G-R-E-E-N

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything - we had VBS last week so that consumed us, plus WE SOLD OUR HOUSE! Wahoo!! Now starts the packing and search for a new place. =/ In the chaotic classroom (it has definitely been chaotic) we just went ahead and stuck with green for two weeks. Even though A knew it after one, I didn't have the energy or the time to switch to a new color. Hello mom life. I do have to say, green has been one of the easiest colors to teach. Especially with it being summer in the south =) We spend most of the days outside surrounded by green things, anyways! Inside the "classroom" this is what we did:

We set up the shelves with everything green we could find. We had a lot more green toys than I thought! I'm personally not a huge fan of the color, so I was afraid we wouldn't have much.

what is more precious than a naked baby in a tutu?!

I made a green bean bag to go along with our collection. A really loves to toss these around and play catch with them. These are super easy to make. All you have to do is cut out two squares of fabric (I generally cut on a fold so I only have one big rectangular piece), sew 3 sides together (2 if you cut on a fold since the fold side is already together, turn right side out, fill with beans, and sew up the remaining side! If you are OCD like me, you can go back and stitch two sides alike so it will be even. No lie, I will add 10 minutes to any project just so it can be balanced. If you embroider the word on, make sure and do that before you sew any sides together.

                                            

We ate green food (which was pretty easy and forced us to eat healthy):

No, I didn't feed the salad to A, although I think she could handle it since she has all of her teeth. It still scares me, though.

For our art activities we colored a page of green things and also went on a scavenger hunt outside for green leaves and grass to glue onto paper to make our own plant! A really loved this one...

For sensory play, we made some green playdough to add to the stash:

This is one of our language/vocabulary activities. A matching game of green things. I simply made two of each object, laminated the individual ones and glued the matching set onto a file folder.  Ideally, I would laminate the file folder, but I don't have laminated pouches big enough =( Any suggestions on how to make it better are much appreciated! 

We also made a sensory bin of green rice and put her green animal manipulatives down in there for her to dig out.  She was without clothes when we did that, though, so I'll spare you that picture. ;)

Our green song of the week was:

to the tune of Old MacDonald (go ahead, sing it in your head)

There's a color we all know,

G-R-E-E-N

It's the color that means "Go!"

G-R-E-E-N

Oh, grass is green and lettuce is green,

leaves and spinach and peas are green,

There's a color we all know,

G-R-E-E-N.

That about sums it all up, I think. "Geen" was a success in our books so now on to the color Orange! 

Teaching Purple

This week in our chaotic classroom =) we learned about the color Purple.  I was excited because this week, after only 2 days A recognized and said "pu pul"! We of course kept going the whole week because I had lots of activities planned, but I was happy to know that she was catching on so quickly.  She only signed "red" and "blue," so I was ecstatic that she actually verbalized this one! I've been concerned (as I'm sure alot of moms are) about her speech development.  Being a speech pathologist, I know that every child develops at a different pace, and technically she is right on tract. But my niece was talking in sentences by the time she was A's age, so she gets compared to her by family quite often (understandably, considering my niece was the only baby for a while). And of course being an SLP, I always assumed my child would talk early because I knew I was going to follow ALL the rules, HA! God has a funny sense of humor, sometimes. =) Here is a glimpse at what we did this week:

Like always, we started off by introducing the word/color by coloring in a sign to put in our basket that holds our crayons, markers, and colored pencils.  For a visual of what this looks like, click here: http://chaostoclassroom.blogspot.com/2014/05/welcome-to-from-chaos-to-classroom-my.html and scroll down until you see the picture of A's shelves.  We follow this layout every week so that she knows where to find things.

This marker was double sided, and of course A had to have the side that didn't work anymore, so you can hardly see her markings.  Again, she did a great job of really trying to stay in the lines of the letters. We also worked on hand-eye coordination and fine motor by putting the top back on.  Up to this point, I always did it for her, but now I'm showing some tough love ;0 and making her do it on her own.

We also made some purple play dough.  A wasn't too sure about the texture at first (it turned out a little oilier than normal because I ran out of flour - oops!) but quickly warmed up to it when she realized it wouldn't stick to her hands.

