The Adventures of Bear: June 2011

Preventing the Summer Slide

>> Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Here is a quick read on interesting ways to keep your children learning through the summer.

Hundred Board and Number Bond Math Games

>> Monday, June 27, 2011

I've been trying to play more math games with Bear. She loves games and she loves her hundred board, but I wanted her to do something more than just lay the tiles in order starting from 1. She had tried dumping the tiles out and placing them as she turned them over, but alone, it was a bit frustrating and she often forgot to keep track of both the tens and the ones, so she'd have the tile in the correct tens row, but not the correct ones column, or vice versa.

By turning this into a two player game, in which we took turns drawing a tile, I was available to give her little clues and reminders to place her tiles in the right place. It involves a lot of thinking skills to place 76 in the right spot on an empty board!

Another game we've played a few times is Tens Go Fish. Instead of trying to get matching pairs of numbers, we're looking for pairs of numbers that make ten. Bear needs lots of practice with this so I leave out a "cheat sheet" of number bond cards I printed from Twinkl (the cards in the forefront with the red line at the top).

At the end of the game, she likes to lay out all the pairs and say the addition sentence (2+8=10).

linked to Math Mondays @ Love2learn2day.

Montessori Tot School - still on the ocean theme

>> Sunday, June 26, 2011

Grinding Chalk.

Making prints by squirting paint on one side of a piece of a pre-folded paper and then folding and revealing the painting. The big reveal was the highlight of this activity.

Turning lids over with a small spatula. I stuck ocean stickers under them to add a point of interest.

Some ocean themed trays using Carisa's letter J printables from 1+1+1=1. Green tray: Coloring (J-jo attempted it with me telling him which to color what color, but Bear did the actual coloring you see). Pink tray: Hole reinforcer stickers over the J's on the jellyfish. J-jo liked this one. Yellow Tray: stamping J on the jelly fish printout. Our stamps are a little small (perfect for Bear though as a replacement for the moveable alphabet) and J-jo struggles with holding them correctly.

Hard at work on his favorite of the three trays.

Reading a counting book downloaded from 1+1+1=1 - I think this one is from her ocean's lapbook.

He also pulled the presentation tray of the geometric cabinet down and used it as a knob puzzle.

linked to Tot School at 1+1+1=1 and to Montessori Mondays at One Hook Wonder.

Ocean Bibliography

>> Saturday, June 25, 2011

Shells, Shells, Shells by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace - I love all her books. They are so informational, yet read like a story.

Amos and Boris by William Steig a great classic of a mouse stranded at sea who gets helped by a whale and then promises to help the whale if ever he needs it. But how would a mouse ever be able to help a whale?

The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown

One White Wishing Stone A Beach Day Counting Book by Doris Gayzagian - a beautifully illustrated book

Hello Ocean Hola Mar by Pamela Munoz Ryan - a story about the sensory experiences one has at the beach. The child in the book hears the sea, tastes it, smells it, feels it. Full of imagery and descriptive words. And it rhymes. One I'd like to own as I can see poetry, grammar, and imagery lessons stemming from it. Our copy from the library was bilingual, which was an other plus.

Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae is the perfect fun book to learn a tad about lots of sea animals.

Swimmy by Leo Lionni

I am a Whale: The Life of a Humpback Whale by Darlene R. Stille

A Beach Tail by Karen Lynn Williams

Ten Little Fish by Audrey Wood - a counting book more for J-jo.

Seashells by the Seashore by Marianne Berkes - replete with stunning watercolor illustrations. It's a counting book, but it is a rhyming story as well. It was enjoyed by both children a lot. Another one I'd like to own.

Seaweed Soup by Stuart J. Murphy - a Mathstart book about sets. It's a fun one to act out and "play" at. We made seaweed soup by using green tissue paper and crepe paper.

Out of the Ocean by Debra Frasier - the book that began our month long study of oceans. The illustrations are mixed media and the story is of a boy who is told by his mother that "you can ask the ocean to bring you something." But the things the mother asks for are things that the sea already gives - sand, sun, water. It's a book about looking and seeing what's right there in front of you.

linked to WMCR at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns.

Godly Play - Noah's Ark

>> Sunday, June 19, 2011

The script can be found here. This Flickr stream has great ideas for play sets for Godly Play. Here are the two parts of her Noah's Ark set.

We do a memory verse for every story and our memory verse for Noah's Ark is

Do everything without complaining or arguing. Philippians 2:14

We don't have a Noah's ark playset and I wasn't sure that I wanted to purchase one. But I easily made one with two boxes. I used a small box and a soap box covered in brown construction paper.

