One of the fun things I have done for my kids this summer to keep track of our summer fun was create a simple summer activity passport for her! It’s a way to keep track of the fun we’ve had this summer as well as encourage the kids to decide which activities we want to make sure to fit in this summer.
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When I think about summer, I think of the sudden increase is dirt and mud everywhere! Baths are a frequent necessity. Strawberry and Kitty love to dig, apparently only encouraged by their brother, who is on a new emphatic hunt for “rocks” hiding beneath our lawn and play set.
The only way to get by is to embrace it, I know! I knew the perfect picture book to go along with dirt: I’m a Dirty Dinosaur! by Janeen Brian and Ann James.
One thing I love about I’m a Dirty Dinosaur is that as the dinosaur gets progressively dirtier, he spends time relishing in the mess: first his messy feet, then his messy hands, and then his messy tummy, and so forth. Strawberry loves to act out the simple rhythmic pages for each messy part of the Dino.
The most clever part of the simple art in this book is that the dirty brown that covers this adorable dinosaur in each picture is actually mud! To extend the fun, we decided to make our own mud paintings.
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Since learning about various animal’s footprints was a fun activity before, we decided to go further and investigate animal tracks a bit more in depth. To practice my daughter’s measuring skills, I made an animal track measuring activity to help us better understand the sizes of the animals’ tracks we learned about before. Measuring animal tracks turned in to a fun math activity as well as an outdoor search for the animal tracks in our own yard!
My kids love measuring things. I figured it was time to put the desire to measure into context as we measured the animal footprints. The printout I created shares an average size of animal tracks for 11 different animals (with three animals showing both front and hind paw prints to show the difference in size). It is important to understand that various animals are different sizes, and since my daughter has seen many of the animals in real life, on the screen, and in books, it helped her to put them in context when she saw that their paws were different sizes.
We also talked about how the various animals had different types of prints: birds, mammals with toe prints, and the deer’s cloven print. (This month our science lessons are revolving around animal biology.)
We read the book Who Was Here? to predict who belonged to each print. On the worksheet, I wrote the animals by each print.
As we practiced measuring the animal tracks, we discussed starting at zero, different units of measure (inches versus centimeters), and finding partial units. Since my youngest is only in Kindergarten, I focused on half inches and full inches for this project. That was challenging enough for her!
As my daughter recorded the measurements on her recording sheet, she got more and more excited. She was especially excited about the squirrel tracks. Although we see many, many animals (including foxes at times!) in our unfenced yard, my daughter was delighted to measure the sample squirrel prints. As a background, you should know that the squirrels in our backyard trees have been given the names of Jack and Jane Fluffytail, so she has a vested interest in them. Last year, Jack and Jane had a few babies, so of course we can’t be sure when we are seeing Jack or Jane or their unnamed babies, but we make up all sorts of stories about our backyard pets!
As soon as she was done with all the measuring, my daughter jumped up ready to go outside and find animal tracks in our own yard. The unfortunate fact was that we did this activity on a day shortly after the snow had melted and the weather had once again plunged below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. (This is a frequent occurrence, one of the down sides of living in Chicagoland.) She was undaunted. We bundled up and headed outside, although I admit we only made it about 7 minutes before we both ran back inside!
Despite our rushed search for animal tracks, we were successful! Right away we found a frozen-in-mud print that was less than inch long and definitely resembled the squirrel track on our activity sheet. Strawberry was so excited! We also found numerous paw prints that were similar to the cat print on our recording sheet. (Certain to be left by either the stray cats we can’t get out of our yard or the neighbor’s own cats!)
As we sipped hot chocolate back in the house, Strawberry begged to go for a walk in the forest to find more animals. I hated to give her the horrible news that the subzero temperatures would not let that be possible on that day. She was disappointed.
“Well, for my birthday, can we go to a park and find more?” she begged.
That’s a sign of a great activity, if it has been granted Birthday Request status!
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With the upcoming solar eclipse, we’ve been learning about the moon and sun. For this week’s activity, we learned about the surface of the moon, especially the 1969 moon landing. Of course we had to recreate the moon landing. Strawberry (and toddler Kitty) loved to walk on the moon by making our own footprints on the moon in our fun outside sensory activity.
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In honor of the recent Pioneer Day (the Utah holiday that celebrates the arrival of the Mormon pioneers to Utah in 1847), we try to do something pioneer related each year, since my husband’s family is from Utah and it’s a part of our Mormon heritage as well. This year (to go along with Strawberry’s always kinetic learning style) we made a pool noodle covered wagon by converting our red Radio Flyer wagon!
In the past, we made a milk carton covered wagon and acted out pioneer scenes with it. Another time, I shared favorite pioneer books. We also learned about modern-day pioneers and interviewed family members, and we did a “scavenger hunt” in a non-fiction book to learn about using an index. I think making our pool noodle covered wagon was the most fun yet!
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On a hot summer day, what does one do for “Princess Preschool”? We play with ice! Building with ice is not easy. My daughter wanted to make an Ice Princess’ castle (as my daughter intended), but it sure is fun to try your hand in stacking the sliding blocks during an outside ice play exploration! Continue reading
In the book In the Snow by Huy Voun Lee, Xiao Ming and his mother walk in newly fallen snow and his mother shows him Chinese characters by writing them in the snow. They discuss how the characters look like the items they are describing. Despite our lack of snow in Chicagoland this season,we made our own snow and practiced writing in the snow at our kitchen table, making English letters rather than Chinese characters as they did in the picture book.
Last spring, we read a fun book called I’m a Dirty Dinosaur, in which the illustrations were created with actual mud. Of course, we had to make our own mud paintings! The same author has another book, I’m a Hungry Dinosaur, in which the illustrations were created with cocoa powder, chocolate, and sprinkles, so of course we needed to give a try to painting with chocolate ourselves. Continue reading
As I mentioned before, we’re following Jamie from Simple Homeschool in her #GiveYourChildTheWorld book club this summer. How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman was one of the first picture books we picked up for this book club. We’ve had a lot of fun doing some activities to go along with the book. Continue reading
We are working on yet more multiplication around here. Now that the weather is so amazing, we’ve taken some of our learning outside. This week we practiced multiplication with outdoor arrays.
