Pattering With Paper Clips

I heard about these links and patterning cards and went around the island in search of them, but not surprisingly I came up empty handed. That's one fun benefit of living in a place where resources and selection is limited - you're forced to become inventive!

I realized the links are really nothing more than paperclips without the clip. :) The point is the link and you can certainly do that with paperclips! And the cards were easy enough to create (in Word). James will use the them as a guide to create various patterns (ABAB, AABB, etc.).

I'm making these cards available to you - just click this link to download. As with all of my printables, these are for your personal use only. Please do not sell or offer them in a giveaway. Thank you!

Oh and here's another paperclip activity James came up with. He began creating letter and number shapes with the clips, so I dug out these jumbo cardboard numbers for him to use as a template. BIG hit! (FYI, I *think* the cardboard numbers were found at Michael's Crafts.)

~Thank you for your comments!~

Mini Unit - Halloween

Here's the last mini unit! This makes seven total. More than I had originally planned to make and the recent ones have been more involved (compare the robot mini unit to the transportation unit - it's laughable!), but that's how I roll. I get an idea and then I run as fast and far as I possible can with it!

Certain themes we've covered in our 2 years of homeschooling have been more interesting to James than other themes. Halloween is one he looks forward to all year. So, since my teaching hiatus will occur over the month of October, I thought I'd devote a unit to all the fun and not so scary aspects of Halloween. To see my posts from Halloween past, click here and here. :)

~an overview~

Tweezing Spiders (Practical Life). This activity reminds me of the game "Operation" because you have to be careful to get the tweezers into the small opening, pinch a spider, and then carefully draw it out of the pumpkin without dropping it!

Finger Puppets (Just For Fun!). Ha! Love the little orange arm peeking out of the bag! :)

Pencil Sharpening (Practical Life). These pencils, like the finger puppets in the above photo, are things James received while trick-or-treating last year. Hooray for non-candy treats!

Lacing Spiders (Practical Life). These spider rings have nice, big loops and bunch up in a fun way to create a spooky spidery necklace!

Patterning Cards (Language/Math). I made these last year using clip art from abcteach (yes, I have a membership, and yes, I think it's worth it). :).

Pumpkin Manipulatives (Math/Sensorial). These acrylic pumpkins are very pretty and come in a variety of colors and sizes. I found them at Micheal's in the US. James can use them for sorting, math, imaginative play, and as our bingo counters.

Mini Sensory Tub. To see past sensory tubs, click here and here. This one is full of all sorts of goodies: feathers, chip board signs (found at a scrapbooking store), spiders large and small, puffs, erasers, skull beads, purler beads in black, purple, and white, and letter buttons that spell out the word "Halloween".

Make A Pumpkin (Art). James isn't much into art whether it be free creation or prepared crafts. He is, however, a big fan of pumpkins so I think he'll enjoy the end result of this craft. I've prepared everything he needs to create two cute little pumpkins.

Skip Counting (Math). As in some of our other mini units, I created some blank skip counting cards (on Word) and then added puffy stickers to make them more interesting. This set counts by 5 up to 100.

Parts of a Skeleton (Science). I printed the booklet from Montessori Print Shop (note: it's actually a set of 3-part cards - I just used the title cards) and I included a little glow in the dark skeleton (found at the dollar store). James can match the parts from the booklet to the corresponding parts on the skeleton.

Stamping (Art/Just For Fun!). As a photo, this activity looks extremely dull. :) But James loves stamping and will cover page after page with stamped images.

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin (Science/Language). This is also from last year and I printed it off from the Montessori For Everyone website.

Scissor Practice (Practical Life). I love these stickers - they're puffy, shiny little candy corns. :)

Punching (Practical Life). I just strips of scrapbooking paper for this activity and there's a little container (not pictured) for James to dump the punched pieces into.

Counting Cards (Math). No counters with this activity. James enjoys numbered items and spends a good amount of time simply putting them in order and creating new numbers.

Poetry Basket (Language). Also from last year - in fact, it was our first poetry basket and the poem was written by me. :)

Books (Language). Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming, Arthur's Halloween by Marc Brown, Clifford's Halloween by Norman Bridwell, and Happy Halloween by Rosemary Wells.

Bingo (Language). I made this myself using clip art I purchased from here. You can find a link to download this here on my printables page.

Worksheets and Mini Activity Book (Language/Math/Art). The color pages were found free online and the worksheets were created by me. The activity booklet was another trick-or-treat giveaway.

Collage (Art). These are foam stickers in Halloween shapes. James likes stickers, so I'm thinking he'll enjoy sticking them on the paper and also tearing the paper to make a collage. He has access to scissors, paste, and other art tools in our supply basket.

