Fun Stuff

We just kind of go with it most days. I've decided that I am not all that hyped up on specifically what he is learning as long as he is learning and enjoying it. Right now,we are still talking water. Some related to oceans and some not. One day he announced he would like to learn more about sharks. So, we first drew and labelled a shark and it's parts. We talked about how a shark is made of cartilage which he has since asked about other animals and if they also are made of cartilage. After we created it, I cut it into a puzzle and let him reassemble it. Fun times!

The other very ocean specific activity dealt with coral reefs. We read a couple books, youtubed it and then ollie created his own picture using his dotters, a couple pom poms and some glitter. After he made his masterpiece, I had him tell me a bit about it (a coral reef). Some of his description included colorful and lots of fish. Smart boy!

As you know, in an earlier post I mentioned that we had started talking about density. The next two experiments dealt with density. Both boys participated and loved it! For the first activity, I filled a vase with water. Then I had ollie pour some oil in it. We first watched how the oil all settled to the top. Then, Ollie & Dawson got to add food coloring. The food coloring, being more dense than the oil sunk down below the oil and then burst into the water creating a really cool effect. This activity came from a blog called, "Play Create Explore." Really cool site. Lots of great stuff!

Our final activity, had three components. First of all, my boys love using straws to blow bubbles so I thought "why not?"And secondly, they loved pouring things together. This activity was awesome. I took a few household liquids and put them into separate glasses. I used edible stuff because I don't want them to drink something or get something dangerous in their eyes. I used oil, water with food coloring, corn syrup and pancake syrup. For the first part of the activity, the boys tried to blow bubbles into each liquid. Some were near impossible to blow bubbles in. Then we poured them all together and watched where each settled. Ollie quickly discovered that the more dense a liquid, the harder it was to blow bubbles! Yay for hands-on learning. The pour the liquids together I took from an activity I did in a college elementary ed class. The straws was just me using my brain! After we finished, ollie and I created a "chart" with the liquids labels and colored to match.

                                           

                                            

Announcement!

So this little guy, 

and this littler guy want to tell you a secret!

They are both going to be big brothers!

Baby Gray #3 is coming September 4, 2012 and we are so excited! The Lord has blessed us immensely.

Just a few more Ocean activities

There really are a bunch of things you can learn about with oceans. So this week we did a few more activities. Ollie is enjoying it but he told me that he really wants to do dinosaurs so maybe we will move on to prehistoric marine animals. They are pretty cool.

We started with an activity in density. I took this activity from my Kitchen Table Play and Learn book. I took a bowl of water and placed a piece of carrot in it. I told ollie that we were going to add salt to the water. I asked him to make a hypothesis of what would happen. I can't remember exactly what he said but be assured it was something wacky. As we added salt to the water, the carrot began to rise and float. We talked about how the salt made the water more dense and so the carrot could float. I asked him if he thought it would be easier or harder to float in the ocean than freshwater. He of course said easier. Such a smarty!

We did a matching activity. I placed some sea animals in front of Ollie. The ones he knew he matched word to by looking at the first letter and listening to the sound as I repeated. I then taught him the sea creatures he didn't know. The second time I held them up and told him what they said and he matched them. We always end up youtubing something that he wants to know more about! He also wanted to see what would happen if he added pepper. So we tried it. It looked so disgusting!


Finally, we did a writing activity. I wrote the words Ocean and Ollie on a paper and had him trace them with a highlighter. He generally doesn't like handwriting but he liked using a highlighter. He wrote his name by himself for the first time this week! So exciting.


 That's all I have for this week. We had preschool on Wednesday and learned about sound. We may need to check out some science experiments about sound in water this week!

We had beautiful weather this week. Here a a couple of pictures of my sweeties!

Preschool- Oceans

So Ollie and I have been focusing on oceans. More specifically, what lives in them. He has really loved this study. He can now tell you which shark is the largest, how an octopus protects itself, and many fun facts about the starfish along with several other fun tidbits of knowledge. He is such a smart boy!

One of the most important factors in our adventures is our information. We love our local library and get many great books there. They have a ton about oceans. We also use the internet a bunch. There is so much information! It is a lifesaver when Ollie asks a question that I don't know the answer to.

After our adventures with preschool co-op, we started by studying octopuses. We read up on them quite a bit. Ollie was fascinated by the way they escape prey--hiding, running or spewing ink. He was also interested to discover that an octopus's mouth is inbetween all of his tentacles. We made an octopus by stuffing an old sock with plastic bags, then tying a string under them and cutting the "leg" of the sock into 8 pieces, such a great exercise in counting! Here he is with his octopus. Of course it was swimming so it's a bit blurry!

 After discovering many tantalizing starfish facts and watching one eat a calm, both boys got the opportunity to use their senses and create a bumpy starfish. They simply glued raw oatmeal to a star I cut out of paper. It was a bit messy but it was fun! This activity and the next one came from the book "Kitchen Table Play and Learn."

