Bee-Themed Tot Trays

It’s been quite a while since I’ve set up Tot Trays at our house, but last week as I was planning out a bee unit study and thinking of activities for my Preschool and Kindergarten guys, trays seemed like the perfect set-up. And I have to say after having these out for a week, I’m remembering all the reasons I like them: fine-motor skills practice, open-ended exploration, creativity, logic, & a defined work-space. What’s not to love! (You can see more about Tot Trays over at 1+1+1=1.)

Here are the Bee-Themed trays that we had out this week:

Make a Beehive

I saw this clever idea for making a beehive out of toilet paper rolls over at Deceptively Educational. We followed her instructions for the most part, only instead of gluing it together we used this as a fine-motor paper-clipping activity. To better accomodate the paper clips, I did cut my hexagonal cells to be a little wider. I found 1 inch to be just right. All the boys really loved this activity and I ended up cutting up more cells for them.

Bee Fraction Puzzles

I made this hexagonal puzzle page to expose my boys to the idea of fractions. I don’t expect full comprehension at this age, just EXPOSURE. While they worked the puzzles we talked and I used keywords like “whole,” “part,” “half,’' “fraction,” etc. There’s a template on the second page of the download that I used to cut the puzzle pieces out of craft foam. You can download your own copy HERE.

Pollen Punch

For this tray I borrowed the flower from our Bee & Pollination Craft-tivity and paired it with a simple hole-punch and some yellow construction paper. The boys punched & punched & punched out “pollen” exercising those little hand muscles along the way.

Bee Life Cycle 3-Part Cards

These Bee Life Cycle 3-Part Cards from Trillium Montessori were a huge hit with Jet. He laid out the full cards and matched up the picture and word cards while we discussed the life cycle of the bee. Another day he put them in a circle to better illustrate the continuing cycle and matched the cards up again. You do have to take the extra step of subscribing to the Trillium Montessori blog to get the link and password for their free downloads page, but (check out those smiles) it was definitely worth it for me!

Nectar Transfer

The boys used a dropper “proboscis” to transfer colored water “nectar” to ice cube tray “cells.” All 3 of my older boys got in on playing with this tray together. This was especially nice because I could hear Dude appropriately using (and inadvertently exposing his brothers to) some newly acquired bee vocabulary as they played. Brother teaching brother! I first saw this idea on the For the Children Blog where they used a turkey baster. My boys would love that, but we didn’t have one so I went with the droppers instead.

Bee Playdough Mat

All of my boys like playdough, so I knew this creative tray would be a hit. It was used multiple times throughout the week. The printable is from This Reading Mama. I just gave them some art supplies that were close at hand and let their imaginations take over. Next time I think I’ll give them scissors too.

If you're looking for more Bee-themed fun check out our
Bee & Pollination Craft-tivity

In addition to the above activities the boys also got to drink juice through their proboscises (straws) and taste test some local wildflower and clover honeys.

Book Recommendations:

As usual books provided the real meat of our unit study.

Here were our favorites.

Literature

The Bee Tree
by Patricia Polacco
The Bee Tree tells the lively story of a little girl and her grandfather who go on a hunt for a Bee Tree. Friends join the pair as they scramble to follow bees back to their hive. There’s not much information on bees in this book, but it’s a lovely & fun story that really encourages literacy in its final pages. I think anyone who loves reading will really appreciate this book.

Bee & Me
by Elle McGuinness
This quick read combines factual information about bees with the sweet story of a bee who gets lost and finds himself stuck inside of a little boy’s room. The book encourages kids not to be afraid of bees, but to appreciate them for their contributions. It’s perfect for even the youngest readers.

Non-Fiction

Honey in a Hive (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)
by Anne Rockwell
 Honey in a Hive is a great non-fiction bee book for 3-8 year olds. It's 40 pages pack a good bit of knowledge into short descriptions and informative illustrations.

The Honey Makers
by Gail Gibbons
I love, love, love The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons. There's a wealth of information in this picture book covering everything from bee anatomy, the bee life cycle, a detailed description of the various duties of worker bees, and of course how honey is made. This book is pretty detailed and can be a bit wordy, so I'd recommend it for the 5+ age group. Even I leaned some things from it!

