Tot School and Preschool Wrap Up Letter D for Duck Bird Theme

Following the Tot School plans from 1+1+1=1, we moved forward to letter D for Duck and learned about birds.

Trays used this week 

Bird matching.  This came from the bird {free} pack at 3 Dinosaurs.

Using the same pack, I made a size sorting tray.  

Instead of using the sorting mat in the pack, I made little nests from construction paper.  Explorer called them bowls.  I'm not that crafty!

These were supposed to be used for patterning, I think.  But I did a sort and count tray for Mini Cooper.  Printables are also from the 3 Dinosaurs pack.  

 This one is not related to our bird theme, but is great for winter.  I found the snowflakes at the Dollar Tree (they are ornaments), and I wrote a number of 0-9 on each.  Mini Cooper counted out beads to go with each.  Explorer matched one to one, placing a bead in the center of each.

Bird themed puzzles from Discovery toys.

Montessori Materials used this week

Explorer worked with the pink tower this week.  I always love watching this material in action!

Mini Cooper had her second presentation of the teens boards.

We also brought out the teens hanger.

The letter d sandpaper letter was introduced.  The sound disks are from The Helpful Garden.

Explorer has been tracing letters all week.

And, we joined the big kids making play-dough landforms and using our water beads with them.

Learning Toys

Our Melissa and Doug alphabet train puzzle was a big hit (though it required the girls to share-not such a big hit).

Melissa and Doug spelling puzzles.

 Duck lacing cards, and Lauri puzzles (I chose just the duck and bird puzzles for this week).

Printables, books & more

We used printables from 1+1+1=1's D is for Duck tot pack.

We read Have You Seen Birds?  by Jeanne Oppenheim

We attempted to make bird art with our fingerprints, but she just wanted to put her fingerprint all over the paper.  That worked too.

Last, but not least, thanks to a large snowstorm this week, we all enjoyed some snow ice cream.  Yummy!!

It was a great week and we had a lot of fun!  We've also been enjoying the beginning of the Olympics.  This next week, we will be doing the very typical and timely theme of Valentine's Day :).

Hope you had a great week!

God Bless,

Lisa

Products we used (or wished we had to use) this week.  This widget contains Amazon Affiliate links.

Nature Lessons: A September Walk {Bird Unit}

For our nature lessons this year, I found a great online {free} resource to use as our guide, Nature Stories for Children. It is an older, copy write free, text and is made available online from the Children's Books Online Rosetta Project. They have a lot of wonderful texts there. I highly recommend checking it out sometime!

The text asks which bird makes more noise, a Robin or a Blackbird. To answer this question, we had to listen to their songs. Nicole at Tired, Need Sleep, provided a link to a great website called eNature.com. There, we were able to listen to a recorded mp3 of both a robin and a blackbird. We decided the blackbird was much louder. The kids enjoyed being able to hear the robins and blackbirds on our nature walk.

Nicole also made up a fantastic bird card printable. I put the cards on a binder ring and we take it with us on our nature walks. To be fair, we scare off any birds within about 75 yards of us when we walk {its hard to be quiet with a 1 year old, 2 year old and 5 year old}, but we are ready with our identification cards if we see a bird that is flying away as fast as its little wings will take it!

Two of the books we used in this lesson were "Now I Know Birds" from Troll and "Usborne First Nature Birds." Both were excellent, but Now I Know Birds was perfect for Mustang and Charger. Just the right amount of information for their short attention spans.


I found some parrot crafts in the clearance section of Hobby Lobby, so we made them. This gave us the chance to discuss the parts of a bird a little more.

Mustang also started her nature journal this week. I asked her to draw something about her lesson. She asked me for the ring of bird cards and this is what she did.




I was quiet impressed.

Our lesson is linked up at Homeschool Creation's Preschool Corner. Lots of great mommas link up their extremely creative ideas there! Check it out!