Earth Day day-by-day (Day 4)

Let's love our Planet and try each day, 

to do all things the greener way!!!

Day 4 - Find a local farm

One of the best days of the year we have, are spent on a local farm, where we go fruit picking. The kids love to put on their rain boots, grab baskets, and hop onto a little wagon that carries them through the farm. 

If we are lucky, we get to enjoy some splashing in puddles or running between the trees full of sweet yummy fruit.

Coming to your local farm to pick some fruit or veggies, is another way to show our planet that you care. 

Picking the fruit brings a lot of joy to the kids. It is very hands-on educational!

...and messy...

...and the final outcome is just an icing on a cake! (only healthier :-))

And of course, on every farm, there is always something extra to do or see!

Go on, support your local farm, help save our planet, and have fun!

We are linking up to the very inspiring It's a Boy's Life Blog Field Trip Friday!

Earth Day day-by-day (Day 3)

Let's love our Planet and try each day, 

to do all things the greener way!!!

Day 3 - Upcycle used objects

What exactly means to upcycle something? It means, that you take something that you used and instead of throwing it out, you make something new out of it - something better. Here are few ideas for upcycling with small kids:

Turn:

- CD into a wind chime

- plastic milk jug into a bird feeder (see our previous post)

- plastic milk jug into a Holiday decoration

- broken tiles into mosaic

- turn broken crayons into new ones

- kids' paintings into wrapping paper

- make a house out of a card box

- etc.

We are including a tutorial for the CD wind chime!


You will need:
Used CD
Drill
Markers
embroidery threads
sea shells with holes 


Drill holes into the CD then have kids color the CD for fun.

Then have them put sea shells onto the thread. I was very happy to finally find a good use for some of my sea shells!

Loop the thread through the holes in the CD and your wind chime is finished! (You can see we used paper clips to hold the thread in place. You can do that if you don't have a drill.)

These wind chimes we admired by everyone who came over! And the sound they made was very calming!

Earth Day day-by-day (Day 2)

Let's love our Planet and try each day, 

to do all things the greener way!!!

Day 2 - Build animal houses and feeders

Why not build an animal house just for fun! Pretend that a chipmunk could use a fancy entrance to his hole in the ground... or bunnies a nice front porch to their burrow. Kids will come up with endless varieties of stories and a forest is full of material. We tried to use all material that was already broken or peeled of or otherwise destroyed. The sticks were laying on the ground, the moss was taken few days ago from the roof of the cabin, fern leaves came from a spot were they were not  wanted, and rocks were collected by the creek.

A cute shelter was born!

We also painted a bird house and hung it in our back yard. And last but not least, we built a bird feeder from an used milk jug. 


You will need:


used milk jug, washed
knife
wooden dowels or sticks
bird seeds


Cut out two holes for the birds to be able to get in for the seed and four holes for the wooden dowels to help the birds stand on while eating. 

...and no, it isn't squirrel proofed... I found this little guy all squished inside of the jug having a feast... nothing peeking out. ;-)

Earth Day day-by-day (Day 1)

Let's love our Planet and try each day, 

to do all things the greener way!!!

Day 1 - Plant a garden

What could be better for our Planet then us eating fresh, local grown food on everyday basis? Let's go back to our roots and plant a garden right in our backyard or on our balcony. Kids will have a great time watching fruit or/and veggies grow and then eat them right from the source. It is an easy fun activity!

You will need:

pots (yogurt cups will do a great job too)

(organic) seed starting soil

seeds (we got our non-gmo seeds here http://www.seedsnow.com/ )

clean spray bottle

Help kids fill up pots with seed starting soil (organic is best). Is there anything else kids love more than getting dirty? So let them feel the dirt and dig around a little. 

Give them some seeds and watch them place them into their new little homes. I would stick with the bigger seeds - they are a better fit for their little fingers.

Do your kids love spray bottles as much as our kids do? Then this will be their favorite! Have them spray some water on the new planted seeds. 

In just few days...

Happy Earth Day!

Letter D is for Dinosaur

After our great two weeks of Earth Day day-by-day series, we are back to our regular activities posts. This time we would like to share some letter D activities that you can do with your preschoolers. As you can see below, the big kids participated as well!!!

The little kids are working on their special ABC book. Every week we go over one letter of the alphabet and they decorate a page with something that begins with that particular letter. We did it last year with the big kids and the final product was really rewarding for them. I will create a separate post to explain to you the process. 

Anyway, back to letter D - first they decorated letter D page with Do-a-dot paint (D for dots).

Then, they went on to trace letter D with erasable marker. We got the template from Erica at Confessions of the homeschooler. We print the page and place it inside a protective sleeve. That way we can keep practicing over and over.

From the same website, we printed this sheet. The kids use Do-a-dot to color all the circles of the letter in. This helps them to faster recognize the shape.

It's time to dig up some dinosaurs! We put small rubber dinos into a plastic bag filled with shredded paper. Then I hid them. Be prepared that this could become dusty and messy but overall they liked digging up the dinosaurs!

The big kids used the small rubber dinosaurs to help them with additions. 

 

Dropper painting

This was a bit more difficult for the little preschoolers to do but at the end they all mastered the art of squeezing and letting go, everyone had fun!

You will need:

medicine droppers

paint palette

paint

water

card stock paper

Fill up the paint holders with paint and dilute it with water so the paint becomes more watery and it's easier to pick it up with the dropper. 

Then have the kids pick up the paint with the droppers and drip the paint all over their paper.

Ask them not to use their fingers, but they can use their droppers to smudge the paint around the paper.

Little man at work...

Kids had a blast!

...and masterpieces were born!

Popsicle sticks Spelling puzzle

I keep trying to come up with new ways to practice our spelling words. This is a little spelling puzzle made out of popsicle sticks. 

Print out a list of spelling words the kids are learning. 

Use permanent marker to write each letter of each word on popsicle sticks. 

Have kids build the words according to the sheet.

And finished product!

Eventually I will not give them the sheet with words, they will have to put the words together by memory.