Knights

During the past 2 weeks we have been exploring the world of knights. We have loved it !! We used the following few books to base our explorations on:

  

In the Castle - Anna Milbourne

This book follows a young boy who longs to be a knight and live in a castle.

The Bravest Knight - Mercer Meyer

A young boy who wished that he lived a thousand years ago and was a squire serving the bravest knight in the kingdom. He rescues fair ladies, fights evil dragons and has a face-off with a giant troll. 

The Knight and the Dragon - Tomie de Paola

A delightful story about a bumbling knight and a clumsy  dragon who research how to fight each other. In the midst of their dual they discover an exciting opportunity in which they can partner together.

The sword in the stone

This book follows young Wart's adventures as Merlin guides him to not only be brave but to "think" too.

A Year in a Castle - Rachel Coombs

This is a story about a year in the castle. All the pictures have a cut-away view of the castle and you can see what happens in the castle throughout the months of the year. On each page there are the same characters and it is fun to spot them. The most noted in our experience were the thief, the prisoner and the cat and dog.

Some of the things that we did included the following:

• Doing mazes from Busy Bee Kids Printables. The knight had to find his way through the maze to reach the dragon and the princess locked in the tower. We printed the maze and put it in a plastic file-folder and used a dry-erase marker. This meant that the knight could go on his quest daily.

• We printed the "Knights and Castles" preschool pack from Homeschool Creations. These printables included included:
• tracing
• identifying initial sounds
• matching rhyming words,
• reading a short story
• matching words with pictures
• making popsicle stick puppets of knights, a princess in a tower and a horse
• coloring shields
• basic counting

Joshua identifying the initial sounds of words

Matching vocabulary pictures

Doing a counting activity

Jed doing a pre-writing activity

Making popsicle stick puppets

• Going on a quest to find a treat. I wrote down ten clues for the boys to follow which led them through a search of the house until they found a treat for for knights - some frozen juice popsicles. Some examples of the clues were as follows:
• Look in the bathtub and find a treasure chest.
• Take 2 of the golden coins from the treasure and give to the monkey in the shower.
• Look in the fridge for the magical ketchup for your next clue.
• Rescue the princess from the top of the fridge for your next clue.

Joshua all ready for his quest

The clues for the quest

 

Looking in the fridge for the magical ketchup

Heading upstairs for their last clue.

• Making a catapult from Busy Bee Kids Crafts. You just needed popsicle sticks, 2 pegs, an elastic and a plastic spoon. It was fun and easy to make. The kids enjoyed shooting pom-poms and dried beans.

 

• Making a castle from a cardboard box, with a drawbridge.

• Making knight helmets from Play at Powerhouse. It took a lot of cutting - first the template then the helmet, but it was worth it.

Joshua with his knight helmet

• Using knight activities from Homeschool Share. We did not make lap books from the materials but put magnets at the back of labels for armor and the time-line of knights so that the activity could be done again and again. Jed especially loved doing this.

   

• Movie night !! We watched Disney's Sword in the Stone and ate popcorn. 

Websites for more ideas include:

Owl and Mouse - Shields, Knights and Heraldry

A book in time - crafts

Busy Bee Printables - crafts, dominoes, chore charts

Peter Pan Week

During the week of 27 Feb- 2 March we were busy doing activities relating to the book Peter Pan. Here are the two main books that we read:

The children really love the story of Peter Pan and so they were very motivated to participate in the activities. Some of the things that we did were as follows:

• Peter Pan preschool printables from Homeschool creations. These printables included included tracing, identifying initial sounds, graphing, identifying rhyming words, measuring height of clock towers, reading a short story, pre-writing activities and matching the digital time with the analog time on clocks. Go here for Peter pan printables from Homeschool Creations

Joshua doing the tracing activity

Jed tracing. The crocodile is trying to get to Captain Hook.

Jed doing the graphing activity

Making the characters into popsicle stick puppets

Taping the popsicle stick to the character

All the popsicle puppets

•  Playing the Tick Tock game, where the children are the actual tokens and they move around the gameboard identifying the time on the clock that they are standing before they can throw the dice again. The boys loved this game and we are very thankful to Living Life Intentionally for the great game.

Here's Joshua playing the Tick Tock game with Google looking on

• Making Big Ben from popsicle sticks and a mason jar lid or CD for the face of the clock.

•  Making a Peter Pan dagger. It was apparently Peter Pan week 2012 in Britain too during the week that we did our Peter Pan theme. J.M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan gave the copyright of his book to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Every year they have a fundraising week and do things relating to Peter Pan. I was able to get the template for the Peter pan dagger from their website.

•  Frequent reading and re-reading of the book.

•  Lots of fun dressing up and taking turns being in character. The favourite characters were aptain Hook and Peter Pan. The characters of John and little Michael were also explored.

John in his nightgown with his glasses, hat and umbrella.

Little Michael in his night clothes and his teddy bear.

•  Going on an expedition like John and Little Michael did with the Lost Boys.

John going on an expedition

John and Little Michael playing "following the leader" as they enjoy their expedition.

•  We also enjoyed a Peter Pan movie night and watched the original animated Peter Pan movie. Of course no movie night is complete without pop-corn !!!

The Snowy Day

Jed: 5Yrs  1 Mnth / Joshua : 3Yrs

As part of Before Five in A Row (BFIAR) we did "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats. The book follows Peter as he enjoys a snowy day and has numerous adventures. The boys loved the book and also enjoyed the activities that went with it.

We included the following in our exploration of this book:

• Playing with snow on the kitchen table
• Having an expedition to the frozen creek and shovelling the snow off the creek to find the ice below.
• Making tracks in the snow like Peter
• Having an indoor snowball fight
• Playing with shaving cream and pretending it was snow
• Decorating snowflakes with glitter glue
• Painting a picture of Peter and the snowy tree

Joshua painting the snow for the background for his picture

Jed painting the snowy background

Joshua in his fort with his sock "snowball"

Jed hiding out in his fort

Joshua in action throwing his snowball

Jed enjoying the snowball fight

Joshua painted his hand "brown", like Peter in the book

Jed's brown hand

Joshua's handprint

Jed's handprint

Playing with shaving cream "snow"

Getting hands all snowy - without the "cold"

The clean-up

Playing with real snow

A baking tray full of snow

Superman making tracks in the snow

Decorating snowflakes with glitter glue

Jed's snowman

Joshua's picture of Peter using a stick to hit the tree

Jed's picture of Peter using the stick to hit the tree

We all really enjoyed the hands-on activities that went along with this book.

Websites for more ideas:
Delightful Learning
Creekside Learning - The Snowy Day