Preschool - Jungle

So it's another week and another theme.  This past week we went with Jungle!  I decided to deviate from the Letter of the Week curriculum and am mostly just using the theme as a jumping off point at this point.

First, we listened to A Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saens and danced around our living room pretending to be animals in a jungle.  I threw pillows and blankets in various places to help pretend we were in a jungle.  Couches became trees, pillows were rocks, blankets spread length wise were logs, and we even ended up with some sort of pretend water feature that Green Bubbles kept ending up in.  The kids had a lot of fun with this one and it got a lot of our wiggles out.

 We also made these paper plate lions.  Little Miss picked blue for her lion while Green Bubbles went for more tradtional colors.  After coloring their plates I gave them the noses and eyes to glue on themselves.  I drew the smiles and whiskers though.  They really liked making the lions and Little Miss spent the entire week walking around with her lion roaring at everyone.  These were a big hit!

The books this week (note: links are afflicate links) --

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild - We read this one at the same time as our dancing game. It was the perfect fit since the kids were already keyed up and roaring whenever Mr. Tiger roared was acceptable at the moment.  And my kids were totally wild the beginning of the week too.  We just got back from a weekend trip and they weren't back into our normal routine yet.  Both loved this book, but I think the favorite part was when Mr. Tiger swam in the fountain and took off all his clothes.

Crocodile Beat - A story about a lot of animals making noise, waking up a crocodile, and a hero lion!  Green Bubbles loved the ending of this book and Little Miss got very involved when she realized the crocodile was awake and hungry.  We made our lion plates after reading this book too!

If I Were a Lion - A story about a little girl who's in trouble for being wild.  But she doesn't think she's wild at all and compares herself to a bunch of real wild animals.  While this one might be a stretch for a 'jungle' theme, I've read this one before with Green Bubbles when he was Little Miss' age and knew I wanted to bring it up again.  Especially since they are both in the wild stage right now!

Verdi - The story of a baby python living in the jungle who doesn't want to turn grow up and turn green.  Verdi wants to stay yellow because he thinks only yellow snakes are fast, fun, and exciting.  After an accident Verdi understands why the green snakes act the way they do and, even though he grows up as well, he learns he can still have fun.  This book was cute but for the littles was a bit of a challenge.  The beginning was tough but about half way through it Green Bubbles got more into it.  He said his favorite part was when Verdi met the baby snakes, which was the very end of the book.

The Little Little Girl with the Big Big Voice - Little Miss' favorite for the week, probably because she is a little girl with a big voice as well.  This little girl scares away a lot of big tough animals because of her big voice.  That is until she meets the lion and giggles ensure.

Gumption! -  A cute story about a little boy named Peter who goes on an adventure with his Uncle where he learns all it takes is a little gumption (and a lot of great luck) to have a great time! Green Bubbles liked this one a lot.  I think because the boy saw and did things that the uncle never even noticed.  There were elephants, crocodiles, and snakes as they made their way to the jungle and the gorilla within.  

Aventure Playground - Nature Study

Wednesday are normally our nature study, at least during the summer.  But it is summer so that means it is time for fun too!  Instead of a hike, or hanging at the beach, we hit Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach instead. Cost of admission is $3/child, adults are free.

If you haven't heard of adventure playground, your missing out.  This isn't your traditional playground.  When I was little I lovingly referred to this as the mud park.  I really do love being able to share my fond childhood places with my own children.  This park is only open during the summer and you'll see in a minute while I called it the mud park.

Adventure Playground is recommended for ages 5-12 and it's pretty right on for the ages.  I did bring Green Bubbles last year but I wouldn't do much younger then 4.  Little Miss stayed home and although Megatron got to come along, he stayed in the ergo the entire time. There's a lot of things that toddlers can get hurt with that older children wouldn't have a problem with.  And if you go, make sure your prepared to get wet and dirty.  Bring an extra set of clothes for your kids, including shoes.  Oh, and speaking of shoes, everyone is required to wear tennis shoes here.  No sandals, flip flops, water shoes, etc. 

