Monthly Archives: April 2018

Travel Busy Bags

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized by

Four years ago, we took our first family road trip. We drove 6 hours to New England. I grew up on the water and it was important to me to take my boys to see the ocean.

But a drive that long, with kids ages 4 and 1? I knew I needed some strategy.

So I started collecting ideas for travel busy bags.

Thanks to all the fabulous mommy blogs out there, I had no shortage of inspiration. I started collecting them all on a Pinterest board. Over 50 sites with great ideas can be found here:

Busy Bags Pinterest Board

I bought a set of pencil cases to hold them. Sometimes the simplest things work the best: a set of dinosaurs, some Duplo Legos, lacing blocks, or craft sticks to practice making shapes. The first three were things we already had in the house. And the last activity was a simple one to make.

For more of my favorite ideas, check out my page on Travel Activities for Little Kids!

Let me know in the comments which ones you try out and what works for you!

Bauernhof Malbuch – Farm Coloring Book

Posted in Coloring Pages, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized by

I’ve decided to do a mini Farm unit with my pre-K/kindergarten class. Over the next three weeks, we’ll read three books. But we’ll work on one song. And I’ve created a mini coloring book for them to make that has all the animals – plus a few other farm words – that they might learn.

In order to create the coloring book, they first color in the whole sheets and trace the words. Then they can cut along the dotted lines and stack their pages. The teacher will staple it together.

This work could be done over the course of the three weeks. I just have to remind them to put their names on the pages! I think it is too much for them to do all at once. There are 15 words, after all!

It could also be added to the classroom as a “work” (as they call it in Montessori schools) to be completed over time, as the children choose. Of course, if we do it this way, not all the children might complete a book. In fact, I think 15 pages is really too much for them to do all at once. Perhaps in that case, we would choose fewer words. Or maybe let the children choose which words they want in their book.

There is lots of flexibility here!

This is what the pages look like:

 

 

And here is the PDF for you to download: Mein Bauernhofbuch GitA

How will you use the coloring pages??

See Tiel 2 of this post for more on the farm lesson!

Flags of German-Speaking Countries

Posted in Coloring Pages, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized by

In the pre-K/kindergarten class, we are creating our own picture dictionary of German words! The book will be auctioned off at the school’s annual fundraiser. But we are having fun putting it together.

We thought we would take a picture of the entire group and put in the words to our hello song. Using construction paper and straws, the children have made flags of the major German-speaking countries, and they will hold the flags in the group picture!

Tomorrow is our last day to take photos. I am going in for a special lesson. I’ll be keeping the kiddos busy while the teachers are snapping the pictures. I thought I would do a review of the favorite songs we’ve sung and books we’ve read this year.

The children always love a coloring page, too! So I made up a coloring page of the three flags: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Flags coloring page GitA-page-001

You can download the PDF file here: Flags coloring page GitA

I won’t be able to share the book here online, since it will be filled with images of the children from the class, and we always want to protect their privacy. But I can tell you it is super cute!!

Viel Spaß!

Ostereier – Easter Eggs

Posted in Books, Coloring Pages, Holidays, Numbers, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized by

We’re a little late celebrating Easter in the pre-K/kindergarten class. I had planned a lesson for the week before spring break, but alas! It snowed that day, and the kids were sent home early!! So I did the lesson today anyway.

After singing our hello song and checking in on the weather, we practiced counting from 1 to 10. Then we sang “10 kleine Ostereier.” It’s a song I made up based on “10 Little Indians.” It goes like this:

Eins, zwei, drei kleine Eier
Vier, fünf, sechs kleine Eier
Sieben, acht, neun kleine Eier
Zehn kleine Ostereier!

Easy peasy! The kids caught on quickly, especially since they are really good at counting to 10!

Then we read our book: Eins, zwei, drei, fertig ist das Osterei! by Ursel Scheffler (Ravensburger, 2008).

Hasenfranz

There is a Drehscheibe (a wheel) you can turn to change the pattern on the eggs! We looked at the cover of the book, pointing out Hase (rabbit), Pinsel (paintbrush), and Farben (colors). Then I taught them the magic words from the book:

Pinsel, Farbe, eins zwei drei!

On each page, Hasenfranz paints an egg with a different pattern. So we all said the magic words together as I turned the wheel to see the new egg. They loved it!

I also brought in some Easter eggs. I had made some stickers for them using round, white labels. They each got two! But before I handed them out, we used them to count to 20. First, we counted all of them to get to 20. Then we counted each color (I had 5 purple, 5 green, and 9 blue – yes, I was one short!).

I also gave them a Malen-nach-Zahlen page to color. I updated it from the one I’ve used in the past. Instead of the 6 primary colors, I swapped out two, so I could include rosa and grau. I also made a more difficult version, so the older children could have more of a challenge. I let them choose which one they wanted to color.

You can download the PDFs here:

And here is the work-in-progress and the finished product. Hippo put his stickers on his paper, too. (This is a copy he and I did at home, and you might be able to tell that I helped with some of the coloring. It was fun to do it together!)

Frohe Ostern!