Category Archives: Preschool Age

Human Body and Nutrition Activities

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This year, for science, my son and I are using Galore Park Junior Science 1. For chapter 1, my daughter had not yet begun preschool, so I decided to play up the chapter into a human body unit for both of my “students.” With pregnancy as a distraction, this became my daughter’s busy box activities for much of the last two months.
Human Body and Nutrition Activities
The first part of the chapter was about the human body in general, with a bit of emphasis on digestion. My daughter has been obsessed with the digestive system since she potty trained six months ago, so I focused on the rest of the body. The second part of the chapter was about nutrition, followed by teeth and bones.
Here are some of the human body and nutrition activities I did with my preschool daughter and my elementary-aged son.
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Leaf Rubbings

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It has been an amazing few weeks for me. Since I last posted, I had the honor of welcoming my third child into my family. My newest daughter, nicknamed “Kitty Cat” for the sake of this blog, was 7 lbs 2 oz, and arrived October 2 after a much-too-short labor. She’s a sweet little one, and 8-year-old Raisin and 3-year-old Strawberry love her. It’s good Kitty is a good sport, given the number of hugs and kisses her siblings smother her with!
I’m easing back in to blogging today with a simple fall project we did when Grandma was in town: we searched for favorite leaves and made rubbings! A nearby maple tree shed it’s super-sized leaves for us to enjoy, and it was fun to create leaf rubbings, a simple art project for all ages.
201511 leaf rubbing
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Uppercase-Lowercase ABC Recognition Practice with an ABC Sticker Tree

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ABC Stickers + colored paper = sticker tree fun!

ABC Stickers + colored paper = sticker tree fun!


What could be more fun than sticker play for a preschooler?
I decided to play on her interest to play with ABC stickers by making her a lowercase to uppercase matching game.
This was super simple! I cut out brown paper to be a trunk and green paper with tree-like whorls. I taped these together in the shape of a tree. Then I wrote lowercase letters on the tree with a neon marker.
Strawberry found the lowercase letters on the tree and put the uppercase stickers on them.
We practiced ABC uppercase-lowercase matching with ABC stickers on a simply made tree.

We practiced ABC uppercase-lowercase matching with ABC stickers on a simply made tree.


She really liked that she was going out of order. Sometimes she’d pretend to do the wrong letter just to see if I was paying attention.
Playing with ABC stickers by making an ABC sticker tree like this was a nice reminder that learning activities do not have to be difficult or require a lot of preparation. It kept her engaged and learning, plus she found it to be a lot of fun!
 

Quill Painting to Learn about Then and Now

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My daughter and I have been having fun together since my seven-year-old son has been at day camp for two weeks. (More on this to come!)
One fun thing we discovered as we dropped him off at the beach for his Beach Day was a large feather. Strawberry was delighted when I showed her how we can “tickle” each other with the feather. She proceeded to tickle herself all the way home. I mentioned, in passing, that in the past people would use a feather or “quill” as a pen, by dipping the tip into ink and writing with it. She was so excited by the idea that she wanted to try it! Hence, we had a morning of quill painting.
Quill Painting
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Why I Don’t Care about Preschool Academics

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I Don't Care about Preschool AcademicsMy daughter is going to start going to preschool at the beginning of September. I choose a park district program very close to my house, simply for convenience. The facility is nice, the teacher-student ratio is small, and I now she is going to love her time to explore and learn.
But I was taken aback when the preschool teacher began talking to me about the “curriculum.”
“Do you have an questions about our academics?”
I get it. I know teachers in Kindergarten these days are teaching early reading. But preschool should still be for fun!  Continue reading →

Farmyard Sticker Stories Fun

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Today it’s another special Story Corner with some blogging friends, this month with an animal theme. I had high ambitions: a mother and baby farm animals matching game, and more. But our activity ended up much more simple and delightfully fun.
My daughter loves farm animals right now, so this was a perfect subject for us! She adores the Farm Animals chunky books: they are predictable, small, and work as blocks to make stacking towers when you are down reading them!
She also loves the Farmyard Tales about the Boot family. We decided to focus on these stories. After we read them (and listened to the audio CD) and read them some more, I asked her if she wanted to make Apple Tree Farm. I simply drew a hillside and a pond on a piece of paper and she went to town adding the animals! Farmyard sticker stories was simple but plenty fun!We used farm animal stickers to retell our favorite farmyard stories.
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Beads and Pipe Cleaner Play

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Beads and Pipe Cleaners Play Time | Line upon Line Learning blog
One of the go to activities my daughter has enjoyed lately is beads and pipe cleaners. Everywhere we go, I try to remember to bring out bead box! She and other children her age enjoy putting the beads on pipe cleaner to make “bracelets” and “necklaces.” I also found a simple strainer for her to put the pipe cleaners through. Continue reading →

Fine Motor Skills Learning with Sticker Books

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One thing my daughter loves to do is play with stickers and play princess. A great book we have allows her to do both together. Using The Sticker Dolly Dressing Princesses book, she can practice her fine motor skills by manipulating stickers and she can practice “dressing” by putting the stickers on the princesses in the book.
Playing with stickers is great fine motor skills practice!
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Make Your Own Book: Lift-the-Flap Spring Colors

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This month’s Story Corner Blog Hop is about Spring, and while I have a huge number of favorite spring books I could share about (I may in the coming weeks), the book I kept coming back to is one that my daughter has recently fallen in love with: Lift-the-Flap Colors.
Because spring is simply packed full of new colors, this seemed the perfect book to keep my daughter interested in a Springy activity. We decided to make our own Lift-the-Flap book, but this time with the spring colors we see!After reading a delightful lift-the-flap book, my toddler wanted to make her own lift-the-flap book! Continue reading →