Preschool - At Home!

What are Audrey and I up to now that she's done with speech therapy? Reading lots of books, going to AP playgroups, other outings, and doing a homeschool curriculum for preschoolers! It's a nature based curriculum called A Child's World. The curriculum is divided into 20 units, each of which is focused on a certain element of nature, such as a season. Each unit has 25 different activities that span the content areas: reading, math, science, art, cooking, sensory play, etc. Right now the curriculum is geared for children of preschool and kindergarten age but it's a new curriculum and still a work in progress so eventually it will include activities for ages 2-7. For more information on this curriculum go here.

We just started this curriculum a month ago but so far we both love it! We did the winter theme this month and here are some of the activities we did:

While going on a nature we collected some branches from a pine tree, painted them, and made prints! On the walk we also talked about winter: the snow, leaves gone from most trees, cold, short days, footprints and tracks in the snow from animals, etc.

This was one of her favorite activities! It's the book The Mitten. The animals in the story climb into a mitten one by one. While reading the book we did an activity called sequencing: as each animal climbed into the mitten in the story we put a picture of that same animal into my mitten. 

We read several books about winter and this one coincided with an outing that our homeschool group, Little Urban Explorers, went to! We saw the play version of the Bear Snores On, which was super cute.

Here Audrey is putting "snowballs" (cotton balls) into empty toilet paper tubes. Each tube has a number written on it and she puts the corresponding number of cotton balls into it, with lots of assistance from me. Her favorite part of this activity was lifting up the toilet paper rolls, squeezing them, and making them "poop the snowballs out" :)

It's hard to tell what she's eating, but it's a "snowflake": a tortilla folded and cut (like you would a paper snowflake), then brushed with butter and cinnamon sugar, and baked. She loves to cook! We did this activity after being outside when it was snowing and talking about the snowflakes.

This isn't an activity from the curriculum but getting out to playgroups, the Children's Museum, and other outings is an important part of our week! Audrey loves the Children's Museum; here she is being a construction worker.

Sensory bins with rice and beans! These can be super messy (hence why we're doing it in the kitchen) but super fun! We talk about the different beans, scoop, pour, sort, and just have fun.

It's hard to tell from the picture but this is a calming jar. It has a piece of pine branch from our nature walk and glitter. You shake it up and watch the glitter fall. On a side note, I've learned that glitter and toddlers make an even bigger mess than the sensory bins! I thought, "hey it won't be that hard to contain the glitter." Oh but it is, my friends, it is.