Color Sight Word Photo Scavenger Hunt

I did this activity with my son when he was in preschool. I sent him on a color sight word photo scavenger hunt. Now, colors are great, scavenger hunts are a ton of fun, but what really makes this activity a blast is that they get to take photos.

So, find something you have that takes photos that you don't mind letting your child use and send them on a mission to find all ten colors. Perhaps you will have a camera they can use or your phone (or even an old phone with a camera on it that you don't have service on, it can still be used for the camera - plus did you know you can use it with apps over wifi - you can even put google hangouts on your phone to have a phone number and texting number) or maybe you have a tablet with a camera.

They will have so much fun with this activity.

More Kid Projects Compliments of Pinterest

I thought this idea for laminated play dough mats was genius! I got the idea from Planet of the Apels. I printed them all off and used clear contact paper to laminate them (I did go through most of a rolls to do this) but now we can use them over & over again and get them out to play with when friends come over. We can also use them as dry erase mats. This is great for doing preschool at home.

This project was my "birthday cake" compliments of my 7 year old daughter. Of course, I scoured pinterest first for a recipe that require NO BAKING (ok, I did bake a store bought whole wheat crust, but you can use a pre-made graham cracker crust for this.) But she did mix all of the other ingredients and pour them in to the cooled pie shell. The recipe comes from the Eagle Brand website. There is only 6 total ingredients and that includes the pre-made pie crust. So, if my 7 year old (now 9 years old) can make this, anyone can. No excuse that you can't make a pie.

My son and I made this zip line lego guy after reading about it on Little Bins for Little Hands.There are a lot of different ideas on here for creative lego creations. We will certainly be trying out more of them.

This is a Minecraft sword that my daughter made for her brother as his homemade Christmas present this past Christmas. This is a printable available from All For The Boys that you can glue on to foam board or cardboard.

Simple Science Experiment with Milk

 This is such a fun science project to do with kids. We have done this several times and they love it. They even ran to get a neighbor kid to come over and watch too. You can see the video of how it works below, but all you need is whole milk, dish soap (not a natural kind) and food coloring. As an adult who never did it before, I thought this was really cool.

There are a couple of things happening here, the first is differences in density of liquids. Food coloring is less dense than the whole milk, so it just sits on top. The second thing is surface tension which both water and milk have, but when you apply soap it reduces the surface tension and causes the liquid particles to move.

Our Top 12 .5 Accelerated Reader Books

.5
The Birthday Car by Margaret Hillert
Country Fair by Mercer Mayer
Daniel's Pet by Alma Ada
Down on the Farm by Rita Lascaro
Fish by Helen Frost
Hop, Skip, Run by Margaret Hillert
Hot Rod Harry by Catherine Petrie
It's Too Windy by Hans Wilhelm
Lucky Bear by Joan Phillips
My Best Friend by Kristen Hall
Scat, Cats! by Joan Holub
Splat! by Mary Perez-Mercado

Stegosaurus Paper Plate Craft

It's no secret that my son is a huge dinosaur fan, so we are constantly doing projects and reading books and doing activities that pertain to dinosaurs.

This one is really simple when you use a green paper plate, although you can just as easily paint a paper plate green. I cut out all the pieces for my son out of craft foam and let him glue them on, as well as the googly eye. He drew on the mouth of the stegosaurus too.

Our Favorite 12 Accelerated Books at .4 Level

.4
Animal Habitats by Peter Sloan
Bess and Tess by Susan Blackaby
Big Brown Bear by David McPhail
Big Egg by Molly Coxe
Bugs! by Patricia McKissack
Clifford Makes a Friend by Norman Bridwell
Gifts for Gus: Sounds of G by Peg Ballad
I am Lost! by Hans Wilhelm
My Camp-Out by Marcia Leonard
My Trip to the Zoo by Mercer Mayer
Rain! Rain! by Carol Greene
We Play on a Rainy Day by Angela Medearis

10 Accelerated Books Level .2-.3 We Have Read

.2
Hello, Doctor by David Marx

.3
Cats by Larry Brimner
Come Here, Tiger! by Alex Moran
Ice is...Whee! by Carol Green

In The Yard by Dana Rau
Kk by Kelly Doudna
Show and Tell by Mercer Mayer
Snow Joe by Carol Greene
Todd's Box by Paula Sullivan
Where is Max? by Mary Pearson

Wordless Wedneday: Egg & Vinegar Science Experiment

This would be totally fun to do for an April Fools' Prank. Tell your Kids that you are magic and you can remove the egg shell without cracking the egg. They won't believe you, but in 2 days you will show them just how magical you are.

