Pipe Cleaners and Magnets!

Learning about magnets always seems to be a fan favorite for the little ones, they love to explore their world and see what they can get to stick to their giant magnets and what will not. My youngest still considers it magic and thinks of himself as Harry Potter, when he has his wand handy!

For this fun activity, we took our scissors and a variety of pipe cleaners. I began cutting them down into smaller sticks and eventually my little guy decided to join in on the cutting fun too!

Roman hunted around for a container that was clear and had a lid that fit on rather snugly. This was a great little treasure hunt for him! Next, he loaded in all our strips into the container and snapped lid on tight.

Let the fun begin! He was able to realize what would stick to his wand and what wouldn't. Keeping the magnetic wand on the outside of the container and waving it around the exterior showed him how magnetic properties worked. I also threw in a marble, penny, paperclips and piece of metal chain, this allowed him to see what was alike and different from the pieces that did and did not get attracted to the magnet.

His favorite, was making stars out of the pipe cleaners, too bad he got upset when they would fall to the bottom after he removed the wand. This is such a fun and easy project to do with little ones!

Fun with Words!

My kids love to read and write! We even journaled about Spring Break and write small entries daily. I think this is something that the kids will enjoy looking at in the future. I'm always looking for fun and new ways to learn words and such, but I also like to include my little guy! I recently came across a fun word game What's Gnu and it's a great game for the big kids, but I wanted to adapt it for the youngest. I printed out some alphabet sheets and grabbed my magnet set from TARGET. His favorite part is sliding the letters out on the What's Gnu game, so he slides and then puts a magnet on the matching lower case letter. It's a great way for him to keep the Upper Case and Lower Case letters fresh in his mind! I love it!

I love to use games in ways other than what they were intended for, it's a way of getting more bang for your buck! Here we are using classic Boggle in a fun way. I shake it up and make a list of words that they can then find. It's like a big word search, since they have the list. Once they have familiarized themselves with the grid in that way, they then can move the letters around 1 at a time to create new words! It's basic, but they are learning and best of all, we are all doing it together!!

Magnet Fun!

I have seen some really fantastic felt boards lately and I love how they entertain creativity! As I've mentioned before, we are ALWAYS in the car, so I wanted something more portable for my little ones. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending Box Tops University as the coordinator of my daughters school. They gave away some goodies for attending and one of them was a package of AVERY Magnetic Sheets! I used many of them to make up magnets for the school (To remember to clip box tops over the summer!!) and had some left over! I knew just what to do!

I used mod podge to glue down scrabook paper to the sheets and then used the mod podge over it and cut our shapes in all sizes and colors and prints! Then, I let the little ones design to their hearts content! Before I knew it, they were asking for certain shapes.

Their magnet boards were 2.99 at a local teacher store, that now always seems to be sold out of them!

Scrapbook paper was from my scrap pile of random pieces.

Simple and So fun!!

~Michelle!~

Linking up here:

Thrift Stop!

After writing this post on thrifty teaching aids:

http://michellescharmworld.blogspot.com/2011/03/thrifty-teaching-aids.html ,

I have gotten many e-mails, to keep updating my fun buys! Remember that you don't have to go to a specific charity shop, just go into one! I for one can be a total store snob, I admit it, but thrifting is FUN! There are so many treasures you can unearth and believe me, I've often times found new in box toys and books and game sets that are perfect for lessons or inspire new ones. 

Today, I ran in just to do a quick check at the local Goodwill (snob about to come out here). I cannot stand this Goodwill and if I were the company I would invest in making it as nice as the others I have been to (every single other one) AND be more careful about what they put on the shelves (stained items, torn items, broken stuff etc.) The minute you walk into this one, you just get that ick feeling, BUT I figured I will give it a shot, since I struck out at my 2 other local stops.Go figure I found some great stuff!! 

I did take the time today to write them a customer note on their website with my receipt information, so hopefully that will help somewhat! haha!!On to the good stuff!

