Simple Popcycle Stick Chore "Chart" for kids (and grown-ups)

About every 6 months to a year we come up with a new way to keep track of daily chores. Not that we haven't found a good system that works, but I feel like it can get the kids excited again about getting their jobs done. (and me too) Here's what we did. We found 2 plastic jars we had laying around the house and printed out little labels using word. One jar labeled "Chores" and the other labeled "Done." I had some colored popsicle sticks that I think I got at the dollar store, each person got to pick one color and then we just wrote on the daily tasks. (You could also get fancy and print out labels...maybe I will someday, but this was a make up on the spot get it done kind of project.) The kids love moving them over to the other jar when they are done. My one daughter who cannot read just asks her big sister what they say or I will tell her the first letter and she is usually able to find it. I also put my daily tasks in there as well so that I'm reminded of what needs done. 

 There are 2 sticks for brush teeth a morning one with a sun on it and an evening one with a moon.

Mom & Me Book Club: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. unfortunately, I was not good about getting a lot of pictures this time. whoops.

Gathering Activity:  

For a gathering activity we let the kids play with pattern blocks and make caterpillars, while waiting for everyone else to arrive.

Show & Tell: 

Each child brought an item related to the book  for show and tell. They stood up in front of everyone, said their name, showed everyone what they brought and told the group about it. 

Circle Time: 

During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. We then sang the "Days of the week" song.  Then we read the book, "The Very hungry Caterpillar."

Activity:

After reading the book we did a sequencing activity. We passed out different props and toys of the different foods from the book to each child and let them try to line up in order of the book. 

Craft:  

For our craft we made caterpillar/butterfly life cycles. The kids got to make the 4 different sections. First they drew a leaf and glued a button on for the egg.  For the caterpillar we used craft pom pom balls of different colors, googly eyes and pipe cleaner antennas. They drew the cocoon, and for the butterfly we used colored tissue paper and miniature clothes pins.

 

Activity:

For our activity we played a game, sort of a mix between musical chairs and a cake walk. We printed out different food from the book and placed them in a circle on the floor. We played music and let the kids walk around in a circle, stopped the music, called out a food and figured out who was on that one, they were then out of the game and we continued from there.

Snacks:

For treats and snacks we tried to have all the foods from the book. Apples, pears, oranges, plums, chocolate cake, cheese, salami, cherry pie, caterpillar cupcakes and so on. 

Preschool: All About Me/My body Theme

Preschool Week #1:
Theme: All About Me/My Body 
Letter for the week: F
Number for the week: 1

The theme for the week is divided up between 2 different days. Although some of the things here are repeated for both days, most of it is divided up between the 2 days.

Centers/intro activity #1: I gave each kid an envelope with cut out letters of their name inside. Their name was also written on the outside of the envelope. They got to practice spelling their name/putting it in order. The kids who had short names got 2 envelopes, one with their first name and one with their last.

Centers/intro activity #2: Skeleton puzzles. I found this print out here. I pre-cut out and laminated the skeleton pieces. 1 set for each child. They got to put the skeleton together like a puzzle.

Circle time: During circle time we always start with a few welcome songs. Songs like, "Good Morning Good Morning," "Here we are together at circle time," and "Have a Happy day." Following the welcome songs, once a week we do show and tell which the kids can choose to bring something that starts with the letter for the week or something that has to do with the theme. Then we read stories, sing songs and talk about the theme of the week. Here are several books/songs on the theme of All About Me and My body.

Books: 
I'm Growing
Thank You for Me!
The Foot Book
I Like Me
My Body
The Body
All By Myself
The Skeleton Inside You

Songs:
Head Shoulders Knees and Toes
If you're happy and you know it
Do your ears hang low?
Parts that bend
I have ten little fingers

Theme Craft #1: We made "All About Me" books. The kids colored pages like, "my favorites,"
"My hands", colored in a self-portrait and helped fill out details all about themselves.

Theme Craft #2: Using large butcher paper. We traced around each child and let them color in a full size body of themselves.

Math: Looking at a calender we discussed the days of the week. sang the days of the week song. Looked at the date for the day. Talked about the month, day of the week. We also discussed what the weather was like for the day and drew a picture on the day to go with the type of weather. We then used pattern blocks. Let the kids explore with building things and then practiced making different patterns with them. Last we talked about the number for the week. Counted to the number for the week, went on a hunt around the house for things items that correlated with that number. We also had each child write the number and put as many stickers as there were for that number in their note book.

