Rainbow Crayons

I told Connor we'd be doing this activity on Friday early in the week. He kept asking if it was "Friday art day" yet. So he was pretty excited when he saw me pull out the crayons this morning. It was a fun, easy craft. Easier than I thought it would be. This could easily be done with several kids, especially if you chopped up the crayons beforehand and just separated them into piles so the kids could design their own crayons.

Our Rainbow Crayons didn't turn out as great as Martha's, but did I really expect them to? Not really. The important part is that we had fun and that Connor got to mix the colors he wanted to mix together. His favorite colors are green and brown, so he had to make a crayon swirled with those two colors. He also chose to make a gold and pinkish-purple one and a blue and orange and white one. The others, besides the rainbow one which we did that way on purpose, just sort of got thrown together. Next time I'll definitely get some shaped muffin tins (I think they have disposable ones at Michael's) to make it even more fun.

Please Comment

I have to say that right now, being in the first trimester of my pregnancy, I'm kind of slacking. I'm still doing preschool, but the ideas might not be great. Please use the links to Everything Preschool and Letter of the Week. Those sites have lots of ideas. Enchanted Learning is also great. I'll add that link to my sidebar.

I have heard from a few people that they check this site for ideas for teaching their children. I would like to ask those of you who read this blog for ideas to comment with your own ideas. I'm not looking for comments about how great my ideas are because I leave plenty of room for improvement. But I'd love it if some of you took a minute to share your ideas for each letter in the comments section so that we can share even more great preschool ideas. And if you can share ideas after trying them with your kids and let us know how they worked, that would be extra helpful.

Thanks for reading!

R week: plans

Here are the plans for R week:

word cards: river, rabbit, radio, robot, run
poem:

RIVER, RIVER

RIVER, river, running through the land,
Are you a traveller over foreign sand?
Are you a carrier from town to town,
River, river, as you hurry down?

Yes, I'm a carrier from town to town:
Here are ships with white sails, there are boats with brown,
What shall they bring you, what will you send?
I'll be your carrier to the land's end.

Monday (geography): We drove home from Rhode Island. We'll look at a map and see where we traveled.

Tuesday (reading): R is for Reading! We'll start reading some early readers I have. I'll read most of the words and have him help with one word on each page. Unless he shows interest in reading more on his own.

Wednesday (scriptures/Gospel): Read the scriptures. While visiting our friends this past weekend, we read the scriptures every night. I need to start this practice with Connor. We'll start on Wednesday, reading the scriptures. Reading and remembering what we've been taught. Not an original or great R week idea, but something I need to make sure I do with my kids and this is my chance to make it happen.

Thursday (movement/music): Red, Red, Red. A game from The Toddler's Busy Book. Call out three colors. If they're the same (red, red, red) then the child(ren) runs, skips, or hops to a distant point and back. If they're different (red, red, yellow) then no one moves.

Friday (art project): Rainbow crayons. I've been wanting to do this with Connor, but never did. This is the week we'll actually do it. I hope.

Other R words that might come up or spark ideas for activities: rainbow, ring, ribbon, right/left, rectangle, responsibility, rose. (Check the Letter of the Week and Everyday Preschool links at right for more ideas.)

Other things we'll fit in this week:
Listening to the radio
Teaching Abigail the sign for rabbit.
Run around as much as possible; Connor needs more exercise.

Q week: report

Q week was kind of a sad preschool week. But that's okay because there isn't much that starts with Q. Our favorite Q week activity was playing 20 Questions. Connor was really good at thinking of an animal and not telling me what he was thinking of. And he usually stumped me, which surprised me because I thought he might tend to choose an animal that he could see or one related to what I had just chosen (kind of like hide-n-seek with kids; they hide in the same place they just found you). But he was original and very good at the game.

On Thursday we headed up to Rhode Island to visit our friends here, so we didn't have preschool Thursday or Friday. But we did play 20 Questions with our friends.