Start with an egg straight from the refrigerator

The shell is calcium carbonate (base)

Get some vinegar (acid) too

Put egg in a glass of vinegar

Watch the reaction start

After 1 Day

The bubbles are carbon dioxide that is released as a result of the reaction

The broken down shells will be the white foam on the top

After 2 Days

The shell is completely gone and what is left is the thin membrane around the egg

Preschool Science Experiment with Frozen Dinosaurs

This was part of our "cold" day from school last month. It was as low as -35 below with windchill and so there was a 2-hour delay from school which means no morning preschool for my son. In that case, we needed to plan some learning activities at home. Given that he had just done some melting of ice in preschool with warm and cold water and salt water in preschool, it was fresh on his mind, but being the ever dinosaur fan that he is, he wanted to excavate some dinosaurs from the ice (because that quite possibly be how some of them died.)

Although we took it all a couple steps further than he did in preschool for some additional learning and more science fun. We knew about the 2 hour delay the night before, so we were able to get the dinosaurs in water in advance.

So, we gathered all of our science equipment (some day I should tell you all about what is in our science kit), a plastic bin, warm water, cold water, salt, baking soda, vinegar and boiling water.

Then let the fun begin! It's mostly trial and error to see what happens. We added the baking soda and vinegar so he could see if that chemical reaction would create heat and melt anymore than the same temperature water.

For more SCIENCE FUN, try these out:

• Below Zero Science Experiments (2 experiments!!)
• Solar Pizza Oven
• Sun Prints
• Fun Science Experiments for Preschool Kids (4 different experiments!!)
• Simple Science Fun with Kids (6 different experiments!!)
• Marker Tie-Dye
• Groovy Lab in a Box
• (Non-Paper-Mache) Volcano

For more DINOSAUR FUN, try these out:

• Ultimate Dino Dig Kit
• Preschool-at-Home Theme on Dinosaurs
• Triceratops Costume
• DIY Clay Dinosaur Bones and Dino Dig
• Birdhouse Gourd Dinosaur Cave
• D is for Dinosaur Art Project
• Dinosaur Feet from Shoe Boxes
• Fossil Cookies

Review: Animal Trackers Club

My son and I reviewed the Animal Trackers Subscription Box together and I am seriously thinking about purchasing an extended subscription because I think it is actually worth the money they are charging for it, fits his interests, provides fun learning opportunities in a variety of ways and helps aid in doing preschool-at-home,

To start out with they send you the following for your first month:

• Introduction to the Animal Trackers Club
• Animal Trackers Club Safari Lunchbox
• African Savanna Information Card
• Cover and Ring for the Safari Animal Photo Collection
• Savanna Art Project
• Savanna Animal Cards Activity

All of those items are pictured above, as well as what you get each month for a specific animal:

• Animal Information Card
• Animal Play Figure
• Animal Foam Mask
• Animal Magnet
• Safari Animal Photo Card
• Learning Activity
• Art Project

Our first animal was the zebra, so I don't know if that is the typical first animal or not, but all of the monthly items pertain to just this one animal to help you really learn about that animal and reinforce everything you are learning about it.

The lunchbox that comes with your first month is made of metal and so darn cute! You might just want to get it just so you can get this. There are 4 different plans that you can choose from and each one you also need to pay $3 a month for s/h. The monthly or 3-month plan both break down to $12 a month, the 6 month plan breaks down to $11.67 a month and the 12 month plan breaks down to $11.25 a month. So, as you can see this is a pretty affordable way to provide some activities to your preschooler's day, as this box is geared towards ages 3 and older.

The picture below is of my son trying out the zebra mask. I think my kids will have even more fun when we get more animals masks and they can each pretend to be different animals.

