Tot School: Thanksgiving Edition

I didn’t do as much Thanksgiving stuff with Gabriela the past few weeks as I would like to have done, but I’m not going to worry about it…it’s a busy time of year.  Maybe next year I’ll have it all together.  Here’s what Gabriela did the past 2 weeks:

1.  Candy corn grid—I brought a bag of candy corn back from America because they don’t have it in England.  Of course we wanted to eat it, but I wanted to do some activities with it first.  Moriah used it several times as math counters, but I created a grid game for Gabriela.  I’ve seen grid games on several blogs, so I don’t know where they originate.  For all I know, they may have been in use for years and years!  Anyway, I’ve always wanted to try it with Gabriela.  She can’t count objects higher than 3 yet, but it’s good practice anyway.  I found a simple candy corn outline on the internet and made a grid.  We rolled a jumbo die, and I helped Gabriela count the dots and count out the candy corn.  She placed one candy corn on each space.  We continued until the whole grid was full.  She asked for this activity again later in the week…but that may have been because she knew she’d get some candy corn to eat!

2.  Bingo dauber art.  The only problem I have with bingo daubers is that if Gabriela holds one down too long, it gets very messy/runny.  Those of you that have the Do-a-Dot pens…are they the same?  Or are they easier to use and less messy?  I’d love to know.  Anyway, I get all my bingo dauber art pages from DLTK.

3.  Playdough and cupcake pick sorting.  I got these Thanksgiving cupcake picks at Hobby Lobby.  One set is pumpkins, and the other is some sort of turkey…except it’s hard to tell on first glance that it’s a turkey…but anyway.  I put balls of our homemade play-doh into paper cupcake holders and placed one cupcake pick into each one.  I gave Gabriela about 10 of each kind of pick, and she stuck the picks into the playdough, sorting the pumpkins and turkeys.  The second time we did this, I remembered I had plastic turkey cups (also from Hobby Lobby), so I put the picks in the cup for her to sort through.  After sorting, she decided she wanted to use some of our fall/Thanksgiving cookie cutters with the playdough, so I let her do that.

4.  Tiny chairs and animals.  This was Isaac’s idea.  It was one of those moments when Gabriela was bored with everything I gave her, and I was busy working with Moriah.  So I asked Isaac to go upstairs and find something for Gabriela to do.  After several minutes, he returned with the Chairs Game and a bunch of little plastic animals.  He dumped them on a tray and informed me that the idea was for her to sit an animal on each chair.  It was a great fine-motor skills activity, and it even frustrated her a bit the first time.  However, it did keep her occupied, and she played with this tray more than once last week.  Way to go, Isaac!

5.  Woodkins dress-up dolls.  I’ve never posted anything for “We Play” (Childhood 101), but if I did, this would be something I’d post about.  I initially bought this for Moriah, and she likes it but doesn’t often play with it.  When we came back from the US, I had brought a bag of fabric scraps my mom gave me.  So I got out the Woodkins, and Gabriela LOVES them…a LOT!  The best thing about our Woodkins dolls is that we got them CHEAP!  I got one (Kirsty) that had all the faces but no fabric for only 50 cents at an antique mall.  Last Christmas I found a whole wedding-themed set with 2 dolls and some pieces of fabric at a charity shop here in England for about £1.50.

6.  Pilgrim, Pilgrim Booklet (Hubbard’s Cupboard)—She colored it, and then I read it to her.

I had more activities planned, but we didn’t get to them.  I finally did get a large shelf unit to store all my Tot School stuff on, and it’s mostly organized now.  And that makes me feel happy!

For more Tot School posts, visit 1+1+1=1!

Charity Shop Bargain Finds!

Last Saturday, my sweet husband took me charity shop hopping…one of my favorite activities if I have a little spare cash on me!

I’m not very good at sticking to one particular teaching philosophy because I like so many things about so many different ones!  With Tot School, I do a variety of activities, but I’ve been trying to do more that would fit with Montessori learning.  After browsing through a pretty cool Montessori supply website (Montessori n’ Such), I made a “hunting list” for my shopping trip.

I didn’t find everything on my list, and not everything I bought was on my list…you know how it is, I’m sure!  A few items were bought at a bargain store, not a charity shop.  Anyway, I spent less than £20 on all of this, so I was pretty happy.

A set of 3 small canisters

A blue bottle and a small jar with lid

A silver star-shaped dish

3 very small glasses…I was told these were from a pub.  I wouldn’t really know since I don’t go to pubs (well, not unless it’s also a very good restaurant), but anyway, I’m using them for tot activities (such as mixing colored water with an eye dropper).  : )

I thought this looked like a very interesting game.  You use chopsticks to try to build a pagoda without it tumbling down.  2 different types of chopsticks are included and also abacus scoring cards. 

Pegs in a Basket—A tiny laundry basket full of small-size clothes pins…or pegs, as they call them here.  How cute is that?  I could use it for all kinds of activities!  This one was from the bargain store…which happened to be in the same area as all the charity shops.

I love this snowman tray!

I found a bag of these beautiful straw Christmas ornaments.  They could be used for sorting or for a Christmas sensory tub.  When we’re finished with them, we can hang them on our small classroom tree!

Plastic egg holder.  There are loads of activities I could use this for! 

Traffic 3D Dominoes.  These are pretty cool.  All 3 of my kids have been playing with them.

Pull the String game.  I’ve never seen anything like this before, but I thought it looked pretty cool.  It comes with several colors of string, the board, a threading pen, and several cards showing designs you can make.  It’s very easy to use.

I still haven’t posted about all the great bargains I found while in the US!  Maybe I’ll get around to that eventually.  There were just so many of them!

As always, if you look at these pictures and happen to think of an activity I could use them for, please let me know.  I’d be very happy to hear your ideas!

Homeschool P.E.

“How do you do P.E.?”  It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once by non-homeschoolers.  I’ll admit it’s a rather challenging school subject for me, for two big reasons.  1)  I personally am NOT the least bit athletic.  I never participated in sports, and P.E. was always my most hated school subject.  My husband is fairly athletic, but he doesn’t often have time to do P.E. for me.  2)  We live in England.  How is that challenging?  First of all, the weather is not often on our side.  It rains a lot.  Then when the rain quits, the ground is muddy.  If we have a nice dry spell, then we take advantage of our outdoor time.  Secondly, our back garden (backyard) is rather small.  Actually, we feel quite blessed that it’s as big as it is, because some people here don’t have back gardens at all!  Our trampoline takes up the middle third of our garden, so that doesn’t leave much P.E. space (although the trampoline itself IS nice for P.E.).  Thirdly, we have no large rooms in our house, so even indoor P.E. can be challenging.  Sometimes, it feels easiest to skip P.E. altogether.  But we keep trying.

A few solutions?  1)  The church we worked with for 5 years is within easy walking distance of our house, and they have a gymnasium.  I’m hoping to get my husband to ask permission to use it on afternoons when it’s not being used by others.  That would help.  2)  Down the street we have a park with a large field.  On non-muddy days, we can use that and have it pretty much to ourselves (since most other kids are in school and won’t be using it).  3)  I’ve researched and found some P.E. ideas that will work in smaller indoor spaces.  4)  We could pay for my kids to take some sort of lessons.  They did take swimming lessons for a year, and I would love to have them do that again.  The problems with that?  First, the cost of the lessons are just not in our budget.  Also, the place the kids were taking lessons (which we LOVED) closed down, and you can be on a waiting list for a year or more to get lessons at a different place.  I would also love to get them gymnastics lessons, but again, we simply can’t afford it.

Thoughts on competitive sports:  Now let me just say that I think it’s great when homeschooled children can take lessons of some sort or get to participate in competitive sports.  I have nothing at all against that.  If I had the opportunity (which I don’t), I’d let my kids do that.  I know some homeschoolers are against competitive sports, and I know others love it.  I personally see nothing wrong with it as long as the child enjoys it and it doesn’t distract from academics.  However, I also don’t believe that being involved in competitive sports is necessary.  I feel that especially at the elementary level, what’s important in P.E. is that children get exercise.  It’s not as important to me at this point whether or not they learn sports skills or rules.  That would be great if we could do it, but I’m not going to feel like I’ve failed my children because they can’t.  So I guess that’s where my P.E. program is right now…just making sure they get exercise and have fun doing it.

So, how do I do this? 

1)  A few years ago, I put together a P.E. book for my family.  It’s basically a collection of activities I found in books and online that I felt we could do, based on space, equipment, and number of students.  I divided them up by equipment used, by skills needed or learned, and by space needed.  I haven’t really used it much, but I’m going to start it up again. 

2)  I’ve been collecting basic P.E. equipment since we’ve lived in England.  I look for stuff that’s on sale in stores, or I keep an eye out for stuff at charity shops.  For instance, I have a balance board, a lawn bowling set, and an exercise mat I bought cheap at charity shops.  Isaac found a baseball bat and glove cheap at a yard sale in the US (and we managed to pack them in our luggage).  It’s amazing how cheaply you can buy P.E. equipment if you keep your eyes open.  Here’s a list of what we currently have in our P.E. box:

Balance board, balls of all sorts, bats, baton, beanbags, bowling set, carpet squares, cones, croquet set, egg and spoon race set, exercise mat, frisbees, hoops, jumping ropes, potato sacks, racquets, scoop ball set, three-legged race cords, whistle, tape measure (for track and field events), a timer, and lawn bowling set.

3)  I keep my eyes open for anything different that we can use in P.E.  Here are some items my kids enjoy:

Trampoline—This is one of the best things we’ve ever purchased for the kids.  For safety reasons, I would never recommend buying one without the padding and netting.  The kids jump on it as often as we have decent weather, and it’s very good exercise.

Wii—Yes, the wii.  Does that qualify as exercise?  Really?  It is, after all, simply a video game system.  I only use it every now and then as a P.E. tool because I feel that by playing the sports games on Wii they can get an idea of how various sports are played.  So, while it may not be very much exercise, they are learning about sports.  The boxing game is one they DO get exercise on.  If you know of any others (other than the Wii Fit, which is too expensive right now), please let me know.  We have the sports disk that came with the Wii system, and we also have Sports Party.

Games—There are several games out there that are very good for P.E. and can be used indoors.  Here’s our list so far:  Twister, Elefun, and Hyper Dash.  Also, I have just purchased (for Christmas) the Twister Hopscotch Game.  I’d love to find more!

Bicycle/Tricycle/Scooter—Isaac just got a bicycle for his birthday…he does not know how to ride yet.  We also have a tricycle which I can teach Gabriela to use, and Moriah is getting a scooter for Christmas.  These will all be good for P.E. once the weather improves (which may not be for awhile).

Dance—I have 2 ballet DVDs for the girls (I’m a Ballerina Now and Bella Dancerella: Let’s Dance !) and 2 dance DVDs (Kidsongs: Dance and All-Time Favorite Dances).  I highly recommend the All-Time Favorite Dances one.  They teach the dances on the DVD, and then you dance along.  The kids love it!  I also purchased and downloaded a selection of fun songs from Amazon and made a CD they can free-dance to.

Now the question:  What do YOU do for P.E. in your homeschool?  I really want to know, because I would love to have more ideas.  Have you found any fun games that I didn’t mention?  How do your kids get exercise?  Do your kids get to participate in team sports or take lessons?  What’s on your list of “must-have equipment” for P.E.?  I want to hear from you! 

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