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Showing posts from September, 2013

My Festive Fridge: Halloween Magnets

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Halloween Magnets This is an easy and fun craft that everyone can help with and when you're done not only can the kids play with it but your kitchen will be decorated for Halloween.  For the supplies I raided the Halloween crafts section at Walmart which was still full because I got there early in the season.  I found a tub full of foam stickers, which were a big hit not only for this craft but to decorate everything. I bought some round magnets and the rest I had at home.  You can't go wrong!   Let the leaves fall off the tree by making each leaf its own magnet.   Time: 30 minutes Cost: Under $10.00 Material: Foam stickers Foam sheets in Halloween colours Fake leaves (I bought a ring used for center pieces at the dollar store) Glue, white glue and glue gun      Directions : Cut out Halloween inspired shapes: ghost, black cat, haunted house, tree etc. Choose which stickers you want to use but don't take the backing off.

Home Preschooling

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Our workbook - letter recognition I did a lot of research lately in preparation to home-preschool my son.   I made the choice when he was born to stay at home until he started school.   I was looking into preschools in my area and came to the realization that most are preschool daycares and since I decided to stay home and not use a daycare it didn’t make sense to send him to one.   I sat down and listed the reasons I wanted him to go to preschool.   After some research I realized that I could teach him at home.   He has weekly activities where he sees other children so I feel that the socialization aspect is taken care of.   I thought making the decision was the hard part then I had to come up with a curriculum.   Researching online was somewhat stressful it seems that there are dozens available but I wanted to tailor to my son’s needs and to what I thought was most important without having to spend lots of money on workbooks. This is what I came up with.   The skills I want

Emotions

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Emotions: surprised, happy, sleepy, sad, silly and angry I found that my son has picked up words for different emotions along the way but doesn’t always use them in the right way he’ll say sad for instance instead of mad.   So I came up with these puppets to help him learn the different emotions.   I wrote the emotion on the back and he had to find the mouth and eyes (eyebrows in some cases) that fit.   It was a fun activity and we spent time putting on little 'plays' with the puppets.   The plays mostly consisted of him standing behind his puppet theatre saying I feel something and then finding the right puppet but he learned the right emotion words without realizing it.   Time: 30 minutes Cost: Under $5.00 (you probably have everything around the house) Material: ·          Foam sheets (including black for the features) ·          Googly eyes ·          Popsicle sticks ·          Glue ·          Marker Directions: 1.        Cut 6 lar

What day is it?

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This is an easy and fun craft to help your child learn the days of the week.  It's very easy to personalize these door hangers, I made them bilingual by gluing stickers on each side.  Tip: I sorted out the letters we needed for this ahead of time but that would be a good activity for children who are learning to spell.   Cost: About $10.00          Time: 20 minutes Material: ·          Foam door hangers ·          Foam puzzle letters (any letters will do but I liked the way these looked and they are stickers so I was sold) ·          Foam stickers for decorating (you can use themed stickers if you have a specific activity that day) Directions: 1.        Sort the letters for the days of the week and stick them onto the foam door hangers. 2.        Taking the door hangers one at a time talk about what is special that day and then decorate            with stickers. 3.        Choose what day it is and hang it on your child’s door, change them ev