Popcorn Magic with Lesson Ideas

(4 Years)

Me- Do you want to see magic?
Little Miss- I do, I do!
Me- What do you think these are?  (I poured out a handful of popcorn kernels)

Little Miss - Beans, tiny rocks, seeds. (I had her feel a kernel and describe it).  It's tiny, hard and yellow.
She poured 1/2 cup of kernels into a brown lunch bag.

Her brother finally emerged from his room and asked to help.  Then she folded the lunch bag over twice.

 

 
We put it in the microwave.  I pressed the secret POPCORN button.  They said, "hocus pocus!"  I asked what they thought was going to happen.  Little Miss - It's going to get hot.

Then they heard the all too familiar pop pop sound.  Wild One - Popcorn!  Mommy it's popcorn!  Are we making popcorn?  They watched as the bag started inflating and they began to pop up and down like little kernels.

We usually buy Orville Redenbacher's Natural Simply Salted Microwaveable Popcorn.  Yummm!  I've wanted to try popping it in the brown lunch bag for months.  I kept thinking, it can't be as easy as pouring kernels into a brown lunch bag and pop the bag into the microwave.  If it was that easy someone would have told me by now!  Well, it's just that easy.  I like a little butter and salt on my popcorn.  So we melted a tablespoon of butter and mixed in a little salt, then poured that over the popcorn and shook the bag.  So yummy!  How did I not know about this?

LESSON IDEAS
So... the teacher in me feels compelled to tell you that you can easily turn this into a math lesson- compare the volume of the kernels to the popped corn, or compare the weight.  If the kids are ready, you can also discuss the reaction (science) that took place.  A writing lesson can be to describe what happened with illustrations.  You can create a popcorn necklace or even paint with the popcorn (art).  There are even fun popcorn books that you can use for read alouds - Tomie DePaola's The Popcorn Book, Half Popped and Popcorn to name just a few that you can borrow or buy.  Today, we decided to observe and describe a kernel and compare that to the popped corn, ok and have a healthy snack.

Learning with food is so much more fun, isn't it?

Giant Sight Word Stomp Board

(4 Years)

Little Miss likes learning activities that are quiet, Wild One always lights up when I make our learning into a physical game (specifically jumping, running, swatting).  It seems a lifetime ago when we were learning our letter sounds.  I remember Little Miss liked pointing to magnetic letters, whereas Wild One was learning letter sounds by playing swat the letter.

Two years later, we are learning our sight words and Little Miss now likes (sometimes, when she's in the mood) to jump and dance and twirl.  I created a gigantic sight word board in the driveway (with each word written twice, so that the three of us could play simutaneously).  Little Miss said that she was going to be the teacher and tell us (Wild One and me) which word to jump on.   I have a feeling that as she grows-up , I'm going to be hearing a lot of Little Miss trying to take the lead and tell us all what to do!

The inspiration for this giant sight word stomp board was from the below hopscotch board.  You see, early last week, we played a game of hopscotch using -at words.  Little Miss was not at all interested.  She wanted to draw with chalk, Grandma and Grandpa bought them a huge box of vibrant sidewalk chalk.  She was all ready to draw, however she asked me not to take any pictures until she finished - and of course it rained. Meanwhile, Wild One kept asking, "are you done yet?  Can I play?".  I didn't think I'd ever finish the hopscotch board, he kept trying to jump on the board as I was creating it.

Oh, those red stains on the collar of Wild One's shirt is strawberry juice.  He ate almost 1/2 of a pound of strawberries!  

Having Fun with BOB

(43 months)

We bought Box One of the BOB books last February.  My plan was to have each of the kiddies sit, and we would learn to read together.  I had these wonderfully, black and white movie visions that they would want to sit down and learn to read.  After all they really love being read to.  In fact, they will huddle in to almost anyone reading (even the mommies that we don't know at Barnes and Noble or at the library- I need to work on stranger danger).  They will sit still, when they want to, for almost an hour and listen to book after book after book.  So of course, I thought that since they just turned three it would be a perfect time for them to start.  Nope!  Neither one of them liked the idea of sounding out words in a book.  They liked doing it during Calendar Time, and they liked working on the BOB book activities, but in book-form, they were not interested.  The last thing I wanted is to discourage them from their love of "reading".  I don't want it to be made into a battle of wills.  If they aren't ready yet, then we'll try again later, and that's just what we did.