Pumpkin Playdough (Sensorial). This playdough, like last year and the year before, is scented with pumpkin spice and smells de-licious!

All packed and ready to explore!

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~Thank you for your comments!~

Mini Unit - Mickey Mouse

I have to admit, I don't usually buy into the whole mainstream commercialism thing when it comes to my classroom. It just seems a bit distracting to me. But, I decided to bend a little just this once and I created this Mickey Mouse themed mini unit for James. He's digging Mickey right now (and truth be told I'm a big Mickey fan, too!) and I figured if I could make the activities educational, why not let the Mouse come over for a visit? :)

I should note that because Bermuda has limited supplies when it comes to specialty items, I made many of these materials myself. In the rare case that I did purchase items, they were cheaply found at our local dollar store, thrift shop, and party supple store.

~an overview~

Here's a closer look at what's inside this unit:
Mini Sensory Tub (Sensorial/Language). I thought about making a full size version of this tub, but with only 3 weeks left to go in this pregnancy, I just haven't the energy. I used red pony beads and black marbles and foam squares as the main filler. Also included are bottlecaps (dollar store), buttons, letter beads to spell with, poms, tiny Mickey Mouse buttons, a couple of vellum stars, and a Pluto Pez dispenser.

Telling Time (Math). I made this myself by using the back of a Mickey Mouse paper plate. I purchased the button embellishments from a scrapbooking store (years ago) and then cut the clock hands out of cardstock and pinned them loosely to the plate with a brad.

Lacing (Practical Life). Another use for the paper plates - I simply punched holes around the perimeter and added a shoelace.

Pin Punching (Practical Life). I create the Mouse heads in Word and printed a few of them so James can repeat the work as desired. I provided a sheet of black foam paper to absorb the pin. I've been asked a zillion times about the jumbo pins I use - I found them at our local dollar store over a year ago, but I've seen them available on Amazon as well.

Dominoes (Math/Language/Sensorial). These dominoes are another dollar store find and boy are they teeny-tiny!

Bingo (Language/Sensorial). Two kinds - one is homemade and involves reading, the other is a thrift store find and focuses on shapes. I had already created the homemade version (by using clip art), but couldn't pass up the other one when I found it for only 25 cents.

Worksheets (Language/Math/Art). I made all of these myself using free clip art I found online. While I would normally share these with you as PDF's, I don't feel comfortable doing so this time around. I'm fearful of some unknown copyright I'd be breaking if I shared them. Sorry!

Books (Language). Going through our bookcases I found only these three Mickey Mouse books. In fact, these were MY books when I was young and I *think*, perhaps with the exception of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, they're now out of print.

Activity Books (Math/Language/Art/Just For Fun!). Birthday gifts from a couple of years ago.

Manipulatives. I found these at our local party supply store. I envision them being used for sorting, sequencing, math, storytelling, and whatever else James comes up with. Oftentimes I will just put materials out there and sit back to see what HE decides to do with them. His ideas are usually much more creative than mine!

Stick Puppets. I used some of the above manipulatives and pasted them to popsicle sticks. Again, I'm curious to see what James will do with these.

Memory/Matching Game (Sensorial). These are paint chips, which I believe you can find at most large home-retailers. The ones in the photo were a gift from my sweet bloggy friend, Susan. :)

Pasting Practice & Collage Making (Practical Life/Art). The paper and stickers are several years old and from my scrapbooking stash. I cut up various aspects of the papers and it'll be up to James to arrange them however he'd like.

Cutting Practice (Practical Life/Math). As with all of our sticker cutting strips, James will need to cut in between the stickers. He can then use the snipped pieces for a sequencing or sorting activity.

All packed up and ready to explore!

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~Thank you for your comments!~

On Our Shelves - July & August

This is my last "On Our Shelves" post for a few months. The baby is due is just 5 weeks (!) and I'm now shifting my focus toward preparing for her arrival.

Our theme is summer. Keeping the theme broad like this really allowed me to put pretty much anything on our shelves, so long as it looked summery! :) As always, there are a few activities that aren't theme related. Click here and here to see what was on our shelves last summer.

Practical Life
Water Transfer. When James is ready to do this work he'll need to fill the bowl of little sponges with a bit of water. Then he'll place one sponge square into the garlic press and squeeze the water into one section of the ice cube tray. Oops - I now realize I need to add another bowl to the tray for the squeezed sponge squares. To remove the water from the ice tray, James will simply put the squeezed sponges back into the section to absorb the water and then transfer them back to the bowl.

Pencil Sharpening.

Pouring Sand. This is sand from one of our local beaches. I added a funnel to make this work a little more exciting. :) The bottle on the left is in a basket to keep it from falling off of the tray. James is really careful about transporting his work to the rug or table, but this tray just isn't that great.

