Sensory Bins

Our sensory bin this week was actually one that I made when I was speaking last week at the Alberta Home Educators Conference. I made a simple Spring sensory bin during my session to demonstrate to those who attended how easy it is to make sensory bins.

To make this simple spring sensory bin, I used rice dyed green to look like grass, play bugs of different textures, stretchy frogs, feathers, glittery pom-poms, green tissue paper, a plastic Easter egg, green ribbon, flower shaped muffin liners, a silk leaf, and a metal scoop.

I love all the bright colours in this sensory bin. The different textures such as the fluffy feathers, the scaly plastic spider, the crinkly tissue paper, the smooth metal on the scoop, the silky ribbon, the bumpy dragonfly, and the grainy rice make this such a fun bin to play in.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

For our “K” week, the sensory bin was a knights and kings theme.

The base of this sensory bin is made up of dried chickpeas and lentils. I added a toob of knights and used knight and king related Playmobile.

I also made a simple St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin for this week.

I used a green bin, shamrock garland, little plastic Leprechaun hats, gold and green St. Patty’s coins, and homemade green playdough.

This is my sweet ones listening to me read them a story.  The bean bag chair in the reading corner gets a lot of use, though mostly just when one or two of them at a time are having some quiet reading time!

For our “K” week, we had lots of fun workbox activities including:

The roll a kite game went over well.  I think it was from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

This kite sizing activity is from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Dancing Queen seems proud of completing this.

Someone is really proud of himself!  Snuggle Puppy put together a whole section of the floor filled with letters strung into words to match with the corresponding pictures.

a little activity to differentiate between the lower case and upper case “k”

I like this picture of Granola Girl playing in the sensory bin because she is so obviously enthralled!

Fred played a hockey game at Rexall Place, which was pretty exciting.  We took Miss Optimism, Einstein, and Snuggle Puppy with us to watch and it was fun to see Fred play in that huge arena!

Fred got two or three assists in the game and did really well, though he wasn’t happy with his performance because his new stick needed to be shortened!  I was a proud mom (mind you, I would be proud even if he sat on the bench the whole time)!

Snuggle Puppy, Granola Girl, and Dancing Queen took ski lessons and Miss Optimism and Einstein took snowboard lessons. They had THE BEST TIME!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miss Optimism has been really wanting to learn how to cook so I bought her a children’s cookbook (it’s not my favourite one and I will be looking for a better one).

Her first attempt was egg salad open faced flower shaped sandwiches topped with pepper slices.

 

 

 

 

 

…the finished product! All the other kids really liked it and she has made it once or twice since then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess it should come as no surprise that this recipe of two chocolate chip cookies with ice cream between them rolled in sprinkles was an instant family hit!

open faced sandwich with ham, sliced hard boiled eggs, and black olives – this one was hit and miss with the other kids and with Miss Optimism herself!

(obviously, all of these were made before we started our gluten free experiment)

We continued our Story of the World. The kids’ memory verse was “We love because He first loved us.” – I John 4:19.

I read Leah’s  Pony to the kids, one of my all-time favourite books. I cried a lot while reading it. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I read it…I still cry. We discussed the book and The Great Depression. (The book is about a young girl who tried to save her family’s farm during the Depression.)

In the past, we’ve never done anything special for St. Patrick’s Day. We’re not Irish and I didn’t really know what the holiday was all about other than Leprechauns and pots of gold, so I didn’t see the point in celebrating it, until I read this post. I read the story to the kids and we did some fun activities including these crafts.  For the templates, click here.

 

 

 

 

The pot of gold craft was made using construction paper, tissue paper, glue, and gold coins (from our sensory bin!)

The shamrock was made using a green bingo dabber (though Miss O. didn’t have the patience to wait for the green, so she layered blue on top of yellow and that worked too)

We had some playdates, the kids went to their gymnastics classes, they made progress in their Math U See and A Reason for Handwriting. Next week, we will start preparing for Easter and start the letter “M”. I have so many plans for the letter “M” that it will take several weeks.  I think that our first “M” unit will be Magnets.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

This week we eased into homeschooling. The letter of the week was “Ii” and our theme was ice cream. With an ice cream unit study, it came as no surprise that there was little complaining from the kids!

Monday, we took all the kids to see “We Bought a Zoo” (great movie) and the kids and I played Scoop Em’ Up.

The goal of the game is to get all 12 scoops of ice cream of the cone. We all tried many times, but only one of the kids was able to do it and even then, it was only the one time. It’s harder than it looks!

