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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Workbox Wednesday

TOT SCHOOL (28mos)
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Picking up Pom-Poms with tongs
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Washing a toy dinosaur
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Dinosaurs and playdough…making fossil prints

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Tweezing rubber band dinosaur bracelets and moving from one container to another
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buttons and pipe cleaners

KINDERGARTEN
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Dinosaur nomenclature cards
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Spelling words with scrabble tiles
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Spelling words with playdough and cookie cutters
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We did two art project using dinosaur stencils, in the first one he traced the stencil with a felt tip maker and then used water to spread the color.  In the second one he filled in the stencil with a white crayon and then painted over it with water colors.  I wrote the name of the dinosaur in white at the top of the page.

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Linking up with
Tot SchoolWorkbox Wednesday Montessori Monday
and Link & Learn
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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Dinosaur Jell-O Eggs - FAIL! (oops!)

Well sometimes ‘good’ ideas do not turn out quite as planned.  We are doing a Ten Week Dinosaur Unit study right now, and this week we talked a lot about baby dinosaurs.  So we tried to make jello eggs with baby dinosaurs (dinosaur shaped fruit snacks) inside.  I don’t have one of those handy dandy jello egg molds, so I thought I could finagle my own.  I had Q drill a large hole in one end of the egg and I duct taped the little holes at the other end of the egg.  I
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We then put one fruit snack in each egg and snapped them shut.
Using the recipe on the Jell-O box for Jell-O jigglers I filled each egg through the hole in the top….most of them didn't hold the Jell-O for long. 
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so, we only got one half way decent looking egg, BUT the kids still had fun with it.  After researching a bit more I found the following tips:
Use glue gun to fill little holes….dip eggs into Jell-O to fill….and spray with pam(I knew the pam, but forgot).  It might serve well to tape them shut too, some of ours came unsnapped.
However, I think in the future I’ll just use the egg molds, though I’ll have to find some. 
If anyone else has any tips…please do share!  Hopefully if you try this activity, you’ll have more success!  Open-mouthed smile


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Monday, August 29, 2011

Math Monday


Comparing weight – with DINOSAUR EGGS (or adapt to any type of egg you want them to be!)
Items needed:
Balance Scale
several eggs (about 6) filled with items of varying weights
First we talked about a balance scale, what it is and what it is used for.  Then I choose two eggs that were distinctly difference in weight, handed them to C and had him tell me which one was heavier.  Then we placed them on the balance scale to check his guess.  We continued doing this until he was done with it. 
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Sunday, August 28, 2011

Toy Story Birthday Party

Free invitations HERE
CAKE:  I used two round pans,for the base and the classic batter bowl from Pampered Chef to make the head (only uses half of one box of mix).  For the batter bowl cake, fill about half full, bake in the batter bowl at 325 for about 1hr 10min (maybe 15min).  Cool for 15min then loosen and flip onto a cooling rack to cool entirely.
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I cut the face on and the green part of his uniform on my cricut cake mini using the toy story cartridge and my gypsy.  His eyes and buttons are M&M’s.  I wrote on his eyebrows, nose, chin dimple and pupils with an edible pen.  The hood is purple store bought fondant, the face is pale pink store bought fondant, the green is homemade marshmallow fondant dyed with neon green food coloring, (I quartered the recipe).  I used regular whipped white icing for the rest. 
**I REALLY liked the marshmallow fondant!**
With the leftover cake mix, I made 12 cupcakes and turned them into aliens.  I dyed the white icing green, used mini marshmallows for the eyes (drew pupils with edible pen), I used the leftover green fondant to cut leaves on the cricut mini for ears, a cut straw for the antenna and black gel icing for the mouth.  I got the general ides from Here and tailored it.
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GAMES: 
Pin the parts on potato head – I want to say I saw this somewhere, but I went looking for it and can’t find it.  I cut the potato out of brown packaging paper, and cut the pieces on my cricut expression using the toy story cartridge and my gypsy.  I laminated them for safe keeping, just in case.  They were too cute to be throw away!
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Then we blindfolded the kids and gave them a part to put on.  We did tell them what part they had though.  Here is the finished product:
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Potato head mix-up – we took two potato heads (Mrs. & Mr.) and made two teams (boys v/s girls).  We blindfolded one contestant each and gave them one minute to try and put the potato head together. 
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The rest of the time they played in the sprinkler
Party Favors:
We put together goodies bags using toy story themed ziplocs, pez dispensers, pencil with eraser, pen, little notepad, fruit snack and stickers. 
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and finished it off with a personalized sticker. 
(I took an image found on the web and personalized it at picnik.com)
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We purchased a few other accessories, like a cake tray, cups, plates, table cloth and napkins in the toy story theme.  And then some lime green plastic ware and plates. We served Pizza and watermelon, as well as Capri sun.  I custom made some Thank You cards using the same image from the goodie bags, for C to fill in.  Basically it says:  Dear __________  Thank you for the _________________.  I enjoyed having you at my party.  From: _____________

I really wanted to ‘make’ more things with my cricut, but with 3 little ones, it’s hard to find the time.  But I’m pleased with the results, and the most important thing is that C had a great bday party, and his friends had fun too!


A friend of mine back in Maryland, also did a toy story theme for her daughter (who is 2 days older than C), here are some cute things she made:


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Saturday, August 27, 2011

Utah and Arizona State Studies

For more references for state studies, including the state printables I made go to my Hawaii  post.
UTAH
Dreamy Cherry Dessert
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The dessert was yummy, and the kids had fun crunching up the graham crackers for the crust!
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Then we added the Utah postcard and a pic of family we have living in UT to the map!
Book Suggestions:

This unit went great with our Ten Terrific Weeks of Dinosaur Unit we are currently doing, more on our dinosaur studies in future posts!
ARIZONA
We had a hard time finding literature that went along with Arizona, but we did find one:
I also stumbled upon a great series that I WISH was carried at our library…
We also had pictures from visits we have taken to both states through the years, most of which were before the kids were born, so I pulled them out, the kids really enjoyed looking at them.

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