Fishy Learning

When I start a unit, I dig out everything in my house related to that subject. 

This past couple weeks it was fish.

I tried to find everything under our roof that had to do with fish.

I love doing this because it's a great way to rotate toys,

and it helps my kids cross reference everything we are learning about in our unit.

First I made a Quiet Time Box,

Lately our quiet times have become a little more academic.

She has been staying up for most of quiet time,

So I have had to find printables and other variety to keep her focused.

In this box are printables from Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1,

I have just slipped these into sheet protectors,

and had M. use a dry erase marker.

There is also a letter puzzle, magnetic fish, and lots of books!

Including Yertle the Turtle, The Pout-Pout Fish, and Exploring the Deep, Dark Sea.

Next I pulled out my Fish Manipulatives,

They look like this,

except mine didn't come with any books.

 

I actually got mine at an education conference {for free}

and I have used them a lot with the kids I have taught over the years, so I decided to use them with my kids.

P.S. I don't mean for this to be a commercial, go out and buy this post. I am just super visual and I thought you would like to see what I am talking about :)

I pulled out the numbers 1-6 and the dots into my touch and feel box, and had M. pull them out and match them.

She actually like doing this,

despite how serious she looks :).

Baby H. loved hooking them together too,

they have different textures on the back,

and he loved scratching those textures.

Easter Egg Painting

It's so fun to dye Easter Eggs,

but they hardly get eaten (by children).

So we decided to play with our food,

To help encourage everyone to eat hard boiled eggs.

And as always, it was super simple!

We peeled the eggs after they cooled.

They loved doing this!

It was a little tricky for them, but really fun.

Then we used the accessories from our Cootie Game,

and Mr. Potato Head.

Super easy, and 4 out of 6 of them ate their whole egg.

Next, we moved on to Easter Egg Painting

This was our set-up.

First we read The Easter Egg, by Jan Brett

I love this book, it's so sweet!

Its about a little bunny village who paint eggs for the Easter Bunny,

and one little Bunny doesn't know what to paint,

So he goes to help a mother robin whose egg fell out of the tree.

And the broken empty egg from the baby robin,

is the Easter Bunny's favorite egg.

Here's some extra activities from Jan Brett's site for this book.

The children loved painting with Easter Eggs.

All we did was use half of a plastic egg

and dip it into spring colored paint.

I used cardboard boxes that come with case lot sales,

to contain the paint.

Then I cut the dried papers into egg shapes.

I thought they turned out cute!

Here's M.'s Quiet Time Box for Easter

Her favorite part was the Easter Eggs,

A few of them (3) had candy,

and the rest had small toys,

like Cinderella earrings she got from her birthday.

I also found some fun matching sheets

found here and here.

I put them in a sheet protector and had her use a dry erase marker.

Here is a fun Easter snack we did last year,

Bunny Breakfast

Happy Birthday Princess!

Miss Sweetie turned 4!
She was so excited to finally be big.

 

A key to happiness is anticipation.

To help her get ready for her birthday,

I made her a birthday Quiet Time Box,

Which she used all month.

It had a birthday had, Melissa and Doug cupcakes,

birthday puff stickers from the $1 box, scented play dough with real candles she cold take in and out and tons of birthday books.

(Like Happy Birthday Moon, The Best Birthday Party Ever, Princess Joy's Birthday Blessing, and Happy Birthday Sponge Bob!)

I let her plan every minute of her party.

She wanted, of course, a Tangled themed Party!

She invited everyone dress up

And the cutest Flynn Rider showed up,
You can't really tell from the pic, but he has a goatee painted on!

My sister, Ashley, made this adorable Rapunzel cake for her,
she also made a tower cake for the family party.

M. is so lucky to have such a sweet Auntie!

So as usual I did things simple, and super themed.
First we played hide the satchel,
where we put a pretend crown in a bag and hid it around the living room.

Then we played pin the nose on Flynn Rider.
So fun, and very little cheating, surprisingly.

 

Then we played Mother, Mother, Mother, Gothel.
AKA. Duck Duck Goose.
We used the witch hat (because everyone knows Mother Gothel is really a witch) and whose ever head it landed on had to chase Tangled.

