A Little of This, a Little of That

I've decided I like review weeks. At first I was intimidated to plan two mornings full of activities that would keep the kids engaged without a lot of help from the curriculum. But it turns out these are great weeks to do more hands-on stuff than we normally have time for. And the kids seemed to really enjoy it.

We started today with the calendar (they all know it's October, finally!) and we read the story of Moses crossing the red sea again. Then we moved right on to an activity to practice counting. I found this idea on Pinterest, and it proved to be very challenging for our kids...I think this is definitely one to come back to periodically.

I put a bunch of Duplo Blocks in a container in the center of the table, and each student got a paper with a graph of sorts on it.

The kids were instructed to build "towers" to represent each number on the paper.

 

 

Look at that focus!

 

Nice work Jack!

 

 

After some serious coaxing (it was apparently more fun to make one giant tower than to make a bunch of small ones), they all got it.

 

Then we moved on to a science experiment. I put a giant tub of water in the middle of the table, and passed around a container full of random objects. The kids had to choose an object and decide if it would sink or float. As they made their predictions, they dropped the item in the water.

 

Jack picked the apple first. Everyone was surprised that it floated!

 

 

Annabelle tried to sink her pom-pom.

 

 

It was so funny to watch them carefully place their items in the water as if trying to will them to float...especially the spoon and the rock!

 

Next we read "Little Blue Truck Leads the Way" while we had our snack...I thought it kind of went along with Moses leading his people out of Egypt...ok, it's a bit of a stretch!

 

Next we made some handprint trees as part of our secret ongoing project :)

 

 

 

 

Even CJ got in on this one!

 

It's a masterpiece!

 

 

To wrap up the morning, we played a letter review game on the back patio. I drew giant letters (capital and lowercase A-E) in circles with chalk. I gave each kiddo a bean bag, and they had to throw the bean bags into the correct circle as I called out letters. It took them a minute to get warmed up, but they soon got competitive!

 

 

 

Everyone stayed for lunch today (I love days like that!) so the kids and the moms got to hang out and socialize a bit after school was done. What a great morning!

 

 

See you next week!