ivey league preschool: the I's have it!

This week has been brought to you by the letter I!  We actually did this letter a couple of weeks ago but I'm playing catch-up on the blog!

We started out by doing our playdoh mat, do-a-do worksheet, and pattern block sheet for the letter I:

We also did a few pages of an Incredibles preschool pack.  We circles letter I's, connected the dots, found "what's different," and traced shapes:

We did a magazine scavenger hunt and collage:

And we did a couple of simple science experiments that involved ice.  First we did the baking soda and vinegar reaction on top of ice to see what would happen.  Caleb liked seeing the ice slowly melt as everything fizzed all around it!

The other experiment involved picking up an ice cube using only a piece of string!  This one proved to be a bit more difficult to achieve, but it helped teach Caleb that sometimes you have to keep trying different things to get the result you want.  First, we tried laying a piece of thread over an ice cube in a glass of water, and then we put salt on top:

That didn't work, so we tried thicker string and used one of the ice cubes in Caleb's other experiment.

This also didn't work, but it did make the ice melt differently than the other ice in the pan once Caleb squirted some vinegar on it:

See how the salt made the ice look bumpy and crystal-like as it melted?  Pretty cool!  But we still weren't able to make the string get stuck to the ice cube.  So I thought I'd try sprinkling less salt on the ice cube, and it turned out that's what worked!

Yay!  So with the previous attempts, I was putting too much salt on the ice and string so that's why it didn't work.  Either way, we had fun trying different things to get the result we wanted.

This week we listened to Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" while we worked.

Our "I" books:
Incredible Ned by Bill Maynard
Manana, Iguana by Ann Whitford Paul

Links:
Do-A-Dot Alphabet Pages (Home School Creations)
Play-Doh Letter Mats (Home School Creations)
Pattern Block Printable Templates (Jessica's Corner of Cyberspace)
The Incredibles Printable Pack (123 Homeschool 4 Me)
Fizzy Ice Experiment (Toddler Approved)
Ice Cube and String Experiment (Mess For Less)

ivey league preschool: hooray for H!

We actually did our H week about three weeks ago, but I forgot to post anything about it until now.  Then we had family in town and after that it was a bit longer before we got back into the swing of things.

Our H week was further complicated by the fact that our printer was out of ink, so we decided to go more low-tech this time.

Of course, we did a magazine scavenger hunt and collage for the letter H:

Caleb also worked on tracing letters and numbers in some Winnie the Pooh pre-K workbooks I had found at Goodwill awhile back.

Next, we did some art projects based on a few "H books" we had found at the library.  First, we read a book called My Heart is Like a Zoo.  It's actually pretty cool; all the animals are illustrated using different sized hearts.  We decided to do a hippo made out hearts:

Or a hippo-like creature...kind of.  Oh well, we had fun doing it.

We also read The Happy Hedgehog Band and tried painting "quills" with a plastic fork!

Finally, we read A House for Hermit Crab.  Caleb liked seeing all the different sea creatures and plants that ended up on the hermit crab's shell.  I drew and cut out similar ones for Caleb to glue onto his own shell:

We also did a couple of "experiments" out of a water and bubbles science experiment workbook (another Goodwill score!  Our community has a lot of homeschoolers in it!).  The first two we did pretty much just dealt with the nature of water and the amount of water that's on the earth.  So for the first one, we constructed a water molecule using a plum, two blueberries, and a couple of toothpicks.

For the second one, we were supposed to fill up a clear container part of the way with sand, then pour water over it to illustrate that the earth is covered with more water than land.  The closest thing we had was potting soil, which turned out not to work so well.

Yuck.  I told Caleb the main thing to remember from this was that the Earth has more water on it than land, and he seemed to understand.  :o)

All in all it was a pretty good week.  It's nice to know I can still teach my child things even if I can't print things out!

Our H Books:
My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall
The Happy Hedgehog Band by Martin Waddell
A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle