Preschool Corner: Weeks 22-26

Okay, so we’re currently on week 32, and I’m just now posting this.  This has been a very busy spring!  Anyway…

These 5 weeks of preschool included letters V-Z, outer space, transportation, Easter and spring.  We read lots of books and had some fun excursions.  Here are the details!

Alphabet Time

Lessons:  Easy Peasy—All in One Homeschool

Crafty ABCs:  Totally Tots

Paper plate zebra:  DLTK’s Crafts for Kids

Played with xylophones for letter X

Themes

Outer Space:

The picture above right is Gabriela pretending to go to the moon like Little Bear.  I have this story in a book, but I thought Gabriela might enjoy someone else reading it for a change:

Here are some more YouTube videos we watched:

This one is her favorite!  The song isn’t appropriate in my personal opinion, but this project is way cool:

Outer Space Book List:

Comets (Kate Petty)

Curious George Gets a Medal (H.A. Rey)

Dora the Explorer: Little Star (Sarah Willson)

My First Book About Space: A Question and Answer Book (Dinah L. Moché)

Stargazers (Gail Gibbons)

Sun and Moon (Marcus Pfister)

Sun Up, Sun Down (Gail Gibbons)

Sunshine, Moonshine (Jennifer Armstrong)

There's No Place Like Space! All About our Solar System (Tish Rabe)

What Makes Day and Night? (Chris Arvetis)

Transportation:  We played games, sang songs, and read lots of books.

Transportation Book List:

Trains

Catch Me, Catch Me: A Thomas the Tank Engine Story (Owain Bell)

Little Engines Can Do Big Things (Britt Allcroft)

Little Toot (Hardie Gramatky)

Terrific Trains (Tony Mitton and Ant Parker)

The Taxi that Hurried (Lucy Sprague Mitchell)

The Train to Glasgow (Wilma Horsbrugh)

Thomas & Friends: Down at the Docks (Richard Courtney, illus.)

Thomas Goes Fishing (Richard Courtney, illus.)

Tootle (Gertrude Crampton)

Cars & Trucks (including construction vehicles)

Good Driving, Amelia Bedelia (Herman Parish)

Mr Gumpy's Motor Car (J. Burningham)

Old, New, Red, Blue (Melissa Lagonegro)

Tip Tip Dig Dig (Emma Garcia)

Truck Talk: Rhymes on Wheels (Bobbi Katz)

Boats

Peek-a-Boo! Boats (Keith Faulkner)

Sail Away (Donald Crews)

Scuffy the Tugboat (And His Adventures Down the River) (Gertrude Crampton)

The Boats on the River (Marjorie Flack)

Air Travel

All Kinds of Planes (Seymour Reit)

Curious George and the Hot Air Balloon (Houghton Mifflin, pub.)

Curious George Goes to an Air Show (Margret Rey and Alan J. Shalleck, eds)

The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot (Alice and Martin Provensen)

Various

Cars: Al's Sky-High Adventure (Luke Paulson)

Down by the Station (Jess Stockham, illus.)

Travel & Transport Then and Now (Alastair Smith)

Spring:  We didn’t get much of a spring this year, but we did the best we could!

We made a pinwheel (which didn’t work very well), painted a cherry blossom tree picture with the bottom of a pop bottle, examined different flowers with a magnifying glass, and made clothespin butterflies.

I found the cherry blossom idea found at Alpha Mom, via Pinterest.  I wanted a black tree like on this website, but Gabriela insisted on brown.  Well, it is her art, not mine!

Spring Books:

Curious George Flies a Kite (Margret Rey)

Let's Look at the Seasons: Springtime (Ann Schweninger)

Puddle Wonderful: Poems to Welcome Spring (Bobbi Katz)
Seasons: Spring (Anna Claybourne)

Spring Changes (Ellen B. Senisi)

Easter

For Easter activities this year, we dyed eggs, made a “stained glass” cross, and drew a picture of the first Easter. 

We also read the following books (mostly about eggs…I don’t have any children’s books of the true meaning of Easter, but we did read and discuss the Bible story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection):

The Golden Egg Book (Margaret Wise Brown)
Easter (Gail Gibbons)
Hopper's Easter Surprise (Kathrin Siegenthaler and Marcus Pfister)
Horton Hatches the Egg (Dr. Seuss)

Field Trips

Chartwell (Home of Sir Winston Churchill)

British Museum and Churchill War Rooms (London)

What Gabriela loves most about London is the Underground (trains).  This is the entrance to Westminster Station:

Quarry Bank Mill—I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve been here, but it never gets old. 

I'm linking this post to "Preschool & Kindergarten Community" at Homeschool Creations.