Tot School

Hunter is 23 months and 364 days (he’ll be 2 tomorrow, sniff sniff)

We had a great time at Tot School!!  Hunter learned about the letter H, owls and gingerbread men.

Hailey does the calendar every morning with Hunter.  She is such a good little teacher and Hunter loves it when she works with him!

Hunter loves the printables from Royal Baloo.  Here he is using several of them for the letter H:

Hunter really enjoyed this mini book about helicopters.

Hunter worked on coloring a helicopter

Pointing out the letter H

Gluing helicopters onto an H.

Hunter also made an H for house.

We added a wreath above the door since it’s Christmas time 🙂

Hailey has been learning all about owls in science, so Hunter has been joining in and doing some owl activities too.  Several of the ideas are from an owl unit by Deanna Jump.

Hunter made this cute little owl.

He really enjoyed this owl poem and loved pointing and saying parts of the poem.

He spent a lot of time looking at this cute little owl book.

I have been doing a Gingerbread Man unit with Hailey in language arts, so of course Hunter wanted to do everything she was doing too.

He worked hard on his coloring.

Putting together a gingerbread house.

Hunter’s completed gingerbread house.

I think we have read every version of the Gingerbread Man that there is 🙂  It was a lot of fun and I have really enjoyed the stories.

After we read “The Gingerbread Cowboy,” Hunter made a candy cane cactus.

The finished cactus hanging up on the tree in our classroom.

Hunter colored this after we read “Gingerbread Baby” and “Gingerbread Friends.”

We made this to go along with “Gingerbread Man Loose in the School.”

It was a fun week!!  One more week and then we’ll be on Christmas vacation- I can’t wait!!

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Heart of Dakota- BLHFHG Units 9 & 10

After taking most of November off from Heart of Dakota to do a fun Thanksgiving Unit study, we dove right back in to HOD last week.  I don’t want to get too far off from where I had wanted to be before our Christmas break so we squeezed 2 units into one week.

History/Geography:

This week we read about the hard trip on the Mayflower and what is was like for the Pilgrims when they landed in America.

We did a fun little mapping activity practicing using north, east, south and west to find some corn in a basket.

We found Plymouth on the map and Hailey made a picture of what the coastline looks like where the Pilgrims landed.  Hunter helped her color the ocean.

Hailey added a new date to our timeline.

We did an activity where Hailey had to try to build a wall and then I would knock down part of the wall as she tried to build.  It related to the Bible story and our focus on the pilgrims trying to build their homes.  It was one of those activities that I thought seemed a little silly when I read it in the curriculum, but Hailey loved it!!  She giggled and giggled and wanted to keep doing it.

Language Arts:

I introduced the concept of historical fiction this week, as we are starting to read Little House in the Big Woods.

I told Hailey to act out what she thought it was like to be on the Mayflower and spot land after being stuck on the boat for so long.  I explained to her that she acted things out based on the facts she has learned about so that she could understand what historical fiction means.

I found this in one of my Mailbox books, it related perfectly to our book.  Hailey had to color and cut out the different foods that the Ingalls family prepared to store for the winter and then glue it to where they stored it.

We are doing a super fun Gingerbread Unit from Around the Kampfire.  Hailey worked on a cute folder from the unit that she is keeping all of her gingerbread papers in.

The front of the finished folder.  So cute!

Science:

This was another activity that I thought seemed a little silly and I actually skipped over it at first.  Then I figured we would just do it because it would only take a few minutes.  I am so glad we did it because Hailey loved it!  I put tape on the table to represent land, the blue X represents Virginia where the pilgrims had hoped to land.  The ball is the Mayflower and Hailey had to blow on it to try to get it to Virginia.  At first she was able to do it.  Then I blew on the ball from another direction and changed the course of where it went.

We put clay in the bottom of this container to show what it could look like under the water and why it was important for the pilgrims to settle where there was a bay deep enough for large boats to dock.  Our bay wasn’t deep enough, so the boat got stuck.

We also did a little experiment to see how the water cycle works.

We focused on learning all about owls.  Hailey and Hunter made a cute owl craft.

Hailey turned hers into a book and wrote a fact about owls on each page and then illustrated it.

The front of Hailey’s book.

One of the pages in her book.

We also dissected a couple of owl pellets, which was so interesting!!

Owls can, have, are chart

Christmas:

We have been reading all about the Christmas story and the real meaning of Christmas.

After reading the Christmas story, Hailey and Hunter used our Little People Nativity set to act out the story.

We are working on our own nativity set and adding a little at a time.

It was a great and busy week!

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