Zoo Week for Preschoolers - Part 1

When planning a zoo week for Adrian, I knew it would involve more science than usual. I guess it's ok in a way. He loves science and in other units, we don't get to incorporate it as much. One thing is sure zoo week was well liked and a trip to the zoo is now pending! :)

Homemade Zoo Cards & Fun Facts

I actually made these cards last summer in anticipation for our annual zoo visit. I wanted to make sure Adrian would be able to identify most zoo animals he'd encounter and I also wanted to get him excited about this outing. It worked and I am glad I got to re-use these beautiful picture cards in school. I made them mostly using National Geographic pictures. I find they always provide such beautiful photographs on their website. For facts, I also relied on National Geographic as well as Encyclopedias we have here. I tried to stick to what the animals eat, what continent they originate from as well as a fun tidbit that would make the animal memorable to Adrian. For example, I put down that the giraffe had a bluish-purple tongue. He thought it was so strange! :)

Sorting : Farm or Zoo Animals?

Let's face it: there are lots of animals out there and it can get confusing for children, especially now that zoo have petting zoos. Are there really "proper" zoo animals? I guess not. A zoo is really just a place where animals are kept in an enclosure and shown off to visitors. Sure zoos tend to have more wild species than farm / domestic animals but nothing prevents zoo owners from adopting ducklings and kitty cats for their next exhibits. :) Now, our activity was to sort the Jumbo Animals from Learning Resources into two groups; Farm and Zoo Animals. Adrian did an excellent job and had no trouble spotting who went where. I tried my best to explain why farm animals were considered "farm animals" and why zoo animals had become "zoo animals". This activity was adapted from My Montessori Journey's.

How Monkeys Remain Off the Grounds

Some monkeys rarely hit the grounds running. They'd rather stay up in the trees. Now, monkeys have hands and feet like we do but clearly, there is no path in between trees. How do they get around? How do they go from branch to branch? From tree to tree? Our "monkey" helped us demonstrate how it's done. He slid on a branch that went from tree one to tree two that had an incline. He used his hands alternatively to grab the branch. He used his feet. He swung as well when he wanted to go faster. He even jumped from one branch to another when he couldn't reach with his long arms. Overall, Adrian thought it was an interesting lesson and enjoyed moving the monkey around and trying to figure out how to make monkey reach its destinations.

Stacking Monkeys

These stacking monkeys are a bit basic for Adrian but still fun. (They're actually Zahavah's monkeys).  I thought he may make more complex stacking structures today but....I was wrong. He put the monkeys in the holes and that was it. I showed him a more complex building of monkeys (see above) and thought it might inspire him to build something more advanced or higher but nope. Next! :) By the way, these are made by Lauri, one of my favorite toy companies. I had eyed them for Adrian but never bought them for him. Bought him the toddler tote instead a few years ago (what a hit that was...is). Baby Z got these for Christmas though and I was so happy! 

Fine Motor & Art: Striping a Zebra with a Q-Tip

Drawing lines is very basic. It's something your child will do around their what? 2nd birthday or something like that? Anyhow, we're still working on making beautiful lines here, both vertical and horizontal (as well as staying within the lines) so I thought a good way to practice would be to paint some stripes on a zebra! I even brought out our zebra figure as a model so the stripes could be painted in the "right" direction. I think it looks awesome, what do you think? Want to try it? Get a blank zebra at Mithmeoi.

* * *

This post was shared at Discover and Explore.

Knights, castles and dragons for Preschoolers - Part 2

Living in Europe does have its advantages when it comes to teaching a child about medieval times. If Adrian were any older, he'd probably be delighted by the jousting tournaments Germany offers (yes, they are back!), the history found in various museums and be surprised to hear that the plague completely wiped the human race from the area we currently live in. For now, he simply enjoys the festival with the "costumes" and the beautiful castles.

Hohenschwangau Castle, Germany - A Medieval Castle we visited last fall



Building a wood castle for our knight

Most families have wooden blocks of some kind. We were gifted these beautiful natural wood blocks made by Melissa & Doug one or two years ago. They do not get that much playtime but if I bring them out along with ideas, then they do. The task that day was to build a castle for a knight and a "cave" for a dragon. Adrian quite enjoyed having our Fisher-Price plastic knight visit the wooden castle after.

