Printable Lunch Note Cards | MapleSeeds Home Blog

Anyone else get a little depressed this time of year?? How about a little pick me up, especially for the little people in your lives! I whipped up some printable lunch cards today. These would be great for your kids, but you could put them in your spouses's lunches also :)

Click HERE to get them!

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Preschool Bean counter | MapleSeeds Home Blog

Here's something we did last year for Pre-school (yup just getting around to blogging it now!)

I just took an egg carton, and numbered each section, then let little L count some dried beans into each one.

 Hard to believe he is in Kindergarten now! :(

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Homeschool: Volume

In the morning we talked about different volume measurements and colored, cut and pasted Mr. Volume Robot from HERE.

In the afternoon I was feeling a little Montessori and decided to break out a HUGE bag of rice and the measuring cups!

We talked about the different sizes of measurement and they had great fun playing in the rice!

Nothing a good vacuum cleaner can't clean up! :)

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Printable: Math Dot Helper

Math has become a bit monotonous around here lately, so I've been trying to make things fun and give my first grader a few different strategies for adding and subtracting.

Here is my Math Dot Helper printable! You can print this and have your child place it in front of them when they are doing some math facts. Instead of counting on their fingers you can teach your child to used the dots inside the numbers and eventually transfer this to the numbers on their worksheets!

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Spiral Math Fact Race Game

I have to thank TIPS blog for this game idea!! We didn't glue the cards to a poster board like she did, that way I thought we could change it up every time we played! The game was a big hit with my kids, although we may need a few lessons on sportsmanship and being a good sport even if you lose! Competitiveness runs in our family :). 

Here is what you need to play!

• 1 dice
• 1 deck of cards
• start and finish labels (optional)
• markers (we just used whatever the kids wanted, Lego man, blocks and a pencil sharpener)

First decide if you are doing addition or subtraction facts. Roll the dice and move forward in the spaces between the cards. Have the kids say the whole number sentence out loud for practice. First one to the end wins! 

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Who's on the Money US Currency

 We're learning about money again! In the past we learned about what money was worth, this time we are learning who is on the money and why! I whipped up some printable work sheets for filling in information. I plan on getting some books from the library and also doing some internet searches with my first grader so we can find the answer to who is on the money?! Since we are Canadian's living in the USA, I plan on making some Canadian currency sheets also! Stay tuned for those! 

You can download the COINS, BILLS and BILLS 2 for yourself! :)

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Set the Table Place Mat Printable!

Our unit study coming up this week is Manners!! We will be learning table manners as part of our study this week and I thought proper table manners and proper table setting would go great together! My kids often "set" the table but most of the time it looks like the preschooler did it. You can print off the 2 halves of this place mat, stick them together and use them as a guide for a simple place setting! Enjoy! 

Place mat 

Link to left half here  (click the picture):

Right half:

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The Lorax Unit

Head on over to Sub Hub to get their FREE printable Lorax unit and Mustache printable!!

We also had a Lorax snack!

Here are a few more great snack ideas!
Brown Barbaloots
The Lorax and Truffula Trees

We also made a paper Lorax and W did some descriptive writing:

More Lorax writing (from Sub Hub):

And then we planted some seeds! (peas and spinach, not Truffula Trees!).

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Volcanos! Part 2

We continued or volcano unit with this fun mini coloring book from Crayola! And some volcano coloring pages for L (preschool).

We took out our big maps and looked at where volcanoes are located all around the world using this map as a reference.

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Volcanos! Part 1

This week we are learning about Volcanos!

Here are some of the resources we are using this week!

Check out the Winecup Christian Academy for their Kindergarten volcano unit!

Today we watched these videos about volcanos and made volcano art! (pictured above).

• Erupting Volcano
• Mount Kilaiea - Hawaii
• Lava

Stay tuned for more molten fun!

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Marshmallow Painting and money!

Yesterday we did some Marshmallow painting! I thought it was going to be pretty sticky and messy but it was actually the easiest clean up! 

We have been learning about money, the different types and worth. Here is a great printable from Activity Mom!! It's so cool I might have to make one for Canadian money! :)

 Enjoy!

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Preschool Prewriting Activities!

Before we started School this year I had no idea that was such a thing as prewriting activities! I jumped right into writing with tracing letters and numbers. It was a bit discouraging to my kindergardener who was reluctant to write. Enter prewriting! This is where your youngster can trace or make shapes with their hands to get used to those motor skills that are used in writing!

In the picture about, my middle guy is using a sheet that I made up in Word and laminated. We use a dry erase marker or his finger to trace over the lines and shapes (as you can see by the marker on his face!).

Here are some sources for some great prewriting ideas!