Paper Punching. This is something new for us and I think James will really like it. The blue container (from Mexico) holds small paper squares of various colors, textures and weight. The silver container will hold the punches.

Tweezing & Transferring. We've done something similar to this several times before, so this is nothing really new, but I know James will enjoy it. The mason jar is what I think he will find most interesting - there are two parts to the lid and they have to go on in a certain way in order for them to fit properly.

Sensorial

Sensory Tubs. We have two available right now: Pond & Transportation

Sandy Playdough. Same as last year. :)

Creating Polygons. These colored popsicle sticks have been used for so many activities in our classroom! I printed out this chart from the internet and James will use it as a guide to create some basic polygons. I provided a control of error by using a single color for each polygon.

Still on our shelves: Knobbed & Knobless Cylinders, and The Pink Tower.

Language
Poetry Basket. I found this poem online and modified it a bit. I needled-felted the water and grass, and knitted the little fruits in the basket.

Summer Bingo. I made this myself using graphics from here. The small bingo cards are in the little box, and the colored shells will be used as card markers. (Btw, I did not color the shells - I found a bag of them at our local thrift store.)

Sequencing. These stars are filled with water (meant to be reusable ice cubes). We'll use them to create various patterns.

Tracing. James finds worksheets a bit boring, so I try to liven this kind of work up by adding fun writing utensils to the tray. You'd be surprised how often this works to entice him. These printables came from abcteach. (Btw, since a few people have asked, yes I do have a membership to this site and yes I do find it well worth the price - I use it quite often).

Moveable Alphabet. I collected a bunch of images from Google and made these cards to accompany our moveable alphabet. James will spell out the name of image. In the case of the card shown in the photo, he can opt to spell either 'shovel' or 'pail'.

Memory Game. This is one from last year when we focused on Independence Day.

Books. On The Seashore by Anna Millbourne, The Sun Egg by Elsa Beskow, Bermuda 123 by Dana Cooper, Summer (Series) by Nuria Roca, America a Patriotic Primer by Lynne Cheney, L is for Liberty by Wendy Cheyette Lewison, Coral Reef by Marcus Phister, The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller, Swimmy by Leo Lionni.

Still on our shelves: Dry Erase Spelling, and the Grammar Farm.

Math
Buying Water Balloons. Put on your creative hat, go into the dollar store and you'll be amazed at what you turn into a learning activity! In the past, I would have made a simple sorting/matching activity with these balloons, but since that's a bit old hat for James, I decided to go this route instead. James will need to "buy" these balloons for a penny a piece/25 cents for the lot. I provided various coins that equal that amount and it'll be up to him to decide which combination of coins to use. This activity falls in line with our recent Money Matters lesson.

Cards & Counters. It's true we're a bit past this kind of work, too, but if I've said it once I've said it a million times - repetition is a good thing. Plus, I have a bazillion of these fruit counters and I've been dying to use them. :) I bought them at a garage sale a few months ago, but I think you can buy them from Lakeshore Learning.

Less Than/More Than/Equal To. I chose sea glass for this work and I think James will really like the look and feel of it. The less than/more than/equal symbols come from this magnetic set.

Lego Math. You can read more about this here.

Skip Counting. I made these bead bars out of pipe cleaners and pony beds. Super easy. The tiles come from our Hundreds Board.

Still on our shelves: Telling Time, and Sandpaper Numerals.

Science & Culture
Discovery Tray. It's been a while since I created a discovery tray for our shelves. This one is full of ocean treasures - shells, coral, sea glass, and bits of pottery washed up after a hurricane a couple of years ago.

Examining Sand. My husband found the idea for this activity here. We'll put some sand on the white paper and make note of what colors and particles we see. We'll do the same with the black paper and see if we notice anything different. We'll use the jumbo magnet to see if any iron-rich minerals stick to it. We'll also talk about why Bermuda sand is pink!

Still on our shelves: (Parts of) the Africa Continent Bag.

Water Experiments - coming soon!

Art & Music

Composer of the Month: Verdi. I often get asked what exactly we do with our COM. Right now I'm keeping it really simple - I download that composer's music onto my iPod and we listen to those songs during our schooltime for the entire month. I also print out a photo of the composer. At some point we'll likely spend more time learning about the composer and the style of music, but for now it's just not something James is interested in.

Coloring Book. I printed this mini coloring book from abcteach.

Circle Time Songs. I can make these available, just let me know if you're interested.

Line Art. The idea here is simple - James can use the ruler to create lines in various lengths and angles. He can color the shapes in if he wishes to.

Happy summer!

~Thank you for your comments!~