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!~

Summer Calendar Cards - 2 Sets!

I made these cards for our classroom calendar this summer and since I purchased the clip art (from here), I'm at liberty to share these with you! Click the titles below to download. Enjoy!

USA

At the Beach

As always, my printables are for your personal use only - please do not sell or offer them in a giveaway. Thanks!

~Thank you for your comments!~

Fourth of July Activities

With summer in full swing we are spending 99.9% of our time outside (or so it seems!). Truth be told, I've been purposely lax about our school time lately because this time of year is always so busy for us - lots of time spent with friends, family and in the ocean! Still, I always make sure to have a handful of trays on our shelves because James *loves* to learn! He is going through such a sensitive period for learning right now -- day after day he blows us away with his thoughts, ideas and new-found knowledge of the world. It's SO much fun being his mommy!

Here are some activities I put together in honor of America's Independence Day. Hooray for red, white and blue! :)

Practical Life

Spooning red beads When I set up James' activities I always make sure to arrange the material so he can transfer it from left to right, which simulates how we read. James calls these little beads "cherries". :) I found them at our local craft store.

Pouring water from a pitcher into four cups
I just *love* this pouring set. It's hard to see in the photo, but the design combined with the cobalt blue color makes for such an inviting activity. James was SO careful with these. I didn't have to remind him to be careful - it's as though he just knew he should be. I believe this is what comes of allowing children to use breakable materials.

Tweezing and transferring puffs
It took a bit for James to get the "press, pinch, hold and release" technique of tweezing down pat, but when he did he worked on this activity for quite a well. He loved the little clear box the puffs "lived in". :)

Transferring ice cube stars These stars are filled with water and are meant to be frozen and used as in drinks (I found them at Michael's). James created a repeating red, white and blue pattern and shook each and every star in the process. He said they sounded wet!

Plucking flowers
This is a good fine motor activity. I found a cheap bunch of fake flowers (at Micheal's) and showed James how to pinch the flowers off of the stem. I spoke for a moment about how it's not a good idea to do this to real flowers because they're still growing. He liked this activity and worked on it here and there for a few days.

Sensory
Our sensory tub and playdough were a HUGE hit!

Size sequencing stars
I created these stars in Word and then printed and laminated them. You can find a link to download this here on my printables page.

Language
We read a couple of patriotic books - F is for Flag, and L is for Liberty. Both of these are really good, very factual, yet easy to read and for children to understand. James really enjoyed these books.

Another book we had on hand is America: A Patriotic Primer. I love this one - it's packed with details and fun facts and it lists the topics in alphabetical order, e.g. L is for Lincoln, E is for Equality, etc. Each page is full of detailed illustrations, which really captured James' attention.

I found this printable here. Inside the little box are flat sided marbles which James matched up with the circles on the flag. The control of error was that here were just enough blue marbles for the stars and red marbles for the stripes.

Memory matching US symbols
This activity was a great way to introduce some new topics and vocabulary words to James, such as Statue of Liberty and Liberty Bell. I think I printed these off from abcteach.com.

Math

Flag game I created this game for James and WOW did he get such a kick out of it! Inside the small tray are enough star-shaped beads for as many dots are on any given side of the dice. James rolls the dice and if, say, he rolls a five, he'd remove five beads from the tin and place them in the empty blue section of the flag. Like I said, James loved this and easily worked through each number. Since this wasn't as challenging for him as I thought it would be, I adapted it be a simple addition/subtraction game. For example, when James rolled five and added five beads to the flag, and then on the next turn he rolled a three, I taught him to remove two beads to get the three he needed. You can find a link to download this here on my printables page.

Star sticker numbers
I made these cards in Word, printed and laminated them. Each card has a number and James will stick the appropriate number of star stickers on each card. The fact that the cards are laminated means they're reusable - yay! You can find a link to download this here on my printables page.

Culture & Geography

Flag pushing Another great fine motor activity. I found these flag toothpicks at the dollar store and the Styrofoam block at the craft store. James was thrilled about this - I think I put about 50 flag picks in that bowl and he pushed each and every one into the foam block.

James' love for his USA puzzle has reached a new level - he plays with it all. the. time. He will work on it from start to finish and calls off the states he knows and asks for names of those he doesn't. The other day he had the puzzle nearly complete with the exception of one piece. He said to me, "Mama, I can't find Wisconsin! Minnesota will miss it - let's find it! Hurry!". :D

You can download my Fourth of July printables by clicking on these links:
Star Sequencing
Sticker Flags
Flag Game
Calendar Cards

As always, my printables are available for your personal use only - please do not sell or offer them in a giveaway. Thank you!

I'm linking this post up to Montessori Monday, The Preschool Corner and What My Child is Reading - check out these links for more activities!