Explore. Play. Learn.: 2016

Monday, October 31, 2016

Pumpkin Painting Party!

This year we decide to stay indoors and safe so we had a pumpkin painting party. I had our school shelf filled with activities along with a few pumpkin snacks and of course the pumpkin painting table.

Here is a counting tray. Inside the bag are little Jack-O-Lantern erasers from Target. Great fine motor practice and one-to-one correspondence.

Just a tray of spider rings and a magnifying flip book of spiders.

This tray is color matching with the plastic spider rings (I cut the ring part off). The children just use their fine motor skills and match the correct color spider to the web.

Just a fun little way to personalize Dollar Tree bags for their candy.

During the week we did a little science/math project of making pumpkin spice play dough. It turned out great.

We also colored white rice and added some pumpkin spice scent to it as well. I added the leftover spider rings to this sensory bin.

Some cute pumpkin books I found in the Target's Dollar Spot along with some crayons.

We kept our slime out on the shelf also.

Throughout the room I hid 3 mini pumpkins for the older kids to find in a game of iSpy.

The pumpkin patch dirt pudding snacks.

Added some orange string lights to the shelf area.

These pumpkin Rice Krispie Treats were a Pinterest FAIL! They were way too sticky to form an actual pumpkin so this is the best I could get them to round.

Pumpkin Painting table all ready to go,

Cute painting aprons I found at Dollar Tree.

View of the whole room.

My son's final masterpiece after the party!

Thank you all for joining us :)!

-Ashley

Friday, October 21, 2016

S.T.E.M. Activities

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been a while since my last post. Officially homeschooling a kindergartner has shown to be a little tough but we are figuring out our groove and what matches our son's learning style best. After many trials and activities our song suggests we only do science and yoga for school :)! HAHA Needless to say we won't be doing only those subjects but I have don't some research in incorporating the STEM/STEAM ideas into our daily activities. Here are two of our latest activities.

Of course what fits better in October than an astronaut at school ;)!

I put strips of painters tape down on the floor and randomly labeled them from number 1-6. We would roll the dice and then hop on each number strip but skip the number we rolled. I got the ideas from Hands on as We Grow.

It was definitely a great math activity.

We had tons of gross motor skills being practiced as well.

Next activity was to use a straw and blow the pompom along the zigzag lines of tape.

Then we ended the day with a simple magnetic sensory bottle seen on Play to Learn.

Then today we tried Steve Spangler's Slime Recipe. This was a big hit as well.

Here he is practicing some math skills by measuring our Borax into the water.

Mixing the Borax mixture.

Adding our glue and equal parts water.

Mixing the glue and water to the right consistency.

Adding our green food coloring to get the perfect slime color.

Finally, the slime is forming!

Then of course, he had to add the bugs. I found a bag of 10 bugs in the party favor isle at War-Mart for less then $2.

Very cool to see the bugs stuck in the slime.

Then when he was done with the bugs we pulled out the cookie cutters and did some literacy and name building! Overall all the activities were a GREAT hit! He loved them all.

Thank you all for visiting :)

-Ashley

Friday, July 29, 2016

Back to School Photos!

It's official! We begin our first year as a home school Kindergartner! We are excited to take this next journey! Enjoy our back to school photo shoot!