Last week, we spent one day talking all about farms – Old McDonald, animals, and barns!

Art

Project: Big Red Barn Animal Puppets

Before we started our art project, we read Margaret Wise Brown’s Big Red Barn.

Materials needed: printable farm animals, crayons, craft sticks, glue

This craft was pretty straight forward. I had the kids color the animals’ faces and then I cut them out. Afterwards, we glued them on to the craft sticks together.

Music and Movement

We had three songs to listen to for music and movement.

Science

For science, we watched a video about chickens.

Sensory

I added a few farm-related items to our existing sensory box, including play food and plastic animals. The boys wound up going to the play area and adding a lot more items to the box by themselves!

Storytime

For storytime, we read two more stories about farms: Mrs. Wishy Washy’s Farm and The Cow That Went Oink.

Virtual Farm Visit

The following day, I thought it might be cool for us to do a virtual online farm visit through Farm Food 360. They have tons of videos and virtual tours on everything from milk and dairy production, pig farms, egg farms and processing to dairy cow farms and grain farms. Unfortunately, the boys were not at all interested in watching the virtual tours and the videos were unable to hold their attention.

It did not work for us but maybe you will have more luck using them in your lesson plans! I, for one, found them to be interesting.

Hope you and your family are staying safe and sane!

* Background: We are all going through some chaotic and concerning times at the moment. On Friday, March 13, 2020, our family began our process of social distancing and staying put in our homes. That means we found ourselves with two preschool-aged children at home. I took it upon myself to continue their preschool education while we find ourselves coping with this change in our daily norm.

Yesterday, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day! Teaching my sons to love the Earth, their home, is a no brainer to me. Why wouldn’t you want to keep your home safe and clean? There is so much beauty and wonder on our beautiful planet!

We started off our lesson by watching PBS Learning’s Earth Day clip. I even learned things about Earth Day that I didn’t know about!

Earth Day Activities

Hanging Pine Cone Bird Feeders

Materials needed: pine cone, bird seed, peanut butter, string

For this project, all you need to do is spread peanut butter on the pine cones. Then roll the pine cones in the bird seed and wrap some string around the pine cone to create a hanger. The whole activity took less than 15 minutes.

Once the pine cones were ready, we hung them out in the backyard for the birds to enjoy.

Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt

Before lunch, we headed outdoors for a walk around the neighborhood. We are lucky to live on a canyon that is basically right in our backyard. I included a little scavenger hunt on our nature walk.

We looked for leaves, flowers, trees, rocks, clouds and other things. We found most of them. However, we were not able to find a single cloud in the sky. We were so lucky to have beautiful weather yesterday.

We even saw some wildlife on our walk, including insects, a bunny and a lizard. I didn’t get any photos of them because they were too fast for me.

I love that we are still able to enjoy a bit of the outdoors while we are staying at home during this pandemic.

Music and Movement

We had three songs to listen to for music and movement. We learned about recycling, ways to go green and why we should love our planet.

Storytime

For storytime, we read three stories celebrating our amazing planet and Earth Day:

We love our Earth and hope we can share it together again with our friends soon!

* Background: We are all going through some chaotic and concerning times at the moment. On Friday, March 13, 2020, our family began our process of social distancing and staying put in our homes. That means we found ourselves with two preschool-aged children at home. I took it upon myself to continue their preschool education while we find ourselves coping with this change in our daily norm.

For today’s preschool homeschool theme, we are going to talk about bubbles. Some days the boys’ attention span is difficult to manage so items that I planned for the unit sometimes get thrown out the window. Today was definitely one of those days where they couldn’t complete activities and I couldn’t hold their attention.

Art

Project: Bubble wrap painting

Materials needed: paint, bubble wrap, shape templates, paper plates, construction paper

To prepare for today’s preschool art project, I cut out pieces of the bubble wrap into various shapes: stars, squares, hearts, circles, triangles and hexagons.

The boys dipped the bubble wrap shapes bubble side down into the paint colors and then stamped the shapes onto their pieces of construction paper.

The end result made for some pretty neat looking art pieces!

