Spring for Preschoolers - Part 2

The warmer temperatures and the sun shining nearly everyday are two big reminders that the school year is slowly but surely coming to an end. I am now multitasking (one of my favorite things) Adrian's current school curriculum with Zahavah's school themes for next year and thinking of Adrian's schooling situation for next school year. Overall, I do expect him to be home schooled a bit less as I plan on having him remain in German school longer (everyday, and including part of the afternoon) but my posts will still feature him (simply not as much; we'll see how much he wants to do). I do believe Zahavah will be featured a lot more in my posts come next school year though, so if you have a toddler,  you'll be delighted! :)

Planting "Silk" Baby's Breath Flowers into Playdough

Although I've seen this activity done here and there and with multiple variations, I remember the day I first saw it on Counting Coconuts as it it were yesterday. I so badly wanted Adrian to do it right away. Unfortunately, that didn't happen until now (1.5 year later) but look at the results! Well worth the wait, wouldn't you say? Picked up fake baby's breath flowers and clay pot at our local hardware store and set out the chocolate scented Tutti Frutti playdough we had on hand for the "soil". Adrian planted the flowers carefully and overall liked the activity but didn't go bonkers over it. I still consider it was a nice practice for when we step out and plant real flowers! :)

Before Adrian planted the Baby's Breath Flowers

Botany: Parts of a Flower

I looked long and large for free three parts cards on flowers and finally found some to my liking! :) I actually found LOTS of things to my liking at The Helpful Garden. If you like the Montessori Method and like freebies, you'll LOVE that blog as much as do. Anyhow, that's where I downloaded the cards from. The language for the flower is difficult so I brought in a real flower from our yard to make it more "concrete".

Practical Life: Buttoning Flowers/Petals onto "Pistils" Buttons

Buttoning and unbuttoning is part of life but it's still a bit of a struggle for Adrian so I prepared a soft felt sheet with three different sizes of flower buttons. I then prepared three different kinds of flowers to button and unbutton over the "pistil". He had no trouble whatsoever with that "board". Must have made it too easy... :)

Spring Flowers Clip Cards - Math & Fine Motor

One week that I linked up my post to another, I saw these beautiful Spring themed clip cards made by The Measured Mom. Couldn't resist getting my own set. They range from 0 to 20 so it was a great for my preschooler. Get your own set here and check out her other printables. She's got lots great stuff. I've already put aside some ladybug sheets for my bugs unit later this summer! :)

Spring Babies - Matching animal babies and mommies

Springtime is "baby time" for lots of animals. I am pretty sure Adrian matched farm animal babies and mommies earlier this year so I was looking for different animals this time. As it turns out 1+1+1=1 has a pretty big pack that includes farm animals as well as pets and zoo animals (labels included too!). I included all of them in our matching activity and it was great fun. Some were actually not that easy for Adrian (the duckling and chick can be tricky) but most were obvious to him. Ah...I guess he's getting older and ready to move on to tougher activities now! :(

Music: Composer of the Month - Vivaldi

April's Composer of the Month for us is Antonio Vivaldi. Having composed the most famous "Spring", I thought it'd be most appropriate. We talked a bit about Vivaldi first (check out Making Music Fun for a bit of information) and then, listened to "Spring" and "Summer" (why not?) while crafting. It was most enjoyable. I love classical music and Vivaldi is such light and playful music. I'm still trying to figure out "what to do" with our Composer of the Month. I feel like it should be better incorporated/heard more. Something I'll look into this summer while we're "on break". For now, I'm just happy I remember to add a composer every month! ;)

Flower Path - Getting a hold of our Pencil  Grip

A quick filler activity printed from 3Dinosaurs's Spring Pack; a Flower Path. There are several paths in the pack, I just picked this one. Just thought we'd get Adrian to work with his Grotto Grip again. :)

Moveable Alphabet Exercise...Not at all Spring Related but out this week anyway...

I've been doing quite a bit of shopping with the Montessori Print Shop lately. My latest acquisition is this series of Wooden Alphabet Cards (bought all three packs). We went through the entire first pack this week (90 cards!) and Adrian LOVED them. I must say from my point of view, the investment was well worth it. It was not expensive at all considering the work it would have taken for me to make these cards. I wished it came in "small" wooden alphabet version but since it didn't, I simply scaled the cards down to 80% and it fitted our small alphabet like it should.  It took no time so it's really not a problem if you have a small wooden alphabet like we do and want to purchase these cards as well. My only "complaint" is not even a complaint; some pictures were "difficult". It simply didn't come naturally to Adrian to think of "gas" upon seeing a "gas station tank" for example. I had to prompt him into getting the word out. I thought of it as a "language enrichment" activity as well...