Counting & Poking Swords

Jolanthe, at Homeschool Creations, makes beautiful FREE preschool packs I use once in a while. I don't like worksheets per se but I'll use bits here and there. The numbers and knight cards you see above were part of her Knights package. I taped the numbers and knights together and taped them to a toothpick I then inserted into a styrofoam board. I also put plastic sword toothpicks into a bowl and let Adrian poke them in a row in front of each number. They represented, I said, the quantity of swords the knights needed in their castle.

A knight in shining armor - Tin foil knight craft

This picture does not make it justice but it truly was a nice craft to make for a preschooler. I personally pre-cut the shapes since foil is so easily torn but I let Adrian crumple the foil for the feet, hands, knees and elbows. He's also the one who glued all the parts in place, including the sword (pipe cleaner), feather and eyes (pink construction paper with two black dots). Wanna make one as well? Check out the template at Busy Bee Crafts! That is where we got ours and where the idea for the craft came from. By the way, Busy Bee Crafts has a few more medieval crafts your kids might enjoy. We thought about building our own catapult for the activity listed next but in the end, ran out of time and used the one we already had...

Catapult testing - how far, how high, and adjusting to reach targets

I pretty much knew this would be well loved.  I did not want it to be simple catapulting though. I did want to involve more physics and understanding of how catapults were used back in the Middles Ages. Our first test involved calculating the distance our pompoms were going and how to make it go far and how to keep it close (see masking tape pieced on the grounds?). Then we tried to make it go high and then tried to keep it low. Finally, I asked Adrian if he could figure out how to hit our targets (the mixing bowls on the grounds). It didn't take him long to figure out the catapult should be aligned  with the targets to be effective! Now we own a catapult thanks to a Fisher-Price Little People Play 'N Go Castle set but I initially intended to build a catapult with Adrian following the instructions given on Busy Bee Crafts. See link above.

Making a "medieval" stained glass window

Stained glass became quite popular during the Middle Ages and I thought it would be kind of fun to do a "kid" version of stained glass. That usually means using "contact" paper or waxed paper but we had just done that for Valentine's Day so I decided to let Adrian paint the windows. Yep. I wasn't sure I wasn't gonna regret my decision but I had read that writing on a vertical surface might help his pencil grip so the incentive was there. Turns out, Adrian LOVED painting the windows.  He wasn't sure he should at first and hesitated knowing I'd normally say this wasn't allowed. I made sure I explained this was a one-time thing. We used liquid washable tempera paint mixed with dish soap. Once it was dried, I washed it off with water and had no trouble getting it off at all. I encouraged Adrian to draw but he really just wanted to paint and spread colors all over.

Sponge-printed castle - Art & Fine Motor

Fine motor skills and art? Absolutely. Other than a good pencil grasp, there is also the tiny sponges that can get involved! Today I cut a tiny sponge from a much bigger kitchen sponge for Adrian to use on this white crayon castle (pre-drawn by...me! No laughing!). The idea was to make "brick prints". Of course, with a preschooler, bricks might not look so much like bricks because they like to dip their sponges into A LOT of paint but if you can convince your child to dip lightly and to print often instead of dipping every time, you may have beautiful bricks on your castle, especially if they are spaced instead of all stacked on top of one another. I tend to emphasize the process over the product with my kids so to me, Adrian's castle was great. I love that he finished it (not a small task with a tiny sponge and that he printed instead of smeared the paper like he could have). The idea for this castle was adapted from  Deep Space Sparkle who did the project with older kids and included more steps.

