

School Supplies Activity Tray

I'm like a 'kid in a candy store' when it comes to discount school supplies.  A year ago, around this time I found a ton of clearance pencils, erasers, and pencil cases in a craft store, and made a little activity tray for the girls (who were 2 at the time).  For this activity tray, I showed the girls how to place the pencils in the pencil boxes, and how to put the erasers on the pencils.  This year, I reintroduced the tray to the kids and we made up even more games with it...

Preschool Science: Colors and Capillary Action

There are a number of experiments on light and color that I'd like to do with the kids.  Unfortunately, last week I just couldn't find the time to prep the experiments, so we ended up exploring colors (as well as capillary action) spontaneously using materials we had on hand.  It ended up being a lot of fun.  Here's what we did:

Tapping Syllables

One of our file folder games is a syllable-sorting activity which is just a collection of cards with various pictures, and a little sorting mat to identify whether each word has 1, 2, or 3 syllables.  If I had ink in my printer, I could have created these cards myself (or you could use stickers as well).  To make the activity more fun, I brought out our collection of percussion instruments and we played a bunch of early learning games..

Math Games with Animal Counters

My twins (age 3) are obsessed with little animal figures.  Somehow we've ended up with hundreds of them!  When we moved, I rediscovered a tub of 60 plastic animal counters (5 each of 12 animals), and the girls begged to play with them all week.   Here are some easy games I came up with to reinforce math and logic skills for my Preschoolers...

New TV!

It's true that you could buy your kids the most expensive toys, and they'll still end up playing with the box.....

Sudoku for Little Kids

Recently while surfing Amazon, I was tempted to buy a book called Preschool Sudoku.  Then I realized that the last thing my kids (3 years old) need is another workbook (we have piles and piles of them), and I could totally teach them how to play basic Sudoku myself using things we already have around the house.  Here's how I taught my Preschoolers Sudoku in one evening...

Collaborative Storytelling with Wikki Stix

Wikki Stix are pieces of colored yarn dipped in wax.  They are pliable and sticky - great for making all sorts of creative things.  L and E (3) were very excited to discover Wikki Stix in one of their Preschool Activity Boxes yesterday, and set to work right away making all sorts of creations.  We ended up playing with them all morning, working together to make up stories and scenes that go along with them..

A Day in Our Homeschool Preschool

As I mentioned in some previous posts, I officially started Homeschool Preschool for L and E (37 months) last week.  Basically it involves doing many of the learning activities we've already been doing, but adding a little more structure and calling it 'Preschool'.  This week, many homeschooling bloggers are sharing 'A Day in the Life' posts on the 'Not Back-To-School Blog Hop', where others can get a glimpse of a typical day in their family.  I thought it would be fun to join in.  Here's how our first day of 'school' went...