May 17 - 26, 2010

As we make our way through the second half of May I thought it would be great to end our "preschool" year with one final unit study.....Oceans! We plan to spend time enjoying the ocean this summer so it is a perfect end of year study for us. We began it a week and a half ago and expect to finish it up next week. We will be continuing with learning activities throughout the summer but at a slower pace in order to take full advantage of all the weather and summer activities there are for us to do. I didn't have my camera around for all the activities and Karl rarely takes pictures when they are doing activities together so we've only got a small sampling of the many things he has done so far. Enjoy!

Day two of our ocean study was centered around the movie Finding Nemo, after a general introduction to oceans on day one. We started by making our own ocean out of blue jello and adding Nemo fruit snacks to respresent ocean animals after about 45 minutes. Kyle is watching the timer count down to make sure he stirred the jello for exactly 2 minutes. I have read variations of this idea all across the internet so I can't remember where exactly I got the idea from.

Putting the Nemo snacks into the deep blue ocean. (Notice his mouth....wonder what's going on there....)

Time for our ocean to sit in the refrigerator.

The Nemo snacks box had a maze and searching activity on it so we cut it out and completed it.

To introduce Kyle to all the Nemo characters I put together a Nemo Names book for him. (printed from here) It said This is (the name of many of the characters) and had a picture of that character.

The last page is a surprise because it says This is Kyle and has his picture in it. Kyle sure loved this book and asked to read it over and over again throughout the day.

We then settled down and ready "Commotion in the Ocean" which features many ocean creatures through short rhyming poems and colorful illustrations.

After enjoying our book we worked on some math. Kyle picked a number card from a pile then had to turn over each condiment dish and count the number of Nemo snacks under the dish, looking for the amount that matched the number card he chose. He then laid the card on top of the matching amount and chose another card, continuing until he had matched all the number cards. Kyle loved doing this!

After finding all the matches Kyle placed them in order from 0 to 7, answered questions about most, least, more/less than, posed, and then chose to eat the snacks in the number 7 dish.

Finally, it was time to watch the movie!

About halfway through the movie....

After the movie it was time for lunch. But we first had to check on our lemonade fish shaped ice cubes we made after we made the jello ocean. These trays can be found here.

When we finished lunch it was time to dig into our ocean. This face shows how excited he was to try it.

We completed most of of our Nemo/ocean activities before lunch so it was then time to play a board game. Kyle chose Chutes and Ladders.

He wanted to do another game so he chose this one that involves matching pieces together to form words/pictures. I gave him either 5 or 6 of the 24 it has to work on and he did a great job completing all of these on his own. We then read each word and talked about the beginning sound each one made.

After board games we did a bit of art. I had him choose a page out of a crayola ocean themed coloring/sticker book and asked him to color it. He didn't want to color but asked if he could paint it instead. So, I cut the whale out from the rest of the page (had just a bit of background stuff) and let him paint it. He chose the blue color after reading about a blue whale earlier.

Painting the blue whale led to some free painting.

The last thing we had to do on this day was a puzzle. Kyle chose this one that he received from his Aunt Ingrid for his birthday. This was the first time we completed it. Daddy even got in on the fun with this one.

It was a very fun and full day!!

Kyle finally started using his pedals on his tricyle!!!

But then decided it is still a lot of fun to have Daddy do all the pedaling.

More ocean fun....roll a die fish math mat made even more fun with goldfish!

Jumping around with Kaleigh

OPENING DAY AT THE POOL!!!

Puzzlemania day!

One of the things he had to do one day this week was a puzzle....just one puzzle was all I wanted him to do. So, he looked in our puzzle box and chose this Nemo one....

then the continents (followed by fifty states) one....

then these complete the scenes one....

then this Ten Monkeys Jumping on the Bed one. After this, and after realizing we were quickly running out of room on the floor since we had to leave every puzzle out to show daddy when he woke up, I said, "You know.....we don't have to do anymore puzzles if you don't want to. I was happy with just one." He simply said, "Okay," and asked to paint.

So paint we did (he chose to work on the easel this time). I love how serious his face gets when he really concentrates on it.

In the end Daddy had 3 or 4 new paintings to take to work. I asked him if he wanted to give any of his paintings to anyone else and he said, "No, only for Daddy to take to his work."

Enjoying chicken parmesan....loves using grown up plates and silverware and sitting in a grown up chair (his "highchair" was one that attached to a regular chair so he has always sat in a grown up chair).

Ocean themed lunch....shell mac n' cheese, octopus shaped hot dog, and cherries. He wasn't as thrilled about the lunch as I had hoped he'd be when originally planning this but he had a lot going on around him while I prepared and then showed it to him so that is okay. I enjoyed making (and eating) it.