Snack #1: Fruit vegetable faces.

Snack #2: Cheese and Cracker Bodies.

 

Reading/Writing/Spelling: We first introduced the letter for the week, then talked about the sound it makes, and what things started with the letter. We sang the ABC's to figure out where the letter for the week was within the song. We searched around the house for words that started with the letter of the week. We practiced writing the letter. We cut out pictures in magazines that started with the letter. We did worksheets with the letter as well.

Mom & Me Book Club: Duck! Rabbit!

We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "Duck! Rabbit!" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

Gathering Activity:  

For our gathering activity we gathered together a bunch of books that had rabbits in them or ducks in them and let the kids and mommies read stories together as we waited for others to arrive.

Show & Tell: 

Each child brought an item related to the book  for show and tell. They stood up in front of everyone, said their name, showed everyone what they brought and told the group about it. For those that forgot their show and tell we had them share their favorite color.   

Circle Time: During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. We then sang the song "Little Bunny Foo Foo" and used a little rabbit finger puppet for the parts with the bunny. Then we read the book, "Duck! Rabbit!"   

Activity:

After reading the book, we talked about how we can look at things and we can sometimes see two different things. We looked at several different illusion pictures and let the kids tell us what they saw. (pictures like, the old woman/young woman, candlestick/faces and so on.) 

Activity:

After looking at the different illusion pictures we let the kids create their own illusions or animals using pipe cleaners and pom poms. They got to show everyone what they made and have people guess what they were. Got the idea from the mommy and me website here. 

Activity: 

We played a game called, "live duck, sleeping duck, dead duck." (normally this game is played with cows, but we changed it for this book.) We shouted out one of the three, and the kids had to act it out. Live duck waddles around the room and quacks, sleeping duck, lays on the ground pretending to be asleep and dead duck lays on their back with their feet up and tongue out. In this game generally the last person to change to the called out duck is out, but we just let everyone stay in and played over and over and over.

 

Craft:  

For our craft we made Duck/Rabbit puppets. One side of the puppet is a duck and the other side is a rabbit. on the duck side you glue on feathers, googly eye and color in the rest of the duck. On the rabbit side you glue on a pom pom for the tail, googly eye and color in the rest of the features. We got the idea from here. 

 

Snacks:

For treats and snacks candy ducks, candy/pretzel ducks and rabbits that we saw here. We also had bread and rolls, bunny marshmallows, fruit and a tray of "rabbit food" veggies and many other yummy treats.

 

Mom & Me Book Club: "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

 We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Laura Numeroff.

Gathering Activity:  

For our gathering activity we let the kids draw their families just like the mouse does in the book. They of course signed their names with a pen, just as the mouse did as well. 

Circle Time:

During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. Then we read the book, "If Give a Mouse a Cookie." 

Activity:

After circle time we let the kids help re-tell the story using props. Each child helped pick which item went next in the story and then lined up in order of the story. We used items that represented things from the book. A toy cookie, pretend milk, a dust pan, a blanket, scotch tape, a pen and so on. We got this idea from the Mommy & Me Book Club Website.

Then we sang "shake my sillies out" with the last line being, "tip toe my sillies out" as we tip toed over to the table for a craft.

Craft:  

For our craft we made mouse puppets. We got the idea here. We used colored paper, cut out and prepped for the kids, googly eyes, a craft pom pom for the nose and glued it all together on a craft stick. 

Activity: 

For our next activity we sang through the song, "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar" We all sat in a large circle and each kid got to point at/pick the next person who stole the cookie. The kids loved being the ones who stole the cookies and one of them even decided that, "yep, it was him."  

Activity:

Another activity we did was a cookie counting activity. We pre-cut out 10 paper circles per child. Each cookie had a number on it from 1-10 and had the amount of dots for the number. The kids got chocolate chips that they got to count out and put onto their "cookies" and occasionally sneak a few bites here and there.  Got the idea from here. 

Show & Tell:

Each child also brings an item related to the book (if they can) for show and tell. They stand up in front of everyone, say their name, show what they brought and tell the group why is is related to the book or why it is special to them. 

Snacks:

For treats and snacks we had Cookies, of course! We also had milk, cheese and crackers, fruit and veggies and various other snacks and goodies.