Play dough is a GREAT sensory and fine motor activity! Not to mention that A was content with it for more than 30 minutes so I got to get some cooking done without constant tugging at my pants and "mama...mama....mama" - that right there is worth it! This is the recipe we use for play dough:

HOMEMADE PLAYDOUGH

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/4 cup salt

2 tsp cream of tartar

1tbsp vegetable oil

food coloring

Combine dry ingredients in a saucepan, add water, oil and food coloring. Cook on low-medium while constantly stirring until it starts to pull away from the pot. Spoon into a ball onto wax paper and let cool. Hand over to kiddo and let them knead all the bumps out and you have yourself some awesome, CHEAP, play dough! I store in a plastic bag- which makes it portable for road trips also =)

This week, for our fine motor activity, we made this "game." Take an empty toilet paper roll and color/paint purple. Tape, or attach somehow, upright.  I've seen this done with magnets onto a fridge, but we didn't have magnets, so I had to make do with tape. Grab 10 purple pompoms, two bowls (purple if you have them), and salad tongs (ours just happened to be purple!) Grab the pompoms individually with the salad tongs, drop into the toilet paper roll and watch it come out into the 2nd bowl! A loooooved this. That is, after she got over the initial devastation that it was not a snack in the bowl.

 

We had a little trouble getting the hang of using the tongs, which eventually let to placing the pompom into the tongs....

and then just giving up on the tongs all together. Hey, whatever works. We were still learning about purple =) We also worked on our counting skills - we had 5 light purple and 5 dark purple pompoms. So, we first counted to 5 twice (once for each color) and then to 10 counting them all together. 

Another new activity we did this week was some bath paint! I just happened upon this in the dollar bins at target and of course HAD to get it. Definitely not the best quality - as you can see it wasn't much of "paint" - but for $1, it worked. We also added our purple blocks to the tub. While painting, we sang our purple song:

P U RRRR - P L EEEEE

THAT SPELLS PURPLE, THAT SPELLS PURPLE

I LIKE THE COLOR PURPLE

DO YOU LIKE THE COLOR PURPLE

P U R -  P L E

As usual, we checked out books at our library. FYI - I think some major money can be involved in writing childrens books. The ones we find are ridiculously boring and silly. Maybe one day.... Meanwhile, I'll just take pictures of A reading boring and silly books upside down =)

Activities we did that aren't pictured: water color painting of grapes (my awesome mother in law was in for a visit this week and she took over this activity like a pro while I was at work!), wore purple clothes, found and pointed out purple things wherever we went, ate purple foods like grapes and plums.

Next week, the color GREEN. 

Color Blue

Today, I'm going to share with you how our week went learning about the color BLUE. Like last week, I started by changing out all of A's toys while she was napping.  I set out a basket of blue markers, crayons, and colored pencils; a basket of blue string with blue beads along with blue animal manipulatives. And I totally forgot to take a picture of all of it! =( I'll try to do better.

We started off by introducing the color/word for A to color with whatever medium she chose (which of course was marker). *note to self - make sure markers are WASHABLE before setting out*

I noticed a considerable difference in the way A concentrated on coloring the individual letters of the words instead of making random markings. I was really impressed! Please excuse the paci in the mouth -we are working on getting rid of that. She normally doesn't have it during the day, but for whatever reason this day, I let her have it. Probably because I was too lazy to fight the battle and deal with the whining that happens alllllll daaayyyy looonnnggg when she doesn't have it too busy teaching to notice I forgot to take it away after nap. We use this sign as a label for her basket of crayons/markers/colored pencils for the week. She will also randomly pick it up and color more of it until the letters are unrecognizable, ha!

One of our art activities was a watercolor of a bluebird. You could also do blueberries, a sky/clouds or even a ball (especially if your child is as obsessed as mine is with them or you are working on the letter "B"). As you can see in the picture, this became a fingerwatercolorpainting. It was a great way to add in a little extra teaching moment about the different mediums you can use to make art AND a bonus sensory activity. I was impressed again with how much better A's painting skills were this week than last.  She really worked hard to fill in the whole bird and didn't make a lot of markings outside of the lines.

For a fine motor activity, we first, colored an empty paper towel roll with a blue marker.  You could also paint it if you want the blue to be a little thicker.  I would actually probably recommend painting because the marker rubbed off on fingers. But I was too impatient to try this activity to wait on paint to dry, so we went with the quick route. =) It was also great practice for holding a marker correctly while coloring something besides paper.  It was kind of hard for even me to hold the roll and color at the same time! After you color/paint, cut the roll into rings. I made 10 rings so we could practice our counting skills, too. Then, I took the paper towel holder and we slid the rings onto the holder. As easy and monotonous as this seemed, A absolutely loved it and played with it for about 30 minutes! To stretch the learning out, we would say "blue" every time she put a ring on, and then count the rings as we took them off. Then switch (count as you put on, say blue as you pull off - or whatever combo suites your fancy).

