If You Wanna Be A Pirate, Get Up On Your Feet

I haven't updated in awhile. It has been chaotic and hectic at our house as we get ready for the holidays, celebrate birthdays and some other things. It's pretty busy! We have been squeezing in a few lessons but not really doing any themes. I did do pirate week a few weeks ago so I thought I would share about that.

I always like to share my sensory box first because I have so much fun making them! This one was made with some sand (that was kind of scented, I bought it in the decorative aisle of the dollar store with the candles and oils...it smelled like vanilla!), seashells, little beads and strings of beads, and a leather box my brother and sister made me years ago as a treasure chest that I filled with chocolate coins. He loved it!

For pirate week I went to the dollar store and bought a cheap scarf that I wrapped around him like a bandana, and I made this adorable beard out of paper for him. (It only held up for one day, but it was cute!) We used a kalidescope for a spy glass and we were set! Here's my little pirate...

We LOVE to read books! Here are our two favourites from Pirate week. We read them every day this week! So much fun!

 

 What pirate is complete without a treasure map? We distressed a piece of paper and stamped the pirate and treasure chest and then mapped out the seas and whatever else he wanted to add. It stayed on the fridge for a millisecond before he whipped it off to go treasure hunting.

Here he is playing with the sensory box. When he first started, he had no idea that there was anything in the box. When he discovered it he said, "GOLDEN GLOONS!" (which is Micah-ese for gold dubloons). Still, he didn't know that they were chocolate. Here's his discovery in sequence. Kind of cute and funny!

 

 We love listening to music, so of course we had to listen to our favourite pirate songs on youtube. We love the Backyardigans pirate songs, but I am a sucker for those Barefoot Books songs, so here was our most listened to song of the week.

 We did a bit of  pirate themed seat work as well. We are really trying to work on writing but it is so hard! I wish I had some tips to make it better and easier for him. We spent a lot of time colouring just to get used to holding a crayon or pencil.

Later in the week when we played with the sensory box he was all about the "golden gloons" and it was hard to get him to concentrate on anything else so I ended up making that his special snack along with some goldfish crackers.

 

Our special craft was to colour and decorate a pirate ship. I think he did a pretty good job!

   

After our lessons were over he played with some learning prompts that I had coloured up - he thought they were great. He had a great time!

 

Our December plans are to celebrate Christmas pretty much all year and talk about the difference between Santa and Jesus. Should be interesting and fun, too!

Not So Spooky Halloween

This week our theme was Halloween. I don't really do much about Halloween, and I don't like anything scary or demonic, so no zombies or skeletons or anything creepy! We tried to keep it as cute and light as we could, since all he really gets about Halloween is dressing up with his brother and going to the nursing home.

Our sensory bin this week was fun to throw together. It's basically just some garland from the dollar store thrown in with one little ghost full of candy that I found and then a bunch of erasers, scrapbook embellishments and a large fake and glittery spider. He loved it though! (And come to think of it, pretty much everything this week was from the dollar store!)

This week was pretty low key, so we did a lot of the same activities. I didn't take as many pictures as I normally do and I am not sure why, but that's okay. We started off each day with reading a book - thankfully we went to the library to check out some because I didn't have many on hand. Here are his two favourites from the week, he could look at them again and again. They are both really cute!

I found these halloween bracelets at the dollar store as well and we used them for a transferring activity, and then we tried to name them all. The package came with ghosts, bats, pumpkins, the word BOO and skulls - I threw out the skulls ahead of time. He really enjoyed doing this this time around and was pretty proud of himself once he had them all sorted.

We practiced stamping twice this week. I had these Halloween stamps that were preinked but I didn't really like them since there were only one or two in the package that I thought were acceptable and not too freaky. So I went back and found these cuter ones that we used later in the week. (The pictures show him decorating his paper plate for special snack with them).

The sensory bin was a hit, as usual. There is always something that he goes right to in the bins and this week it was the cute looking ghost. He had a lot of fun with it! The first few days he basically just played with the ghost...

Since the spider wasn't that creepy we had a little fun with it, too!

Not that I would ever want a spider like that too close to me. I do not like spiders! Today I had him trying to find all the small embellishments and erasers that sunk to the bottom. He thought the spider rings were pretty cool too and wanted to try them out.

Our special songs this week were a bunch of cute and not spooky ones, and we also found one on youtube that we loved, a spin off a really old one!





Micah really enjoyed dancing to it and shaking his bones! He even had an appropriate shirt for it! (A little small, but it is only for a short while!)