Then we pretended to cut Tangled's hair off,
meaning we cut yarn off of a hanger.
This was every one's favorite inside activity!

Thanks Preschool Daze for this activity!

Then we went outside and hit the pinata.
Not really Tangled related, but super fun!

 

I can't believe she's so big!
Wasn't she the sweetest baby?

Five Senses Quiet Time Boxes

While we were learning about our Five Senses,

I made M.'s Quiet Time Boxes go along with that same theme.

It was fun for her, to have new boxes and to have them be about what the theme she was learning.

These boxes are A LOT more gender neutral, so I hope they give you some new ideas for your own quiet time boxes.

Sense of Taste Quiet Time Box looked like this:

It had anything to do with food in it, such as the Melissa and Doug cutting food, fruit stickers, Skittles, and a bunch of books about tasting.  Like Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti, I know an old Lady who Swallowed a fly, and Eating the Alphabet.

I did links on all of these so you can see what I am talking about,

then you can go to the library and check out the same books.

Our Sense of Smell Box looked like this:

It had our Scented Play Dough, cookie cutters shaped like food, scented marker and paper to draw,

and a bunch of scratch and sniff books. 

Such as, Little Bunny Follows His Nose, The Spooky Smells of Halloween, and I Smell Christmas. I got really lucky because my library had a few scratch and sniff books.

(All I did was I went on to Amazon and typed in "Scratch and Sniff Books" and tons of titles popped up, then one by one I searched for them at my library.)

Our Sense of Sight Box looked like this:

It contained all the sunglasses in our house :), view finer, her blue and red binoculars we made, Peek-a-Boo books about looking through a little hole and guessing what the picture may be.  I also included some coloring pictures of herself that I made by photo shopping some of our family pictures. (These were her favorite)

Our Sense of Hearing Box looked like this:

 

It contained: An old fashioned phone (does that make you feel old?) a book on tape, with a tape player, her tag reader, and some tag reader books.  As you can see I broke one of my Quiet Time Box rules, No toys that make sound.  But while learning about the Sense of Hearing, I figured I had to bend a few rules.

Our Sense of Touch Box looked like this:

 

Sorry, she's taking a nap with it right now!  I'll hurry and get a picture up!

It contains: Lots and Lots of touch and feel books, gloves, fake finger nails, and pretend nail polish.  Once again I got lucky at the library with all of those touch and feel books! Love the library!! 

As you can see I broke a few rules, normally I try not to use consumables like stickers and paper because it's hard to keep up on. I made some exceptions here because she will only use them for a couple of weeks.  Then we'll switch back to princesses and pinkness.

Here are my other posts for Quiet Time Bags,

and a Quick Quiet Time Box idea.

Quick Valentine Quiet Box

Okay okay, so I know I have been talking about

Quiet Time Boxes a lot lately!

But  I wanted to make the idea super easy for you,

so you could make your own {Quickly}.

Today I wanted to throw together

one quiet time box,

so you could see how easy it is.

First I picked a theme: Valentines

Then I grabbed my books:

Some of these are from around the house,

some are ideas from JDaniel4's Mom

which I put on hold at the library

(from the convenience of my own home)

and picked them up today.

I threw in our wooden hearts that we use for sorting,

Grabbed some cute containers,

and told her she could sort them by size or shape.

I also grabbed her beauty shop bag,

and threw it in there.

It has pretend makeup, brushes, lipstick,

a blow dryer, a mirror, a tea pot and some tea cups.

See, so easy.

It took me five minutes to put it together,

she went into her room played for 45 min,

and is now napping.

I am now to the point that I know what she loves,

If I see a cute book on a blog or on Amazon,

I go onto my library's website and put the book on hold.

M. loves books so that makes it easy for me.

Whenever I am at the dollar store or Target $1 bins I look for new things that I can throw in there to change them up.

So pick a theme whether you have a girl or boy,

put toys that somewhat match the theme

{that aren't their favorite toys}.

Then set a timer, especially if your child is older.

You could start with 15 min., 30 min., and then work up to a longer time period.

Here is an idea for Quiet Time Bags,
And here is my original Quiet Time Boxes Post.