We had a math and science heavy week at homeschool pre-k just because it seemed like acorn manipulatives were naturally lending themselves to those types of activities.
We went on a walk on Monday to collect acorns and we took oak leaves from last week's collection to help guide our way to the oak trees (hahha). While we were on our acorn walk, we randomly stumbled upon a skull of some kind! So we took a little acorn learning pause and detoured into some skull hypothesizing. Rust thought it might be a small fox, groundhog, rabbit, or a big squirrel. He also decided it definitely was NOT a turkey or coyote or bear or snake or mouse. After comparing and contrasting a lot of internet pictures of skulls (lol, my google history is w.e.i.r.d.) we determined it was a groundhog!
Other than that, all the brothers and sisters (and Dad!) were super happy to reap the benefits of 'Acorn' dessert treats and Rust really loved playing the Find the Acorns game.
Lesson: Acorns
Books we read:
Little Acorn by Scholastic Nature Stories
Woody, Hazel, and Little Pip by Elsa Beskow
Those Darn Squirrels! by Adam Rubin
Memory Verse
5 little acorns sitting in a tree
Here comes Mr. Squirrel as hungry as can be
The autumn winds blew
And rustled all the leaves
Down fell an acorn
Mr. Squirrel was pleased
(repeat with 4, 3, 2, 1 and use puppets)
Testing:
I did a diagnostic 'test' with Rust to get a benchmark as to which lowercase letters he knew for certain. He himself could only point to and name without prompting: o, x, and r. After that, we sang the alphabet song together while I pointed to each letter and it sort of blew his mind that the song IS each letter. So then when I pointed to an "e" afterwards, he whispered the song while pointing to the letters until he got to the right one and said triumphantly, "E!" It's good to know where we are starting at and I will check back in again periodically to make sure we are moving in the right direction of letter recognition.
Language Arts:
Acorn mini book
highlighting all the letter "a" in the book
Matching capital A and lowercase a
Math:
counting acorns (putting correct number of acorns in sidewalk chalk circles)
Venn Diagram of sorting: acorn hats, acorn bottoms, full acorns
Ten-frame completion
Missing number cut&glue worksheet
Counting worksheets
"Feed the squirrel" activity with real acorns & number cards
Patterns using our painted acorns
Handwriting:
1 page of handwriting
Science:
learning the name of acorn trees: oak
learning that acorns can turn into oak trees
matching oak leaves to figure out where we might find acorns
discovering that most acorns float, but some sink! (because they have holes)
Cooking:
Making "acorn" dessert treats (Hershey kisses, mini vanilla wafers, and chocolate chips)
Art:
Painting acorns
Physical Play:
Nature walks to find acorns
Tossing acorns into a bucket from various distances away
Find the squirrels acorn game (like hiding&finding Easter eggs)
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