Cutting a flap into one end of the ark and putting a pipe cleaner loop as a handle, we were able to open and close the ark to put the animals and Noah into it.

We used animals from our farm. We found we had two of a lot of farm animals. I would have liked to include a better representation of animals, but I was being frugal.

Here the animals are coming out of the ark and Noah has built an altar to God.

We used three rocks to make the altar. You can also see our "olive branch" and "dove". I ended up replacing the small twig for a small piece of pipe cleaner because that twig was so small we kept misplacing it.

The dove leaves the ark and finds itself a nest. Bear chose this from one of our bins of blocks.

We added other fun things like this song and this one and this one at circle time. And we made arks out of paper plates.

There's a mini book here that I cut apart and had Bear sequence as review work for the story.

Next up is the Tower of Babel.

Ocean Theme Artist Shelf

>> Saturday, June 18, 2011

I first mentioned our artist shelf here. For our ocean month of June I've featured some artists of ocean wildlife.

A biography of Wyland and two copies of his paintings.

Vincent van Gogh's painting of the seashore and Ted Harrison's painting of the whales. I won the cute little felted bird from Discovery Days and Montessori Moments. It's my favorite thing on the shelf!

The art activity I included on the shelf is an ocean drawing book, paper, and a pencil.

linked to Preschool Corner.

500 Writing Prompts for Kids - Review and Giveaway

>> Wednesday, June 15, 2011

When Bryan Cohen contacted me about reviewing his book, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids First Grade through Fifth Grade, at first I thought I would say no, since Bear isn't even remotely close to first grade. However, around that time, she started coming home with stories she had written, so I decided it would be interesting to see if I might be able to use writing prompts at home with Bear.

The first thing I liked about Bryan Cohen's book is that the introduction is conversational, making it appealing to read, especially for a busy mom or teacher.

The book is separated into sections: Memorable Events, Imagination, Relationships, Activities, School Days.... Each of these sections is broken down into subtopics. This categorization makes finding a topic of interest for a particular child much easier.

Some prompts encourage prose, while others encourage nonfiction. Some prompts are personal. Some, like prompt number 423 ("There are a lot of countries in the world that are in conflict with one another. Sometimes this conflict can even lead to war. What do you think are the issues between some of these countries? Why can’t they get along?") encourage deeper thinking. I like that there is such a wide variety of prompts.

This is a book it wouldn't hurt to add to your bookshelf as it can be used over the course of many, many years. Many prompts would encourage my 3.5 year old with story ideas that go beyond a walk to the park to buy icecream (she's written 4 of those already this week). Many of the prompts could be used into middle school, with changed expectations about vocabulary, depth of ideas, and length of output.

What I like most about the prompts is that they don't even have to be used for writing. I have a plan to print some, cut them into strips and put them in a jar to pull out at dinner and use as prompts to practice the art of conversation.

The book comes in kindle edition or as a paperback.

Would you like this book?

Author Bryan Cohen is doing a giveaway of his book 500 Writing Prompts for Kids for the next week along with a grand prize drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card! Simply comment with your e-mail address and you are entered in the drawing for one digital copy of the book on this site (there are over 10 sites involved in the giveaway, with one winner of a book per site). One lucky winner will be picked from all the sites to win a $50 Amazon gift card. If Bryan's book, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids reaches the top 500 in sales this week, he will add another $50 Amazon gift card to the drawing. The drawing will occur on June 22nd, so post away! Visit his website at Build Creative Writing Ideas.

For an extra entry, follow The Adventures of Bear on Facebook. Just make sure you leave your email in the comment to tell me that you do.

Disclaimer: I received a free digital copy of the book in exchange for a frank and honest review.

Ocean Theme - Tot and preschool

>> Friday, June 10, 2011

Here are some of our ocean-themed trays. I do have more project-oriented ideas, but don't know if we will get to them. I'll post as we do things.

Sensorial:

Matching shells to shell outlines (I traced the shells on cardstock).

Sorting shells.

Math:

(more for J-jo than Bear)

Counting with one-to-one correspondence. These shells ended up replacing the ping pong and golf balls at this water station.

So this became the counting and one-to-one correspondence work.

Science:

Matching the plastic animals to the classification cards I made.

French:

Our pretend game was to go fishing for fish. The fish were under the silk shawl, but Bear had just finished getting them all and we were just finishing counting them by five (in French). These items are kept in a basket by our calendar and they can play with them whenever they like.