Product Description from Animal Trackers

Bode Bear takes your child to the African Savanna where he tracks a variety of amazing animals. Begin the adventure with your Animal Trackers Club Safari Lunchbox. This lunchbox becomes a play station for the monthly animal magnets as well as storage for the animal play figures, animal information card collection and the “Safari Animal Tracks” ringed set. Each monthly packet will include an Animal Trackers Club Information card with easy to follow and understand information about the animal being tracked that month. The packet will also include a play magnet to add to the lunchbox, a foam animal dress-up mask, and a realistic, hand-painted animal play figure. In addition, the packet will have a “Safari Animal Tracks” card for your ringed set, containing a real photo of the monthly animal as well as the track it leaves in the wild. Each monthly packet will also contain a learning activity and an art project created to develop the skills needed to become a proficient student and reader.

These are some of the projects and worksheets that were included and my son couldn't wait to jump in and start completing everything.

ORDER ANIMALS TRACKERS CLUB FROM THEIR WEBSITE

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Try It Tuesday: Preschool at Home Theme - Dinosaurs

It's back to school and for those of you doing preschool at home, I want to continue sharing so ideas of what we have done. Let's start out the year with my son's favorite - DINOSAURS!!!

We did a fun door hanger activity kit, played with dinosaurs, did some Dino Scratch Art, made dinosaur tracks in playdough, got out all our dinosaur books for storytime and did some worksheets from this FREE Dinosaur Printable Set.

Some other fun dinosaur activities we have done:

• Bird House Gourd Dinosaur Cave
• Ultimate Dino Dig
• Letter "D" Dinosaur Art Project
• Prehistoric Volcano
• Dinosaur Sun Print
• Dinosaur Feet Made from Shoe Boxes
• Egg Carton Dinosaur
• Fossil Cookies

Try It Tuesday: Dot Marker Popsicle Stick Math

This project was fun to do with my son. I took a bunch of large popsicle sticks and numbered them and let him make dots on them. You can fit up to 10 dots on one if you make the dots close together. This exercise was good practice with counting, but then we took it a step further and I made +, - and = signs on some more and we started to practice some math and then he had to look for the corresponding answer to the problem I set up for him. This was a lot of a fun and a different way to do preschool at home.

Be sure to also check out my post called Five Spring Dot Marker Art Projects to get some other ideas!

Try It Tuesday: Easy Dollar Store Crafts for Preschoolers

Transform some Easter foam figures, foam stickers, some googly eyes, pompoms and markers in to some fun personalized Easter crafts that preschoolers can do themselves. All of these items were bought at the Dollar Tree. No need to spend a lot of money on craft supplies when you don't need to.

Remember to keep craft projects do-able and simple for preschoolers. They will really enjoy being able to do as much of the project all by themselves. In this case, my son did these both by himself entirely and he was very happy about that.

Try It Tuesday: DIY Teaching Clock

This is definitely a Dollar Store craft. The foam stickers, the foam circles and the foam sheets all came from the dollar store. The brads came from an office supply store when I needed them for another project a couple years ago.

The foam circles are great for this project because the clock shape is ready made. I did cut out the clock hands and gave the kids a choice as to what color clock face and hands they wanted.

We took down a clock from the kitchen wall so the kids could see it and know exactly where they needed to put the numbers. Lots of good number practice for them. Luckily there was enough 1's in the pack for both kids to get all their numbers!

This was a project that I brought over to a playdate at a friend's house. We like to have a nice long playdate that includes lunch, a craft project for the kids and lot of playtime and talk time and maybe some loom knitting time while we talk.

My son is proud to show off his project. He has been very interested in the clock and can usually tell me the hour, he is a little young to really get minutes on an analog clock but time will pass quickly and before I know it be will be telling time.

GIVEAWAY and Review: Hot Dots Let's Master Reading and Math Sets

I had the pleasure of spending some time the last few weeks reviewing the Hot Dots Let's Master Reading and Math sets from Educational Insights with my son. We reviewed the Kindergarten sets, even though he is in preschool. (Braggy mom moment coming up!) Maybe my kids are just super bright (might be because I do these extra programs like the Hot Dots Let's Master programs with them), but I have always found that any workbook or game I get I need to go up a grade.

The Kindergarten programs in both reading and math are the perfect level for him to feel both successful and challenged. Each program has 2 workbooks with it with a combined total of 85 lessons in each with 15 advanced lessons for a total of 100 lessons in each program.

