(And All My) Work Be Praise

Drummer Hoff  is as much of a favorite with my sons as it was with my brothers when we were children, which gives it a special place in my heart! It's a simple little book, with classic Ed Emberley illustrations, that shows the progression of loading a cannon to be fired, but there's something magical about shouting "kah-bah-bloom!" and watching the whole illustration turn red on the last page. Each page builds upon the actions of the previous page, so that by the end, you have this: General Border gave the order, Major Scott brought the shot, Captain Bammer brought the rammer, Sergeant Chowder brought the powder, Corporal Farrel brought the barrel, Private Parriage brought the carriage, but Drummer Hoff fired it off. (Yep, I did that from memory.) Silas pointing to Major Scott's shot, back in March. I mentioned  about a month ago that Owen had no concept of rhyming words, so last time we read Drummer Hoff (maybe two weeks ago), I made a huge de...

To go along with our ocean theme, I picked two story books that we already own: Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle, and The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. It's a good thing I did, too, because sickness kept us home from library story time two weeks in a row! Mr. Seahorse  is a strange but true book about father-fish who take care of fish eggs until they hatch. Besides the usual Eric Carle illustrations, every few pages is translucent. "As Mr. Seahorse drifted gently through the sea, he passed right by . . . ." A stonefish hiding behind a rock, for example, and you can just see the stonefish through the rock on the translucent page. I hope I'm describing that adequately. So for an art project, I first had the boys draw pictures of fish: Owen's lion fish, with black and brown stripes just like in the book. Levi's purple flounder. Then, I cut apart a page protector (because who has transparencies around anymore?!) and had them color "ocean pla...

Fact: if you want a preschool theme with hundreds upon hundreds of ideas, oceans are the way to go. Holy cow there's a lot of stuff.  Printables: Royal Baloo and 3 Dinosaurs teamed up to do a week-long theme (which could easily be way MORE than a week, if you're as casual about completing activities as I am). They have activities for tot through first grade. Gift of Curiosity also has a ton of ideas and printables (free with e-mail subscription). I ended up with so many worksheet packs saved that I spent an hour sorting through, printing the ones I liked, and making folders for Levi and Owen to work on throughout the month. It worked well; one bored morning, I pulled out the folders, they did as many pages as they wanted, and I tucked them away for the next time.  Owen's first dot-to-dot. Word search, scrambled words. Gluing on the beginning consonant. Roll and graph ocean creatures. Random shot of growing baby in big boy high chair. :D ...