A Garden of Flowers & Letters... and it's FREEBIE Friday!

    And… we have flowers! Teeny, tiny flowers…but FLOWERS! 

The munchkin was SO excited!!

   For our Gardening Theme, the little munchkin created this cute picture by searching for all the right letters to make a Garden of Letters!

   The munchkin also practiced some writing with her Letter Rr and Ss writing mini-books, similar to the ones she did for Letters Gg and Ff. 

Click on each Picture to pick up your own FREE copies of these 

mini writing books, which are also being featured at Teaching Blog Addict's Freebie Friday!!

   I also came across a post by This Reading Mama and decided to try something like it with my little one. It is called Reading The Alphabet. Our activity focused on Tracking Print, Letter Identification and Letter/Sound Connection.

This Garden theme sure was fun! 

Now to move on to some SWEET stuff… 

Stay tuned!

Counting and adding practice with Flower Ten Frames!

   As I chug along (or drag my feet) to make it to the end of the school year, I can honestly say that I have checked out. I know it sounds really bad, but that is the truth. My mind is fried, my body is beyond exhausted and I am just DONE! 6 more days!!!!
   So instead of trying to relax a little like I deserve to, I have focused my energy on the learning fun with my 4 year old at home. My Idea Boxes are full to the brim with lots of ideas that I want to cover this summer!!
    But right now, we are still working with our Garden Theme. We did alot of work in her Math Basket and she practiced counting and adding with these cute Flower Ten Frames that I created.

Click the picture above or HERE to get your set today!

   Here are a few other math activities that I created last year (with my Cricut that I actually have been neglecting lately!!) to practice counting and matching Number to Set.

   We have a few more other things to share but for now, I have to sign off! My sis is flying in to visit tonight! My little munchkin has been asking me ALL night, "Is it time to pick up Desi yet?" Luckily for her (and me) she gets to stay home and sleep in with her tomorrow (because it is WAY past her bedtime right now)... and I get free daycare for the next 2 days!  Everyone wins!

Fantastic Flower Fun... and a writing FREEBIE!!

    Alright, so I have somehow managed to maintain my sanity the past 2 weeks, but I don’t know how much longer that is going to last! My child who was on short term exclusion is returning this week AND I have to work on finishing up my End of the Year Academic Assessments (and 2 other final assessments), as well as start planning our “Moving Up” Ceremony…

    I will try to manage as best as I know how b/c it is all almost over! And Summer Vacation is on the horizon! YAY!!

    Last year, my little one and I did several (and I mean SEVERAL) flower activities. This year for our Garden Theme, we have been doing flower activities but have also been putting more focus on letter activities.

   She has been learning the letters Ff and Gg and since she shocked me and almost brought me to tears the other day with this writing (which she did all on her own just by looking at my writing):

    I decided to follow her lead with starting some writing with her. I created two writing mini-books for her, with letter Ff words and letter Gg words. (I have also just made mini-books for the other 2 letters that we have been learning about this month.)

    Click on the pictures below to download a FREE copy of the Letter Ff and Letter Gg Mini-Books!

    And this little sponge of mine has also shown signs of learning that she is learning the concepts of print. I caught her tracking print the other night when I was reading her a bedtime story. Once she fell asleep, I pulled out a pocket chart, some sentence strips, colored some flowers and put together a little Flower Colors sentence activity. And I made a little pocket to put the flowers inside.

    She LOVED it! The best part was when she played it for the 3rd time and said, “Mommy, I love this game!”

   I have also been wanting to try Easel Starters, which is an art idea that  have seen on one of my very favorite blogs, Teach Preschool.

   We read the book: This Is the Sunflower and then talked about flowers and the parts of flowers.

   I pulled out the easel that we found for $7 at a garage sale down the street! Since she already has one, we decided to make this one the Outdoor Easel.

    I put a circle shape on the paper (I meant to glue some sunflower seeds inside of it, but I forgot!) and then allowed her to create her own (flower) painting.

How many of you have started your End of the Year Countdown?? 

I have 13 days to go!

How many more days do you have left???

Flower Power Continues...!

     This is the last post about Flowers… I promise!! There is a plethora of ideas out there for flower units and I was overwhelmed by all the awesome ideas that I saw on blogs and on Pinterest! I wanted to try it all…. But I can’t.

     I wanted to make sure I touched on a little bit of Science with my little munchkin, in regards to how a flower grows. I am a fan of Scholastic News and I love that they now have a Preschool Edition! Since Flowers is a hot topic/unit in the Spring, I wasn’t surprised when I found this in my spring stash! I love that it comes with a Big Book type pamphlet and a little one for little hands. =)

    We looked at the picture of the flower and I told her the parts of a flower and briefly talked about how each part grows.