The sets work with "Ace" the talking dog that says a variety of phrases or sounds or a combination of phrases/sounds (you choose which kind as well as you can change the volume or to have no sound). There is also visual reinforcement because Ace's eyes with glow green if you are correct and red if you are incorrect. I think these options for sound reinforcement are great because some kids are bothered by sounds or loud sounds, but they can also receive the feedback on their answers visually. Each set comes with it's own Ace that needs 2 AAA batteries.

I found that in both programs my son could easily get through 1/4 of the reading program easily and now he will be learning new skills he was not familiar with. In the math program we got through almost the first book before he started to become challenged. Both sets are something we are going to keep using as part of our preschool-at-home curriculum.

He just loves using the dog to pick his answers. It makes it even more fun to learn by having this talking, flashing dog to work with. Also, he thinks it is great when he gets three in a row right and Ace starts vibrating to show he is proud of you. My son gets really excited because he knows he is doing really well when it starts vibrating.

Watch below as he demonstrates how to use the Hot Dots Let's Master Kindergarten Reading Program. This has really been a lot of fun to do these programs with him and I love how excited he is to "play" with them.



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I added several of the Hot Dots programs to my cart and they come up at $18.74 with the 25% off, regularly they are $24.99 each. You save $6.75 each!!!!

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ONE LUCKY READER WILL WIN THEIR CHOICE OF HOT DOTS LET'S MASTER PROGRAMS.

You can choose between a reading or math program in grade levels of PreK, K, 1st, 2nd or 3rd grade.

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I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Review: Piano Lessons from Hoffman Academy

Piano lessons have been on our list of things we wanted our daughter to participate in, but we were having a hard time fitting it in. When she was in kindergarten, I bought some teaching materials and asked my husband to teach her. Even though I can read music and played an instrument in my youth, I did not take piano and I did not keep up with playing an instrument after high school, whereas my husband did both and is an amazingly talented musician. The problem is that my husband did not have the time to sit down with my daughter or plan out lessons regularly. And so, her piano lessons were few and far between, even though she did learn to play a few songs and seems to have retained much of the information taught to her. We discussed again, as a family, about taking lessons with someone else but I really don't want to over schedule my child and want her to have some time to play with the neighborhood kids when she is not at swim team practice or gymnastics practice. I did not want to be running my children to more than one activity in an evening ans so we tabled paying for piano lessons for another year.

That was until I had the opportunity to review Hoffman Academy. Before I decided to review piano lessons from Hoffman Academy I checked out what they had to offer, how much it cost and what kind of time investment was required from a child and parent.

What Hoffman Academy offers is 60 FREE online video piano lessons! Yes, you did read that correctly! It is free. They also offer a FREE download of supplemental materials from Lesson 1 from Unit 1. Then if you like what you used for the lesson 1 supplemental materials you can purchase the complete materials for Unit 1, which is 20 lessons for only $19. This also includes mp3s of the songs they will be playing in both a practice CD and playing CD. It's not hard to do the math and realize you are paying LESS THAN $1 a lesson! When I looked in to lessons around us, the cost for lessons were an average of $15 for a half hour lesson plus the cost of workbooks/CDs/software.

But it's not just the fact that these lessons are completely affordable that I love, but that they can be done in the comfort of my home and I don't have to pack up the kids and drop my daughter off at a lesson for a half hour and try to figure out how to entertain my son during that short time. All the lessons are between 5-15 minutes and you can pause the video whenever you need to in order to practice a skill or rewind it to hear it over again. Lesson 1 is only 11 minutes and at the end they are playing Hot Cross Buns! My daughter was so proud that she couldn't wait to show her dad what she just learned. You can watch her play it below.





The supplemental materials help reinforce the information they learned from the video lesson and is presented in an easy to understand format that is interesting. Once your child has finished the 20 lessons in Unit 1, you can move on to Units 2 and 3, each which have 20 lessons in them and each unit has the supplemental materials and CDs available for $19.

I do recommend watching the video alongside your child to help them keep their focus and be assured that they are understanding the information being presented to them. But like I said, lessons are 5-15 minutes each. Whereas my husband isn't able to regularly sit down and give her a lesson he prepared, I (or he can) sit down with her while she take a video lesson. She still receives live verbal feedback and personal interaction, but more importantly it is a nice parent child togetherness opportunity. I think I will be learning piano myself.