• Confessions of  Homeschooler
• Montessori n'such We've done this with rice
• Kindertastic
• Shirley's Preschool Activities  - this site has lots of gross and fine motor skill activities.

What rewriting activités do you like to do with your preschooler?

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Diagraphs Free Printable

We are working on Digraphs this week, fancy word for blends.

Here is a great download for working on TH, CH, and SH. Who could resist those cute penguins.

Penguin Digraph Download

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David and Goliath

The account of David and Goliath is one of my favorite stories in the bible. I love it because it is an example of a fearless spirit and trust in God when your circumstances seem impossible.

This week 1 Samuel 17 is going to be our Bible focus. I think it is important for boys to see examples of strong leadership in the Bible. Granted the Bible is full of screw up sinners (just like the rest of us), but this is one story that shows Biblical character and strength in God.

Here's a look at some of the activities we did this week!

Printable worksheets from DLTK!

Goliath was estimated to be about 9' 4" tall! That's HUGE! We took a look at how BIG Goliath actually was!

 Our life sized Goliath drawing!

Check out this fun vintage cartoon about David and Goliath.

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What We Did This Week: Space!

This week our theme was Space! I have to say it was one of the boy's favorites from the first half of the year. As usual we got some books from the library, our two favorite books were:

• I can read about Planets, by Darrow Schecter
• Space Shuttles, by Gregory L. Vogt

My kids are pretty young, 5 and 3 so we tried to keep it simple. We learned about planets and did some coloring worksheets from Allkidsnetwork.com, and we used a string to learn about orbit, I'll explain below!

On the day we learned about the space shuttle, we painted a picture of a rocket with sparkly stars!

Lately, instead of getting W to practice writing his ABC's I've been getting him to write out words that are part of the theme from that week. He is doing great and getting some sight learning in as well!

Check out some of these great videos from You Tube that we watched about the space shuttle! I just went to the site and typed in Space Shuttle

• Space Shuttle Launch
• Recovery of Shuttle Boosters

Here is a fun activity we did to learn about a planet's orbit!  All you need is a string and two people. One person stands still and will be the "sun" or "planted" that is being circled. The other person takes the string and holding onto the other end walks around the other person. This shows how an orbit always stays the same (for the most part).

If your kids are a little older you could make a planet mobile and experiment with a flashlight and ball to show day and night.

Have fun!

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School Magnet Board

You can thank Pinterest once again for this idea! This is our "school board".  It is a place that we can display our work for the week, without having to stick things to the wall!

I purchased an oil drip pan from a local auto parts store, it was about $10. Basically it is like a great big cookie sheet! I mounted it to the wall with some 3M Command Damage free hanging strips. They are like Velcro, one part sticks to the wall, one to the board and you Velcro it to the wall! We just grabbed some magnets that were on the fridge, but I am hoping to make some with the boy's initials on them. They think it's great and they get to show Daddy all the things they did that day when he gets home from work!

I also used my handy dandy laminator and made a dry erase sign that we could write our theme of the week on. It's mounted on the top of the board.

How do you display your kids school work??

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What We Did This Week: Fire Safety and Armor of God

This was our first week of doing a routine for school. We learned about fire safety this week. We used some ideas from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Fire Safety post. It was great!

Using candles, a spray bottle, a cup and a lighter we discussed what fire needs to "live". We showed what happened when you the the HEAT away by spraying the fire with water. We looked at what happens when the FUEL is gone (let the candle burn down to the bottom and it burns out). We also looked at what happens when AIR is taken away from a flame, it goes out!

The kids thought it was really neat to watch the flame extinguish when the cup was over the candle.

We also made a map of our house and talked about where all the exits were (doors and windows). We practiced a fire drill with the whole family (this is a great way to check your batteries, we noticed that one of our smoke detectors needed a new battery). We also practiced STOP, DROP and ROLL. We also got several books from the library about fire safety. We were hoping to get to the local fire department to see the trucks, but they weren't open when I called, another time.

This was the baby's newest trick this week. Crawling over then under the stool bar and getting stuck!

Our scripture for this week was Ephesians 6:13-17. I thought talking about protection in scripture was fitting for safety week! It is a bit of an abstract idea for young children so we got a little hands on! First we got a huge piece of paper (you could also do this small scale with a small outline of a person and make paper doll like clothes).

We traced each of the kids:

And let them decorate themselves:

Then everyday during the week we made and decorated each piece of the armor of God:

The SWORD of the SPIRIT, the SHIELD OF FAITH, the BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, the SHOES OF PEACE, the BELT OF TRUTH and the HELMET OF SALVATION.  

They thought it was great fun!

Today was our free day, sketch books and "school pictures" as well as a field trip to the pool!

Did you do "school" with your kids this week?

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