Jump to spell words game (and letter and phonics recognition for my preschooler too!)

Since my math jumping game was such a hit around this house, I decided to use the same concept in our spelling practice time. I lay out floor letters for the entire alphabet (printed the letters from here), then give Rylan a word or phrase and he spells it out by jumping on the letters to form the word(s). If it is a phrase instead of a single word, as he switches from one word to the next he shouts out “new word”, if the word he is spelling is a proper noun, he shouts out “capital” as he jumps on the first letter of the name. When we use jump to spell for spelling practice, the comment at the end is usually, “Can we do some more spelling, pleeease?”. Got to love that! :)

Of course, not to be left out, Damian wanted in on the action, so he gets to do his own form of letter hopping to practice letter recognition (I call out the letter and he jumps on it) and phonics (I make the sounds of the letter and he jumps on the matching letter). All in all definitely a popular exercise in our home!

Now that it is warmer out, I think we will take this lesson outdoors too. I will have Rylan write out the alphabet in sidewalk chalk and then the jump spelling will begin!

This has been added to: Preschool Corner & 5K too! and Show and Tell

Science unit: Studying the human body

We have had a whole lot of fun studying the human body over the past month! When I started preparing for this unit I was thinking we would study it over the course of two weeks, but the boys were so fascinated, I added a lot more onto it. I was pleasantly surprised at how much Damian understood and how much he enjoyed it. He even explained to me how the white blood cells where fighting off his cold virus while he was sick a couple weeks ago…I am pretty sure I didn’t know anything about white blood cells when I had just turned 3 years old! ;)

Here is a round up of what we covered during our study of the human body:

• We read a lot of books, and used them as a starting point for many of the aspects of our further research/activities. All the books are shown at the end of this post. The books vary in their level of difficulty, since I am teaching at preschool and grade 1 level at the same time.
  
• For a fun start to the unit, and to get our bodies moving we sang and acted out “head, shoulders, knees, and toes”, getting faster and faster with each round (and more and more silly too!).
  
• We read the Magic School Bus: Human Body, watched the Magic School Bus: Human Body DVD (Damian did not last long with the DVD, he thought it was a little gross, so Rylan watched the rest while he was napping), and did all the experiments included in the Magic School Bus: Journey inside the human body science kit.

{creating a ball and socket joint, with vegetable oil (synovial fluid) to make the movement of the “joint” more fluid}

{getting a feel for how muscles work}

{experiment aimed at comparing our different lung capacities}

{using iodine to test whether foods contain starch. We also did an exercise to identify the different areas of taste on our tongues, but I thought I would spare you photos of that one!}

{building our own stethoscope to listen to our hearts; we also compared restful and active heart rates}

{learning about the functioning of the diaphragm}

• We completed the life sized poster included in the above science kit.
  
• We did a few more experiments related to the human body from this book:
  
• We put together a large skeleton puzzle, which can be downloaded here. And then sang “Dem Bones” (which the boys learnt from a scholastic DVD a couple of years back) just for fun.

• We put together a glow in the dark skeleton that I picked up for $3 at our local science museum shop.

• Both of the plastic and paper skeletons, along with all the books and other activities (that could be repeated by the boys on their own), that we did during the course of our study were placed in our “feature study” area of our school room, so the boys could come back at different times to read or work with the materials individually.

• We drew diagrams of the eye after we read about the eye and how it works.
  

{Damian at work}

• We made red and white blood cells out of construction paper after reading about the circulatory system.
  
• Rylan read through and completed this book:

• Rylan completed several worksheets on the human body during his workbox time in the mornings, here are some examples:
• My wonderful body
• Body Parts
• Human heart
• Human skeleton
• Major organs of the human body
• Human body word search puzzle
  
• We went to our local science museum to visit their human body section and worked through all the different hands-on displays. This was a lot of fun (although a couple of the items really grossed the boys out! :) ).
  
• After reading our last book Happy and Healthy the boys did the exercises in Yoga For Kids Vol. 2: ABC’s.

We will definitely be re-visiting a study of the human body in the future, when the boys are older and we can study the topic more in-depth.

This has been added to Preschool Corner & 5K too and Show & Tell.

Yoga

Last week Rylan started a yoga class. It is a special class for kids aged 4 to 10, and it is awesome! Every week their instructor takes them on an animal adventure – so far they have gone on an Australian adventure and a trip to Arizona – all of the poses and movements are named after the animals and plant life in the area they are exploring. It is a very physical class, lots of movement, using muscles, working on balance; so the kids have a lot of fun. At the end of the class, though, she takes them through some guided relaxation, and I am amazed that she gets these kids (in particular, my very active son!) to lay dead still, eyes closed, and be quiet for five or more minutes. Straight! During this time they look completely absorbed in the relaxtion exercise, there is no squirming or chatting, or sneaking a peak, they are really quiet and relaxed. Just for those five minutes the class it worth it to me, Rylan is learning a valuable lesson about being quiet and still, and the sense peacefulness that brings to him. It is just a bonus that he has a blast during the class pretending to be various animals and also develops better muscle control and balancing ability.

Ringing the bell at the end of class.