Preschool: non-themed activities!

 During the last two weeks, the big kids had a three and four day weekend, so I decided to make Sweet E's homeschool plans very casual to accommodate their schedules. We didn't have a theme, but we did several fun activities! Take a look!

Forming Letters

Building letters with playdoh. Free printable comes from Fun Learning for Kids.

Making Patterns with Links

I quickly drew some templates for Sweet E to follow. She loves using these links to make chains!

Sorting Coins

Free printable from Fantastic Fun and Learning. Sorting is such an important skill for preschoolers. We didn't go into values of these coins. For now, we're just learning to distinguish them!

Once they were sorted I asked her comparison questions. Which has the most? Least? Which two have the same amount? 

Counting and Number Recognition

This idea comes from Happy Tot Shelf on Instagram. I made the flower on Sweet E's dry erase easel. She picked up a sticky note, counted the dots, and placed it next to it's matching numeral like a flower petal.

So cute!

And since the layout of our flower so closely resembles a clock, I drew some hands in there to introduce her to the concept. Then I'd ask, "Which number is the little hand pointing to?" I erased it and drew it in a few times.

Scissor Practice

Just using up some scrap paper to work on scissor skills!

When she finished those four, she asked for another. So I drew her a couple more. She loves cutting with scissors! 

Color Hunt

Sweet E received a small camera for Christmas, since she's always asking to take pictures with our phones. I decided to incorporate it into today's color hunt activity! Free printable comes from The Fun Size Aussie.

Sweet E walked around the house with her camera, taking pictures of one thing of each color. Here she found something green on the mantel. 

So happy!

Fine Motor + Color Sorting

This idea comes from mutlucocukoyunlari on Instagram. I placed a paper with pictures of four empty cups into a laminating pocket, and used a pipette to place some colored water droplets onto it. Sweet E used the toothpick to drag the drops into the cup with the matching color.

This was such a fun activity!

When she was all done, she took the liberty of telling me what each color was called.

Then I placed more droplets on the paper, and let her use the pipette this time. This was easier!

When Sweet E was done she started mixing the colors. I was reminded of a fun activity I did with her big brother and sister several years ago, so I went upstairs and got the color wheel out for her!

 

She loved it!

Finally, before we cleaned up this successful activity, she played with our extra colored water. She mixed it up a bunch of ways, and at one point wound up with a nice orange and teal!

Process Art - Car Painting

I've been trying to find more time to include process art into our days. Just a 3-year-old, playing with paint with no particular outcome or end result in mind. For today's invitation, I asked her to choose two cars, and I gave her matching paint for each.

She drove them around the paper making fun tracks!

And since she chose two primary colors, she did a bit of color mixing in her painting!

To clean off the cars, I brought out her toy sink (we LOVE this toy). She gave them a good scrub!

Then she continued to play with this for a while, washing her hands and cleaning some toy dishes.

Fidget Spinner Alphabet

I saw this at Teach Me Mommy and thought it was a super fun idea! I wrote uppercase letters around the edges of a plate, and used some sticky tac to hold a fidget spinner down in the middle of it.

The lowercase letters were scattered on the dry erase easel.

Sweet E needed to spin the fidget spinner (which I had taped an arrow onto), and identify the uppercase letter. Then she would find the lowercase letter that matched, and place it into our empty wipes container (which I had lazily turned into a monster by placing two eye stickers inside the lid lol).

This made it extra fun for her! As soon as she saw the little face she got so excited, because that meant we'd be doing some pretend play. I spoke for the hungry monster and she fed him.

Rainbow Craft

As I was searching for scissor practice ideas I was inspired by this fun craft at Housing a Forest. I drew half circles in degrading sizes onto papers of each color of the rainbow. Then Sweet E cut them out, and glued them in order to form a rainbow!

So cute!!

Beginning Sounds + Rice

We love our rice bin! I printed out a beginning sounds page from Childhood 101, and hid magnetic lowercase letters in the rice. Then Sweet E took her magnetic wand and searched for the letters. Once she identified each, she searched for the picture that started with that letter.

I was so impressed with how well she did with this!

While searching for those final few letters, she really dug her hands in there to look for them! Great sensory fun.

So proud of her work!

Miscellaneous

It has become our new after-lunch routine to do a nice quiet time activity until we pick up the big kids from school. Some of our favorites are reading books together, playing with kinetic sand, doing puzzles, and playing lots and lots of board games!!

It's so great to do a week or two without a theme; we really did some interesting things! Coming up next, two sweet weeks of Valentine's Day activities!

Mini Preschool Unit - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

 Since we've now finished our upper and lowercase alphabet, I decided to do a small "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" theme. It also happens to be one of Sweet E's favorite books right now!

Learning Notebook

We created a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree with the letters of her name.

 First I drew some rough lines onto brown and green paper, and Sweet E cut them out.

Then she glued them into her notebook.

I think the tree came out great! Then she used a circle punch to make a few brown coconuts. She loved this new tool!

Before stamping her name, she first wanted to arrange the letters in the right order.

Then she stamped her name up the coconut tree!

So cute!

Counting Coconuts

This free printable tree comes from The Cozy Red Cottage.

I wrote a number in the box, and Sweet E transferred that many brown pom pom "coconuts" into the tree using her tongs.

We worked on some big numbers!

Matching Upper and Lowercase Letters

Free printable from Making Learning Fun. First she helped me color in the tree.

Then she matched all the uppercase letter stickers to the lowercase letters on the tree.

Reenacting the Book

Little M&M just so happened to make a coconut tree for his room, for his koala stuffed animals. So I asked if we could borrow it for our last activity!

First I had Sweet E fill in the blanks in alphabetical order.

Then we used the letters to reenact the story. Our front door is magnetic, so she was able to have them climb right up. It begins "A told B, and B told C, I'll meet you at the top of the coconut tree." So she took those letters and had them climb up. She loooved this.

And of course she made all the letters talk to one another and dance around on their way up.

Then when the coconut tree bends over and all the letters fell down, we pushed them all down onto the tray. The story continues with each letter getting up in order. So she again followed the story, one letter at a time.

She had so much fun with this!