Hi!!! I’m Karrah. A preschool teacher in Norfolk. I have a Master’s in Elem. Education and certified PreK-6. I have two daughters, Teaghan and Rowan. I love to come up with fun, hands-on learning that will hopefully instill a love of learning for young children!
The girls received a “Butterfly Grow Kit” for Christmas. I make them space out their gifts so they can really enjoy them, because they are so loved they usually get overloaded. At a time like this, I’m so, so glad I have things stashed to pull out for them. We have been waiting for warmer days to start this kit! 🌞 🦋 🌱 It’s fairly simple and the girls did most of the prep themselves. They decorated, laid the soil, then planted the chia seeds. It comes with a cute little spray bottle to water it daily. (Fine motor!! Rowan actually has a difficult time with the spray bottle so this is great for her to practice and strengthen her little hand muscles!) They have also been observing and recording their observations daily. Teaghan even started her own little journal just for this. By day 3, we were already seeing sprouts begin! If you are talking about plants basic needs and plants’ life cycle with your child while doing this, you will be hitting science objectives in PreK-4th grade. Recording observations is also a few SOLs and of course your child will continue to practice their writing. Teaghan changes out the number of day each day with a dry erase marker and we snap a picture! It’s been a fun learning project that we are excited to continue to watch grow.
The girls decorated and planted the chia seeds all by themselves! Note- we didn’t pay attention (😬) and decorated the stickers on top of the plastic, they were supposed to go underneath! I did realize before we started putting the dirt in and fixed it but whoops – lesson learned! You can find this kit Here!
Lots of Sprouting!! We have this by a sunny window, we did not purchase the extra GROW light.
I remember making ice cream like this at school when I was a young child. I remember thinking wow that was really awesome. With Teaghan’s poem this week based around Ice Cream, I figured why not?? I first asked the girls what they thought ice cream was made out of? They both could only give me one word. Sugar 😆. I took the whole thing to be a teachable moment. We looked up a “recipe” and set out everything we needed. We talked about how those would be our ingredients. We talked about measuring cups vs. measuring spoons. We smelled vanilla. We talked. We talked about our favorite kinds of ice cream, when and where we’ve ever had it, if we prefer bowls or cones, etc. We talked about why this kind was white but chocolate flavored is brown? We talked about what they thought was going to happen when we started shaking the milk, sugar and vanilla. We laughed. We learned from mistakes. We shook so hard the Ziploc popped open and ice flew everywhere. Note to self.. double bag it. And best of all, we enjoyed a sweet treat that we made! 🍦 Try it! So fun!
A few FREE resources that I’m using this week for practicing letter and word recognition!!
Teaghan loves a word search and there’s still some sight words that she is not getting as fast as the others.. or I’m seeing her confuse with other words while reading (example occasionally saying “three” for “there”). So, I decided to make her her very own word search using them! I used Discovery Education. Very simple to use. Plug in the words you want in the word search and it generates it for you! Also.. something about using a highlighter is just so “cool” per Teaghan. 🤣😅Last week I “pretested” her to see where we needed to focus. We put her sight words in a pile and she sorted them as she attempted each one! It creates her own personal goal to get all the words in the “yes!” pile. She self-corrected a few that are in the “still learning” pile, but together, we decided they should be focused on a little more. With sight words, the child should be calling them out fast when drilling with flash cards. Then, they should start to make connections when they see the same words in a text while reading.
Do-a-Dot Letter Search
Rowan would have been working on letters U and V for the next two weeks at school. So I found these FREE Find and Dot pages on Pinterest. Which are the same idea.. Letter Search! We use do a dot markers a lot in preschool, they are great for hand-eye coordination, following directions and self-control. However, I don’t own them at home. They are kinda pricey in my opinion so I grabbed a single Bingo marker at the dollar store for her to use for activities like this here and there! FYI— I’ve learned these “dot dot markers” are not as washable as your typical washable markers!
Color-by-Number!
U is for Unicorn! Does your little one love to color as much as mine?! There’s these fun color-by-number pages that are great for both my girls. Thanks Google. Activities like this continue to expose Rowan to number identification. And continue to expose Teaghan to the color words. There’s all kinds of difficulty levels available online. These also help hand-eye coordination and dexterity! I simply Googled “unicorn color by number”. If your child is working on addition, subtraction, multiplication..I saw some with those too! Make anything you can more engaging and fun! This particular sheet can be found HERE!
