Hibernation

The holidays were a busy time, as always, but we're back for the new year and excited to continue our themes! First up, to celebrate the winter, we learned about hibernation through a variety of fun activities!

Books

Many of the books about hibernation are pretty advanced for kids or sound like a textbook, but we did find a few fun stories that suited them. Over and Under the Snow was one of our favorites, as well as the adorable Time to Sleep, in which we cross the path of not only a bear, but a handful of other animals who sleep through some or most of the winter as well. Bear Snores On is from our own collection, and has been a favorite for many years.

Roll and Cover - Math Game

I created this roll and cover game in Photoshop Elements for the kids to practice their counting and number recognition. I had intended for the kids to use our snowflake confetti, but somehow it was put away with the Christmas decorations and I can't find it. Cotton-balls work nicely though!

And here's one for you:

Playdoh - Fine Motor and Pretend Play

We whipped up a new batch of homemade playdoh this week. We chose brown to use primarily for building caves and other dwellings, as well as making bear cutouts. I have no process pictures, but the kids enjoyed a good deal of imaginative play with their creations!

Line Tracing

I created this worksheet in Photoshop Elements as well, and slipped it into a plastic sheet so the kids could use dry erase markers to trace them. We talked about some of the different kinds of homes where animals sleep during the winter, as they lead each creature to it.

Want one of these too? Here it is with no lines, so you can customize it to your child's abilities:

Feed the Bear - Literacy Game

I found this fun idea from Mom Inspired Life. We adapted it to our hibernation theme by talking about how animals must eat a lot in preparation for the winter. For Honey Pot, I wrote the sight words she has learned so far in Kindergarten onto her fish.

And for Little M&M's fish, I wrote down the letters of the alphabet that he has learned so far in preschool. The idea was to search the "pond" of gems for fish to feed to the bear.

And the bear likes to know what he's eating, so they had to say which word or letter fish he was about to eat. They both really enjoyed this game, but were in agreement that my bear looked more like a rabbit. Lol. Ah well.

Little M&M returned to this activity a few times throughout the week. And for any letter that he had trouble recognizing, he'd use his alphabet puzzle and sing the alphabet to figure it out! Love his problem-solving skills!

Light Box - Tracing Activity

I wanted to include a light box activity this week, and decided to let the kids try their hands at tracing animal shapes. I created this collage of animals who hibernate using coloring pages from the Internet, and printed it onto vellum paper so that the light could shine through completely. Then I provided the kids with blank paper and assorted markers.

Here is Little M&M tracing a ladybug:

Honey Pot decided to trace the bat. Notice she created a winter scene with falling snow, and even a dying flower! I was really surprised at that detail!

Choose an Animal - Little M&M's Craft

This week I let each child choose which hibernating animal they wanted to do for a final craft or activity. Little M&M picked a brown bear, so I found this printable grizzly bear from Learn Create Love. I provided him with brown and white paint and two different kinds of brushes from which to choose.

And of course for his background paper he picked his favorite color, red. Super cute!

Choose an Animal - Honey Pot's Activity

Honey Pot picked a bat for her final activity. Recently I stumbled across the Art for Kids Hub, where there are several drawing tutorials and videos for kids. Honey Pot loves to draw, so I proposed the idea to her, and she loved it. We found two different versions of a bat on the website, sat side-by-side and followed the instructions together. They were so simple to follow, and we were able to pause if we needed more time. We enjoyed doing this and can't wait to try more. Honey Pot's are the two on the right. I think she did a fantastic job!

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Autumn Leaves + Quiet Bins

Books

We borrowed these books from the library this week. Why Do Leaves Change Color? was a little bit advanced for them, Little M&M in particular, but the others were adorable. We read them over and over this week. Highly, highly recommend.

