rainbow window catchers

Last year for St. Patrick's Day we made shamrock and clover window decorations, so this year we made rainbows! I had some rainbow ribbon/yarn and gave long pieces to the kids to cut up and put down on clear contact paper.

What you need:

• contact paper
• rainbow colors - ribbon, tissue paper, stickers, etc.
• scissors to cut the ribbon/paper and to cut a rainbow shape

They are so bright and cheerful!

Materials.

After putting the ribbon down, put on another piece of contact paper face down, then trim.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

shiny pennies and copper plating

Our local children's museum had posted about doing a penny activity; it sounded like something my kids would like so I followed this one and it was very simple and fun! The write up for it was very straightforward and easy to follow. The pennies get shiny very quickly (part 1 of the experiment), but the second part takes a bit longer.

Setting up.

Starting the experiment.

Pennies right after they went in.

Shiny!

After the pennies were done, we removed them to dry and added other items for the second part of the experiment.

Wow! Watch the experiment carefully - check on it every 10 minutes or so.

The bolt was in the solution halfway - you can really see the copper plating.

One control screw, one copper plated screw.

What will you try to copper plate?

memory noun game

After playing with the noun cards I printed out last week, the kids wanted to sort them again, but as they were sorting them I thought we could instead use them to play a game. I grabbed a couple of the wooden cubes in my craft stash (the same used in color resemblance sorting) and some stickers I had from a yard sale. H and F made their own dice with the stickers, and then I put a different colored sticker on each of the noun categories. We turned all the noun cards face down, and then they took turns rolling their die and turning over two cards at a time trying to match the category. When they found a match, they placed it in their pile. Great for learning about nouns as well as for memory.

Color coded noun categories.

Noun game die.

Game setup.

if you give a mouse a cookie activities

I stumbled across these cute word cards to go with Laura Numeroff's If You Give A Mouse A Cookie (the collection is worth having; it even has an audio cd so you can listen to the stories on the go). There are also some domino cards and other activities listed there, but I thought since all of the words are things commonly found in homes, it would be fun to have a scavenger hunt. Pretending to be the mouse means you won't have to go looking for any mice (unless you're into that, then go for it, but they make me squeal and jump up on chairs). The word cards have both words and pictures so this is great for readers and pre-readers alike. To make it more challenging for your older child, have them try to find the items in alphabetical order!

Other activities to do with this book:

• make some cookies! while they are baking,
• get out some brooms and sweep up, or mop! and then,
• draw a picture of your family and hang it on the refrigerator  

Enjoy! 

We put the word cards in little bag and pulled them out one at a time.

F finds a broom.

 

noun sorting

We have been talking about nouns for a few days and so I searched for some person, place, and thing printables to make a sorting game.

Two sets good for pre-readers are here and here; there are both pictures and words on the cards (I printed 4 sheets per page since there are so many pages).

Montessori for Everyone has a great printable with words only, excellent for those kids that have already started reading. They are also grouped so that the person, place, and thing all relate to each other (astronaut, outer space, space shuttle).

Print these out on card stock and let the sorting begin!

circumference experiment

While watching the kids play with their toy garbage truck, I noticed that the wheels had different diameters, and since the kids love to do experiments, I thought this would be a fun and easy way to explore circumference!

What you need:

• Paper (we tapes a few sheets together so we could make a few marking for each wheel)
• Circles of various sizes (wheels of toy cars, coasters, coins, etc.)
• Crayons/markers/pencils
• Something to mark the wheel at one point along the circumference (we used small stickers)

Line up the marking on the wheel so that it is touching the paper and mark it with a crayon. Drive your car or truck and then mark the same spot every time it hits the bottom. Do this with each wheel and you will measure the circumference.

Marking the wheel rotations.

Closeup view.

After you mark them all, measure between two of the same colored lines.

Ours worked out to 5, 5.5, and 6 inches.

For older kids, you can ask them several follow up questions: How many rotations of one wheel does it take to go a certain distance? How about other wheels? In the real world, which tire would wear out first?

target practice

My kids are playing this as I type. I was planning on taking them out today but we have had too many 4 and 5 am days recently and I just want to stay home!

What you need:

• felt
• velcro strips or stickies
• lightweight balls
• tape or marker to mark off a target area

I just stuck the velcro circles (only rough sides with the loops, not the soft ones) to the lightweight balls, made a target on the felt, clipped it onto a hanging blanket with some binder clips, and gave each kid a ball. This is a two-minute setup if you have all the materials! If you have velcro strips you can hot glue them onto the balls instead. I ended up making a few more felt targets after I took the pictures and clipped them all over the blanket, worth different "points" since they love to keep score. I may just have to make an entire carnival of activities for them to do today!

Materials needed.

Balls with the velcro stuck on.

I made the target with painters tape (it was 1" wide, I cut it to 1/2").

A hit! Retrieving the ball.