Farm Theme

This week we did a Farm Theme, as it seemed kind of fall-ish.  Of course, we had an indian summer, and the temps were near 80.  Oh well!

 I found some great pre-made packs for kindergarten HERE, which is where all these great activities came from this week.  Rose really enjoyed the connect-the-letters to help the farmer get to the cow.

Then she did a little farm math - count the different animals and circle the correct number.  She did well, in fact it was almost too easy for her, so maybe I need to start upping the ante in math.

I got these adorable magnetic farms from my Pampers points and they had fun making up their own story to go with the farm animals.  Rose was intent on getting them in the right place, while James just liked putting them on and off.  

We rounded the week out with a trip to a local farm/park.  It is run by volunteers and they have it set in 1771 so the farm was like it would have been back then.  They dress, speak, and act the part which the kids thought was funny.  We got to help carry firewood in, wash our hands in their 'sink' (a bucket of water), and play with cornhusk dolls & other farm toys.  

As you can see, Daddy made it with us on this trip, which was great for the kids.  Here they are looking at the pigs and trying to get them to oink.  It only really worked with the geese, which ended up scaring them anyway!

Clothes Theme

Ok, so I know it is a weird sounding theme, but Rose had fun with it - she is a girl after all!  Anyway, I found this cool felt doll at a sale the weekend before, so it worked really well with the week's activities.  She had a ball picking out outfits and dressing the girl.  We spent quite a bit of time discussing how certain accessories go with different types of outfits.  

Of course, this was the only activity that was really worth taking a picture of.  So I will just give a quick run down of the other activities.  For a math activity, we discussed clothing size then went through all of her clothes and noted that the smaller numbers didn't fit her any more but the bigger numbers were a little bigger on her.  Then she and I spent time organizing her clothes, folding and whatnot.  

At first, science was going to involve some tie-dye, but I didn't really want to get into that, so we did a laundry drying experiment.  We tried different ways of drying her clothes from the laundry.  She figured out that it was really nice to have the dryer do all the work!

We also donated a bag of clothes for our social studies for the week.

James Sleep-eating

Transportation Theme!

We kicked off our 'school year' the same time all the public schools did so Rose felt included with the neighborhood kids.  Technically, Rose wouldn't be starting kindergarten until Fall 2013 (almost 6) because of where her birthday falls (cut off is September).  But when she decided to start reading this summer, I figured we could do pre-k/kindergarten this year.  If all else fails, I figure I have 3 years for her to complete kindergarten!

Anyway, our first theme was transportation.  No rhyme or reason, just started there.  Here is a basic run down of what we did:

Sorted all of our vehicles (who knew we had so many?) by

 type,

 method of movement,

 size,

and color. 

 Then we had a race for all the cars, down a book ramp, to see which one went the farthest. White won, green lost.

 She made some notes about the race in her Sid the Science Kid journal (we will use this throughout the year for different science experiments).

 She did a color by number train picture while I cooked dinner or lunch one day. All the manipulative were found online.

After discussing the parts of a boat (bow, stern) and the general shape, we made boats out of foil to see if they would float (idea found here).

 Added a paper boat to see the difference.

 Handwriting practice.

 Which way is the vehicle facing? Rose aced this the first time out, I wasn't really sure she even knew the difference.  Even the boat (before the discussion too!) didn't trip her up.

 A number ordering train, followed by odd/even organizing.

Finally...a trip to the Air and Space Museum!

 Supposedly learning about why the airplane's wings are curved.  I think they really just liked pushing the air button ;)

 Fun in the cockpit!

 They loved the fact that they could go through so many of the different planes and shuttles.  

This had to be Rose's favorite display.  It was just a capsule for the balloon that recently circumnavigated the world.  She thought it was cool that a balloon made it all the way around.  This was the first museum that held her interest at different displays for more than 5 seconds.  She even asked questions about different things and wanted to learn more about them.  We will definitely be going back this year, even if it doesn't fit in our theme!

We also briefly touched on outer space, but might take the time to do that in more depth later on.

James in time out...really he was