Fast forward six months, and we started again with the BOB books.  This time with eager success.  I think this is in large part to two things, one they have been showing increasing signs of reading readiness (moving from pretending to read stories, to tracking their "reading", to making up stories, to wanting to read) and two we started with another version of BOB, Larkin's Little Readers (wilbooks.com) Reading Level: K.  The Little Readers offer a lot, I mean a lot, of support through pictures.  It also allows the child to have almost instant success, which helped inspire my little ones to keep trying.  What's most remarkable is how quickly they are now able to really read the BOB books.  We started set one, book three yesterday and with a little help they were able to read it on their own on the first read through. It's so exciting!

Blooms Taxonomy and The Three Little Pigs (Common Core)

(43 Months)

When I was teaching fifth grade, I used a Blooms Taxonomy wheel to help me create open-ended questions for our literature circles, guided reading and independent reading.  The kids liked the challenge of the harder questions and the variety of options (instead of just writing about what happened, they could draw a picture with a short caption, create a short video, have a conversation with the narrator or one of the main characters, create an alternate ending...).  Now, years later, a Blooms Taxonomy wheel is aligned with the Common Core Standards, for children as young as those in Kindergarden.

Today I decided to employ the same concept with my kidabunks during our read alouds.  I found these adorable cards at Dragonflies in First.  I printed them out, colored each set of questions a different color, punched a hole and put it on a ring. I definitely recommend printing these out on various colors of card stock, to make them more durable.  We've read The Three Little Pigs so many times, it's almost memorized so I knew this would be a great story to try with the cards.

We took out our puppets, our book and I held the cards.  Before we read the story, I tried out a few of the Knowledge questions:
Me "Who are the characters in the story?"
Kiddies "The three little pigs." (they were on the cover, the wolf wasn't)
Me "Is there anyone else in the story?"
Wild One "Yes!  The Big - Bad - Wolf!"
Me "What happens first in the story?"
Little Miss "The three pigs say goodbye to their mom and dad."
Me "What happens next?"
Wild One "The Big Bad Wolf blows down the houses."
Me "What happens before the wolf blows down the houses?"
Little Miss "The little piggies build their houses."
Me "Which house gets built first?" "...second?" "...third?"

Next, Wild One "read" the story.  Then, I read and paused to ask the following questions:
Comprehension:
"Describe the Big Bad Wolf."
"What are the differences between the straw house and the brick house?"

Application:
"If you could ask one of the characters a question, what would it be?

Analysis:
"Explain what part of the story was most exciting."
"Explain what part was the saddest."

Sometimes I asked a question, other times I had one of the three pigs or the wolf ask a question.  The kidabunks always eagerly responded.  These cards are wonderful for pausing during reading to think about what we just read, a skill that they will be using for the rest of their lives.  Before using these cards, I kept asking the same type of questions: "why do you think so and so is sad?" or "how would you feel?" or "what would you have done?"  It's so interesting that even at their young age, that they are able to work on something that is typically viewed as a more developed concept.

I love how much fun this is.  I also love that they don't realize they are learning, because we are staying true to our philosophy "learning through play is the best way".

Rhyming Wheels of Fun (CVC Wheel)

(39 Months)

Little Miss has been doing a lot of rhyming lately - pink, blink, sink, drink.  She also includes made-up words that will rhyme- bink, eink.   She cracks herself up, laughing wildly as she recalls or creates rhyming words.  Since she's having so much fun rhyming, I decided to make a rhyming wheel.  Since we have been pretty lax on practicing our cvc words,  I chose to continue with -at words, since we have practiced those in the past (see here for our calendar time post including -at words).  I made a rhyming wheel, with two paper plates and a brass fastener.  It took all of five minutes- including gathering materials.  Yay, this activity so far gets one star.

I invited the kidabunks over for a fun rhyming toy.  They were both easily hooked and came running over- two stars!  I modeled how to use the wheel, and sounded out the first word together.  Success - three stars!  I let the two of them "play" with the wheel, they took turns nicely- even incorporating Little Miss' baby into the mix- four stars!  Most importantly, they were having fun and learning at the same time.  Did they get each word right on the first try?  No.  Did they have fun trying to remember how to sound out each word? Yes!  When we were finished, I showed them where to put their new toy on the shelf.  A few minutes later, Wild One was playing with it again all by himself- FIVE STARS!