 The first area is the fort building area.  They have 4 different tree forts built for the kids to climb up into, one specifically just for older kids! Kids are allowed to check out a hammer and are given 3 nails.  There's no fee for this. If they want more then 3 nails they have to earn them!  Pick up 4 pieces of trash, or two bent nails to earn another nail.  What a brilliant rule!  It keeps the park clean, and discarded nails are less likely to be stepped on.  For older kids they are able to check out a saw as well.  While Green Bubbles isn't old enough for that, he did enjoy hammering things.  The picture above was him making a ramp on the side of the tree house.

 And here he is building his cross, plus sign, 'T' and, a car.  At one point he named it all of these things.  He's still to small to actually hammer the nails himself.  I nailed them most of the way in for him, as carefully as I could with a baby strapped to me, and let him do the rest.  He did hit his thumb once but shook it off.  He's gotten really sensitive to things like that lately so I was very proud of him for not letting it stop him from doing something he really liked. 

There's also a rope bridge the kids can cross over the water.  If they fall it isn't a big deal.  The water is really shallow and, at the deepest sections, only goes to Green Bubbles' hips.  This one was out of order last year so it was his first time crossing it.  He can be overly cautious about things so I was surprised that he not only tried it, but really enjoyed it and did it multiple times this day.

Green Bubbles favorite activity is the mud slide though!  The kids line up and climb some stairs built into a steep hill.  Employees of the park stand at the top with a garden hose and just run water down this tarp slide.  At the bottom is a little muddy water pit that kids dive into.  Some kids make giant splashes and actually go under the water but, as mentioned above, Green Bubbles is pretty cautious.  He goes pretty slowly down this slide and just drops gently into the pool at the bottom.  The slide opens and closes throughout the day and every time they announced it's opening Green Bubbles was one of the first in line.

My favorite is the rafts!  I love watching the kids on the rafts.  It reminds me of Huckleberry Finn.  The kids line up (or adults, but if you put to much weight on a raft it will sink!), and when it's their turn they get to walk into the water to their awaiting raft.  They use those long poles to push themselves around on the pond.  Although Green Bubbles really likes to 'lose' his pole in the water and pretend he is stranded and awaits one of his friends to rescue him. 

Some general tips I've learned:
1) They are serious about the tennis shoes.  I've seen them turn people away!
2) Don't forget clean underwear, and socks if your changing them into another pair of tennis shoes.
3) It opens at 10am and we always get there right at opening.  It gets crowded around lunch time with various summer day camps coming to visit.  A lot of kids without a lot of adult supervision is our que to check out.
4) If you have littles, keep them at home.  There were some 3 year olds here from a day camp that I saw, but they didn't seem to be enjoying themselves at all.  One of them cried the entire time on the raft, they were to afraid to go down the slide, and the building area just wasn't very safe for them.  Give it a year or two.  This park has been here since I was a kid in the 80's at least, it's not going anywhere yet. 

Preschool - Cows

Recently, someone in a homeschool group I belong to asked for recommendations for preschool curriculum.  There were a lot of great suggestions and I loved looking them up.  Most of them either cost a lot of money, or were very structured however.  I knew I wanted to do something with Little Miss this coming year because she was showing interest and already picked up a lot of her ABC's and was starting to count to 10 already, but I didn't want it to be forced or very structured yet since she is still just two years old.

I almost didn't didn't look at Letter of the Week thinking it was what it said it was.  I didn't want a huge focus on just letters and sounds yet.  But I sure am glad I looked because they have a preparatory curriculum that focuses on themes for different weeks.  It includes shapes, colors, numbers, letters, and a fun theme. The first week is cows.  We decided to dive right into right now since we weren't really doing anything for school at the moment and Green Bubbles would benefit from the review.

Week one starts with the theme of cows, something near and dear to my little girl's heart right now.  We jumped on it and made it our own, although we took two weeks to complete it due to the holiday week and our nature study days. We checked out a lot of cow themed books from the library, colored in a large letter A, made square shaped cookies, and are talking about the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle and read some of the other rhymes from the website.  We made a cow out of squares, our shape of the week.  Although perhaps the favoriate of the kids was playing pretend as if we were cows.  There were many moos from all of us until I ended up being climbed on and turned into a horse!

Here's some pictures of the cows Little Miss and Green Bubbles made from a lot of squares.

Many of the books suggested by the website were not available at our library so I thought I would share a list of the books we were able to check out. (Links are affiliate).