On Tuesday this week we carved our pumpkin as a family. Aiden designed it using a program on the Disney Jr. website and then we drew it on and cut it out. They enjoyed doing that this year, unlike last year when they were really turned off by the pumpkin guts. I read them this cute little poem as we were doing it which takes the focus off of Halloween and puts it on Jesus. I thought it was cool.

Our special craft today was a little wreath covered in foam pumpkins with a pumpkin in the middle that says, "Let your Light Shine for Jesus!" It was super cute but he had a really hard time because every single one of those jack o lantern pieces needed to be cut out and glued down, including the leaves and the pumpkin tops. It was a cute craft kit, but way too old for him. We still have fun putting it together though, and I especially like the message.

I had to think about what to do for special snack since I had forgotten about it when I was planning my grocery shopping trip. So I whipped up these ghost cupcakes this morning using the last of these edible eyeballs that I had from earlier this year (I think it was Easter). I put the icing on while they were still hot so they melted to look more transparent. I wish that was intentional, but it totally wasn't. We just wanted to eat them!

Next week is going to be a busy one so I am not sure what the theme will be but it will definitely be a mini unit, and maybe one on baking (we might bake his brother's birthday cake together!) We will see!

Transportation Week

We have all been under the weather at our house this week, so we took a week off from preschool. Today is also a day off of school for Aiden, so we're all just hanging out here today. I thought I would post what we did last week for preschool instead - transportation week!

 I had fun putting this sensory bin together. It took awhile to come up with a filler for the bottom. I couldn't think of anything to use because I had forgotten to buy dried beans like I had planned, and then my smartie pants husband told me shredded paper would be a good idea. It worked well!

 

We love to read books for preschool and usually I will go to the library and get out a few books that are appropriate for the theme of the week. Having two boys in the house does mean that we have a lot of books about cars and trucks, so I didn't have to go too far to find books for this week. One of Micah's favourites was this book about trains. He really likes Chuggington!

As usual, we did some seat work where he had to trace the words. I love getting these free printables, especially the ones you can customize. Makes it so simple! This week we did various modes of transportation. He thought the airplane and the ambulance were the coolest. The helicopter was pretty neat, too!





One of the fun things we did was play with a puzzle. Since the last puzzle we tried during dinosaur week wasn't quite his speed, I tried something a little less difficult and it seemed to do the trick. He really enjoyed it! (And we boxed up the dinosaur puzzle for him to give his brother for his birthday in two weeks - he will like it much more than Micah!)




The sensory bin was a pretty big hit - they usually are. This time he found the airplane to be the best. I bought the airplane just for the bin, so it wasn't something he had seen before. The rest of the stuff in the bin I just swiped from the toy bins in their rooms. He didn't want to put the airplane back in the bin at the end of the day, he was so impressed with it...and was very happy when the week was over and he could keep it for himself!

We had a lot of fun watching youtube videos this week for music as well. We LOVE the Barefoot Books selection on youtube where they sing a book. It is so much fun to sing them and dance around with them. They are ALL very well done. Here's one of the ones we watched this week several times over!

Our playdough this week was left over from dinosaur week. This playdough stays so fresh that I don't really NEED to make new playdough week in and week out unless I want something new or different for a special theme. We enjoyed cutting out cars and trucks with our cookie cutters and making them go vrrrooooom!





We did a bunch of different crafts this week as well. We did a license plate transfer that he didn't quite get the concept of at first but thought it was hilarious!





And we also did some stamping with these stamps I purchased at the dollar store. There was a car, boat, train and plane. He really enjoyed it!





We do a lot of the same activities all week long - but on Friday we like to do a few more things that are different and fun, including our special snack. Here he is playing with the sensory bin for the last time and telling me excitedly that he gets to have the plane for himself.

We also did a special craft on Friday. I bought this craft kit from the dollar store earlier in the week and cut out the colours and things for him to glue together and he had a great time. He loves using the glue sticks...I hate it because it is so messy! But what can you do?

This week for special snack, I had to be a little creative. I could not think of anything to do because I had forgotten I needed apples and bananas for the special snack (I was going to do banana boats and apple airplanes!) and I used them for baking. Ooops! So instead I made cheese rafts with crackers, cheese and pretzels. He didn't seem to mind!

Notice the plane sitting beside him? He would not let it out of his sight! 

Next week we're going to focus on Halloween. It's not going to be creepy or scary since I do not enjoy that sort of stuff. We're going to keep it cutesy and low key and we're going to throw in some Biblical lessons in there as well. Curious? Come back next week and see what we are up to!