Simply Play: Brown Paper Bags

This week we used a brown paper bag to make a Bear puppet. While we were doing this I thought of all the fun activities I did with basic paper bags while growing up and decided to share some of these with you and later with the kids.
You can use them for puppets, a paper kite, you can let the kids draw on the brown paper and use it to wrap gifts or packages, make a paper bag book, and you can use them for sensory play. For sensory play you can allow the child to rip, fold, or crinkle the paper.
There are lots of simple activities to entertain children of all ages.

Our current Pre-K curriculum 2011-2012

This video is a quick overview of our current curriculum. Some things are changing as we will officially be starting Kindergarten soon and I will do an updated video then.

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" Unit Study, Activities and Pinterest Board

Our K4 curriculum

These are some of our basic books that we are using for our PreK curriculum this year. We started out using the lesson plans from Heart of Dakota Little Hands to Heaven but have since decided to follow our own schedule. We do a lot of loose unit studies, read numerous books a week and take "field trips" whenever possible.
We are also supplementing Math, Science and Social Studies activities from several PreK workbooks that we bought. Social Studies & Science are also talked about a lot during our weekly units.


My Bible Coloring Book: A Fun Way for Kids to Color Through the Bible

My Mother in Law gave Azilee this book around Christmas of last year but
she was not very interested in coloring at the time. I am so thankful that I kept
it back because it goes along with lots of the lessons that we are reading and
it is helping her to tie lessons together with a hands on Art experience.


My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God's Word in Little Hearts






 
   The Singing Bible (Focus on the Family)
4 CDs. The songs go along with the lessons in our HOD Little Hands to Heaven.





The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons

Unit Study: Zoo (Field Trip!)

Elephants (Animals in Danger)
Lions Up Close (Zoom in on Animals!)
Gorillas (Animals in Danger)

One of our favorite books.
We will be doing a unit based on this book.

Watching Turtle with 

Lemur

 

 

Snapshot with the Giraffe

Comparing hands

 

 

Such a wonderful Playground. This pic shows 1/2

 

She was so exhausted and upset when we had to leave the playground

We ended the wonderful day with a trip to Pizza Inn.
I used the slices to discuss factions with Princess. 

Unit Study: Cherokee

We only did a brief unit on Indians this year for Prek. We were only able to find a few books at our library that were on a young enough level for her. We did take a quick trip to the Cherokee Indian Reservation which is what interested Princess enough for us to form this small unit. We hope to return for a longer visit and do a larger unit next year. This year we only drove through and stopped long enough for Princess to watch Indian dancers do a mini performance. She was able to participate in the friendship dance which she enjoyed. We also plan to go watch the Cherokee dance team preform at our countrys Labor Day festival this weekend. I will add those pictures at the end as well.


    

Princess dancing in the Friendship Dance