Volcanoes

Along with dinosaur week, we made a volcano to errupt. Jim made the volcano out of plaster of paris using newspaper and a small plastic soda pop container. He had a great time doing this project and trying to make the volcano as real looking as possible. He sat there for hours making it look just right :) When it came time to paint the volcano, Jim suggested we paint it gray. We didn't have gray paint, but black and white make gray, right? Going on the paint looked gray, but dried it looked a whole different color--blue. I'm sure there are blue volcanoes somewhere! It worked just the same and the kids enjoyed watching it errupt. Matthew kept saying "Again, again!" We set off three or four explosions before deciding to trash the volcano since it would be hard to store and we would just want to make another one again sometime. Next time I think we will try paper mache!

Here are some good links for learning about volcanoes:

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/environment/environment-natural-disasters/volcanoes/volcano-eruptions.html
This is video of a volcanic erruption, and there are other videos found on this site as well.

http://www.fema.gov/kids/volcano.htm

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids/0312/main.html

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/volcano1.htm

Letter D Theme - Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Book List:
How Do Dinosaurs (count to ten, learn their colors, play with friends, clean room, go to school, eat their food) series by Jane Yolen & Mark Teague
Dinosaur ROAR! By Paul and Henrietta Strickland
Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Strickland
Can I Have a Stegosaurus, Mom? by Lois Grambling
Dancing Dinosaurs by Sally Lucas
Usborne Touchy-Feely That's Not My Dinosaur . . .
Oh My Oh My Oh DINOSAURS! by Sandra Boynton
Usborne Dinosaurs by Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells
Danny and the Dinosaur books by Syd Hoff
Dazzle the Dinosaur by Marcus Pfister (There is also a movie of Dazzle the Dinosaur)
Ten Little Dinosaurs by Jim Harris (There is a version you can buy with the fingerpuppets that is so cute!)

Dinosaur Worksheets:
There are tons of great dinosaur theme worksheets for Pre-K through 3rd Grade on Learning Pages, but you have to be a member to access this link. Membership is free! To sign up for a free membership, click here. When prompted, store your username and password in your computer so you don't have to login in every time--it is so easy that way! Learning Page has some of my very favorite worksheets. They also have dinosaur fact files and clipart. You will be seeing more links to their resources!
After signing up for a membership, click here to access the dinosaur files:
http://learningpage.com/pages/menu_wkshts/fact_dino.html

Here's another great link for dinosaur math worksheets for different levels--through 5th grade:
http://www.kidzone.ws/math/dinosaur/index.htm

Fingerplays and Songs:

http://www.everythingpreschool.com/themes/dinosaurs/songs.htm

http://www.bry-backmanor.org/dinosaurs/dinofingerplays.html
This one has a cute dinosaur hunt rhyme (like Going on a Bear Hunt)

10 Little Dinosaurs Felt Board Story: Color Black & White I use this to count backwards, skip count to 10, and basic addition/subtraction (there were 10 dinosaurs, I took two away, how many are left?)

Dinosaur Alphabet Book: Color Black & White

Make dinosaurs of different colors--out of felt or colored paper, or just color dinosaur pictures different colors. Play sort of a memory game where you have the kids close their eyes and take away a dinosaur. When they open their eyes, they try to guess which dinosaur you took away.

Activity Ideas:
Make dinosaur sock puppets using felt to make teeth and scales, and buttons for the eyes.

Make dinosaurs out of salt dough and bake in the oven until they are hard. Paint when finished. Use toothpicks to help add details such as eyes and mouth and form scales. Also, make fossils this way by pressing a plastic dinosaur into the salt dough then baking (you could also use playdough to do these activities and not bake or paint it.)

Salt Dough Recipe:
2 Cups Flour
1 Cup Salt
1 Cup Water (add slowly)
Knead for several minutes, then let sit about 20 minutes before beginning your project.
Bake at 200F until salt dough is hard and dry (a few hours--watch closely!!)

Have a dinosaur dig--hide dinosaurs in a bucket of sand, sandbox, or big container of beans and let the kids pretend to be a Paleontologist by digging to find the dinosaurs.

