Tag Archives: Homeschool Preschool

Mixing Primary Colors and Chemical Reactions

Peanut knows all her colors, with the exception of sometimes thinking white is yellow and vice versa. Since she’s pretty set on her colors, I’ve been trying to show her the concept of mixing colors. How green is actually a mixture of yellow and blue. That sort of thing. When I came across this experiment, I realized it’s the perfect way to show her colors mixing. Plus who doesn’t love chemical reactions?!?

It’s a pretty simple experiment and Peanut didn’t want to put it away, even when all the baking soda was used up. It can get little hands messy though, so watch out!

Just take a tray of baking soda (cookie sheet worked well for us) and 3 bowls of vinegar, one for each primary color. Color one yellow, one blue, and one red. Give the kiddo some sort of utensil to get the vinegar out with (we started with a medicine syringe, but quickly moved to measuring spoons) and let them go at it!

While Peanut played, we talked about the colors. We made guesses as to which color mixing two together would make. We talked about how just a little bit of the red on the baking soda made pink. We talked about how the three colors of food coloring are called primary colors.

While big sister played, Twig showed us her own chemical reaction. Baby saliva dissolves all solid matter.

After mixing colors for a while, the activity became a sensory one, which Peanut quite enjoyed. I wouldn’t suggest this for kiddos who are likely to try to eat it though.

Peanut had a ton of fun. It was really hard to get it away from her. Next time, I think we may do it outside so that she can just keep playing until her heart’s content, rather than mama deciding it was getting too liquidy and risking pouring food coloring on the new kitchen tile.

 

 

 

 

Homeschool Preschool

My plan all along since taking Peanut out of her preschool on my campus has been to continue with her preschool education at home. I’ve felt like we’ve been sorely lacking in not only learning at home, but also attention for Peanut. My husband and I were discussing the other day how our relationship has gotten more stresses, but not really suffered since the birth of either of our daughters. Sadly, after the birth of Twig, our relationships with Peanut have definitely suffered.

So in an effort to be a better mother to Peanut and to help her learn, we decided to do a homeschool preschool. I’m not following any curriculum and a lot of it is going to be learning through life, but I wanted a way to put goals for our days. If I don’t set a goal to do something, it won’t happen. Likewise, with the hectic life of having two children, if I don’t write something down, it doesn’t happen. So, here enters our daily preschool goals chart.

This isn’t a set schedule. There isn’t a curriculum. It’s just what we want to do for the day with an emphasis on learning. We’re still in the very beginning stages on this idea, so it may change at any time. We did it the day before too (and accomplished studying bugs, playing with the sensory box, and practiced writing letters). It’s goals, so if we don’t accomplish them, it’s just fine. I also plan on not doing a chart on the weekends, since we’re not home for much of it (with music class on Saturday and family’s houses on Sunday) and traditionally school takes a break on weekends too. Obviously, we’ll still learn as we go through life on weekends, but just not as structured.

So here’s what we did Friday as part of Peanut’s preschool goals.

We started the morning with sorting socks. It’s an activity we’ve done many times before, but we switched it up by not only sorting socks, but using the socks to demonstrate same and different. When she found a match, I’d ask her what as the same about them. When she was waiting for me to find more socks in the pile, I’d ask her what was different about two socks she already had. I decided on this activity purely for the fact that I had two baskets of laundry to fold from the day before. Life is learning for preschoolers. There’s always way to find learning within your day to day activities.

After Twig woke up from her sleep-in-all-morning-ness (I know, why wasn’t she my first child!??!), we went for our walk. I gave Peanut a bag that she got at a birthday party last week and told her she could bring home anything she wanted in it. I also let her decide what direction we were going when we had the option to go one way or the other.

Twig rode on my back and was happy for the first little while, but started getting grumpy, so I suggested to Peanut that we head in the direction of home when we had another option to turn. I haven’t mastered getting Twig off of my back without sitting on the couch, so we had to hurry up our street when she started crying because she wanted to nurse.

Peanut makes the most silly faces for photos sometimes.

After we got home, we took all of the stuff you picked out and you made a picture. You also wrote your name on the picture all by yourself! I didn’t even have to tell you what shapes the letters were! You’re still learning how to hold a pen so that it’s easier for you to write letters so it’s not super easy to read what you write, but it’s a step in the right direction. Maybe I’ll look into some sort of special pen for you to learn with if such a thing exists.

After your nap, we planted the lettuce. It didn’t work so well because Twig was crying for part of it and you got bored easily, but you did help me set the plants out and then dig the holes for the plants. Hopefully things will go better with planting veggies if we do it in the morning in the future.

So that’s our preschool for now. I’m constantly trying to come up with new ideas for the preschool and I’m trying to incorporate our regular life, and therefore life lessons from our lives, into our lesson plan. For today (Monday the 23rd), our plans are: play with bubbles (you requested it), practice writing, feed Heidi’s horse an apple (since we have to go get eggs), go grocery shopping (I plan on giving you the list and you can help me “find” what’s on it and then cross it off), and get books from the library (which will obviously involve a lot of reading).

Does anyone else specifically set out to do a preschool at home? Do you do lesson plans or goals? Any helpful information on a homeschool preschool?