Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Literature Based Learning.....Plugging away at learning are letters through one of Mason's favorite books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. After years of not being able to find them (I think I've looked since I got out of College) Walmart finally started carrying them! We did this project with my kindergartners and it was a big hit. Was true for Mason too....I made the coconut tree and then as we went over the different letters we pulled/spilled out of the box Mason picked which ones he wanted to put up in his coconut tree. We of course read the book a few times learned a few letters and ate a lot of cereal!

The Very Busy Mason

Literature based learning.....
Busy Spider by Eric Carle, supplies to make a spider web and spider stickers. Very Spooky!

Mason is one of those kids who does his best learning while ACTIVE. So we went on a nature walk at a local park and found "Nature's Treasures". If you look/think there are many different things to learn about in nature. Just a few we discussed on our walk were the obvious ones like colors (trees, leaves, flowers,etc...) But we we also talked about how you tell how old a tree is by counting its rings, how and why they fall, how their leaves turn color, their bark, why the ground gets muddy when it rains, how birds talk and make different sounds. You get the point. What helped us notice these things and get the conversation started was once we got to the middle of the woods we sat down on a log and I told Mason we had to sit and not talk so that the woods could talk to us.
....Try it and listen they have a lot to talk to your little ones about. Plus you gotta love the quiet time:)

"M" is for Mason and Maccaroni!

Our big goal this year is to write our name. Since Mason has little interest in this I have tried to come up with a variety of ways to not only write it but learn it. This is a little game you just need to write the letters of their names along with a few that aren't cut the letters up individually and put them in a baby food jar. He chose letters one by one and if he got a letter that was in his name he glued it down and if it was just a random letter it went back in the jar. We did this till he had his whole name glued down.

Counting Cars

Lightning Mcqueen and friends have HAD to come to (ghetto) school with us every morning therefore Mommy's big challenge is incorporating cars into actual learning as much as possible. Here we worked on number recognition and counting skills. Mason actually asked to play the "car game" later so I totally pulled one over on him that he was actually learning.

Letter M

Letter M is this week why because its "mine letter" Mason says and of course his favorite while we have been trying to practice writing it Mason would much rather do this activity....
Draw M&M type circles on paper and match m&m to its corresponding color we did lots of counting and eating as well.

I'll just do it myself

I'll just do it myself.....
After waiting too long for Chris to get around to drywalling an extra room we have in the basement I decided to make my own makeshift ghetto classroom. A rug and a sheet and some teaching aids and voila! I just wanted some place to "go to school" where we are not distracted by toys or t.v. I know its ghetto but it works:)

Race Track Colors

Trying to incorporate a little learning into our obession with cars and "mommy draw race track" So pretty simple just made several tracks differant colors and we tried to but blue cars on the blue track, pink cars on the pink track etc...

The Letter S

For Our Classroom this fall one long term project/goal we will be doing is working on a differant letter each week. The challenge will be coming up with fun projects that correspond with each letter to keep Mason's attention because the "S" worksheet was not cutting it. Here we just took biscuit dough shaped them into S shapes therefore hopefully teaching Mason how an S looks and how it should be written and then sprinkled cinnamon and sugar on them so they would taste yummy.
Why you ask did we start with S and not A well Mason decided by talking about snakes one day and I said snake starts with S etc....

World Word

World Word
I have to rave about how great this show is on PBS. Mason has learned so much about letters and the words they make I love that it is slow paced and age appropriate....there is some good T.V. out there.

Collage and.....school time

Today we worked with a large sticky (contact paper) canvas and explored the makings of a Collage by sticking a bucket full of random objects on the canvas...this kept Mason's attention for quite sometime. I am starting to make a collage as well in my mind that is...of all the things we want to do this fall in Our Classroom.

Color People

I got these great colored clothespins at a garage sale for .25 cents and sat down with Mason and drew faces on them. We called them Mr. Purple, Mr. Red, etc... We then obviously learned our colors this way but also worked on front and back and top and bottom and listening to instructions as I would say Mason put Mr. Red on the top and Mr. Yellow on the bottom. Or Mr. Blue goes in front and Mr. Purple in the back. Quick and easy activity that Mason seemed to enjoy.