Honestly my first opinion was wowww this is an overwhelming amount of work for children at home. I started looking through it and there’s a lot that can be integrated with one another. So that’s what we are going to do over here! I had to organize her packet and prep to try to maintain some sort of normalcy, keep our days running somewhat smoothly, and limit the amount of meltdowns. 🤞🏼
Play is the highest form of research- Albert Einstein
Social Studies week 3 and Science week 1: Seasons 🌳 🌼🍁❄️ These two should be integrated in my opinion. Brainpopjr.com has some good videos on Seasons that we will utilize. There’s a daily writing prompt that can be doubled up as one of the Social Studies assignments “my favorite season is…” There’s also two assignments we can get a two-for-one deal on… the tree picture. Teaghan is going to Q-Tip paint the trees for each season to make it a little more exciting. (See example below per Pinterest) For the winter vs. summer bear 🐻 drawing, we will make a big cardboard box into a hibernating cave. They threw a random day of Transportation in Social studies, but you can talk about the jet mentioned in The Big Trip and turn that same oversized cardboard box into some sort of vehicle. 🚗 ✌🏼😎
Something similar to this..photo from TrilliumMontessori.org
Season Sensory/STEM Play Ideas
Winter– see my previous post about how to make Snow! ❄️ Spring– build your own flower garden 🌸 Summer– Kinetic sand, 🐚s and a few sand toys! Fall– popcorn kernels, spoons, bowls and 🚜s!
Math I don’t mind the math week 1 activities. To make “missing numbers” a little more fun we are going to hide the numbers 1-20 around the play room, she’ll find them and put them in order. After they are in order, she’ll close her eyes and I’ll take some away. She’ll have to figure out which are missing. Same concept as the worksheet but more hands-on. We will utilize HopScotch for skip counting by 10s. For the Board 2.. we will use both “digit” and number card sheets and play the card game WAR with them. Board 3 we will hide numbers again around play room and then proceed with that game once they are all found and placed face down.
Reading: Ice Cream Poem I wrote the poem on the back of a big laminated poster I had.. to act as a white board. She can point with a princess wand or pointer as we read it and she can circle rhyming words with dry erase marker. We will read a recipe on how to make homemade ice cream and make it. I recommend Mo Willem’s book, Should I Share my Ice Cream? for reading. If you don’t own it.. there are some Read Aloud videos of it on YouTube. There’s also a writing prompt of favorite treat. We’ll do that one this week, too.
Reading: The BigTrip story. Make it a little more exciting by putting some hats and sunglasses in a suitcase for your child to open and play with/get dressed up in.. set the mood for their imagination to be thinking of going on a trip. Work on journal prompt about going on a trip.
“Morning work” well that will be alllll those worksheets within the reading packet.. while my coffee is kicking in and I’m trying to get my life organized, Teaghan can be independently working on those beginning/middle sound, rhyming worksheets. Same with the A-Z tracing.. she can rainbow write it if she wants, or be as creative as she wants, or not. If we get through these great- if not, that’s okay too. I put them all in a separate folder for her to grab and go.
Preschool sibling-
I’ve stated before, my biggest obstacle doing this “homeschool” thing is both girls want to be doing the other’s activity. Want what you can’t have. FOMO. Idk but I am trying to set myself up for success here so I thought of some activities Rowan can be doing based kinda around Teaghan’s work. Ice cream counting with Pom poms and sorting in bowls, playing with her ice cream truck, sorting a pile of her clothes into different seasons and putting on a fashion show (this should entertain her for awhile)! 👗🧥🧤👙
Did you know activities that promote “pincer grasp” will help your child later hold a pencil correctly?! Prewriting skills start with fine motor! Stickers are awesome for promoting that pincer grasp. If your child is struggling with peeling stickers…peel the outer layer off from the sticker sheet! This will help them peel them off a little easier. It is helpful for 2-4 year olds. I learned this from working at my preschool and it definitely helped the frustration at home when the girls were using stickers. Stringing beads on pipe cleaners, pipe cleaners through colander, pinching clothespins, using Jumbo Tweezers to pick up small objects (sold at the dollar store) and PlayDoh are also great for strengthening that pincer grasp. If your child is younger, pincer grasp can be strengthened by picking up small cut-up foods, peeling masking tape off high chair while they are waiting for lunch, blocks and puzzles galore. Older children can use stickers to form letters and words!
My biggest obstacle with this whole “homeschool” thing (so far) is finding activities that I can differentiate for both girls. Because they are SOO curious what the other is doing and want to do it too! We are trying to make the most of this social distancing as we can. Why not make it an opportunity to learn more about family members? Teaghan helped me come up with the questions for her very own Family Interviews. Rowan is working on interviewing favorite colors and making a graph to see which color “wins”. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜They have both really enjoyed conducting these! Whether it’s via FaceTime or our house phone (I think it’s an elderly phone😅 off Amazon- it’s for our girls for emergencies, which I highly recommend! They press “photocall” and that person’s photo and it automatically dials.) They sit with their little clipboards and pens and it’s the cutest thing ever. “I wonder what their favorite snack is? Mine are fruit strips and gummies, maybe they like them too!” They love learning about their loved ones and comparing all the answers.
We have also recently started “Would You Rather…” questions before bedtime and their responses have been very interesting 😅 and hilarious and even surprising at times. Learning more about my own kids. They are obsessed. If you haven’t tried yet with your kids it’s so fun, there are a million on Google.. or just make your own. Of course Teaghan wanted to add them with her initial interview questions. She helped come up with all the questions so it made it that much more meaningful to her, and we plan to keep switching them up to keep it going! All while doing this, she is practicing her writing skills, reading, comparing and contrasting and making connections.
