Unit study for preschooler/kindergartener

I love unit studies when I'm teaching my kids and a great place to get ideas is Home School Share .

I love looking at this site to find books to read and then ways to use them to teach :)

I recently got the opportunity to try out a new study that isn't on the site yet and we had a great time (oh ya, and they're free, it doesn't get any better than that!)

Here is the birthday girl with the books we picked up from the library. Our study was about reptiles, and we were given a list of books to read (although you could get books on the subject yourself) but most of the books on the list I was able to find :)

There are pages to print that go along with the study, these are for preschool/ kindergarten age. I laminated this one and Ava used the Crayola whiteboard crayons to write on it and then erase. I love those crayons!



finding the first letter of the reptile

patterns

big sister reading a story

how many spots

These 2 books are from Costco and I love them! Each one had a section about reptiles that really added even more to our study.

if you are interested in this kind of thing, check out the Home School Share site, I think these new studies will be there some time in August :)

Pippi Longstocking

We are just finishing a unit study on the story

Pippi Longstocking.

Just for my own benefit, so I can remember it, I wanted to do a post on some of the things that we did.

Last summer we found this version of Pippi and I read it to the kids, they loved it! Ryan laughed so much and we love the illustrator.

So, when I saw in the newspaper that Pippi was coming to Mcintyre Hall this fall, I bought the book and we started reading it again. We went to see the play last Saturday and it was really well done, quite a bit like the book, again , Ryan laughed a lot.

We got a great book about the author, Astrid Lindgren,

Women Of Our Time Astrid Lindgren Storyteller To The World.

The book was a biography but was interesting enough that I read the whole thing to the kids, lots of info in it besides just about the author.

Since the author was from Sweden, I thought that we could learn some Geography as well. I got some books from the library on Sweden, and I printed some worksheets from enchanted learning . The kids colored a map and filled in relevant info, we drew and colored the flag of Sweden, colored and cut out a Viking paper doll, and Sydney drew a picture of the author's house from a description in the book.

We did a little math using dates and put together a world floor puzzle and found Sweden on it.

Probably the last thing we will do is watch the Pippi Longstocking movie that I remember watching when I was young. I'm pretty sure that the voices don't match up with their mouths and that the movie is probably pretty dumb (don't tell my kids I said that!) but it will be a good end to our study.

Since I don't have a picture for this post, here are the kids last Christmas.

Cute books

We love books at our house!

We really love finding books with great illustrations.
There are some Pigeon books by Mo Willems that we like

The Pigeon finds a Hot Dog

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

They are just little silly books , but what we like is the artwork, it's simple and cute.

Perfect for little artists to copy!

This one, I drew and Ava colored, I think she stayed in the lines pretty well.

These 2 were drawn and colored by my little artist, Sydney.


If you have favorite book, check out the library to see if it has any other versions that have different artwork, it makes the story more enjoyable :-)

You should smell this.

My roses around the house are those "old" roses , you know, the ones that smell so good.

I love shopping online, I was looking for a specific book

Teaching with Cinderella Stories From Around the World,

I finally found it on christianbook.com and they were having a big sale , so I found a few other things, some of these are for "school" and some are just for fun.

Whenever we get a package in the mail or UPS the kids are so excited, it's like Christmas!

I can't count the "Oh, thank you, mom!" 's that I got , especially from Ava.

Some crafting and a school project for Ava

I had a whole post almost ready about Memorial Day , but never finished it, since I'm not really into it anymore I'll just show some of the craft stuff we have been doing.

This is actually a lapbook that Ava and I put together, it was my first one ever and we had a lot of fun with it.

I found all the things to print out online and Ava colored and I cut out all the stuff and glued it to the folders.

It was based on her favorite book

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb

I bought a small sewing kit for the kids to try out and this is the elephant "Ellie" that Sydney made, although she didn't do all of it herself it was a good start.


I went to the Dollar Tree and bought some cans of shaving cream, and squirted liquid water color paint in it, the kids had fun squishing it and painting with it.




We also used the liquid water colors in bingo bottles with white crayons to make these pictures.

My nephew Connor came over and tried out the shaving cream too.

My kids- the slaves

Here is Ryan's "Domo" from Target and a felt donut that I made, I thought it turned out pretty cute.

We have been reading The Tale Of Despereaux for the last 4 weeks. We got it from the library and have already renewed it once and it is due again tomorrow, so I think we will have to renew it one more time. I like to read books to the kids if there is a movie to see, before they see the movie; I think it's really hard to do it the other way around.

I have been having a really hard time getting into this book, which is why we have had it so long, but I'm hoping that I will be able to finish soon and then the kids can watch the movie, which is what it's all about anyway, right??

So, we were reading tonight about a girl in the book who was sold to be a slave to this man , and a man who worked for the king came and took her away and told her she was going to be a paid servant at the castle now. Oh ya, should I have said, SPOILER ALERT!?

Ryan had to ask me to "Pause", and asked me what a servant was. So, we talked for a few minutes about what a slave is and what a servant is; Sydney says, "so, we are slaves, right?"

I was like "slaves to who??"

Sydney, "well, slaves to you , we have to do what you say and we don't get paid."