Preschool - About Me, Week 2

Day 1: Feelings

We spent a lot of this day in front of the mirror.  First I asked him to make a face that went along with a feeling I said, like happy, scared, surprised, etc.  Then I asked him to make a face for how he felt when I said certain things, like cake, present, puppy, owie, etc.  Then I made sounds like laughing, crying, etc. and had him told me how I was feeling.

We read the book Today I Feel Silly 

and made faces in the mirror to go along with the book.  The back of the book had a face where you can turn a wheel and change he expression and we played with that for a bit.  

Then we read the book Feelings.  

This book was great for discussion and we probably spent half an hour reading this alone.

We sang the song "If You're Happy and You Know It" but with different feelings for each verse instead of always happy.  And we sang "If You Chance to Meet a Frown."

For our craft we took a paper plate and I cut eye holes out of it and let Alex draw a happy and sad face on the top and bottom.  

He's played with it a lot since then.  The eyelashes actually make it look like tears when he turns it upside down.

If we'd had time we would have taken crackers and spread peanut butter on them and then made faces out of raisins and peanuts, etc., but time ran out.

Day 2:  Five Senses

This was our best day yet!  There is so much stuff you can do for the five senses that it was hard to narrow it all down.  

First I made little cards that each had a picture of an eye, ear, nose, hand, and tongue and asked him what each was and what we use it for.

Then we read the book My Five Senses.

This book helped put the words sight to eye and hearing to ear, etc.  They were words Alex didn't quite have down for each sense.

This next part was the highlight of the day.  I got five brown lunch sacks and labeled each one with a picture of a sense.  Then in each bag I put things that he would have to guess using that sense.  In the hearing bag I put a bell, a whistle, a piece of aluminum foil to crinkle, and a small Tupperware with popcorn kernels in it to rattle.  In the taste bag I put salt, lime juice, a grape, and a chocolate chip.  In the touch bag I put a seashell, sandpaper, a piece of fake fur, and a silky ribbon.  In the smelling bag I put a bottle of perfume, a bottle of liquid smoke, some Pepto-Bismol (it's the worst smelling thing I could find), and some pine needles.  In the sight bag I had a picture of the kids with a rainbow, a magnifying glass, a small book, and a kaleidescope.  

I blindfolded him for all the senses except sight.  He wanted to do this over and over again.  Then he had to test me.  When Ella came home he tested her.  And he wanted to test Daddy but he wasn't home.  This would have gone on forever if I hadn't had to put some of the stuff away.

We sang the song "I Know Heavenly Father Loves Me," then we then read the book The Listening Walk.

And then went for a listening walk ourselves, though we turned it into a five senses walk, which after the fact we realized was too much at once.  We took a digital recorder to record the sounds we heard, we took a camera to take pictures of the things we saw, and we took a bag to collect things we could smell and feel.  I was pretty sure we wouldn't find anything to taste, but we actually found a peach that had fallen off someone's tree!

When we got back I had Alex glue everything we'd found onto a scrap piece of cardboard.

We even glued the peach pit on there.  While we were doing that Daddy was making a slide show of our pictures and sounds.  It's not great, but here it is:

(It won't load.  Sorry!)

I also had him do a worksheet I found online here about good and bad smells.  Alex loves cutting and pasting so I couldn't pass this one up.

And finally, we baked banana bread.  That took all of our senses, especially taste!

With more time we would have made sandpaper art.  You color on sandpaper with crayons and a cinnamon stick so that all the senses are being used, you see the colors, hear the sandpaper scratch, feel the sandpaper, smell and taste the cinnamon. 

Day 3:  Clothes

To start I showed Alex pictures of different pieces of clothing I had cut out from a catalog and had him tell me what they were.  Then I pulled out some real clothes of mine and Anton's and dressed him all up.  He looked super cute!  We talked about the different clothes we wear in different seasons and the different clothes we wear at different times of day.  Then we talked about specific clothes we wear on certain parts of our bodies, like hats on heads, gloves on hands, etc.  I'd name a body part and he'd tell me all the clothes he could think of.

We read the books Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed (I LOVE Mo Willems),

and The Emperor's New Clothes, and Clothes in Many Cultures.

I didn't like the version of The Emperor's New Clothes that we had (it's not the one I linked to above).  It used the word "stupid" over and over again, and that's a word that is banned in our house.  And the way the story was worded it was way over both my kids' heads.  I should have reviewed it before reading it and gotten a better version.  Oh well.  Live and learn.

After reading Clothes in Many Cultures we tried to dress up like the different people mentioned in the book.  I have a sarong and it worked for most of the stuff.  

We ended our day and our About Me week by making paper dolls then cutting clothes out of catalogs to dress them.  Here are Alex and Ella's dolls:

Ella always has to do what we did when she comes home from school.  They weren't patient enough to finish all four dolls, but they spent a lot of time searching for the perfect clothes and cutting and gluing.  We'll definitely do more of this kind of thing in upcoming weeks.