School Journal - Ocean/Beach Preschool Theme

We're getting ready to go on vacation to the beach and I thought it would be fun to do a beach/ocean theme for our school workboxes. We used some printables and ideas from several different sites:

http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2011/06/ocean-theme-printables-more.html

http://www.homeschoolcreations.com/oceanpreschoolpack.html

http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-our-shelves-july-august.html

Betty and Bo both enjoyed this activity I got from Counting Coconuts (not from the link above, but I couldn't find the exact one). It's just putting little umbrella toothpicks into styrofoam. Great fine motor activity. We used our ocean animal toobs a lot and poured "sand" into different containers with a funnel which Betty loved too.

I also put together an ocean sensory tub with our ocean animals, blue aquarium gravel, a small boat, some seashells, aquarium plants and some spikey balls for sea urchins. The beach sensory tub that I did didn't get its picture taken but it had cornmeal for sand (since I didn't have the real thing), seashells, a bucket and scoop, a toothpick umbrella and little chairs and some game pieces to serve as people. Both of them were played with a lot.



I think that now they'll know what to do when we go on vacation!

School Journal - Bunnies and Birds

Betty loved our spring themes of bunnies and birds! We read books on both topics including:

     



I used some Easter theme printables and activities from Prekinders and the Birds Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations for our 2 weeks of Bunnies and Birds.

This is a fun thing from Prekinders. It's like a Find-It! Game but you put rice and little items inside a clear plastic carrot. Betty had a blast finding all her letters in the carrots. Other bunny things we did were hopping like a bunny and other animals, bunny counting using a picture of a garden with a bunny and then using playdough carrots that the bunny gobbled up and a bunny craft.



I couldn't think of a bunny theme sensory bin, but we did do a bird bin. I used bird seed and had a couple of fake birds that I found at the dollar store and some plastic eggs. Betty wasn't the only one who got interested in that.

But we had to take it outside for him! :)

She also painted a little birdhouse I picked up at Hobby Lobby. We did a lot of games with plastic eggs and we made a playdough nest for counting our jelly bean eggs. She really likes birds and can name some of the more common ones around our house. But she's really hoping to see a Great-Horned Owl.