Visit a dinosaur park/museum

Make a volcano and talk about Pangea (see volcano posting)

Snack Ideas:
Dinosaur chicken nuggets, donuts, jello jigglers in the shape of dinosaurs, dinosaur fruit snacks, Sunny “D”

Letter R Rainbow Theme

Rainbows - this is the most simple rainbow experiment I found. We'll be trying this to see how it works. http://www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus/simplescience/feature.htm

Colors This is a great color mixing experiment using simple household ingredients http://www.kidzone.ws/science/rainbow.htm This is a little more advance color wheel sheet off of Learning Page somewhere in the fact files. Not sure exactly where I found that one!
This is cutesy color wheel :http://www.kidzone.ws/science/colorwheel.htm

Color Flannel Board Activities:
Donuts
Balloons
Fish and Crocodile
Online Coloring
Coloring Pages
Rainbow Necklaces out of froot loops or fruity Cheerios
Books: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Flannel Board Characters Songs: Our Primary Colors I Can Sing A Rainbow Simple Math: sort Skittles or M&Ms and count. Graph according to color, etc.

Rock Cars

Here are the rock cars! The kids had a blast doing these. After we finished the cars, Emily and Spencer spent the afternoon just coloring and decorating other rocks.

Starting from left to right: Gabe's tiny car (courtesy of Emily), Emily's pink van, Matthew's compact car, the yellow extra (because they painted sooo many rocks), and Spencer's multi-colored racecar.

Letter C Themes

This week we are working on the letter C. Our general theme is cars, but we have many other "C" themes that go with this for science and fun.

The letter story is C the Caterpillar that cuts in the Amazing Action Alphabet Book . We read the story and made the action and sound while "cutting" (tickling) each other with our scissor hands. The kids thought this was great!

We glued cotton balls on the letter C in our touchy/feely alphabet book. This went great with our science theme of clouds, rain, and rainbows.

We are making cars out of rocks--I will post pictures when we are done. We found our rocks and washed them this morning and we will paint them this afternoon, let them dry and glue on buttons for wheels. We are also going to drive our matchbox cars through paint and make designs on paper, then give them a carwash.

We are also going to play with cars lots this week. We have a car mat and several different car toys. We are going to build cars out of legos. Play Lots of Levels, Zip Track Rally, and Pump Action Racers from Discovery Toys.

Cars Theme Booklist:
Cool Cars by Tony Mitton & Ant Parker
*Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car by Eileen Christelow
Cars by Anne Rockwell
Richard Sacrry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
My Car by Byron Barton
Rattletrap Car by Phyllis Root
The Wheels on the Race Car by Alexander Zane
Cars and Trucks (drawing Book) by Joan Holub

Trucks Booklist:
I Love Trucks! by Philemon Sturges
My Truck is Stuck by Kevin Lewis and Daniel Kirk

Cars Activities & Games on the Web:
This is one of the best resources for activities and games for the kids I have found. There are several car theme activities if you scroll down the list. I plan on using the car colors book and the cars number match. There is also a car shape flannel board story that is excellent, but I think we will save that for shapes.
Car Colors Book: Color Black & White

http://www.childcareland.com/free.html

Science Themes:
Clouds, The Water Cycle

The Water Cycle - this is the best kid explanation of the water cycle I found. Make sure and scroll all the way down the page and use the worksheets which have some great things to do as examples of evaporation, condensation, precipation and collection.
http://www.kidzone.ws/water/

Great Story About Drippy the Raindrop and the Water Cycle along with additional activities
Try out the cotton ball cloud experiment - Science Experiment #3
http://www.first-school.ws/activities/science/drippy.htm

Cloud Types
This is my favorite website with simple explanations of the main cloud types. There is also a great little interactive quiz (probably 1st or 2nd grade level -- with some help).
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/2003FF/clues/index.html

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/2003FF/clues/cloudclues.html Test your cloud knowledge!

Clouds - Cloud in a Bottle Science Experiment
www.weatherwizkids.com/cloud1.htm

There are a couple of other science experiments we are doing out of Janice VanCleave's book Earth Science for Every Kid -- science experiment #74 & 75

Additional Themes:
Cows - we are going to milk cows at Wheeler Farm and we are going to make butter out of cream.
Also, I love the book Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type by

Snacks: crackers, cookies, cereal, carrots, candy, cheese, chips, cake, cupcakes, cantaloupe, cherries, rainbow goldfish crackers

Character Training: Sharing

Sharing Books:

Letter B Themes

Building (Construction) Theme Booklist:

*B is for Bulldozer, A Construction ABC, by June Sobel
*Construction Countdown by K.C. Olson
*Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson
Building Maching and What They Do by Derek Radford
Alphabet Under Construction by Denise Fleming
*Jack the Builder by Stuart J. Murphy

Letter A Themes