Music and Movement

We had three songs to listen to for music and movement. Two were generally bubble-themed and the third one was about hand washing. Since we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, every reminder to maintain clean hands is helpful and it definitely fits into today’s theme.

Science

For science, we watched a video on what bubbles are!

Storytime

For storytime, we read three stories about bubbles: Bubble Trouble, Clifford Counts Bubbles and Big Bad Bubble.

Hope you and your family are staying safe and sane!

* Background: We are all going through some chaotic and concerning times at the moment. On Friday, March 13, 2020, our family began our process of social distancing and staying put in our homes. That means we found ourselves with two preschool-aged children at home. I took it upon myself to continue their preschool education while we find ourselves coping with this change in our daily norm.

This week, we took a virtual trip to Disneyland! I haven’t been to Disneyland in almost two years and the boys have only been to the Happiest Place on Earth once when they were a year old.

To plan for our virtual trip, I scoured the Disneyland map to set up an itinerary for our day. YouTube is stocked with videos of all of the Disney Parks rides, entertainment and parades, so making a trip to Disneyland from home was easy but did require some advanced planning.

We started our fun day by pulling up the Disneyland park map to see where we should head first. I picked out rides and entertainment that I thought would keep the twins’ attention. The best parts of visiting Disney virtually is, first, no lines and, secondly, no height requirements. Other perks are that you can get grab a snack whenever you want and don’t have to worry about where the nearest bathroom is.

Below is a copy of our itinerary and well as links to they YouTube video we watched for each ride.

Tomorrowland

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

Fantasyland

Pinnochio’s Daring Journey

Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough

Casey Jr. Circus Train

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

Peter Pan’s Flight

Alice in Wonderland

Storybook Land Canal Boats

It’s a Small World

Mickey’s Magic Mix

Frontierland

Big Thunder Mountain

Fantasmic – one of my boys got scared during this show and didn’t want to watch all of it. He made is about half way through.

Critter County

Winnie the Pooh 

Splash Mountain

Adventureland

Tiki Room – my three year olds weren’t able to sit through the whole show.

Main Street USA

Magic Happens Parade

What a packed day! Next up, I am planning our visit to Disney’s California Adventure.

Today, the boys and I had a Pajama Day at home! Since we aren’t going anywhere anyway, pajamas have been our daily uniform. What’s the point of washing nice clothes or changing for that matter? So I decided to incorporate pajamas into today’s stay-at-home preschool lesson plan.

Art

Project: Bedtime for Frances

For art today, we listened to Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban. In the story, little Frances just won’t go to bed. She keeps delaying her bedtime with requests and is also concerned about cracks in the ceiling and tigers in her room. After listening to the story, the boys used a sticker play activity book to make faces of the things that might have scared Francis.

They wound up making the most normal looking faces of little boys one could think of. Not scary at all! Lol!

Science

For science, we watched a couple of videos about why we sleep and why we dream.

Music and Movement

For music and movement, we listened to three different bedtime and pajama themed songs.

For “Ten in the Bed,” I collected 10 of our stuffed animals from the playroom and lined them up on the couch. Then, as the song played, the boys followed along and rolled the stuffed animals off the couch, one by one, until there was only one left in the bed as the song goes. They thought it was funny to roll them off the edge of the couch.

Storytime

Our local libraries are closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and we only have so many books at home, so I have found read aloud videos on YouTube to be really helpful.

We did a second art project for storytime. I read the boys “Llama Llama Nighty-night” by Anna Dewdney. After the story, the boys painted their own pairs of pajamas from a printable that I found online.

I love how their finished pajamas turned out!

I also picked out three more books for the boys to listen to that related to our preschool pajama day theme: Pancakes, Pancakes!, Pyjama Day and Bedtime for Little Bears.

This day was so much fun! Hope you are having fun learning with your kids!

* Background: We are all going through some chaotic and concerning times at the moment. On Friday, March 13, 2020, our family began our process of social distancing and staying put in our homes. That means we found ourselves with two preschool-aged children at home. I took it upon myself to continue their preschool education while we find ourselves coping with this change in our daily norm. Disclaimer: While I have Masters in Business Administration and Bachelors in Psychology, I do not have any teaching experience.