 Little Calf by Kim Lewis - This book is a very simple story perfect for my 2 year old.  It is about a little calf learning to walk, nursing from her mother, and making friends with a little girl.  Little Miss really loved this book and it was her favoraite of the bunch.  The thought of a baby, human or animal, just excits her.  She kept giving the calf kisses on each page.  I really liked that we were able to introduce a new vocabulary word for her too, calf.

When Cows Come Home by David L. Harrison - This is a cute book about cows who play when the farmer is looking away.  Little Miss loved dancing around when I read this book because the cows swayed and twirled.  It's a very silly book with a lot of catchy, rhyming phrases.

Cows Can't Fly - Another silly book with a good message.  A little boy draws a picture of cows flying and when the cows discover it, silly things ensure.  Little Miss didn't like this book as much as Green Bubbles did. 

The Cow That Went OINK - Little Miss loved this silly book about a cow who didn't know how to say moo.  A great book to teach about animal noises and how being different can be a good thing.  It was a great follow up to the game that we played earlier pretending to be cows too!

THE STORY OF FERDINAND by Munro Leaf - If you haven't read this book you need too!  It's a great classic story that I've read to Green Bubbles many times.  While technically this book is about a bull, I still think it counts as our cow theme.  We also already owned this one!

Kiss the Cow! by Phyllis Root - Another silly story about a magic cow and a kiss.  Green Bubbles and Little Miss were both giggling over this book and the thought of kissing a cow.

Happy Anniversary and 4th of July, Disney style.

10 years ago we decided to get married on 4th of July weekend.  10 years, 3 children, and a lot of ups and downs.  To celebrate we left the kids at home, even the baby, and went out to dinner at Napa Rose at Disney's Grand Californian.

 

The biggest present we gave each other was to renew our passes to Disneyland though.  It's been almost an entire year since we've been and we wanted to surprise the kids.  We didn't tell them until we woke them up on the 4th of July and they were so excited! We decided the night before hand to go to Storyteller's Cafe for breakfast.  It's a character breakfast which we knew the kids would love.  Chip and Dale's Critter breakfast was a hit!

The kids got to see a Chip, Dale, the bears from Brother Bear, and the raccoon from Pocahontas, all while eating some great food.  Green Bubble's favorite part was then the bear gave us a Happy Birthday button with America written as the name.  I don't think he quite understood it, but he loved getting a present from a character.  He even took a selfie with my camera while I was at the buffet with his sister.

Here's a few more photos from our breakfast.  It's hard to get good pictures in general of small children, and adding in a character breakfast you can see how great most of the pictures were!

After breakfast we decided to go to Disney's California Adventure since you can enter it through the hotel.  We expected a lot of crowds being the 4th of July but were pleasantly surprised.  We managed to walk on almost every ride we went on that day.  We got to go on Ariel's Ride, King Triton's Carasol, Toy Story Mania, and Disney Jr's Live on Stage.  Daddy took Malcolm to Soaring while I took the littles to go on the Monsters Inc. ride and we got to see Doc McStuffins and Princess Sofia as well while we waited for them to catch up to us.

And the best part?  We were home by 12:30pm with plenty of time for meals and naps before seeing the fireworks in our own neighborhood away from the crowds.  Since we have the passes we can go back whenver we want and not have to feel guilty for spending so much money to only go for a few hours.  In fact, Little Miss even asked to go back again today and I think we just might!

Nature Study - North Beach

 This week we went to North Beach in San Clemente.  This one is a drive for us but totally worth it.  There's a small playground, the beach, an awesome pier and, of course, the beach! This wasn't supposed to be a water day though although whenever water is near the kids always end up in it.  We were hiking from North Beach to the pier and back again. And since it's summer, not a lot of nature 'study' was going on, but a whole lot of fun.

Some of the girls enjoying the water while waiting for more friends to come.

Little Miss found a huge feather and carried it almost the entire way by herself. 

Who can resist a little baby cuteness?

Little Miss collecting rocks on the beach.

The kids love this wooden bridge.

Making friends.

Trains!

 I don't have very many pictures of my oldest or youngest on this day.  My oldest was constantly running ahead and I stayed near the toddler, especially being near trains and water.  And the youngest was in the ergo most of our trip.  Everyone had a lot of fun though.