The Connett Connection

Winter time is for lots of snow and polar animal crafts!  Check this post out for a variety of winter themed crafts!   Here is a common winter craft, paper snowflakes!  Simply take a sheet of construction paper (or any paper really) fold it in half, then in half again and then fold the paper at an angle at the corner.  Cut the corner off and then cut the top into a nice pattern.  Afterwards, cut small shapes in the folded sides.  Open up the folded paper and see your snowflake!  We made this melted snowman art project.  I told my daughter what we were doing and she insisted she needed the three neat circles for a proper snowman.  I showed her a picture of a melted snowman and she said, "Oh!  I get it now!" and this is what she created! I broke out the chalk for this craft.  My daughter free drew her snowman and added these cut outs to make her unique snowman! MORE WAYS TO CONNECT Teachers Pay Teachers Sto...

This week started off great, but ended with two little boys with viruses.  I hate when the little ones are sick.  We did complete 3 days of school. We are continuing to learn and practice our addition facts!  We did sums of 6, 7, and 8 this week. My two year old was watching his sister do her math and he was so eager to "do school like sissy."  When she finished her math, I drew a large letter B (what his name starts with) and told him to color his letter!  He had so much fun, though he really did not focus on coloring the letter, but all over the board! My daughter has come a long way in writing.  We did this snowman writing page where she had to lists the things that she needed to build a snowman, then she got to draw a picture of her snowman! We also made this cute tree topper for our Christmas tree!  It took us two days to get it done (because she wanted to take a break and we forgot to finish it the first day). Here is...

There are so many Christmas themed crafts and activities that one could post about.  Here, on this post, I will be highlighting the crafts and activities I actually do with my kids! With this activity you decorated your Christmas tree while playing a game!  I gave my daughter craft objects of various shapes and then I gave her a Christmas tree page.  I instructed her to color her Christmas tree.  Then she drew a card and had to put the correct number of objects of the chosen shape on her tree!  Students are finished when their tree is filled with shapes or they feel their tree is complete!  The tree printable and the cards can be found HERE ! These pine cone Christmas trees were a huge hit at our house, with both my kindergartner and my preschooler!  Simply paint your pine cone green and stuff pom pom between the spines.  I did not even use glue!  They turned out so cute and are now decorating our kitchen counter! My son brough...

We had a full week this week, despite this short post!  I just did not think about getting pictures!  I did manage to get some pictures from our activities from studying the forest, so I will share them here! My daughter learned the difference between deciduous trees and coniferous trees.  Last week, we focused on deciduous trees, and this week we focused on coniferous trees.  My daughter loves doing art, so she loved this pine cone painting activity!  We have done a variety of pine cone crafts this year, and to see some more, you can check out my Pine Cone Activities Post ! We also learned some about bears, since they live in the forest!  We did this guided writing activity and then my daughter drew this awesome picture to go with her story! We have also been doing several activities about owls.  She thought her torn paper owl was "super cute!"  MORE WAYS TO CONNECT Teachers Pay Teachers Store Boom Store Facebook Page Hands on...

 We had a fun and full week this week!  We did a lot of fun activities and crafts! We had some acorns left over from last week so we painted with them!  We simply dropped pain on the paper and rolled the acorns around! To accompany our acorn craft, we did this guided writing activity with acorns.  My daughter can write sentences on her own with this activity! We have been learning about the woodlands, and about deciduous and coniferous trees.  I made this clip card activity to test my daughter's knowledge of the two types of trees! To accompany our forest unit we have been working on, we made these cute owls!  Simply pull cotton balls apart and stuff them inside the pin cone.  No glue needed!  You only have to glue the eyes and beak. We did this fun Christmas tree craft as well this week.  It was a game and a craft!  My daughter would draw a card and it told her how many of each shape to put on her tree!...

I have spent the last several weeks collecting pine cones to use with my kids for a few projects this winter. The first project we did was this turkey pine cone art project.  It was more difficult than I initially anticipated.  The feathers kept falling off the turkey, even after we glued them in.  Perhaps they would stick better with hot glue, but I am not comfortable with my 5 year old using a hot glue gun! We made a pine cone Christmas tree as well.  We painted the pine cone green and glued different colored pom poms to the inside of the cone. We made these cute pine cone owls as well!  Simply stuff the pine cone with cotton and glue eyes and a beak!  This makes a perfect craft for a winter animal or owl unit! We also painted with our pine cones.  We dipped our pine cones in paint and rolled them around our paper! We made rainbow pine cones to decorate our counter!  My daughter loved making the pine cone all different ...

We did a mini lesson on acorns.  I never thought it would be so hard to find acorns for us to use!  No one in our neighborhood has an oak tree.. I mean really?  Two hundred houses and no oak tree!  We finally found some at our chick-fil-a, at a home we stopped at for a yard sale and in the yard of a friend! I made these acorn measurement task cards to introduce my daughter to weight and how to use her new beam balance! We first worked with the cards that had us figure out which objects weight more, a set number of acorns or a set number of other objects.  I made sure that each card had objects we could easily find around our home, like pennies, buttons, blocks, marbles, etc.  We next figured out which of the objects weighed less. We then used task cards that had us figure out how many acorns would equal the weight of the given object(s).  The above picture shows that 3 acorns weighed the same as the one block we placed in the balance! ...

So the last two weeks have been very unconventional in our home school journey.  For week 14, we were out of town at my grandmother's house.  I told my daughter I would only take a few days of school since we were already 8 days behind, but that I would not make her have school lessons everyday since we were technically on vacation. I love the way my daughter will sometimes do her writing in artistic ways.  She loves to be cutesy and loves art, so I do not correct her when she does things like the above writing.  She did what I asked in a way that was fun for her.  The fact that she thought to make her letters this way was impressive to me as I've never modeled letters looking like this nor have I ever seen her make them this way before.  Everyday we do school work, I have her write the date as the first thing we do.  We talk about the days of the week, month of the year and the number of the day during this time as well! We did another guid...

Another week has ended!  A new one is about to begin!  We had a lot of fun this week, especially with our big project and a new writing plan! We are finishing up a study on the grasslands !  Just a few more days left and then it is one to studying the forest! We had fun using these clip cards to figure out what type of grassland each of these animals lived in. Part of testing her knowledge of the grasslands was doing this writing paper .  I ask her to draw a grassland and then two animals that live in the grassland. Our big project this week was making this grasslands box .  We did a small portion of the project each day this week and on Friday we added our animals and the kids got to play with it.  My 2 year old was so excited to add animals to the box.  He came running over with his favorite animal, his shark.  He got a lesson on why sharks do not belong in the grasslands! Someone posted this idea for writing rubrics on Fac...