Here Comes Peter Cottontail!

Okay, so again, a somewhat minimal week, but we're gaining ground with the new guy here in our midst.  It's all about routine and preparation with my guys and homeschool.  We are finally getting the routine back, but my preparation is lacking.  So, I'm working on that part of it.

This week, since Easter is coming this weekend (tomorrow, in fact), I tried to pull together a few Easter-y things last minute (like I said, preparation skills have gone by the wayside....it's getting better).  Here are the things I manage to accomplish with the boys this week:

Bunny's Egg Hop Sight Word Game
One of many lesson plan/activities I have been lucky enough to snag for free from the TeachersPayTeachers and/or TeachersNotebook websites.  It's awesome!  This particular activity comes from Over theMoonBow.  It's a little board game that the players flip a coin and moves an egg space or two.  If they are able to read the word on the egg, they stay on the space.  Otherwise, they must go back to their previous space.  The first to reach the basket wins.  There is a board for sight words, color words, and number words.

Rainbow Writing Roll and Spell
This activity (from www.gracehopperlearning.blogspot.com) involved rolling a die and writing the word according to the corresponding color.  When the word is written, you say the word aloud.  It made writing his frequency words a little more tolerable.  Hayden really does NOT enjoy writing even though when he takes his time and really tries, he has pretty decent handwriting for a five year old.

Easter Egg Color-By-Sight Word
Even though Hayden does not enjoy writing, he DOES enjoy coloring, and the more tedious the space, the more he enjoys the challenge (go figure).  So, I'm always snatching up the opportunity for him to do the color-by-number type of activities.  This time, I got lucky with finding a color by word sheet made by Jessa Maguire on www.talesfromoutsidetheclassroom.blogspot.com.  There were several pages with big Easter eggs that were divided into patterns.  There were certain sight words written in the spaces, and you had to color the word with the matching color.  Or you could fill in your own blank Easter egg which is what we did.

Easter Egg Color-By-Number

And speaking of coloring (I think I inherently taught with a side theme this week), we also found an addition facts color-by-number Easter egg worksheet.  We didn't do very many of these....just enough to know we got this down pat.  Hayden's original goal was to hang every egg he colored around the house for Easter decorations.  That idea waned after the fifth egg was colored/painted.

Addition Facts Color-By-Number

Peep Addition Game

This was a lot of fun but took a lot of preparation on my part (see earlier writing about lack of preparation skills).  We were supposed to do this on Monday, but we ended up doing it on Thursday due to me not getting it all together and ready.  I printed out a bunch of cards from here at TeachersPayTeachers.  Then I had to cut them out, use the hole puncher to punch holes in all the little peeps, and then draw a circle around the correct answer on the backside of the card.  By the 4th day of the week, I was ready to roll!

3+4=???

Hmmm...which to choose??

Yes!  The answer is 7!!

Art Projects

Our big art projects for the week involved painting outdoors and mad balloon-blowing skills indoors.  The first was project was a huge Easter egg painted by each boy out on the back patio.  I love the outdoors when the weather cooperates.  If we're ever able to do outdoor activities, I'm all for it.  The boys love it, I love it....it's a win-win situation!

Creative Easter Egg Tempera Painting

The other art project was an Easter egg garland - mostly done by me with the boys supervising.  It always surprises me how timid Hayden is with gooey stuff when he is so willing to get filthy dirty on a daily basis in our backyard.  For some reason, handling mushy wet goo is not appealing to this boy!  However, he just couldn't wait to see the end result of this project!

Soaking the embroidery string in liquid starch and flour

Then the strings are wrapped around small balloons and left to dry

Finally, the balloons are popped and the eggs are hung on the mantle!

Science

On a completely different note (or subject, should I say?), Hayden really wanted to study lizards this month.  So, we started a lizard lapbook this week, and we transformed our old frog aquarium into a lizard terrarium.  We've gotten a bunch of lizard and reptile books from the library that Hayden is diligently reading (or being read to from), and he's watched a few videos on the different types of lizards and reptiles.   He is LOVING it.  His Easter basket was even filled with Backyard Safari stuff for catching and studying lizards, insects, etc.  By the end of this month, I swear, he'll know almost as much about lizards as he does about dinosaurs!  Pictures of this will follow later once we finish up this unit.

The other science project we did this week was a Floating Egg Experiment.  This was the first of several egg experiments that I have planned for the boys.  The week after Easter is going to be a haven for egg experiments and lessons.  I can NOT wait!

The Floating Egg Experiment!