How old are the kids you are working with? I have an almost pre-schooler and used to teach pre-schoolers but I've also done unit/topic based afterschool programming with middle schoolers. I love to brainstorm activity ideas. Right now my son and I are doing a letter a week. This week is B so we played with bubbles in the bathtub, baked Bear Bread, played balloon baseball, talked about the colors brown and blue, did b flashcards, bean counting, block building, after his nap we are going to make a bank to keep his "allowance" (pennies for chores) in, Last week we studied A so we made an ant farm, ate A foods, made apple crisp, did Potato prints with an A potato stamp, listened to music from Africa, looked at pictures of alligators online, and made an alligator puppet. I would like to add in more character building stuff somehow but its going to be hard thinking up a quality for every letter. Had
Right now I am using the Prairie Primer with my 9 year old daughter. It's a unit study using the Little House books. We're just getting started, but it looks like alot of fun! We are also studying wolves ( read Never Cry Wolf, watched a video, went to the wildlife park and saw the wolf display, now she is writing a story about wolves) and Spain (lots of reading so far, a video is on hold for us at the library, getting some Spanish music to listen to, and we are planning a Spanish feast for the end of the unit) Now that it is warm out, we will be going on more hikes to learn about local flora and fauna, birds and other animals, as well as Native medicines, food, and crafts.
I have a six year old. I think we will be starting out with insects or animal themes. She is really interested in those now. Really fascinated with lightning bugs, so maybe we'll start there. I like the letter of the week idea. As for thinking up a quality for every letter.....I bet we could brainstorm something for each one! What letter are you on this week?
We're on letter c this week again I was pretty busy last week and he didn't seem to absorb what we were doing. I got courdoroy out of the library- figured caring and courage. Had
Sorry, getting lax here, moving and trying to jumpstart a freelance writing career so that we don't starve. What are people doing for units? Robert hated the letter c- just wouldn't do it. I will probably work on the letter R this week, for his name. R for responsibility, respect, H
We haven't technically started "school" yet because of so much going on (new baby, new house....). Plus, dd is in Florida with her dad right now. My goal is to have the first unit prepared by the time she gets back.....ha! She wants to start with dinosaurs, her favorite. I've been thinking of ideas, just need to gather materials. I plan on breaking units down into: Reading~read books about dinosaurs Spelling~spell words related to dinosaurs Math~measuring out sizes of dinos to see how big or small they really were Art~haven't decided on a project yet, but it should be easy because art is dd's "thing" History~timeline Science~maybe looking at the different body parts and how they differ from animals today We will also discuss how dinos are discovered, etc I would also like to incorporate foreign language into her units. Possibly Spanish or ASL.....or both. In that case we could learn dino words in those languages. I don't know that may be too much..... Anybody have any other ideas?
Dinosaur Diorama More KinderCrafts [size=+2]Create your own prehistoric dinosaur scene in a box. Just print out the dinosaurs, paste, color, cut, arrange them in the box, and - welcome to the Mesozoic Era, the "Age of Dinosaurs." Supplies needed: [size=+1] paper and a printer (stiff paper works best - colored paper is great for this project) a shoe box or slightly larger box crayons and/or markers paste (a glue stick works well) scissors tape, thread, pipe cleaners optional: glitter (for great lava!), cotton puffs (for clouds), thin cardboard to glue to the back of the animals if your paper is very flimsy (old cereal boxes work well) [/size] [/size]
