A Walk Down Memory Lane: Paper Towel Roll Subtraction

A Walk Down Memory Lane

I was searching through my posts for a picture of one of the girls when I came across this forgotten activity. This was something that came to me in the middle of the night a couple of years ago.

I used an oblong basket, some Styrofoam balls and a paper towel roll, plus made some construction paper numbers.

Check out this subtraction activity I definitely need to add to our activity table this year. 

The girls are to use the paper towel roll to make the balls disappear, one by one.

moving the paper towel roll to the left as they go 

so the numeral corresponds to the number of balls.

When they are done, they have zero balls visible

Here is Tabitha trying it out. She really enjoyed this activity.

Amelia wasn't as fond of it.

Wooo, letting them all fall back in.

(Can you believe how much she has grown?)

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Springtime Patterns

This week we continued working on our Pattern Garden from last week. We also discussed the fact that some of the patterns we put on our Garden are Opposites. Here is what was on our Pattern Garden picture at the end of last week.

We used long/short and big/small.

This week we added clouds in the sky and focused on the opposite up/down.

We then had our second Pattern Muffin Tin

And later in the week we made Pattern Parfaits for Kids and a Mom  in the Kitchen.

We layered Chocolate Oreo Crumbs, Chocolate Pudding and Coolwhip.

We finished our Spring Pattern Gardens by adding Butterflies using the opposite open/closed. The open winged butterflies are flying above a flower, while the closed wing butterflies are resting on the flower. I had the girls decide on what pattern they wanted to make on the table, then I explained how we were going to place them on the paper.

They also decided there needed to be rain.

I had some paper squares I cut out of scrap paper set aside. I figured when I was busy it would be a fun activity for the girls to make some random patterns.

The blue papers are Tabitha's and the red papers are Amelia's (Hannah was sleeping). 

We also continued work on our Color Garden (for Hannah) and Word Family Gardens (for the older two).

Tabitha and Amelia are not gluing theirs on yet because we are using them for different activities.  I would say a word and have them find it to put on their flower. We have done the following Word families this week- ed, eg and ell. 

They then took turns reading a word and finding it for their flowers.

Then we played a memory match game. I combined the girls' petals for the eg words so we would have doubles. Then we placed them upside down. When they turned up a petal they had to say the word. Other than that it was a typical Memory Match game.

I also came up with a fun subtraction game. Tabitha was using the Shaker Jar with Toothpicks. This was obviously a simple activity for her so I wanted to add something to it. I made her count 10 toothpicks out of the bunch that were in there. After setting the extras aside I explained the game to her. She was reminded that  there were 10 toothpicks in the jar. She then was to shake the jar three times upside down so toothpicks would fall out of the holes. She then recorded how many toothpicks fell out on a piece of paper. She was then to figure out how many toothpicks were left in the jar. After thinking about it and giving a guess, she could take them out and count them. 

Toothpicks in jar - Toothpicks that fell out = Toothpicks left

10 - ? = ?

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School Time Spring Patterns

This week we focused A LOT on patterns. It started out with wanting to focus on spring and seeds. Then I was reviewing the FunBites cutter and I tried to figure out a way make a creative Muffin Tin out of tiny squares. After I decided on patterns for the Muffin Tin I brainstormed ways to combine patterns and spring. I came up with a Pattern Garden. I decided it would be fun to make it an ongoing project. We just worked on one aspect of it each day we had lessons. 

First we discussed patterns. I started a pattern on our easel board and asked them to complete it. Then they insisted on each making their own pattern. 

I think it is cute that Tabitha and Hannah are looking on with rapt attention.

Amelia had to be reminded to start her first shape close to the left side or she ran out of space.

Here Hannah had drawn a pretty good circle.

Then we moved on to making our garden. 

The girls started out by cutting fringes on green paper. I cut Hannah's and let her color it green.

Then the girls added some flower stickers I had recently purchased on a whim.  They were to add them in a pattern. Tabitha's went big, small, big, small. Amelia went the opposite way, small, big, etc. I just let Hannah stick the stickers on. She did a great job with one to one correspondence. 

Tabitha insisted the flowers needed sun to grow, so her hand became the sun. 

For lunch I served their pattern muffin tin.  

They took the square shaped food and made patterns either on a toothpick or the table.

Then I gave them M&Ms for dessert and they made patters with them.

Tabitha:

Amelia:

You know they are retaining information when they start their morning off with cereal patterns.

Amelia is still struggling with the concept a little.

Here is Tabitha's

And with a little reminding, Amelia made one too.

Then we made our pattern sun to help the flowers grow in our garden. 

The idea was long and short rays. 

Wednesday we took a library and out door day. I was going to have them pick dandelions (yellow flowers and white puffs) and set them out in patters. Unfortunately it started to rain. 

To finish off the week we added pattern caterpillars to our gardens.

We will be adding a little more to this next week.

Edited to add: You can see the finished projects here.

While I was on the subject of gardens I decided it was high time to make another word family chart of some kind. We haven't really been using our Caterpillar Word Family chart as it has been shredded (the joys of having young ones). 

I have plans to fix this soon. It is one of the things that needs to be finished before we start My Father's World Kindergarten. 

In the meantime we are making Short e gardens.  Each flower is going to have rhyming words. We started with the "ed" words on a red flower. 

Hannah's flowers are just going to focus on the colors.

Next week we will add additional flowers in different colors for the other short e word families. The plan is, per Tabitha's request, to make these into place mats. Stop by next week to see the completed projects.

In addition, I also added some fine motor skill activities. It has been quite a while since we did any specific activities. I know how much Amelia enjoyed putting toothpicks into a shaker jar. Guess what, Hannah loves it too.

And then I attached a couple of pipe cleaners to a tray and had the girls make patterns out of beads. Note to self, make sure there are enough of each color to make a decent pattern.

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