Quiet Bins

Here is our leaf-themed bin for the week:

Inside it were the following activities:

- leaf coloring pages with markers

- a leaf q-tip painting template with giant pushpins (great fine motor practice) to be completed on a rug of course

- a leaf stamp and ink pad with paper

- our leaf felt board, scaled down to fit on a tray

- a fall tree dot marker page with fall colored dot markers

- a roll and cover game I created, with two dice and acrylic leaves

Here's one for you to grab:

And here is our non-themed bin for the week:

It contained:

- cutting practice worksheets and scissors

- our Tell Tale card game, with a template I made, for storytelling

- the geoboard

- a puzzle

- a Cars magnetic toy

Leaf Walk + Identifying Leaves

I printed a great leaf identification chart from iMom today. While Honey Pot was at school, Little M&M and I took advantage of an unseasonably warm morning and took a leaf walk. He carried a sand bucket and we tried to find as many different kinds of leaves as we could on our street.

When the wind blew we loved to stop and listen to the leaves falling, and watch them drift to the ground.

When we got back to our house, we pulled out the chart and tried to identify the types of leaves we found. While some of them were of similar shape, Little M&M was able to determine that they came from different trees, because of their textures.

It was super fun!

Later in the week, on a much cooler day, we went back out with Honey Pot to find a new batch of leaves to identify.

We had a lot of success, and the kids had fun trying to match them up to the chart.

Light Box

We put together our light box again this week. Remember the fun we had when we first made one for Little M&M's L is for Light theme? This time I set it up with our acrylic leaves, clear plastic cups and some small sticks that I had them gather during our leaf walk.

First Little M&M sorted the leaves by color:

then he started pouring them back and forth between all the cups:

and finally he set up some sticks to make trees:

Then Honey Pot started to play. She made a tree with lots of branches:

And a HUGE pile of leaves at the bottom, lol:

Then, without my prompting, she gathered them all up into plastic cups, and arranged them from emptiest to fullest:

Sweeping Skills

I scattered the leaves onto the floor, and offered for the kids to help sweep them up. They are great helpers, so they have a lot of experience doing this already. But they still jumped at the chance.

Decorating Leaf Cookies

We hosted a football party this week! It was an all day affair, and there were six kids present who don't watch football. So I decided to bake some cookies, using leaf cookie cutters, and have the kids decorate them as a way to break up their day of free play. I followed a recipe from Bake at 350 for brown sugar and spice cookies and they were SO delicious!! I set the table, using a vinyl tablecloth for easy cleanup. At each space I set out a plate, a plastic knife, homemade cookie icing, leaf sprinkles in a small dish and mini M&Ms in a small dish. Also on each half of the table were solid colored sprinkles, in fall colors, for the kids to share. The kids varied in age from 3-6 and they all did a super job!

Here are the finished cookies ready to eat! Mmm!

Leaf Pile Play

And of course, we had a giant pile of leaves to entertain the kiddos as well.

We love fall!

And please take a look at our previous autumn themes:

Autumn 2012

Autumn 2013

L is for Light!

Books

Here are our books for today's letter of the day. We really enjoyed I See Myself. It really put the concepts of reflection and light into terms young kids can understand.

Here's an example of one of the inside pages, which asks the reader to try to look in the mirror in a dark closet. Loved this book!

Letter Recognition

After reading our books, we completed one letter recognition activity. Placing gems on the letter L (this dot marker page comes from Shannon's Tot School). I printed the page onto vellum paper, and placed it on today's sensorial activity, our light box! It was just our usual sensory bin, with Christmas lights placed inside then plugged in, and a piece of parchment paper taped over the top. Worked out great, without being too fancy.

Light Box - Sensorial Activity

I had been wanting to do a light table for a long time, since seeing them on Pinterest. We did a simple version here today, while exploring light and color-mixing. We observed our water blocks over the light for quite a while.

Then we brought the gems back out, as well as a few small, clear cups.

Little M&M, in particular, enjoyed filling these cups and pouring the gems back and forth.

They also enjoyed scooping and sorting.

Then the kids brought the blocks back onto the light box to combine with the gems.

And Honey Pot, ever the fan of pretend play, brought a little giraffe over to eat some gems while she had her own dinner.

A successful theme!