These sheets are definitely not fancy with cute font because I don’t have time for all that 😂 buttt if you want them, and just don’t feel like typing them, I got you covered. I uploaded them to my TPT which I never use, but search Karrah Pope and that should work! Hopefully. Happy Interviewing!
Looks like possibly tomorrow and Friday are going to be warmer!! 80?! Thank youuuu. We deserve this, right?? My plan is simply to lock the kids out of the house. Jk but really.. we will be doing all the things outside. I initially planned to take them on a “field trip” to the bay or beach but it looks like it may be too windy for sand play. 👎🏼 Here are a few fun things I’ve done in the past!
Bubbles!
If you have small containers of bubbles on hand, put some food coloring in them and let your children blow colored bubbles!! Put a piece of paper on the ground and as they fall and pop, they create some pretty cool designs! I’ve done these with my preschoolers and it is MESSY but so much fun!! You can also create your own DIY bubbles, make an experiment out of it if you have older children. There are several DIY recipes out there..we may try to make a few and see which works the best.. then compare to the store bought bubbles.
Water Table
We don’t actually own a real water table but I plan to take a storage tote and fill her up! Yes, I will be emptying one from my attic. Because… desperate times. 😂 Put measuring spoons, cups, and bowls in there for your child to pour and transfer back and forth. Put a mixture of plastic and stainless steel so they make/hear different sounds. You can add watering cans, toys, boats, bath tub letters, etc. Can even put those Magnetic ABCs in and talk about the letters as they scoop them up! If you have play animals you can talk about which animals live on land vs. water. Same with transportation.. watercraft vs. cars/trucks. Have your child sort them. Ask all sorts of questions as your child plays. 💦 🐠 ⛵️
Extend it by grabbing a basket and fill with random items around the house and do a Sink/Float experiment! If you have mandarin oranges.. leave one as-is and peel the other, predict which will sink and which will float! 🤓🍊
Ice, Ice, maybe?
This requires just a tad bit of prep work.. but it’s not very time consuming. I have taken little plastic Dinos and placed them inside a balloon, then filled it up with water. (You can fill them to make them as big or small as you want.) Tie the knot and freeze them! Cut and peel the balloon off once frozen. Put in a bucket outside and let your child explore! I used dinosaurs to make “Dino eggs” but I will probably use Rowan’s little Hatchimal things this go around. They get SO excited when the creature finally “hatches”! Talk about ice and temperatures, how it feels, how ice melts into water, opposites, etc.Learning through P L A Y 🧊 💦
Free Lucky Charms Graph fun way to talk about graphing, counting, sorting! 🍀 🌈 Rowan vs. Teaghan Outside Fun. 🌞 I’m sure I’ll do these a few times throughout the “break” and just change it up a bit. They can either bring the item on the back porch if they can pick it up, or bring me to what they find. You can add in Rhyming, opposites, textures. I think next week, I may do one solely based on length with the ruler and one that is a Sink/Float experiment. Rowan got this cute Melissa&Doug DIY Craft Purse as a birthday gift. If you have little girls.. mine both LOVED it! Works on fine motor and patterning.. and cooperative learning. 😬💕
Welp today went really great.. besides “quiet time” with Rowan. 🤨🤪 Teaghan finished a whole 100pc puzzle while Rowan put two pieces together of a 24pc and was over it. She then moved to a mosaic sticker activity.. and well same thing. 😅 soo plan B with her. She needs to work on strengthening her scissor skills so I put together a little bin for her to work on during independent Quiet Time aka nooo Mommy is not playing or helping you right now!! She also LOVES PlayDoh.. and it usually engages her interest for quite some time. She will not be getting all the extra toys out for PlayDoh but she can roll out snakes and cut them. I stuck other things in the bin that I found around the house… Plastic and paper straws. Ribbon. Bubble wrap. Drew a little face on TP rolls and paper bags so she can pretend she’s cutting hair! Card stock is much easier to cut for little ones, so any extra junk mail/flyers you get, save them! If this is something I want to last the rest of the week, I won’t put everything in the bin tomorrow. I’ll keep adding to it daily, to make it new and exciting for her. Anything she cuts, she can do right over top of the red bin so there’s little to no clean up. During the end of the week.. she can try out “special scissors” that cut different patterns. Young children should be working on scissor skills as it helps strengthen muscles in their hands and practicing skills that use bilateral coordination.
*note if your child is still learning how to hold scissors properly, this would not be ideal for them to do independently! Work one-on-one with them and assist as needed!
*Helpful Tip* place a sticker or draw a dot with marker on the thumb side up. They should be able to see the sticker/dot the entire time they are cutting!
Pretend they are an 🐊 “Two fingers on the bottom, one thumb on top.. open the mouth and go chomp, chomp, chomp”Stapler and hole-punch Fun. Same concept with strengthening fine motor! It’s been awhile since they have “played” with them, but they really enjoy it. Scraps of paper turn into some pretty creative designs.
Pumped for Preschool! 