Let's learn about Hands!

I don't post every little thing I do with the kids... but when I have one of my "I'm a super mom moments" like I did this week I want to share it. So when I mentioned my project this week to a friend of mine she really wanted me to post it. And of course I have lots of photos to go along with it!

 

In D's Pre-PreK homeschooling we work on basics like letters, numbers, parts of speech, and each week we have 2 "special subjects".  So our first Special Subject this week was "Hands & Fingers".

 

We sang "Where is Thumbkin" and talked about what we use our hands and fingers for. Some of her answers were to grab, hold, scratch, dig and point. Then we added some less obvious uses like to feel. Feel if something is soft, sharp, hot. They can warn us when something is dangerous. They let us show affection with high fives, hugs and let us communicate with sign language and we learned a few basic signs (which she once knew from baby signs and didn't remember at all!).

 

So for Science Project we used vanilla pudding with food coloring.

The purpose was:

1. To investigate how we used our hands to find gummies and candies hiding in the pudding and to see if we could identify which was which by touch alone.

2. See how mixing our basic colors we could find new colors like chartreuse, magenta, etc.

3.  And get creative painting (and of course eating) our pudding paint.

 

 

To keep things neat I used a cookie sheet. Just take a 4 pack of Snack Pack pudding and scoop it onto the tray and have you or your little one drop a squirt of food coloring onto each pile.  We used blue and red for purple, red and yellow for orange... you get the idea. We went for a basic ROYGBV pallet. Now make sure they don't look while you sneak in some gummies and small candy (we used Pez).

 

Then she started mixing them to make new colors and as she did she found gummies and Pez candies. She had to guess by touch which was which and if she got it right she got to eat it! 

 

She learned that besides smooshing the candy to see which was which (obviously gummies are softer than Pez) she could feel the shape since Pez are ovals. She also found out if you drag the Pez on the tray it makes a scraping sound and the gummies don't.

 

 

And an extra bonus was her tongue turning colors. Oddly her fingers didn't get dyed so that was a plus. 

 

She quickly dug out the hidden goodies and then used a paintbrush to see if it was easier to make lines using her fingers or a brush.

 

 She decided her hand was easier because she could move it easier and it was easier to lick her fingers.

 

 

Next up we made finger puppets! Seriously... you can come up with soooo many crafts if you have wire cleaners, pom-poms and googly eyes! Now honestly this project was a little hard especially since I learned a while ago when gluing pom-poms a hot glue gun works best so she designed them and laid them out and I glued them together. (And yes, I got burned a few times.) It was a joint effort in assembly but she still loved them!

 

These ones have a spiral base so you can pop them on your fingers. We will probably be doing more of these at Easter (I'm thinking bunnies and chicks).  

 

These were basically the same concept but instead or wrapping around the finger  they turn the hand into a mouth. I think these would be cute in with antlers for Christmas reindeer so I may give that a go in a couple months.  

 

So the end result... another totally awesome subject logged and in the books! Next up is "Feet & Legs" so I'll be trying to figure out something on that for the rest of the week tonight! But considering I'm podophobic my expectations aren't too high.

 

 

 



Pre-Pre-K School

D has an early September birthday. This has pros and cons. On the good side we have her being with me for a whole extra year. On the bad we have her all alone with me while all her friends went on to pre-k this year. So since I already work with her at home with a curriculum of sorts we just started back up. We are covering some of what we did last year with a few tweaks to make it new and a bit harder for her.

This is her "home school".

 

Week one of my "pre-pre-k" home school with D went really well. We worked again on the letter A, the number 1 and had lessons on "All About Me", "My Body", and "Humpty Dumpty".

When we did All About Me we made a scrapbook all about D. It was full of things she liked, her hand print, finger print, she even picked out images from the Internet to include in lists of her favorites.

When we worked on My Body we went over the less known parts or her body (like shin, calf, wrist). She laid down on the driveway and I traced her body and we labeled the parts. Then we made paper dolls using a template I found on about.com. We discussed where each part of clothes she made goes on the body and why we wear it. Then we played a game where we dressed the doll for the seasons.

Today we did Humpty Dumpty. I turned it into a creative arts project. We took a raw egg and using a needle I put a hole in the top and bottom and blew all the guts out. She then decorated her very own Humpty Dumpty.

While she was doing that I was hard boiling eggs so we could make "Humpty Dumpty Scrambled Eggs".

First she built them a wall. She'd place an egg on top of the wall each time and when we sang the part where he had a great fall she would knock him over. As we did it I asked why she thinks the egg fell? How could we keep it from cracking? Is there a way to put it back together again?

 

Then she rolled the cracked eggs around and peeled them with me. Once they were all naked I cut the in half and put the yolk in a bowl with mayo, mustard, garlic salt and onion powder. She mixed all the ingredients.  

 

Next it was time to put Humpty together again... so she stuffed the egg halves with the mixture all on her own. It was a mess but she loved it. The trickiest part was keeping her from eating it all before we they were all stuffed!

 

 

We also made a book on Humpty Dumpty where she colored the pictures of Humpty on a wall, Humpty falling, Humpty cracked and then Humpty fixed. She put them in order, First, next, then, last and we made a book with a slightly different rhyme:

 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

But Humpty did not cry.

He did not scream. Do you know why?

With a little tape, and a bit of glue...

He fixed himself up. Good as New!

 



 



 We also made a super cute craft for the letter A and to help with adding and subtraction that I stole from www.preschoolalphabet.blogspot.com .

 

I changed ours up by doubling the monkeys and we each made a clothespin alligator. So when we roll dice we have to add or subtract that number. And of course you can sing the 5 Little Monkeys song and just take one away each time!

And we mad a clay ant out of Crayola Model Magic clay!

All in all it was both a very educational and fun week for both D and I! I don't know what I'll do next year when she's at school. Man I'll miss this.