Here we are repeating the activity another day.  We also wore blue as much as possible - which was pretty easy considering half of her closet is blue! What can I say, I'm a sucker for blue clothes on a blue eyed baby =)

We made a water sensory bin by simply adding blue dish soap (dawn) in our blue bowl and filled with water.  A loves to wash anything and everything! And I'm certainly not complaining! I spread out a blue towel and filled the soapy water with her blue animal manipulatives. Then, she had to dig in and find them.  We counted them as she pulled them out and then did it again and named each animal. This was a big hit. This was actually a spur of the moment activity because she had blue marker all over her from coloring the paper towel roll and it seemed like an easy way to get her hands clean very thought out and planned activity that I spend hours preparing.

Finally, (I know, right...you thought I'd never shut up) I "tested" A by pulling out our red manipulatives from last week and had her sort them onto the correct paper.  I'm not gonna lie - I had to help her on this one. I demonstrated first, then set the animals below the corresponding paper.  Since this was the first time we've done something like this, I wanted her to have as much success as possible so she would enjoy it. I think she was getting the hang of it by the end, though! 

*Some things not pictured that we did were: check out books from the library about BLUE, lay on a blanket outside and talk about the blue sky (make sure it's not a time of day when the sun will blind you), play with blue toys in the bathtub, talked about our blue eyes (our whole family has them), eat blue foods like blueberries (A's favorite food), make blue play dough, make a homemade blue beanbag.

Next week: the color PURPLE

Welcome to From Chaos to Classroom! My name is Emily and I created this blog to mainly help myself plan and keep track of my daughter's progress as we embark on the adventure of creating a homeschool preschool. I also want it to be a place of inspiration for anyone else looking to help their little ones learn as much as possible while still having fun at home!

My husband and I have recently started discussing what schooling we want for our daughter (known as "A" on here) when she gets that age - which I know is still a few years away, but will be here in the blink of an eye. I am thinking I would really love to homeschool because we have some amazing groups around this area. But that would mean I wouldn't be able to work...kind of a big deal financially. Anyways, for now, I have decided to do our own little homeschool preschool. She goes to "preschool" at the church in the mornings, and I know they are awesome, but being the teacher minded SLP that I am, I can't resist doing something at home, too. :) I am all about the idea of intentional play and know that her little brain is capable of learning sooo much right now. and that brings us to the topic of this post: our first week of homeschool preschool!

I am starting off with doing colors. It just seemed like an easy place to start and come up with activities. For week 1, we did the color RED. I started by gathering all of A's red toys and putting them on her shelves in the playroom.

The small basket is holding lacing beads and red sorting animals; the bottom shelf has any books about colors/red that we had in our bookshelf; the red construction paper is for putting red things on (a precursor to sorting multiple colors)

all of her random red toys

                       

Then, I introduced the color/word to her by a coloring activity: (sorry, the picture is sideways and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to change it)

Throughout the week, we did several "art" activities:

coloring things that are red

painting a watercolor ladybug

                                                     
  Activities not pictured: slicing an apple in half and using it like a sponge to paint apples, I made a red beanbag to play with, we filled the tub every night with red toys (doesn't have to be bath toys - just anything that won't ruin if it gets wet)

We also dressed in red, whenever we could - which was like once, ha. I realized that red must not be our color because none of us have very many red clothes!

We also *attempted* to make red play dough:

*note - when a recipe calls for cream of tartar...there's a reason*

Other than our planned activities, we just really tried to emphasize anytime we saw something red - outside, at the store, in a book, etc. Speaking of books, we also went to the library and checked out books about "red." Apparently red isn't the library's color of choice, either, because we ended up with random ones about tractors, barns, etc. Anything that was red, we got it.  I also made up silly songs while we were playing with her red toys. The one she liked best was to the tune of Frère Jacques: 

I see a red block, I see a red block

there is it, there it is.

Look at that red block! look at that red block!

It is red, it is red.

All in all, I think our first color was a success.  I "tested" her at the end of the week by presenting her with two different colors of something and asked her to give me the red one.  She still won't say "red" but she will sometimes do the sign for it.  =) We have now moved on to Blue - it was extremely hard for me not to go in order of the rainbow and do orange next, but I was afraid it wouldn't be enough of a contrast in colors for her to grasp just yet. Stay tuned for an update on Color BLUE!