My 4 year old son decided to join us for lesson #2 which was 10 minutes long and we learned the musical alphabet. He picked it up just fine and was very interested in it. I think I may add this program in to the preschool-at-home day I do with my son. He does have a high interest in music and if he wanted to try learning now, I am not going to deter that interest, but help foster it. Now, we're talking teaching 3 of us to play piano for $19 for 20 lessons.

We have been enjoying these lessons so far and I hope that enjoyment continues for all of us.

I encourage all my readers to check out the FREE online video piano lessons from

Hoffman Academy!

I love that they are making music lessons more accessible and affordable for all children!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Try It Tuesday: Preschool at Home Theme - Monsters

If you know me personally, you might be wondering why the preschool at home
still when my son is in preschool. Well, first of all he is only in it 2 mornings a week. 2nd of all, I am a SAHM so I feel it my responsibility to help him to continue learning through the day and on his days off from preschool. And thirdly, I just like to stay busy and creative. Ok, I do have a 4th reason too - I really feel we all need to take part in our children's learning even if they are in a school system. (soap box warning!) I see too often that parents except all the learning to happen within school doors and get upset with teachers or the school if they don't feel their child is learning enough or is struggling to learn something but are not trying to help their child at home or in the community. I think we should not be sitting idly by relying on others to teach our children. We are our children's first teacher and will continue to be life long teachers to them even then school staff is no longer present in their lives. Enjoy your kids and learn with them! (ok, getting off my soap box because if I don't get off now I could stay there for a while.)

So, with that said, I am sharing with you some of the ideas we did for our theme on Monsters (my son's pick):

Here is what we did:
* "M" Monster Tracing
* Packing Peanuts Monster
* Monster Playdough
* Dress up like a Monster with Monster Feet
* Play with Boogs the Boogie Wipes* Monster
* Halloween Counting Yarn Monsters
* Monster Painting
* Monsters Inc Pancakes
* Read Monster Books

You could also try:
* Monster Puzzle Magnets
* Monster Time App
* Make Monster Stuffies from Old Sweaters
* Counting Monster Puppet
* Repair a Monster Hole in a Pair of Jeans

I am a Saline Ambassador for Boogie Wipes, so I was given samples and this stuffed toy to help promote and demonstrate their products. I receive no monetary compensation for this program.

Thrifty Thursday: Mix Up Your Playdough

You don't need fancy gadgets, rollers, cutters and toys to play with your playdough. While all those things are fun, sometimes kids want to change it up and make something different and it doesn't have to cost you extra, look at what you have in your home. For our Preschool at Home Theme of Monsters we made monster playdough using googly eyes (you've hear me mention how much I love those!) and when he was done we took out the googly eyes and will use them on other projects.

For an upcoming preschool at home theme on dinosaurs we will be making dinosaurs tracks with his plastic dinosaurs in playdough.

Also - save yourself some money and make yourself a big batch of playdough. I have a ton of different recipes for playdough on my blog.

Try It Tuesday: Packing Peanuts Monster

The inspiration for this project was a collaborative effort between my son and myself. It is part of our Preschool At Home Theme of Monsters, which I will share all of my ideas for that later. Earlier in the day my son asked me if we could do some projects and I asked what theme he would like to do (sometimes it's easier on the fly if I go with what inspires them and then tailor things around that.) He told me monsters. Then a package (for a review was delivered) and inside with the product was a bunch of these styrofoam packing peanuts (I sure wish more companies would switch over to the biodegradable ones!) and then it hit me that these might a fun texture for a monster. They were the typical S shaped packing peanuts that you can see below.

So, we got to work. I asked my son to paint a monster body on a piece of paper and told him we would be gluing other stuff on after. All the other pieces he glued on were leftover or re-used art supplies. He also had some ideas of his own. I think it was calming to him to break apart the styrofoam pieces and he suggested that be break them apart and make little bumps all over the monster. It was different than what I was thinking, but this was his project and I wanted him to enjoy making it. I cautioned him that he would have to break up a bunch and glue them on all over to do his idea, but he was not deterred. He was very calm about breaking them apart and I think he would have liked to break apart more of them if I would have let him. Sounds like I need to come up with another idea to re-purpose packing peanuts. Or maybe I should just ask him. :)