Kitchen Geography: Teaching landforms the fun way!

We are sharing a fun way we used to review all the different types of Landforms Miss K is learning about in Geography and Science this year. This project is a twist on the typical clay model. We made a Landform cake!

The base is a sweet Scone Dough. The kids used it like play dough. Following a picture from a favorite Science book, Miss K shaped an island complete with a peninsula, coastlines, bay, and a gulf.  Using the last of the dough they made hills, rivers, canyon, plateaus and a mountain.

After baking and cooling our island was ready to decorate. The 'paint' was powedered sugar and water and food coloring. Mixing up the correct colors were trial and error but it was a good art lesson in itself!

This is the finished product. At this point the  kids were begging to eat it. However I was a mean mama and asked them to label it first.

If you want a tasty way for your kids to learn Geography (and a sweet treat to go with your coffee) give this project a try too!

Preschool Butterfly Science Unit

The Piwi''s just can't seem to get enough Butterflies and Insects. It seems our Save the Monarch project has ignited a shared love of (most) things creepy and crawly - Hairy spiders, Scorpions, Worms and Fire ants aren't so popular...

Everyday for nearly two weeks we have been moving our Milkweed seedlings into the sun in the morning and putting them undercover at night. While we are outside the kids have taken to observing the Roly poly bugs and Lizards that are out basking in the spring warmth. Some days they collect some beetles to watch for an hour inside other days they just like to watch them go about there work in the bark chips.

 After reading Eric Carle's Hungry little Caterpillar we used the cutting practice printable to make a poster of the caterpillar/butterfly life cycle (she also added some extras because 'they are 'friends'). We loved this Bug tot pack from 3 Dinosaurs.

The Dollar store had these cute Spring Sun catchers. There are so many great things there at the moment, little gardening aprons, bug study kits, kids garden tools, seeds.....we had to get out of there fast before I had the urge to fill up my basket. I only went in to get art supplies for a parcel we were sending overseas...

 I hadn't been printing out too many worksheets lately because Mini Piwi wasn't enjoying them. I added a couple this week to my folder of 'stuff' and she spotted the cute pictures and asked to do them. I was amazed how much more control she now has over the pen she insisted on using! These sheets are from 3 Dinosaurs and Two Teaching Mommies.

While tidying up the bookshelves the Piwis found books they hadn't read for awhile. Mini Piwi was fascinated by a kids cook book. She actually slept next to it for a few nights and would wake up asking to make something out of it. Her favorite creation was a Yogurt & Berry 'Butterfly' 

My other Dollar store find was a little bug observation set.  Mini Piwi loved finding this in her tray. It included a 'bug catcher', plastic magnifying glass and magnified bug holder. She just used the catcher on the pretend bugs because I was worried she might squash live one with it.

'Plastic Bug catching'

 By the end of the week our 'Sharing board' was full of color!

I captured my favorite moment: Here are two friends sitting by the window..Perry is pretending to be part of a Montessori activity while Mini Piwi is playing the Hungry Little Caterpillar app.

What is the warmer weather inspiring you to do?

Happy Earth Day: Planting our Milkweed seeds

For Earth day we are sharing our progress in our 'Save the Monarch' Project. For the original post about our plans click on here or on the picture.

This past weekend we planted all our Tropical Milkweed seeds. Thank to the inspiration from Organic Aspirations we planted them all in mini 'greenhouses' made from plastic berry containers. The kids had a fun evening scooping and raking dirt.

Here is our little nursery of 100 Pink Tropical Milkweed seedlings.

We already fully grown plants waiting for the Monarchs because these seeds won't be ready for hungry caterpillars for at least 45 days. We ordered the plants from Educational Science. They arrived very quickly and were nice and strong.

  Even Perry was satisfied with the packaging....

They have a nice sunny spot and are just beginning to flower.

So long as the sunny spring days continue, we should have lots of strong seedlings to feed the caterpillars. There should also be plenty left over to re-pot and give to our neighbors. As Miss K pointed out, by doing this, even if we move before next spring the Monarchs will still be able to visit our neighbors' plants.

We have been reading a lot since we started this project and as we were about to plant the seeds we read something that made us have second thoughts...

In March Texas Butterfly Ranch posted about the efforts of the Native American Seed Company to restore Native milkweed.

'Gardeners and butterfly fans committed in theory to propagating and planting native milkweeds (and I consider myself among them) have been vexed in practice by their persnickety ways.   That’s what often drives us to plant Tropical Milkweed, the nonnative Asclepias curassavica that is easy-to-grow, widely available and the favorite of Monarch butterflies for hosting and other butterflies for nectar. While the practice bothers some scientists and native plant purists, our rationale is that Monarch caterpillars need to eat.   In short, it’s better to provide SOME host plant for migrating Monarchs than NONE as they pass through Texas.' Source

 We decided to check the nearby parks and green belts for Native Milkweed. We have yet to find any. Talking with the locals it seems that a lot of the area has been cleared for new Houses, Apartments and Retail expansion. We felt, like Texas Butterfly ranch, that the Monarchs will need something in in our part of Texas even if (for the present) all we have to offer is the tropical variety.

Source

We are going to spend some weekends a bit further from home looking for Native milkweed to collect seeds from. However it looks like this could be easier said than done....
Persnickety Texas Milkweeds may not lend themselves to Mass Seed Production

We also intend to contact our local council about the issue of Milkweed depletion.

How is the Native Milkweed doing in your area? If you need some help, to identify the native milkweed in your State, the University of Minnesota has some good resources here.

Preschool Puddles:Easy to make Water cycle model

Mini Piwi had fun learning about the water cycle in a fun and colorful way. A Toddler or Preschooler may not know about Precipitation and Evaporation just yet but, they do know all about puddles!

This week we got some rain and lots of big puddles to splash in. Mini Piwi was disappointed that the puddles weren't there by the next morning. I used this game/activity to explain where the puddles had gone.

1. I explained that we were pretending that the pile of colored mini pompoms represent a puddle on the ground. The cotton balls are a cloud in the sky.

2. The sun shines on the puddle. We used Mini Piwi's sun puppet, but we could have used a ball or balloon.

3. The heat of the sun 'picks up' the drops of water in the Puddle and it is 'added' to the cloud.

4. Mini Piwi added all the pompoms to the cloud until it was big and puffy.

5. When the cloud got full it rained and all the raindrops fall to the ground again. The pompoms fall off the cotton balls when you roughly shake the whole thing.

Mini Piwi did this over and over and thought it was hilarious when it 'rained'.  All the giggling bought Big sis over to the table and she got 'rained on' too.

We’re joining in with these bloggers from the Kid Blogger Network to bring you ideas for Spring and Easter – pop along and see what fun activities they are sharing with you today. We also invite you to come and share your own ideas if you are blogger please link up your Spring and Easter posts below and join us celebrating Spring and Easter.

The Magic of Play, Rainy Day Mum, hands on : as we grow, Putti's World, Blog Me Mom, Scribble Doodle and Draw, 3 Dinosaurs, Buggy and Buddy, Royal Baloo, Kitchen Counter Chronicle, Nurture Store, The Usual Mayhem, Making Boys Men, Two Daloo, Reading Confetti, Creative Play House, Fantastic Fun and Learning, Here Come the Girls, Blue Bear Wood, Zing Zing Tree, Mummy Mummy Mum, Red Ted Art, Life at the Zoo, My Little 3 and Me, Imprints from Tricia, Smiling Like Sunshine, Frogs & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails, Creative Connection for Kids, 52 Brand New, Inspiration Laboratories, Kid World Citizen, JDaniel 4s Mom, Inspired by Familia, Kids Creative Chaos, All Done Monkey, ArtChoo, Something 2 Offer, Child Central Station, KC Edventures, Momma's Fun World, Sun Hats and Wellie Boots, Discovering the world through my son's eyes, Little Artists

 

Our Fun W is for Weather Unit study

Mini Piwi had a lot of fun with the letter W!
Thanks to all the inspiration I get from livingmontessorinow.com I decided to try out some trays with Mini Piwi. Here is what we did this week:

The first Snow tray was a size sequencing craft. The snowman is made from felt circles. Initially I only added the felt pieces to the tray. After she had completed the size sequencing and glued it onto the page I broke out the glitter dots and other decorations.

The second Snow tray uses the Snowman number match up cards from Little piles everywhere. For this activity we left the cards in one piece (later on the week they were cut up for a matching game). Using the toaster tongs Mini Piwi counted out the snowballs for the number on the card.

Sunny tray number one was a sun printed on a sheet of paper and folded into quarters. Mini Piwi cut the curve outline and then opened up the paper to find that she had made a circle!

Sunny tray two followed on from the first tray. We used the same procedure to cut two circles from fabric. Together we stitched the fabric together to create what Mini Piwi called her 'sun puppet'. This Sun was used later on the week for our Water cycle activity. See how we played with 'rain' and stayed dry here.

Mini Piwi and Big sis had lots of fun playing with Science in the bath. We created Chilly cloud soap, Stormy paint, Hail storm wash and a Sunny days bath. The directions and what they look like are all here.

 

To keep Mini Piwi busy while I was teaching Big sis Mini Piwi also:

• Colored  'W' papers

• Followed the Spring path

• matched up weather pictures

• used a match the clothes to the weather page to make a collage

Weather themed Baths: 3 recipes for Fun.

These bath activities were an extension of Mini Piwi's W is for Weather week. We had a mini science lesson talking about what the bath activity was for (eg. snow, clouds etc). At least one bedtime book was chosen to tie into the theme.

We needed some snow for weather week so I froze a little blob of shaving foam to see what would happen. The results was a marshmallow like texture that didn't disintegrate like room temperature shaving foam.

Making Chilly Snowman Soap:

 Freeze tennis ball sized blobs for 5 hours. While the kids has fun melting them in the bath we talked about how snow is different from rain.

A Sunny days bath

This was Miss K's idea. We colored the water with blue food coloring and made Shaving foam clouds on the surface of the water. When we gently swirled the water the 'clouds' moved and started to make shapes. The kids had fun trying to point out what each one looked like.

Stormy Bath paint

To color the shaving foam I used the same technique In lieu of preschool shared for 'Lava Paint'. The yellow was nice and bright for painting lightening and for the cloud I used blue and red by not thoroughly mixing we ended up with a great multicolored effect for the clouds.

The Hail wash (declared to be the most fun) 

All you need is a $1 silicone ice cube tray, shower gel and food coloring. Fill up each 'cube' space with the gel and drip a tiny drop of food coloring on the surface. Use a Q tip or old chopstick (I use the same one to mix up all our shaving foam paints) to distribute the coloring. It took 24 hours for them to freeze solid.

Next week we move onto a another letter and I am wracking my brain for some more inspiration...I have a few ideas, lets see how they all work out...

 

This post was linked up on:
  Hosted by Multiples-Mom, Multi-Testing Mommy, Shannon’s View From Here, Baby Giveaways Galore =============================================================== Check out our Pinterest Board where we will be listing all of your amazing ideas.

Turn your Preschooler into a Scientist for the day -for Volcano week

We had a whole week of Volcanoes but Friday we went all out so Mini Piwi could be a scientist for a day.

A Scientist needs a uniform so Mini Piwi made her own vest from a paper bag I had cut up for her.

Decorating her vest with a Shape Volcano

For her first 'job' She and Big Sis erupted the Volcano she had made earlier on the week...

we started just with a few drops of colored vinegar on the Baking soda to show represent how the pressure on the magma builds and builds until...

the Magma spills over into the outside of the Mountain and becomes a Lava flow (when we added lots of Vinegar).

For Lunch we made what we called Volcano Buns. It was really a traditional Filipino Snack called Puto which we also added a savory filling to so it would 'erupt' as it steamed.

And how does a Pre-K Volcanologist wash off all that mud and dust? With Lava Paint! Thanks to In Leiu of Preschool for this inspiration!

To see what Big Sis did for Volcano week click here

This post was linked up on:
Hosted by Multiples-Mom, Multi-Testing Mommy, Shannon’s View From Here, Baby Giveaways Galore =============================================================== Check out our Pinterest Board where we will be listing all of your amazing ideas.

Preschool V is for Volcano Unit

This week was V is for Volcano week for Mini Piwi. She is crazy about a song called "Hot Lava' from Jake and the Never Land pirates and the Dinosaur train episode 'under the Volcano'.

PBS kids has a lesson plan around this episode and it was a great start to a week of fun. We displayed the Simple Eruption diagram printable from PBS kids.

The tricky part was finding books we could read that weren't too graphic for Mini Piwi. For now Mini Piwi is more focused on the Volcano as a land form rather than for it's dangers.  The Fiery pictures in Big sis's encyclopedia worried her a bit.

Here's what we found:

Land (by Donna Herwick Rice) is an Time early reader full of beautiful photographs of the different Biomes on Earth. It was a perfect for a Pre K introduction to land forms.

Volcanic Valley ( by Loli C Froeb)  is a cute lift the flap Dinosaur train tie in about Pteranodon familys' trip to visit a Volcano and all the stops along the way. Dinosaurs, Lift the flap and volcanoes -it has it all as far as Mini Piwi is concerned

A day on the mountain (by Kevin Kurtz) was too amazing to leave in the library this week. It takes you on a journey up the side of a  mountain where you met the animals and plant there along the way. The realistic illustrations appeal to all ages but the text will hold the attention of older elementary kids. Even though it is not about a Volcano it did give rise to a discussion about whether all Mountains were volcanoes.

Giant Octopus to the Rescue (adapted by Allison Inches)  is based on a Go Diego Go episode where the team has to rescue animals from an erupting underwater volcano. I used it when we were talking about Volcanoes that we can't see under lakes and at the bottom of the Ocean.

Eruption: Story of Volcanoes (by Anita Ganes) was our one 'fiery' volcano book. It has some impressive and colorful eruption photos but nothing too scary. We used this when we were talking about Volcanologist and what they do.

An Island Grows (by Lola M Schaefer) is written in short rhyming couplets and was a simple lesson in how Magma becomes lava and ultimately gives rise to an island. Big Sis appreciated the 'lesson' more than Mini Piwi who liked the cute illustrations.

Using the PBS Kids lesson plan Mini Piwi made a Volcano and Dino land from Playdoh. We didn't 'erupt' it until later on the week when she played 'Volcano Dr'.

 To practice the letter V this week Mini Piwi

 Traced with Glitter glue

Made play doh Vs by folding the 'sausage shapes' we had made

We used some awesome apps to search for Volcanic and Earthquake activity and take a tour of Volcanoes.

Discovery Channel's Extreme World -Ultimate Volcano was one of the eight interactive subjects

Volcano Tour took us on a Virtual tour of 80+ volcanoes

We finished up the week with Mini Piwi playing  'Volcanologist for a day' or Volcano Dr as she called it...check out the post here

 To see what Big Sis did for Volcano week click here