Goodnight Moon is HUGE, it's the Lap Size for the classroom and perfect for all 3 kids to see while I read at bedtime! The Vintage Clock is a puzzle too! This is going to be very helpful in teaching Roman the Time basics and we can also use the numbers in different games too! My favorite purchase was the magnetic Pattern Blocks and Book, these were in a ziploc freezer bag, so I put them in the red pouch to make it more portable. I then dug through my supplies and found a cute little iron on to pop onto the pouch to make it cute and my youngest son fell in love! 

I took an iron on patch that I had in my supplies and put it right on this drawstring bag I had and now this little set looks good as new and Roman has already started carrying it everywhere to play!

Goodnight Moon .79

Magnetic Blocks and Book .99

Clock .99

Total spent today under 3.00!!!

Craft in a Minute!

 This week's craft in a minute is so simple! This is a great way to breathe new life into an old puzzle or make some fun magnets. It's a great craft that even the youngest learners can get involved! The total for this project came out to be under 3.00!You need magnetic tape (2.99 with a 40% off coupon from Michaels) scissors and any old wooden puzzle, I picked this one up in the dollar section of Michaels too!

 Today, my partner was my 5 year old son! I used the scissors to cut the magnetic strips into the right sizes for each letter. I let him peel and stick away!! Before they were even done, the kids all had their magnetic boards out and were playing away!!

Can you tell they loved them???!!!

Our Day!

Wow, it's not even 10am yet and Roman and I have been incredibly busy!

Rain Catcher!

After I took the big kids to school and he woke up, we hurried outside to check our rain catcher (not exact by any means, he made it with a ruler and applesauce jar and I just wrote the numbers where he said to), since we got a lot of water last night well into this morning! He was so thrilled, he wanted to play with it and a funnel, but it's too chilly for water play today! (Idea for rain jar came from here!)

Counting Marshmallows, Building with them and creating shapes!

I knew a melt down was coming if I didn't think of something cooler than playing with the rain water, so I ushered him inside and decided today would be our Marshmallow Day! I pulled some out along with an egg carton and he got to counting them (up to 12) and then we decided to make shapes out of them (using a polygon shape page) and finally we he decided he wanted to build with them! He had so much fun, that this lasted over an hour! (Another blog post will go into these activities in more detail).

Magnet Play!!

I'm off to drive the carpool in a bit, but this afternoon, we are going to be working with magnets again and seeing if has retained any information from before! What's even more fun is that Gabriel has only morning class today, so he will be able to join us!!

Punching circles!!

Hopefully this weekend sometime, I can squeeze in a stop to the craft store for more craft punches! He's been using my circle 1.5 inch cutter and having a blast! I would love to get many more geometric shape cutters, so that he can make a shape book in the future! So many plans, so little time!!

We had an AMAZING nature hike and picnic after school today, I will share more in another posting in the upcoming week!!

What did you do today???

This Week in Photos!

Welcome to our week in photos! We had another Blessed week and cannot wait to enjoy our weekend! I hope you are having a fantastic Saturday! We are headed out to dinner to celebrate my birthday with friends and family!! (Yes, I had a birthday on the 23rd! I turned 31 YIKES!! Lol!

With the chill still in the air, we headed out anyway and hit one of our favorite hideaways on the bike path in search of river rocks for our nature table and rock project. we enjoy spending time together and being outdoors!

This week my youngest (he is not in school yet) and I worked on Easter wreaths! This was made of a paper plate and tiny eggs (will post more about this later in the upcoming week) and some ribbon. We plan on giving these out this weekend to family members to help them decorate their home for the Holiday!!
We also worked on our address book after school one day! We are sending out Easter cards and this helps my older two know how to address and envelope and get stamps etc. A fun project that gets everyone involved!
My oldest boy (I really dislike the middle son title! I don't like him thinking that he's in the middle, I know that probably makes me weird! haha) is leader of his school this week (They call it the Big Cheese) and he is all smiles about it!! I am very proud of him, as this is his 3rd time this year!!
We found this tutorial on how to make a felt bunny on Natural Kids, I am hoping to eventually make a pin for the teachers this year, but for now we are using it as a template to cut out Bunnies for our Easter Cards!!!
We made magnets out of a 1.00 puzzle and we had a BLAST!!! The process is so much fun for little fingers, but at the same time we can even use them!! They want to make more and for 1.00 I just may give in!!