Here I drew an underwater scene in white crayon on white paper. Ollie then painted it with watercolors to discover what animals were there. I do say, if you do this, be sure to really color your picture in thoroughly or they won't be able to tell what is there. Ollie did enjoy this but kept telling me that the shark was a dinosaur. I guess my artistic ability has never been fabulous!

I borrowed this idea from a great little blog that I love called Discovery Days and Montessori Moments.  She recently had her child create a winter scene with little plastic animals and white playdoh. I had Ollie create an underwater scene with some plastic sea animals and blue playdoh. He enjoyed this and it morphed into a long fun experience. Not only did he create a scene but he hid them in the dough, he made prints with them and he decided to make an urchin as well. We played for probably an hour. Our sea creatures interacted and it was quite amusing. 

Finally, We did a shark activity. I cut out different sharks to scale  and had ollie arrange them on his paper from biggest to smallest. I randomly picked 5 but I did make sure to include the very biggest which is the whale shark. The whale shark can reach nearly 50ft! That's 30 ft more than a Great White Shark.To make them to scale I simply drew them at half the cm. So since the whale shark reaches 50 ft, I drew him at 25 cm.  I did not get a picture which is probably ok since I am not a artist but they passed as sharks!

Fun New Talent

My baby is growing up. He has weaned. He is running around and now he is saying animal sounds! What is happening to my baby! Here is a video of his new talent. He was a bit distracted by the camera. You can tell we haven't recorded him as much. Poor deprived kid.

Preschool Co-op

So a small group of mamas and I get together a couple times a month to do "preschool." It's very light-hearted and the kids really have a great time. Today, we got together for the first time since our Christmas break and we talked about oceans. Ollie and I have been exploring this topic a bit and he is really excited about it. I bought a map at the local learning store and he is all about it. Of course, when he sees maps in books he often wants to find where we live, and where Africa and China are. Strange, but hey whatever floats your boat buddy.

 He knows there are 5 oceans and can name "Southern." For those of you who do not know, at some point in the recent future, the Antarctic Ocean was renamed the Southern ocean. I was very confused when I first opened our new map and did a quick google search to discover it had been renamed. I am not sure why.  Here is Ollie on a previous day, labeling the oceans.

When "his friends" arrived, we started by looking at the map and talking about how many oceans there are and what their names are. Then we read The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor.The book is really neat and has a lot of information. It proved to be a bit long for a group of preschoolers although I think most would have loved it sitting on their own mom's lap reading it. 

We then moved to the table to make sea urchins. We made them by taking play-doh and sticking a bunch of toothpicks into it. Tonight at dinner, Ollie told Bob that the urchins have those spikes to protect themselves from predators. Well done kid!

                       Rex with his urchin

Ollie and Quinn

After the sea urchins, we made "ocean bags." Each child got a gallon ziploc bag and a bottle of hair gel. After squeezing in the hair gel, the kids added some blue food coloring, and glitter. Ollie is like me, if he sees something sparkly, he gets distracted. Before I knew what happened, he yacked off the lid of the glitter and dowsed himself with it. He then decided to try to brush it off himself (sigh). We did get a bit of glitter inside the bag. The kids then used the bags to practice writing letters. For some reason, I took no pictures of this. Go figure. 

While the big kids worked on there ocean bags, I had the brilliant idea of letting the  babies play in a sensory bin I had made. Inside, I put shredded blue paper, shredded cellophane, and various sea creatures we have around the house as well as a few I purchased at the dollar store. This was a huge hit! The only problem was the aftermath. I now remember why I don't buy Easter grass. It is a pain! It was from one end of the house to the other. 

For a snack, I gave the kids a real wholesome one! They each received four calm shells with numbers on them. They had to place that number of marshmallows on each one. Ollie quickly gobbled his as soon as he put a few on his first one. You'd like he was deprived. 

Hannah and her clams

We did a few other not as fun activities that the kids seemed to like. All in all, it was a good day. The kids had a blast playing together and I think they learned a thing or two. 

Matching and Dotting

We haven't seemed to do as many planned activities lately. Its been kind of nice. We've played a lot of dinosaurs, monsters and hide N seek. Friday, I had Ollie do a little work. I saw this idea on pinterest. I took the letters of his name and wrote them in capital on clothes pins and in lowercase on squares of paper. Ollie then had to match the capital letter to the lower case. He really had fun. We then worked on arranging his letters in order to spell his name. Fun! Fun!

Ollie with his new Tracing Trails book

For Christmas, we received a set of bingo dotters. They are so much fun. The boys had a blast making art with them. Dawson enjoyed licking them as well. I am so thankful for non toxic art supplies! Here they are: