At the Pond: Week 1

We recently started using the preschool curriculum again called Experience Early Learning. It was formerly Mother Goose Time. I wanted some quality time with my 3-year-old, Little Miss, while the older boys were at school. We were getting complacent and lazy and just needed something fun to fill our days. I used this curriculum with my older boys several years ago, but took a break since I was overwhelmed with having 3 kids. I knew that using this curriculum would be just right for us at this time. There have been so many great changes and additions to the Experience Curriculum since the last time I used it. I am excited to use and share all the great things we do and learn.

March's theme is At The Pond is about learning life in and around a pond area. 

Week 1 has been great; with topics including turtles, snakes, tadpoles, frogs and ducks.

This first game was a favorite. A mat with numbered turtles and small paper cups helped recognize numbers. Little Miss is still working on counting properly to 10, but she loved matching the "turtle shell" paper cup to the turtle on the mat. We also used the Duck Counters, which are included in the curriculum, to hide under the shells. We played "where are the ducks hiding." 

The Make&Play is a small craft that the child makes and then you are able to play with. Little Miss loved making a small turtle pull toy. We colored the bowls for shells and then glued everything together. She even colored her nose, for whatever reason.
I asked Little Miss a few questions while working... "Why do you think a turtle needs a shell?" Her response was, "To hide from the octopuses." I laughed and reinforced that she was on the right track and they do use shells to hide from bigger animals in the pond and protect themselves. I love the thinking of a child and to hear answers that are logical to them.

While learning about why snakes would be around a pond, we used the Loose Letter Cards as guides to fill them with yarn snakes. I've never really focused on the letters, so we just made the letter sounds as we filled it with small yarn snakes.

 The Inspiration to Create is a process-based art project that gives the child complete freedom. In the daily packet we were given pipe cleaners, straws and beads. Little Miss practiced cutting the straws and stringing the pieces with beads to make different kinds of snakes.

We learned about tadpoles and frogs for a few days. Little Miss used the Loose Letter Cards again to fill the letters with tadpoles made of play-doh.

Frog day included several fun games and activities too. We worked on recognizing numbers and counting using this lilypad number mat. We used plastic frogs to jump to the numbers in order.

Recognizing letters was fun with this Frog on a Log mat. After choosing a letter card, Little Miss used a pom-pom or felt frog to locate the letter log and jump to the letter.

She was rather excited when she could find the letter quickly. We went over letter sounds as the frogs jumped to different logs.

Patterns are still a bit tricky. Little Miss didn't quite understand how to put the cards in order to repeat the pattern shown. She just wanted to place them wherever she wanted. But, we kept repeating "Frog- tadpole- tadpole" and she eventually figured out to place the cards in the same order to make the pattern continue. She is being exposed to so many new concepts and it's so exciting to watch her enjoy them... or not.

Ducks! We started this day with The Five Little Ducks song and our felt puppets. Little Miss likes simple songs with felt characters. I'm a terrible singer, but she doesn't mind. Though, she did keep correcting my words because I was singing "...over the hill and far away..." and in the song on the EEL music cd, it says "...over the meadow..." I kept wondering why she kept insisting that I was wrong until we actually listened to the song on our music cd. She was right and I was surprised to find out that she knew the words and was paying attention.

An extra resource that is available to subscribers is coloring pages. We have been doing them every day while we have a small discussion about the topic of the day. Little Miss loved using the dot stampers to decorate her duck.

The math manipulatives have always been a favorite in our home. While discussing ducks we played a counting game with them. These oval ponds have different numbers of blue dots on them. We took turns rolling a die to see how many ducks to add to the dots on the pond. Little Miss practiced her counting and is getting better at remembering the number 4 since she normally skips it. She was excited when we filled all the ponds.

We played several times and also used the duck counters to practice color sorting.

What a fun week with Experience Early Learning.

I receive Experience Early Learning preschool curriculum for free, in return for our honest opinion and experiences with the lessons, games, crafts and activities.

