Weekly Wrap Up: 4th of July Unit!

This week was pretty fun! We got to leave our curriculum behind and study our country's birthday. And we lived it up! Shhh dont tell the kids they were learning history, geography, and culture.

First, we started off with a couple books:



We received this book, If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution from another homeschool family and it was a great way to start out our 4th of July study. We didnt read the whole book, just the first few questions: Why did we go to war?, What was the Declaration of Independence?, and What did the King of England think of the Declaration of Independence?. This started our conversation about our freedom and the people that helped to fight for that freedom.



And then, we read Paul Revere's Ride-a great yard sale find :). This story is a classic, and is very well written, but I have to say it seemed to be hard to understand if you didnt already know the story. Charger fell asleep while we read it lol.



So then we watched Liberty's Kids' episode 'The First 4th of July.' Mustang LOVED it. The series is on Netflix and she has been begging me to watch all the episodes. Great way to spend a hot summer day-watching (and learning) history!!



We found the USA and England on our globe-Mini Cooper thought standing on the world was more fun.

We got hit with a crazy straight line storm-called a bow echo (I learned a lot this week). And thankfully, other then some crop damage, and a small cherry tree, or only loss was the internet for a couple of days (people in our area had damage to their homes, so we were very thankful). While we were without internet, I made a 4th of July printable pack that I put out on Tuesday. You can read about it here and here. It can be downloaded (FREE) here. We used my pack in addition to some great printables from 2 Teaching Mommies this week.

All of the adorable graphics in my pack came either from copyright free sources or from the package I purchased from Just So Scrappy.

Sensorial:




Poking toothpicks into floral foam. I got this idea from Counting Coconuts. She used real foam, a MUCH better idea. I have floral foam dust all over the classroom. It was a HUGE hit, either way! *this could be considered a pre-writing activity*



Clipping paper clips to the matching paper color.



The first to want to try this was Mini Cooper. I explained to her that she wasnt going to be able to do this tray, but she showed me that it can be more then a clipping activity-silly mommy. She went about simply laying the clips on the paper. She got every single one!



Mustang gave it a try as well, but Charger wouldnt touch it. It's interesting to see who wants to try what activities. One advantage to having 3 students, usually at least ONE person will try an activity so it's not a complete waste of time :).

Writing:


Charger had a lot of fun connecting the fireworks with this great printable from the 2 Teaching Mommies' pack. He also enjoyed covering the entire page with black marker afterwards. Hmph. LOL.






Another big hit-I found these patriotic cookie cutters at Walmart. I put them in a bin with white paper and colored pencils. The kids traced the cutters and colored in the pictures. Please excuse the black marker all over Charger's fingers...he worked on the fireworks matching page again this day, too.

Language:


Mustang worked on this 4th of July 3 part card set from my printable pack.



And then clipped the beginning sounds, also from my printable pack.



We played a rousing game of match the lowercase and uppercase letter stars. Mini Cooper was the winner, and she really impressed me when she was able to match the W's on her page without help! You can find 4 game boards and 24 letter stars in my printable pack.



Mini Cooper matched patriotic kids (my printable pack). This is a great pre-reading go together activity. Great for Tot School!



F is for Fireworks Magnet page from 2 Teaching Mommies. Obviously, this one was for Mini Cooper, but Mustang had a great time with it. Mini Cooper seems to be in the exploratory stage, Mustang in the mastery stage. I'm still not sure which stage Charger is at.

Math:


Charger counting a clipping cards from the 2 Teaching Mommies' pack. He really liked this one!



And after doing 'work' for awhile, the kids always seem to turn to our box of blocks. They build for a long time! I love watching them work together, and seeing the things they make. Charger built this tower and let Mini Cooper play with it.

.

Mustang came up with this pattern on her own.




They also love to put our peg people from the Godly Play boxes in the train and give them rides (see the Tower of Babel guy riding with Eve?).

We are linked up at (or will be):






And at Montessori Mondays on One Hook Wonder.

Have an awesome 4th of July weekend!! God Bless you!!

What's in the 4th of July Pack-Part 2

**If you downloaded the 4th of July pack yesterday, please note there was a small error with one of the games, I have updated the pack and it is right now. Sorry!**

As you probably read yesterday, I made up a few 4th of July printables to use with my kiddos, and share with you. The pack can be downloaded here and the first post about the pack (and pictures of some of the contents) is here.

