Thank you so much for joining us on our learning adventures!
We have officially completed our first week of homeschooling! Considering that the kids are only 4 and 2 at the moment, I’m keeping it pretty unstructured and following their lead.
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I had a lot of activities planned for the week, but we ended up with a surprise litter of kittens that needed round the clock feeding. Needless to say, I was pretty wiped and also ended up being house bound. As a result, plans were cancelled and we just did our own thing! We did however make it out to our city’s “Not Back to School Picnic” for the first time, met some lovely people and had a great time!
Right now, my plan is to have a number of independent activities kept in busy bins for the kids to occupy themselves with in the mornings. A night owl by nature and currently pregnant, mornings are always tough for me, so I really appreciate the potential of these boxes!
Knowing that so many of these bin activities need to be printed in colour and laminated, I jumped onto Amazon and picked up a Scotch Thermal Laminator and generic Amazon branded Thermal Laminating Pouches (so much cheaper than the Scotch brand and they work perfectly)! I also decided to treat myself to a new printer and after much research, ordered the Brother MFC-J4320DW Printer. Even though it’s a bit upfront, refills are super cheap, cutting costs in the long run!
Then, I picked up a storage bin for each child from Walmart and then dug out some mini zipper pouches from Thirty-One Gifts and even used the bags the pouches came in to separate and store each activity!
Here’s what I included in this first week’s quiet box:
Counting Caterpillars:
This was by far my son’s favourite activity (he loves anything to do with counting and is fascinated with caterpillars at the moment). I got the free printable at PowerfulMothering.com and some pom poms at amazon.ca. He loved using the pompoms, but then switched to buttons for something a little different and had a blast!
Shapes Counting:
I picked this activity up from PowerfulMothering.com as well, and it was a hit! They struggled a bit with the laundry pegs, but loved putting pompoms on the circles!
Velcro Dot Counting Sticks:
I was surprised these weren’t a bigger hit, but my son did love combining the sticks to make various shapes. It was a one and done activity for him, which wasn’t the greatest since it took forever to prepare! Nevertheless, I will hold onto them and try re-introducing them in a few weeks to see if they rekindle some interest. The idea came from PowerfullMothering.com and the sticks and velcro dots both came from Amazon!
Pin The Tail on the Bunny:
My daughter is obsessed with bunnies! We had one show up in our yard in the spring, who still pops up every once and a while, much to hear delight! So, this activity from fromabcstoacts.com was a hit with her! She loved putting the appropriate colours on the matching bunny, but then also loved mixing them up so they wouldn’t match! She then had a lot of fun just playing with the bunnies and feeding them buttons.
Pompom Rainbows:
My kids LOVE rainbows, and really, I can’t blame them! So I found this awesome rainbow template on sewfantastic.blogspot.ca and instead of magnets, I added pompoms and velcro so they could decorate their very own rainbow! They loved this activity, and not only differentiated the colours, but also counted how many pompomsthey needed for each band! So much fun!
Then I topped off the quiet bins with a box of crayons each, a colouring book, a handful of construction paper and a sheet of stickers (changed each day), giving them other activities to explore freely.
My plan is to switch up the busy bin prepared activities each week, introducing new activities and offering old ones that they really enjoy and align with our experiences as we go along.
I look forward to sharing our bins and activities with you and hope to inspire some great new learning activities for your little ones too!