Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Mini Unit - Pond

~an overview~

Here's a closer look at what's inside this unit:
Nomenclature Cards (Language). The cards are from Homeschool Creation's pond preschool pack and the wooden letter tiles are from Michael's Craft Store. I got the idea of combining the two from Totally Tots. I know James will like this work, and especially the little jar that's holding the letters. :)

Sensory Tub (Sensorial/Practical Life/Math/Language). A mini version of our larger pond sensory tub.

Graphing Game (Math). Also from HC's pond preschool pack.

Life Cycle of a Frog (Science). This is a fun one - I found this life cycle kit and these cards/chart and put them all together for a great tactile learning experience.

Worksheets (Language/Math/Art). The sheets came from a variety of places: Homeschool Creations, abcteach.com, Google, and KidsSoup.

Stamping (Art). I've had these teeny tiny stamps for years. James will need to visit our "supply basket" for the stamp pad.

Speckled Frogs Felt Set (Language/Music). This adorable set comes from Storytelling Fun. I cut a bit of regular felt to use as our story board since I didn't have room for the actual felt board.

Create A Dragonfly (Art). I found this at our local craft store.

Beginning Sounds (Language). Admittedly, James is past letter sounds, but I'm a big believer in repetition when it comes to learning. Also, I just know he'll love the frog paper clips (which I found here on the island). Cards are from HC's pond preschool pack.

Addition/Subtraction (Math). For this activity I combined these dragonfly beads and the magnetic symbols from this set. That adorable Goldfish container was a gift to James from grandpa - no idea where he got it. Knowing him he sent away for it via snail mail. :)

Bead Transfer (Practical Life). This activity has tongs with it, but I see they didn't make it into the photograph - oops! The frog bath mat thingy came from here.

Poetry Basket (Language). Sans the basket. :) I searched and searched and could NOT find a decent pond poem that I liked (I'm kinda picky about the poems I use for our poetry baskets), so I wrote my own. It's cheesy and I'm sure I broke every rule in poetry, but ah well. It'll work just fine. I needle-felted the pond and dragonfly, the lily pad is cut from a piece of foam paper, and the little wooden duck is from here. There's also a wooden turtle (hard to see him from this perspective), but he's super cute! I won him in a giveaway.

Counting Fish (Math). See my post here about these cute little fellas.

Books (Language). Titles are: In the Pond by Anna Milbourne, Five Little Ducks by Ian Beck, Frog and Toad (Early Reader Series) by Arnold Lobel, and The Tale of Jeremy Fisher by Beatrix Potter.

All packed and ready to explore!

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~Thank you for your comments!~

12 comments:

Lisa @ Our Country Road said...

I love the idea of using the letter tiles to spell words on the cards! And the little frog paperclips are too cute!!

Heather said...

Very swweet. I just wrote a post on our frog hunting and then clicked here. How cool is that? Thanks!

FroggyMama said...

We used the pond pack from Homeschool Creations a little while ago and loved it! They have such great materials, very nice graphics.

Sara Ruth said...

Love this! You have the best ideas!

Caterina said...

We are learning about Ponds now too! Thanks so much for this post. We have the same goldfish container we got it at shoprite. Thanks for giving it another use.
Hope you are feeling well!
Caterina

Anonymous said...

Very creative, as always!
The gold fish container can be found at Kroger. Also, the little bath mats for the transferring activity are sold at Target ($5 for a set of 6 I believe).

Unknown said...

you use abcteach, kidsoup alot. do you just do free or do you subscribe?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

My daughter's class created a "pond in a jar" last year. They used mason jars with water and blue food coloring. Then they added little pebbles, plastic leaves (left over from tearing apart silk flowers for another activity), and those "grow in water" little fish, frogs, and turtles. I think they may have also added some plastic fish beads.

I finally had to throw hers away after about 4 months b/c is got yucky, but she loved loved it! She understood that it had to go, but she also wanted to know when she could make another one.

Gabrielle said...

I completely LOVE your mini units. Actually I love everything you do. I just wrote up a post on your blog featuring some of my favorite things. Thanks so much for all of the great ideas!

Erin said...

Love this mini unit! It looks like so much fun.

I've seen those little goldfish containers all lover the place - grocery stores, dollar stores, supercenters. They seem to pop up at random!

Deb Chitwood said...

Great mini unit - as always! I love the creative way you put together a variety of resources to create wonderful Montessori-oriented activities! I featured your pond mini unit at http://livingmontessorinow.com/2011/07/14/montessori-inspired-pond-unit/

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