The free pack includes:

*US flag cards 1-10 and star counters
*4th of July themed 3 part cards
*Patriotic kids matching game
*Counting puzzle
*S is for star sorting mat
*Beginning sound clip cards
*Uppercase/lowercase group matching game (4 game boards)

As you can see, the activities vary in skill level so that all of my children have a few activities in the pack. I have links to each activity in this post and the last if you prefer to just download one or two. Hope you enjoy it!

Uppercase/lowercase group matching game (4 game boards and letter stars)



We played this together during school yesterday and it was a HUGE hit!


Each player takes a mat that has stars on it. Each star has a lowercase letter.


When it is the player's turn, they take a star from the bowl/box/etc, and see if they have the matching letter on their mat.

The loose stars are all uppercase letters, so this helps with lowercase/uppercase matching.


I did find a huge OOPs on my own board while we were playing. I was only able to use 24 of the 26 letters of the alphabet, and got confused which ones I had chosen to use, so I had an x on my board and a Z in my hand, neither of which had a match lol. I have since fixed the file to have 2 X's :). Sorry about that! I was thankful that I got the messed up board because the kids loved filling theirs up.



Mini Cooper was the surprising winner, even though Mustang had a clear lead throughout most of the game. I hope your kids like this one as much as mine did! It can be played as a group, or as an individual filling all 4 mats.

Patriotic Kids Match Game



This game is much easier then any others in the pack. I made it specifically for Mini Cooper. It includes 8 matches-4 girls and 4 boys. For this one, I simply presented the game to her. If I were laying it out for a group, I would put self checking stickers on the backside.



She really loved finding the matches, but turns out that 8 matches were a little overwhelming for her. So, I narrowed it down to 4. First the girls.



Then the boys, then I mixed up 2 girls/2 boys etc and we played about 5 times before she was ready to move on.

S is for star sorting mat




No one has taken this off the shelf yet, so no action shots. It is a simple sorting mat for uppercase and lowercase letter S.

Counting puzzle


And this last one is a puzzle. Have your child put the flags in number order and it will create a picture. You may want to print this one on landscape, it seems to have cut off the side of mine when I printed on portrait. (Sorry still pretty new to this printable making thing).

I wanted to thank you all for the great response to the pack, I'm so excited that many of you are enjoying it! I hope to bring you more like this in the future.

Happy 4th of July!! and God Bless You!

4th of July Preschool and Kindergarten FREE Printable Pack

Did you miss me? Probably not, it's only been since Sunday, but it seems like an eternity. Why? Because we have been without Internet service! It could have been MUCH worse, so I wont complain much. We had a storm with 80 mph sheer winds tear through the area early Monday morning. It was quite crazy! I spent half an hour-at 1:30 am huddled in the basement with my kiddos. Thankfully, we didnt get much damage.

Unfortunately, the big city where we go for everything got HAMMERED. They are still in a state of emergency. We were without power for a few hours, but some in the area are still without power, and many without water. So, I was thankful that our only real loss was the Internet for a day and 1/2 (and some crop damage but we try not to think about that!).

So, what do you do when you are without Internet? Make printables of course lol. I downloaded some adorable graphics last week, but hadnt had a chance to do anything with them until yesterday. I had a great time and went overboard, but the kids seem to be enjoying them.

I dont have a photo of all the printables in one shot, but I will be highlighting a few in this post and few tomorrow so you can see what is inside (and print separately if you choose). The entire pack can be downloaded here.

So what's included?

*US flag cards 1-10 and star counters
*4th of July themed 3 part cards
*Patriotic kids matching game
*Counting puzzle
*S is for star sorting mat
*Beginning sound clip cards
*Uppercase/lowercase group matching game (4 game boards).



US Flag Cards and Counters This Montessori style printable includes 10 flag cards, numbered 1-10, and a sheet of 23 star counters. Print the star page twice and discard one star so that you have 55. I put stickers on the back of flags for self checking.




3 Part Cards Here is another Montessori activity. Set includes 10 4th of July themed images. Print 2 sets, leave one set together and cut the word from the pictures of the second set. Have your child match the combined card to first the picture and then the word. Help them read the words, this helps with vocabulary building.




Beginning Sounds Clip Cards I had Mustang work on these right after the 3 part cards, while the words were fresh in her memory. The object is to clip the first letter in each word. I put self checking stickers on the back of each card.

I hope you can find something in the pack that is useful to your family! If you are looking for printables, here are some other great places to find them:

2 Teaching Mommies (they used the same graphics I did on some of their printables, great taste!)
1+1+1=1
Counting Coconuts

Check back tomorrow for more of what is in this pack. Happy 4th of July (a little early). And God Bless!