Today’s preschool homeschool theme was all about dinosaurs! This was one of my favorite lesson plans that I have put together so far. It also doesn’t hurt that the twins love dinosaurs.

Sensory

For sensory time, I put together a dinosaur sensory box using a plastic storage box and items we have around the house. Since we are under a mandatory stay at home order, I am not doing any lesson plans that require things we do not already have.

For the sensory box, I added popcorn kernels, lentils, shredded paper and Easter grass. The boys used one of their sets of dinosaur figures to play with in the sensory box and I also gave them cups, scoopers and bowls to play with.

Art

Project: Dinosaur skeleton puzzle

Materials needed: dinosaur skeleton printable, glue, water colors, paint brushes

For today’s art lesson, I printed out two copies of this Dinosaur Skeleton puzzle and cut out the pieces before hand. The boys were able to put the skeleton together almost entirely by themselves. I just put glue where it needed to go in order to put the skeleton together.

Then, they used water colors to paint their dinosaur skeleton. I was super impressed by their finished projects!

Science

For science, we talked about what fossils are and how they are formed. We watched the following video called “Fossils for Kids.”

We followed up with a fossil making project. The boys used Play-Doh and some toy dinosaurs to make foot prints and dinosaur fossils.

I rolled out the Play-Doh for them ahead of time so that they could have a nice, even space to work with.

Music and Movement

For music and movement, we listened to three different dinosaur songs.

Language

For language, we reviewed words and pictures using two sets of dinosaur word cards from PreKinders.com: Set 1 and Set 2.

Storytime

Our local libraries are closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and we only have so many books at home, so I have found read aloud videos on YouTube to be really helpful.

I picked out three books for the boys to listen to that related to our preschool dinosaur theme: Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs, Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp and The Littlest Dinosaur.

This day was so much fun! Hope you are having fun learning with your kids!

* Background: We are all going through some chaotic and concerning times at the moment. On Friday, March 13, 2020, our family began our process of social distancing and staying put in our homes. That means we found ourselves with two preschool-aged children at home. I took it upon myself to continue their preschool education while we find ourselves coping with this change in our daily norm. Disclaimer: While I have Masters in Business Administration and Bachelors in Psychology, I do not have any teaching experience.

* Background: We are all going through some chaotic and concerning times at the moment. On Friday, March 13, 2020, our family began our process of social distancing and staying put in our homes. That means we found ourselves with two preschool-aged children at home. I took it upon myself to continue their preschool education while we find ourselves coping with this change in our daily norm. Disclaimer: While I have Masters in Business Administration and Bachelors in Psychology, I do not have any teaching experience.

Today’s preschool homeschool theme was all about transportation and vehicles.

Math

For our math lesson, I collected a couple of containers full of different cars and vehicles from their playroom. I used our number magnets to set up numbers from 1 to 7. The boys were asked to place the correct number of cars next to the corresponding number. For example, they placed one car next to the number 1 and two cars next to the number 2 and so forth.

Art

Project: Construction paper hot air balloon

Materials needed: construction paper, stickers, paints

I cut and pasted a hot air balloon out of construction paper. I’m not the best artist as you can tell, so my hot air balloons looked super simple.

The boys used stickers and watercolors to decorate their hot air balloons. They were definitely into the stickers!

Science

For science, we made a ramp out of materials that we have lying around. I used one of their toy containers and a wooden puzzle to create a ramp.

Then I collected a variety of items from their playroom and we tested each item to see if it could go down the ramp by itself. They learned that items with wheels or things that are round would go down by themselves.

Music and Movement

For music and movement, we listened and grooved to some transportation themed songs. I was putting this lesson plan on the fly so they watched a lot of songs today. I was mentally and physically exhausted this day and just needed them to be occupied for a good amount of time.

Language

For language, we reviewed words and pictures using this set of Transportation Word Cards from prekinders.com.

Storytime

Our local libraries are closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and we only have so many books at home, so I have found read aloud videos on YouTube to be really helpful.

I let the boys listen to four read aloud stories today because they were so into the Tony Mitton and Ant Parker series of transportation books.