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Your comments make my day ! 

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Thursday Toddler & Preschool, Tuesday Tots, Serenity Saturday, Discover and Explore, and We Made That.

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!

Spring for Preschoolers - Part 1

If you happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring has officially arrived now but has it shown any "real" signs yet in your area? It was a very slow start for us here in Germany but last week was the first week where we actually got to enjoy sun, warmth AND beautiful blooms all at once. An absolutely perfect week to host our Spring themed week for Adrian, 4.5 years old.

Cherry Blossom Craft

Aren't cherry blossom trees just magnificent? I know they have already gone through their peak in many places but ours hasn't even started blooming yet. *sigh* I had to remind Adrian of how beautiful our tree was last year and show him pictures before we started this craft to inspire him. To make this, you'll need black paint (we used washable tempera), straw, liquid glue (we used washable glue), and two tones of pink silk paper cut in small strips. Although I came up with the idea of having Adrian do a cherry blossom craft myself, the technique itself was borrowed from Meet the Dubiens with a little twist. They blowed the paint on their paper to make the tree trunk and branches and well, Adrian couldn't really get good shapes with the blowing so instead, I showed him how to paint with the straw. As for the rest, he crumpled the silk paper strips and dipped them in glue once the tree was dry and glued them on the branches.

"Pot Pourri" Smelling Pouches

Spring always had a special smell to me. Maybe it's because of Spring cleaning or maybe it's because of the flowers. I'm not sure but I thought it'd be nice to bring in some olfactory activity in for the Spring week. I quickly picked the scent of lavender, lemon and orange to represent Spring. At my local Bargain store, I found a small bottle of lavender oil, then I had some lemon extract on hand and an orange I could use some peel for a good scent. The pouches were actually something I also had. They are spice bags for making bouquet garni. They can be washed after use so they were perfect. To assemble the bags, I put a few drops of oil/extract on one cotton pad and put it in the bag. As for the orange, I grated the peel and put it on the pad making sure there was enough to get a smell. I made two bags of each so they could be matched. Adrian sniffed one bag at a time and then tried to find its counterpart. He eventually had them all matched successfully. I personally chose not to put more than three bags out. I feel like sniffing any more than 3 can make things overwhelming for the nose. 

Smelling Pouches Preparation

Tulip Phonograms - Looking for the Intruder

Phonograms were quite popular for Easter so I brought them back for Spring with this cute tulip mat. It could obviously be done with any word family but I went with "at". I made all the combinations I could think of and then added one that did not exist. Adrian's task was to create the words and read them along. I told him he'd find one flower that did not represent a real word and he'd have to find out which. After trying all the flowers, he proudly handed me the flower "j". I am one proud mama. Original tulip mat idea: Little Family Fun.

Spring Flower Nomenclature

Fresh off the presses are my Spring Flower Nomenclature cards including mostly what you'll currently find in our backyard (or what you will soon find anyway) As usual, some cards are not pictured. My goal was for Adrian to know the names of the most common Spring flowers but also to know the names of the ones that grow in our our yard.

Our backyard Crocus! :)

Spring Cleaning

I had not intended for Adrian to do any Spring cleaning around the flowers actually but as it turns out, Adrian desperately wanted to get rid of the cobwebs in the trees and on the fence prior to completing any flower picking required for our next activity...I really had brought out the broom only for our garden house porch sweeping activity as part of our practical life tasks "classified" under "Spring cleaning" (along with painting the fence with water)! :)

Matching flower cards and flowers + counting petals

Once Adrian was finished with the never-ending cobwebs removal, he quickly picked one specimen of each flower found in our yard. These were brought inside for identification. All our cards were spread on the table for Adrian to match flowers with the cards. As you can see, last week, we had some crocus in a variety of colors, some snowdrops and some scillas. Since then, snowflakes appeared, daffodils, and bluebells. Our tulips and hyacinth are slowly but surely under way...

Spring block patterning

A beloved activity this week was this block patterning activity. I printed a few templates at Prekinders and cut out from foam sheets the needed shapes to make two different types of flowers, this caterpillar and butterfly. Adrian chose one of the templates and simply had to reproduce the  flower or bug he picked with the foam shapes. Adrian loved it so much that I'll be printing more templates for next week based on our "By the Pond" unit...

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Your comments make my day ! 

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Thursday Toddler & Preschool, Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, Hammock Tracks' Look What We Did, Life's Little Adventures, Artsy Play Wednesday, Serenity Saturday, Full Hands Full Hearts, Discover and Explore, and We Made That.

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!