    Home School Creations created a FREE Garden Unit and as always, I chose which activities I thought the little munchkin would enjoy, Usually I am right…BUT I was wrong about this one! She wanted nothing to do with it! But it’s still a cute activity... I even put magnet strips on to make it into a cookie sheet puzzle.

  

 Lucky for me I had some leftover die cut flowers from my Flower Mat making I did last weekend and I found a way to use them to create a magnetic Parts of a Flower Puzzle! Now this one, she liked! I also brought out her box of magnetic pom-poms to use as seeds.

 (I love how our dog, Sox, is just there, smelling her foot!)

  Here are some pictures I want to share of the Parts of a Flower Activity that my Preschool munchkins did, that I failed to post...

  I also made some Literacy Mats with other die cut flowers and she used foam flower stickers to play a letter matching game. ( I used the letters of her name to make each Letter Mat.)

  We wrapped up our Flower unit by making a fun lunch! A hummus sandwich in the shape of a flower…along with a tomato as the seed(s), celery as the stem and carrots as the leaves! It was a yummy way to review the Parts of a Flower! And I added some heart shaped cheese, just because! =)

  

And now, the Flower Fun has come to an end.....

Mighty Math Powers with Flowers !

   My little munchkin has been doing really well with her counting so I wanted to take some time to make a few math mat games for her to practice her counting and one to one correspondence.

   I love my Cricut machine and try to find ways to just use it! I saw an idea in one of my Mailbox magazines and rather than using the blackline masters that were in the magazine,  I whipped out my Cricut machine and made my own version!

    The math mats I made can be used in many different ways. Here is how I used them with my little one:

Bee & Flower Clip Game

 She matched the Bee Number Clip to the Number on the Flower Petals. 

(She got a little frustrated because she had a hard time opening up the clothespins.)

Bee & Flower Counting Mats

    We identified the numbers and then used bee counters to cover up the flower. I decided to put some magnetic strips on the bees so that it became a Cookie Sheet Math game! =)  She was even role playing a "teacher"!  =)

  It was much more fun for her that way, but it can be used as an ordinary math mat- which is how I will probably use it in my preschool classroom next school year!


Math Counting Mats with Flower Erasers:

I also remembered these play-doh math mats from Home School Creations, that I had used in many different ways in the classroom. I had her use our mini flower erasers instead of play-doh to play and count. 

Click here or on the picture for a link to the Home School Creations blog and for your own FREE copy of these versatile math counting mats.

Flower Number Order:

    I wanted to do some work on identifying the numbers and the order of the numbers. So I made some counting cards, up to number 10. 

Click here for your own copy!

    

    I helped her to put them in order and once they were all lined up, she grabbed her My Little Pony toys and did some one-to-one correspondence work- all on her own!

 It was a proud momma moment! I guess she wanted to see just how many My Little Pony toys she had! 

We sure have done a lot of math work these past few days! 

Hope you enjoyed our Mighty Math Power Fun with Flowers!

Flower Fun !

    Flowers are everywhere! We walk outside and turn left, we see a garden with flowers! We turn right, we see another garden full of flowers!  It sure is nice to have neighbors who keep their gardens looking lovely!  Too bad I don’t have a green thumb, or else we would have our own garden to look at! =)

    This past week, the weather heated up quite a bit. But I was not complaining! There wasn’t much humidity in the air—thank goodness! So the heat was bearable b/c of the summer breeze… felt like I was in Hawaii!

   Anyhow, the little munchkin and I are always looking for fun stuff to do and with this heat, we brought out the water hose and the water table! I took an idea I saw in a Mailbox magazine and created a Flower water play area. 

   All I needed was fake plastic flowers (which I cut down to a smaller size), some empty Dannonino yogurt containers, and a spray bottle—and there we had it! Not quite sure what to call it though… Flower Spray Play?  I don’t know! =) 

   The little munchkin had TONS of fun putting the flowers inside the containers, setting them up and spraying away! Note: It led to a whole lot of additional soaking water play! This lead to purchasing 2 wacky sprinklers to help us keep cool!

   

    When we aren’t outside getting wet, or playing in the “dirt”, as she calls it (it’s really her garden sensory bin), we are indoors doing some other fun stuff.

    Here are a few little projects we have done with Flowers this week.

               Glued buttons onto the Letter F:

Scrapbook Flowers- 

I cut scrapbook paper into parts of a flower and glued them onto paper: 

    

    

   Skittle Flowers:

Then I got an fun idea to do, with a Flower dot printable that I found at Making Learning Fun.

    Rather than using Fruit Loops, I used Tropical Skittles! They are much more colorful and delicious!

 It was as VERY tasty Flower Treat! =)

    This weekend I have been making some math mat games for my little munchkin to play in the next week! 

     And I just finally put together my Preschool Memory Book! I will share a picture tomorrow!