Imperfect Organization: Circle Time

 

Meet our learning robot!  This super cool poster was a steal at Christmas time for $1.59!  I bought it at Darlington Holiday Outlet in Fort Wayne.  

The Learning Robot has really simplified and helped me organize circle time in our home with my preschoolers.  Now we can easily sit on the floor in the dining room and go over the skills it presents to my boys!  

This tool offers letters, beginning sounds, shapes, colors, reading a clock, months, days of the week, and numbers 1-30!  The boys love it.  They have so much fun checking it out.  It is a fun game when someone tells them what letter or picture to look for.  It's even more fun when the boys get to be the teacher.  They don't even realize they're still learning to identify these items!

Behind the learning robot is our thankful tree.  Each leaf has something that we are thankful about written on it.  It also has apples and flowers with numbers on them that we use at different times for practicing counting and number identification.

How do you organize daily learning time with your family?

Looking forward to Easter

You read it right.  Easter. Christmas, the celebration of Christ's birth is over.  now it is time for us to begin looking forward to the celebration of his death on a nasty cross so that we could have an intimate relationship with God. 

Randy and I have begun preparing our home and family for the Easter celebration.  Okay, okay - so we have started in small ways.  The tree is still up (for today), there are still assorted Christmas goodies around the house.  We even have some more Christmas celebrating to do in the next week. 

Still, we have begun talking with the boys about the next celebration.  We want them to know that Christ's birth is a BIG deal.  Even more than that, we want them to know that his death means that we can live. 

As we are preparing for the next year in the life of the Crum family, we have laid out a course of study for the first 3 months of the year.   We will be exploring the gospels with the boys from January 1 through March 31.  Each week we are focusing on a different story as a family and will be learning it through a variety of formats - crafts, music, reading, games and more.  You are invited to follow along with us on my Friday posts. 

Here is our road to Easter schedule:

January

Jesus as a child

Jesus' baptism

Jesus calls disciples

Jesus loves children

February

Lazarus

Water into wine

Jesus heals the blind

Walking on water

March

Jesus calms the storm

Feeding of 5,000

Passover

Good Friday

Easter

SimplyFun Leap Forward Set: Review & Giveaway

You read that right!  More SimplyFun!

This is our favorite game out of the Leap Forward set - Tangrams.  Monkey decided to try making his own game out of the shapes while I was in the office one day.  He had a great time building a... whatever this thing is.  Tangrams are fantastic because of their LARGE size.  They are easy for preschoolers to handle, and the game itself is easy to understand.  Did you ever play Tangrams in school?  I remember them!

Here, my niece, Little Lou, is showing the boys how to put the shapes together to make a picture.  There are 2 sets of large foam shapes in this package, that makes it easier to play together, or as a competition.  There are so many ways to play with Tangrams that it has entertained my boys for hours!

A finished picture - I think this is a dog.  It was Little Lou's first experience with Tangrams and she needed just a little bit of help after she had finished so the picture came out looking like the one in the book.

 

Ice Hop is an incredibly cute game where the kids work to get their penguins to safety by hopping from ice burg to ice burg!  It is helping my boys practice counting - and in a sneaky way, helping them practice addition!  This was especially fun for Little Lou (6), Bugsy (4), and Monkey (3) to play together!

See those cute little sheep?

I have never seen another game like Clover Leap.  It truly is unique.  It's a bit difficult to begin playing with Monkey right now, but as soon as he starts to get a better mastery on word recognition, we will begin helping him understand it.  Mr. Crum and I played it together (he won).  When we were finished, he was ready to start again.  It is a fun game of silly sentences!  I can't wait until we're back at my sister's house so I can share this one with Little Lou.

Mr. Crum is proud of his sentence "I see hairy bikes".  (He's also proud that he won Clover Leap).

You too can own this set!  You can buy it online from SimplyFun
OR
You can win it right here on Life With My Boys!  Enter using the Rafflecopter form below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Our week in education

Here are some of the educational activities that we have/will participate in this week:

Monday

Play Dough Free Play

Sorting & Lining Beads

A trip to the zoo, riding 2 rides (addressing Monkey's train fear)

Tuesday

Free Play & Exploration Outside

Shaving Cream Fun

Bath Water Bonanza 

Wednesday

Finger Painting

Free Play & Exploration Outside

Cracker's first overnight with grandma

Thursday

Ear Surgery 

Friday

Library Trip

Building with BIG blocks

Family night - games at church

Fun & Educational

Some of the fun and educational activities that we have participated in at the Crum house this week (some yet to come):

Monday  

Fire Station Tour (totally free activity)

Ultrasound (fascinating for Monkey)

Tuesday

Finger Painting (haha, read yesterday's post)

Tower building (Duplos are my current favorite thing)

Wednesday
Box Day (playing with recyclables - using imagination)
Homemade Play Dough (mama made it, boys played)
Park Exploration with Daddy

Thursday
Bath Splash - fun water play
Relax day - free time while mama works

Friday
Mom Time - mama gets to play with friends, so do boys

Saturday
Possibly Kid City - local educational event

TOTAL COST FOR THIS WEEK'S EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES: $0

YEP, FREE ACTIVITIES ALL WEEK

60 Quick and Easy Science Experiments with Everyday Items

Congratulations Jessica and Preston, Comment #16, you won!

If you are new to my blog, you might not know that I am working on teaching my preschoolers.  I have been doing homeschool activities with my 1 and 2 year old for about a month now.  I also enjoy having their friends over for parties and we do some fun educational activities at our parties. 

"Why do you think that happened?"... "Because sometimes science is like that" (Conversation with a 5 year old)

For these reasons, I was very excited to have an opportunity to review 60 Quick and Easy Science Experiments with Everyday Items from Touch of Home Learning.  This book is a great resource for all families.  It is especially an asset to any families currently homeschooling young children, or working toward a home education.

Daddy and Monkey made the flood during our Noah's Ark week.

 What I love about this book:  It is divided nicely by subject, and subjects that captivate children - bubbles, dinosaurs, space, and more.  It truly does use items that most people have around the house (or can acquire cheaply).  There are questions to help kids start thinking about the experiment, and discussion questions ater the experiment.  It is written in an easy to use format.

Monkey is adding water to his flood.

What I would change about this book:  More, I want more more more.  I love the book and look forward to using it with my boys for a long time to come!

Making Goop at our preschool party.  They thought it was "gross", but had fun sharing.

Buy it:  You can buy this book for $54.95 at  Touch of Home Learning.

Win it:  One lucky reader can win this e-book!

Mandatory Entry:
Go to Touch of Home Learning and comment on this post about something you discovered there.  Don't forget to leave your email address in your comment.

Additional Entries:
1) "Like" Touch of Home Learning on Facebook.
2) Follow my blog via GFC or Networked blogs (or both), upper right hand column of this page.
3) "Like" Crum's This N That on Facebook.

Beginning Bible: Week 2

Adam & Eve
(I didn't do so well keeping to my plans this week, but here they are.. no pictures because someone decided my camera wanted to swim).

Memory Verse: You must not eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden.  Gen 3:3

Math - Shape story (recreating the story using shapes to make characters), observing colors in nature

Science - Tasting Fruit, Identifying animals and plants in nature and pictures

Language - Shape Story (using shapes to tell the story, see above), felt people - flannel board

Art - Making Felt people, apple print

Music - ????

Movement - "ah the snake" (running from the serpent)

Free Play - Little people, felt people.


Next week: Noah.. and this should have a lot of crazy fun activity!