As part of our unit study, the kids completed some worksheets related to ice cream. We incorporated a bit of math by graphing people’s flavour preferences, the kids coloured a sundae and glued sprinkles on top, there were dot-to-dot worksheets, and ones related to colours.

Granola Girl went a little overboard with the sprinkles!!!

It was interesting that the results of the ice cream flavours survey differed considerably when chocolate and vanilla were not offered as options.

This simple worksheet was a fun reinforcer of the colours.

I found different ice cream printable worksheets on:

2 Teaching Mommies

Kidsparkz

Mama’s Monkeys

Spell Out Loud

We had some friends over for a playdate after the worksheets were done and we decided to carry over our theme through lunch.  I made this for each of the kids:

-the “cones” are quesadillas on whole wheat tortillas

-the “scoop” on the first one is Greek yogourt with sprinkles in a flower tin

-the “scoops” on the second are a cucumber slice, a meat slice, and a carrot slice

-the “scoop” on the third is an orange slice

The kids thought the ice cream themed lunch was super cool!

Later in the day, I gave each of the kids some ice cream in a bowl and set out two trays of toppings for them to have fun with.

-coconut

-mini chocolate chips

-mini coloured marshmallows

-organic fruit gummy bears

-banana slices

-sprinkles

 

 

 

Also to go with the ice cream unit study, I made an ice cream sensory bin. The kids spent a lot of time playing in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are going to make ice cream in a bag tomorrow and maybe have one more taste of ice cream as we fill out the ice cream observations worksheet.

Next week, our homeschool will be back in full swing. It will be a busy week as I plan for my book launch and we have my mother-in-law’s birthday and my niece’s wedding. We are so excited for the wedding and for seeing our out of town relatives!

In our homeschool this week…

This was the busiest homeschool week I can remember!  Our theme letter for the week was “Hh”, so we had a Horse Sensory Bin.

I just used hamster shavings and a variety of toy horses, which we had around the house, so it didn’t cost anything and the kids thought it was a lot of fun.

I had a variety of activities in the kids workboxes for the letter “H” including many from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I also included a great book about horses complete with an audio CD.  There were also several horse word searches and worksheets and a few colouring sheets just for fun.

We continued to start our days with a long prayer based on the Armor of God from Drawing Closer by Glen Martin and Dian Ginter.  We added to that additional discussion by focusing specifically on one thing each day such as the Helmet of Salvation and the kids completed colouring/activity sheets on this from here.  The kids also did one colouring sheet every day from the story of the birth of Christ.

Our memory verse for the week was “Honour thy father and they mother.” – Exodus 20:12.

They are really enjoying their typing lessons using Keyboard Classroom.  I will be doing a review on this next week if you are interested in more specifics.

In Story of the World, we did the chapters on Rome Divided in Two and Attila the Hun, the kids did Celtic designs, activity sheets, and tonight, we are having a Celtic feast of roasted chicken, grape juice (wine), berries, and bread where no cutlery will be allowed!

Snuggle Puppy is getting way ahead of Einstein and Miss Optimism in Math U See.  That is just a reflection on his natural tendencies towards anything related to math, but I am trying to get the other kids to catch up a bit because it is so much easier to teach them when they are at least in the same ballpark as far as the concepts go.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

Monday afternoon, we went over to another homeschool family’s house and the kids played and made Christmas cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday night, we all went to watch Fred’s band Christmas concert.

Wednesday night, we had a Family Fun Night with a Minute to Win It theme. It was hilarious! You can check out all the details and pictures here.

As someone pointed out in the comments of that post, this theme would make a very fun New Year’s Eve family friendly party.

Thursday morning, we went on the Bethlehem Walk and it was absolutely incredible!  It was very interactive.  In the market area, the kids were encouraged to taste (dates, meat, nuts), smell (handmade soaps etc.), touch (live animals, pottery, sheep’s wool, etc.).  There was a choir of angels floating in the sky in the area before the market and there was a stable full of live animals where Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus were.  All the actors were in character and asked the kids questions such as if we had traveled far to get to Bethlehem and if they had ridden in on camels!  There was a blacksmith who showed them how to make nails and a carpenter carving crucifixes who spoke to them about the need for a Saviour to come.  My kids were excited to tell him that the wait was over…the King had just been born!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday afternoon was gymnastics class.

 

 

Today (Friday), I am trying really hard to have an at home day because there are a lot of things that we are behind on and some projects we need to complete such as starting on our Christmas baking.  The kids are also going to make some simple gingerbread crafts.

 

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.