Winter Week for Preschoolers - Part 3

Winter Week is winding down and so is winter in general it seems. Snow turned into rain here and there is now nothing left for sledding and snowmen. Thankfully, the kids spent quite a bit of time outdoors enjoying the wonders of winter sports and leisure. I present here the remainder of the indoor school activities Adrian and I worked on in this end of January.

 

Free the Penguins - Addition

Ooo. I was so excited to try this mat! I found it on mathwire and they had a variety of penguin mats (perfect for winter!). I chose the "sum of two dice" mat for Adrian and he was quite happy to try it out. Anything with dice gets his immediate attention. I like that this was a different die game. Two dice had to be rolled and then Adrian had to count the dots on both dice. That number would free the penguin on that ice floe! Now the penguins did not come with the mat so I had to research some clipart but it was worth it.  I printed mine thanks to Best Clipart Blog.

Snowflake & Scissors

Well this turned out to be a bit more complex than I thought it would be. I remember making snowflakes when I was a kid but making beautiful snowflakes requires lots of folding and as such the paper is so thick that even I had a tough time cutting through. As such, I folded Adrian's in half only and his snowflake was a minimalist one, not nearly as intricate as mine. Maybe a coffee filter would have been better! Adrian's scissor work is still in its early stages so the circle guidelines I had drawn became triangles as well.. Not quite ready for non sharp cuts yet.

Snowflake Pattern Making

THE brilliant idea I wish I had come up with! My patterns are always with stamps and stickers it seems and then there's this: felt snowflake making with pattern cards! Duh! Why didn't I think of that? Thankfully, Making Learning Fun did for me and the rest of us. There was still quite a bit of work involved, namely prepping the cards and cutting all the snowflake parts but it was SO worth it and Adrian quite enjoyed it. He likes novelty in school and that quite struck his fancy. I saw this idea on My Montessori Journey and followed the link back to Making Learning Fun to get the patterns.

Melt-an-ice-cube Game

I really wish we would have had time to do this game but we did not and since it was not as educational as some other activities, I had told myself I would put it out as a bonus IF we had time.  We did not. There's always next year anyway.  If you have time though, feel free to melt your own ice cubes and tell me what we missed! :) Instructions were found with the idea at My Montessori Journey (instructions were linked directly from MMJ to Humingbirded).

Go Sledding and Enjoy the rest of winter!