Knights, Castles and Dragons for Preschoolers - Part 1

Dragons? Yes, I hesitated grandly before coming up with a mini-unit that would include a fantasy component. After all, Dr. Montessori was not exactly known to make room for these. Part of me understands why but part of me also thinks it's sad. I find fairy tales somewhat traditional and feel like my son should at least be aware of what a dragon is. Now that he is nearing 5 years old, I feel like he is well grounded in reality and that he knows certain creatures were made up by someone else's imagination. Sure he can create his own "monsters" and most certainly the real world is big enough for a 4.5 year old to discover but I still liked the idea of incorporating a tiny bit of dragon into this thematic. Hey, doesn't the Komodo Dragon exist after all? ;)

Making old pennies can shine like new

The background story given to Adrian was that a knight wanted his shining armor to be shiny again but before handing it to us, he wanted to make sure we could make it shine. As such, we would practice on cents. Being that we are in the E.U., we used Euros but American and Canadians pennies (did you guys keep some?) will work as well and other high content copper coins from other countries would as well. You'll need some salt and vinegar. I was out of regular vinegar so I used apple-cider vinegar (thus the yellowish color in the glass) and it worked just fine. The pennies don't need to soak long at all and Adrian liked to dip for 5 seconds and check the line the solution had made on the penny before sending the coin to the bottom of the glass. For full instructions, check out the link under the 2 pictures.

Can you guess which cents were cleaned and which weren't?

Can you guess which cents were rinsed and which weren't?

Ok. So the rinsed cents did not leave any residue on the paper towel and the ones that were no rinsed sadly didn't leave much behind either. It just remained on the coins themselves...which is still cool since the cents were quite colorful when we flipped them over. Adrian thought the rinsing versus non-rinsing changed nothing at first but when he turned the coins over, THERE was a different after all! 

Instructions and extensions to this activity can be found on Exploratorium's Website. 

"Metal" working - Hammering textures in aluminum foil

Is texture rubbing popular in your house? We haven't done it here except with leaves but I thought we could do something similar with aluminum foil and a toy hammer and pretend we were working metal like in the Middle Ages. It was actually not very easy to find textures that would hammer well. We either have a very smooth home or hammering textures is much harder than rubbing them with crayons. The activity itself was still fun but I felt like I was looking for textures more than Adrian was.

Close-up of our results

"Castle and Sun" by Paul Klee

Being that we were doing a unit about the Middle Ages, I thought I'd sneak in our first Artist. About time, right? We've been doing art a lot but not appreciating it much. I am now aiming to do it once a month. For this month, I picked Paul Klee and his "Castle and Sun" painting. Adrian and I first looked at Klee's work through a slideshow at Wikipaintings.org. We discussed how he liked to use shapes and looked at the colors he liked. We talked about Klee himself and how he lived in Germany like we do. I then showed Adrian the "Castle and Sun" painting. I had printed that one. I made sure not to mention the name of the painting to Adrian and then asked him to tell me what he thought it was about. We talked about the shapes Klee used, the colors, the sizes, how he filled the frame of the picture and so on. In the end, I presented a black sheet and tray filled with pre-cut shapes. Adrian was then asked to make his own "Castle and Sun". I first saw this idea of My Montessori Journey. I saw it done with chalk too and the results are always beautiful.

Crown Jewels - Counting Gems

A little counting activity I saw on Our Montessori Home. Really easy and basic for Adrian but I didn't have enough gems to make it more challenging. The size of certain jewels made it difficult though! :) Off to buy more gems! :)

"Pin" pushing / "Slaying the Dragon"

Hmm. I didn't tell Adrian we'd be slaying the dragon actually. It sounded too violent to me so I actually told him we'd pierce the dragon's heart with a sword to turn him into a nice dragon because there was a "nice dragon" serum on the tip of the sword. :) He made sure not to miss and inserted the tip of the sword into the heart of every dragon. I found this clipart on Best Clipart Blog and the sword toothpicks at a dollar store back in the U.S.

Sharpening Jousting Lances...aka pencils

Well this was the first time Adrian sharpened a pencil. I quickly realized that 3 was way too many! :) 1 was enough and it took a while and lots of encouragement. I found it was a GREAT hand strengthening exercise though. Will have to do it again. I pretended these pencils were jousting lances in need of sharpening for the jousting tournament. Cute, eh?

Stay tuned for another post on knights, castles and dragons later this week!

* * *

Discover and Explore, and No Time for Flashcards