Colorku: A different kind of Sudoku

If you are one that loves puzzles, Colorku is one to try. It's exactly like Sudoku, but uses colors instead of numbers. This particular version that we received from Timberdoodle is made of wood. It's large and sturdy. I love it.
Included in the box are cards ranging in difficulty to set-up your initial gameboard. So, you set up your board with the colored balls according to the card. Then, you play as normal; get one ball of each in every row, column and 9-square.

My 8-year-old loves this game. I love this game, probably more than him. Puzzles are such a great way to exercise your brain and my brain certainly needs help. Colorku was a bit of a challenge at first since I was used to playing with numbers like in Sudoku. My brain had trouble locating the colors in the columns and rows and I messed up quite a bit. (If you notice in the photo above, I have two light green balls in the same 9-square. I had to restart this board.) There is a sheet of answers for all of the puzzles to check your board too, just in case you need a little help. After a few puzzles, my brain did adjust and located the colors missing more quickly.
Sometimes my 8-year-old and I will play together to solve a puzzle, but its usually played individually when we need to take a break or need some quiet/ alone time. I'd love for this game to just hang out on the coffee table so that it gets more use, but with wooden balls about the size of a large marble, the game lives in the closet most of the time. But, seriously... this game is fun and I am glad that it lives with us now.

This Colorku game is included in the 2018 4th Grade Curriculum Kit Elite from Timberdoodle.
We do recommend it to anyone that enjoys logic games. It would make a great present too.

Dot-2-Dot Philadelphia review

Timberdoodle gave us the opportunity to review the Dot-to-Dot Philadelphia book. It is a book with extreme dot-to-dots with hundreds of dots to connect to form the picture. I figured that my almost 8 year old would like to have a go at it, but I found that I love them too.

I like that the numerical dots are separated in the picture and you have to search around to find the next number. Most of the pictures have instructions to connect the dots until you reach a star, then you find the next number and pick up where you left off. So, instead of drawing one continuous line you are doing sections at a time until you reach the last number. Trying to color it at the end is a bit confusing, to me at least. But, it was fun nonetheless.

In the back of the book is a page with small descriptions of the dot-to-dots that you can complete. This book is dedicated to Philadelphia and the Parkway Museums Districts.

Some of the pages are described to be completed like the picture below. I have had a great time doing these extreme dot-to-dots. They have been a good way for me to take a break when I get overwhelmed with stuff at home. What a great destresser this book has been. I've always liked those adult coloring books, but this worked my brain a little bit differently. I loved discovering what the picture was as I completed more numbers. It was satisfying to say, "Oh, that's a face and here's the hat."

I do think that this is a great addition to any curriculum, age appropriate, that is learning about The United States. It's a fun way to 'connect' with the theme and a different way to remember the academic aspect. This dot-to-dot is included in the 11th Grade Curriculum Kit from Timberdoodle.
Mr A, my almost 8 year old, worked on the first page which only has 156 dots. He did well, but was stumped sometimes when it took him a little while to find the next number.
Several of the pictures have over 1000 dots and one has over 1600.

Mr Z, the little brother, was interested in the book as well and liked to watch and tried to help a number from time to time.

After reading the description in the back of the book, we learned that his picture is the Love scultpure in the Love park in Philadelphia. Its a great fit for the location since Philadelphia means, brotherly love.

Mr A said he liked this dot-to-dot page. I could tell he was getting irritated when it took too long to find a number, but he wanted to finish. He did enjoy this but we'll have to see how a page with more dots works out. I know I like extreme dot-to-dots to use a destresser. We do recommend this book, Dot-to-Dot Philadelphia for anyone that wants to mentally check-out or is learning about the United States.
Thank you Timberdoodle for letting us discover this book.

UPDATE:
Since posting this review, Mr A has been asking to do more of these dot-2-dots. He has really started to like them and will sit in bed at night and work on them for quite awhile before he goes to sleep. Mr A has even asked for more of these types of books.