The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive

by Joanna Cole
Who can resist Ms. Frizzle? I know my boys can't! This book follows the adventures of an elementary school class and their ecentric teacher as their bus is magically transformed into a beehive (and the children into bees). Each page is practically overflowing with information as you can see labeled diagrams and notes the children take in their notebooks, as well as speech bubbles that often provide humor and give you insight into each characters personality. There's a lot here for everyone and I'd recommend this book for ages 4+. And if your voice is getting tired by this point there's also the The Magic School Bus TV Series. The Inside a Beehive episode is on disc 4, episode 6. It's very similar content to the book. (I opted to read the other books this week and let the boys watch this one on DVD.)

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Free Printable Math Activity: Feed the Penguin Boxes

I made these cute little Feed the Penguin boxes to use in math & counting games with my boys, and thought I’d share with you, my wonderful readers.

 

I was a bit indecisive so there’s both a free-standing option as well as a flatter variety that’s sized just right to fit over these Dixie 10oz Paper Bowls. You only need one sheet of paper (or cardstock), a few cuts, a little folding, and a bit of tape to make each box. My 3 year-old used his for counting, My 5 year-old addition, and my 7 year-old multiplication. We fed our penguins goldfish, of course!

 

I also laminated our flatter box so that I could use a dry erase marker to write on the penguin’s chest. Here my 3yo, Jet, is getting an early lesson on addition. I had him feed the penguin the two numbers from some simple addition problems, then raise the box to count (& eat!) the total. This boys LOVES his snacks, so this was a perfect activity for him.

Want to make your own Feed the Penguin Boxes?

Click on the links below to download your free printables:

Feed the Penguin “Bowl-Topper” Box Printable

Feed the Penguin "Free-Standing" Box Printable

Each file contains the instructions and printables necessary to make the boxes in either color or black & white. And because Valentine’s day is approaching, I also added a heart to the penguin’s chest, so you can choose to print with or without that.

Enjoy!

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Our New Morning Board

New Year = New Plan

I’m excited to be adding a new element to our home preschool this year, a morning board! Now that the older boys are 4 and 2.5 I’m doing more and more things with the 2 of them together and I wanted some way to start our school time off in an organized and hopefully *fingers crossed* calm manner. I think our morning board will be just the thing to accomplish that.

Here’s the layout I came up with:



I attached everything using double sided tape to a foam board I bought at Walmart.




Most of the printables are things I found online for free. Starting at the top left, I printed & laminated the calendar songs from the 1+1+1=1 website. I attached them to the board using 1" Binder Rings to make a sort of flip book. I went with the larger version for now because we’re not familiar with them, but there are also smaller versions available here.

Under that is our Make the Date box with velcro strips underneath to make the date using real coins. For now Dude will be doing this using only dimes and pennies. I just typed mine up but there are different version available to print here & here.

And below that are boxes for Spudder to velcro on a Color of the Day, Animal of the Day, Shape of the Day, & Letter of the Day. We’ll review these daily of course, but my plan is to use this section as inspiration for activities to keep Spudder occupied while I’m working with Dude. For example I might pull out playdough in the color of the day, or a letter of the week type activity for the appropriate letter, or have him make the shape with popsicle sticks, those sorts of things. This printable is also from 1+1+1=1.

Across the top of the board I have a section for making the date.

In the middle of the board (where you see the apple page) is actually where I attached a sheet protector. I plan to rotate out what’s in this space to keep it interesting. At the moment we have a logic problem from this book. I actually bought the digital copy during the Scholastic dollar days sale I posted about on facebook, but it doesn’t seem to be available from that website any longer.

Next we have this Days in School section where we’ll count up the days in school and do some place value review.




Botton center we have our What’s the Weather Like Today block.

And in the very right corner I attached a plastic pocket for slipping in these Godly Character Trait cards. I printed mine 4 to a page.




We’ve only been using our board for 2 days now. But so far we’re really liking it!

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Free Printable- Letter I CVC Words

Amidst a busy schedule, we're still plugging along with our Letter I studies, slowly but surely. Since this is the first vowel we've covered, I decided to try something new and introduce some simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words to Dude. I should probably point out that he's recently surprised me by spontaneously sounding out some simple words on his own. This is just my way of running with that interest!

For this week I made up a simple printable of CVC words that I wanted to share. They all use the letter I. There are a total of 8 words (pig, dig, lip, zip, sit, hit, rib, & bib) each illustrated with a picture and a blank for filling in the beginning sound. I choose 2 words from each of 4 words families so that we can also use these to talk about rhyming words. I've cut ours apart so that we can match them up.

You can Download the File Here.
If you'd like to share this resource please share a link to this page. Thanks!

Comments are always appreciated!

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File Folder Games

We were too busy last week to do our letter of the week activities, but I wanted to share something else I was able to mark off my to-do list. I've been on the hunt recently for some new file folder games to beef up our stash of resources. Dude gets bored easily, so I'm realizing that we need a wide variety of resources to keep him interested and learning. And this trying to pull everything together last minute is getting tough on me, so I'm hoping that having more things ready to go and at my finger tips will take some of the pressure off.

My goal was to find a good variety of things for Dude. My plan is to pull one of these out occasionally, on a tot tray or fit into a weekly theme as appropriate. I think I found some neat things so I thought I'd share the new games as well as some older ones we have in case anyone is on the search for new resources.

Paint Chip Color Sorting
  

This printable came from COAH. Depending on which paint chips you use, it can be used to teach how colors can be different shades. 

Leaf Shadow Match

   

This is from 2 Teaching Mommies.

   
    
Paintbrush Color Match

   

This is also from COAH. This definitely wasn't my favorite puzzle to make due to all the pieces, but Dude loves slipping the paintbrushes into the correct pockets.

Air, Sea, Road, Track Sorting

 

   

This is from Printable Share. I printed it all at 50% of normal size. (I ran each page through the printer twice.)

Shapes Pictures Match

   

 

This is from 1+1+1=1. The object is to match the shapes to the correct examples of everyday objects.

Animal Sorting (farm, ocean, zoo)

  

This is from Homeschool Creations. I think it was meant to be made with the categories velcroed on, but I just glued them down and added the extra blue sheet as pictured above. There are 9 animal pieces for each category, so I'll probably add velcro dots to those to make it somewhat self-correcting.  

Magnifying Glass Animal Match

   

This is from Bible Story Printables. For this one you use a magnifying glass to match up the small pictures on the playing pieces to the larger pictures on the board.

Shamrock Hearts Color Match

   

This one is from File Folder Fun, and it's a tough puzzle! You match up the shamrocks that are the same colors, but in opposite positions. I printed this in "quick print"(draft) mode which I DON'T recommend. Because of the way I printed it some of the shamrocks were just too close in color so I added patterns to a few to help Dude differentiate.

Hope you find this list helpful!

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Tree- Cut & Sequence Craft

D is 32 months.

We did this tree craft as a part of our letter T week, but I thought I'd put it in a seperate post to give me a little more room to explain this simple craft.

My main goal in putting this together was for my son to be able to practice and gain confidence in his cutting in a fun way.  You only need to be able to cut straight lines to do this and if you instruct your child to cut the lines in the proper order then there are no points where they have to stop. They just cut til they run out of paper.

To start you'll need to draw lines on a piece of construction paper as shown above. I started off by drawing the largest triangle and just letting the paper dictate the triangle sizes. This is really easy once you get started! If this still seems like too much I made up this free printable that you can use.

If your child can cut straight lines they may be able to complete the rest of this activity without help.

Instruct your child to cut along each line. It will be easiest for your child to start with the longest line and continue on with the next smallest line, etc. (basically starting at the upper right hand corner and going clockwise)

You should now have 5 different sizes of triangles. You can play with these by having your child put these in order from smallest to largest or largest to smallest.

When you're ready to move on, have your child glue down the triangles in order from largest to smallest with the largest on the bottom to form a tree.

Decorate as desired. This would probably make a cute Christmas craft,  but since we made ours in February, I just let my son decorate his tree with his normal art supplies. He choose to use his Do A Dot Paints .

Easy as that! And hopefully you've snuck some frustration-free cutting practice!

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