Favorite Books

(30 Months)

I love that we'll frequently find Wild One sitting somewhere "reading" a book.  Sometimes he's reading out loud for all of us to enjoy.  Other times, he's quietly sitting reading to himself.  It amazes me that a boy with as much energy as he's got (always running, jumping, galloping), can sit still for 15+ minutes and "read".  I hope he always loves to read.

When it comes to reading, they definitely have their favorites.  Right now, they are:



This is a Mo Willems classic.  Wild One and Little Miss LOVE the various inflections of Elephant and Piggy's voices.  They laugh hysterically as Elephant and Piggy are laughing.  Another Mo Willems favorite of theirs is The Duckling Gets a Cookie.  These are just as fun for the parent, as they are for the child.

 

I love how this story has rough tough little girl pirates with their own pirate ship.  The kidabunks love the repetition and were "reading" the first few pages to us as we would read the story aloud to them "Down, down, down the dark, dark, street they came..."

I love this version!  The font is large.  There are pictures to help the pre readers identify which animal comes next.  When Wild One picks up this book, he really looks like he's reading it (even though, I know he has it memorized).  I love watching him read this story aloud to us, he holds it up the way I would as he reads.  When he finishes a page, if we don't clap, he says "claps" and then of course he receives thunderous applause.

I have searched and searched and searched for the version that tells the Piggies to always work hard at what you do and not to take the easy way out.  However, in every version that I have been able to get my hands on, it's vaguely alluded to.  This version is the nicest one that I've found so far.  We made stick puppets for the kidabunks to use when we read this story.  They love retelling this story.  In fact, now before they knock a toy over they say "I'm the big bad wolf.  I huff and puff."

My incredible cousin bought this one for the kids and they completely surprised us when they started reading along side us.  They memorized another story!  We change the characters names in almost all of our books to their names, and at the end of the story when the little brother yells "Pinkaboo"Wild One excitedly says "that's me!".

We've been reading this story to the kids since they were itty bitty newborns. We know this story line by line, page by page.  For the first year and a half, we read this story every night.  I'm not sure if they now ask for this book because they like it, or because it's become a part of them.

The kids call this "the color book".  Little Miss says that the "Hacken Kracks are crying because they miss their Mommy and Daddy."  Wild One is always asking (on each page), "where did the boy go?"

I remember when my adorable nephew "read" this book to us.  I was so impressed that this little man of less than two years of age was able to "read" the entire story.  We started reading this story to our kidabunks and one day they started "reading" it to us.  I love the looks in their eyes as they "read" the story.

We didn't check this one out of the library until the kids were 26 months old.  I wish I knew about this book before though. There's hardly any words in the story.  However, the pictures detail beautifully what is happening and allows the "reader" to create her own story, make predictions and retell the story.





Sadly Brown Bear, and Ten Fat Turkeys (favorites from a year ago) have been sitting on the shelf.  Hopefully, they will get noticed again soon.  Still, it's sad when a favorite doesn't get picked.

Letter B Week (Day Two)

(29 Months)

I love my itty bitties!  When they saw their table this morning filled with "b" books, I received "wow!" and "thank you very much Momma". They sat down to their table and began to "read" their books.

After that we partially colored the letter "b".  This full-page letter b is from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.  Thank you Erica.

We carefully placed beans on the b outline.  Do you notice what Wild One is about to do?  That's right, he almost got the bean in his mouth before I stopped him (he's so fast).

Next, we had fun stamping butterflies and bunnies on the "b" paper, on the easel paper, on the tops of Mommy's feet, on our legs, arms, bellies, backs (you get the picture).

Then, we threaded light blue and royal blue pony beads onto blue pipe cleaners.  Wild One threaded seven beads and then got up to start jumping around the room.  Little Miss placed five on her pipe cleaner and then began taking them off one by one to use in her tea pot (maybe it was supposed to be herbal tea?.

Lastly, we used our bottle cap letters to spell out our names.  We tried using clothes pins last week, but they were too challenging to clip onto the paper (we need to develop those pincer muscles).  In all fairness, I had to give a significant squeeze to open the clothes pin as well.
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Little Miss wanted to end with counting three bananas, and then asking to eat three bananas.