Glimmercat Education: freebie

Showing posts with label freebie. Show all posts

Make a Basket Like the Ancient Civilizations

We just read about Moses. The story begins with this mother of Ancient Israel carefully weaving a basket in which she will place her three month old son. The tale is very poignantly retold in the River Lullaby from "Prince of Egypt", the movie by Dreamworks.

Now, I was caught by the idea of this basket, and wondered if we could create a mini basket. I found some beautiful handwoven baskets while researching for our study of Ancient Africa. I thought we should give it a try. But, it is best to begin with a base of light card-stock for your beginning weavers.

We had just read the introduction to Moses in Chapter 14 of "Story of the World" and I wanted to try an oval basket, like we imagined the basket for Baby Moses might have looked. I played around with the shapes for a bit until I landed on this one, which seemed to work well for me.

The reeds in the photo are cattail leaves. I only needed two for this small basket.

I taped one end of a reed to a card-stock arm and began weaving in and out around the arms, beginning at the base of our basket.

When I came to the end of my reed, I grabbed the next one and taped the last one to the card-stock. I think a good staple might work even better than tape.

When I got to within a half inch or so of the ends of the card-stock arms, I folded over the tops and taped them to the card-stock lower down. Again, I think a staple might work even better.

Of course, we had to try out this basket with a figure that might work as a Moses surrogate. And, hey, she fits in there just fine! This little basket has been holding up much better than I expected considering we used tape to secure its cardboard. It's a sturdy little item and makes its way between my son's room and my daughter's and has been used for all sorts of things already. Next time, I might attempt to make one entirely out of cattail leaves!

The above lesson is now available as a FREE DOWNLOAD

I want to mention this wonderful Game Pack from Belinda over at Whispering Waters. Her Game Pack is filled with cards showcasing familiar moments from Ancient Times in the Bible.

This product is in her store right here, and the wonderful thing is that she lists a whole bunch of game ideas as ways to utilize these awesome cards. She also includes this excellent reading list of fictional stories that would be great read-alouds for kids covering Ancient Civilizations. You will definitely want to check this product out!

The other item I want to mention is a FREEBIE I have in my store.

We used it for Hammurabi's Code, but this would also work EXCELLENT for two Ten Commandment tablets, if you plan on having your students write out some or all of the Ten Commandments. And since, that is also covered in this chapter, I wanted to be sure and mention it so you can download it and use it. :)

Letter of the Week for I

Imagine the letter I! We focused on crafts zeroed in on the Short i sound, so if you're wondering where "Ice cream" or "Icicle" are hiding out, they are in abundance on Pinterest and you won't have any trouble finding them. When it comes to Letter of the Week, I feel it is important to begin with the short sounds of vowels for toddlers. Long sounds usually get introduced later.

The two main creatures we use to discuss the letter I in our letter I packet are inchworms and iguanas. Let's begin with inchworms...

To begin with, our character Glimmercat walks up on an Inchworm and is startled into gasping out the short letter I sound! We follow this up with an Inchworm Craft (see below).

This was one of those easy and extremely satisfying crafts to complete, and all it required was a pair of scissors and a pipe cleaner. You don't have to add on the pompom and googly eyes like we did here, but if so, that makes it all the more fun.

This little guy really does "inch along" on his pipe cleaner way, just like a real inchworm might. And if you can pick up a little bag of YumEarth Organics' Gummy Worms, they are just the right size for tiny inchworms.

Okay, first, iguanas are such a fun creature to introduce to preschoolers. They are such fascinating reptiles and really are modern day dinosaurs, so what's not to love, right?

Here is a nice little Video of an iguana walking along a beach, that provides a beautiful introduction of the iguana for those children who have never seen one before.

Our lesson plan for our Iguana Day looks like this:

Our Iguana craft uses shape matching for students to discern where to place the legs and tail and other body parts. These shapes are small, but my daughter was able to complete her Iguana Craft almost entirely by herself.

Let's move on to I is for Igloo:

If you remember, my husband and kids built a real igloo this past winter over here.
But, if you are in a traditional classroom setting, that might not help a whole lot, so images of
real igloos or pictures for context will be helpful. Like this:

Regardless, building a crafty igloo is definitely something that preschool kids can do with just a little help. In our I "Letter of the Week" packet, we begin with a basic shape for the children to begin piling on their popcorn peanuts or sugar cubes:

This is the basic outline of an igloo. For our own practice on this igloo craft, we tried out the packing peanuts and foam chunks.

We used Tacky glue and we built the igloos in stages so that at times the glue could dry. This made it easier for the kids to grow their igloos.

The other thing we did is demonstrated in the above photo. We added a small balloon for structure, and built up the last of our ice chunks on top of the balloon, trying to keep the glue just on our chunks, and not on the balloon.

Finished products look great! The kids loved building their igloos.

Letter I makes for a wonderful letter of the week packet!

You can find it here in our store, or check out some of the other letter packets we offer:

Letter of the Week for Y

Letter of the Week for Z

Letter of the Week Packet for A

A Letter of the Week Packet for A for Preschool and Kindergarten!

This packet for the letter A packet (over 40 pages worth!) is available at our store, here:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-A-1948189

So many of the craft ideas you will see here are available for download. I'll go over a bit of what's inside this Awesome and Amazing packet.

This might seem like a simple craft (and it is!) but it is just the thing to start out your small chilluns with. There was nothing they enjoyed more than sticking their finger through that beautiful apple and wiggling it around like a little worm. Joey opted for an angry worm face on his finger, as you can see, but we are all about smiles, too.

Because we have a large Homeschool following, I include scripted lesson plans in each letter of the week packet:

You'll notice that in the lesson Plan above, each activity is themed with apples. We try to make sure that every day has a theme as move through the letter of the week. Children like to be able to predict, and knowing that one day will all be about apples, is comforting and exciting for them at the same time.

How about those Astronauts? We include a fun astronaut craft in our letter A packet, but we also have this extra idea about dressing up with an Astronaut helmet.

Astronauts are a lot of fun to talk about. One of my kids' favorite videos is the Cat in the Hat "Space is the Place" dvd. In this video, they can travel with Nick and Sally (and the Cat) to outer space and meet an astronaut and learn some neat scientific facts while they're there. We actually love the Cat in the Hat made for television series. It's a great educational series.

But, our Astronaut Craft looks more like this:

All you need is a photo of your favorite child popped into the inside of that helmet!

We love guided crafts, and I think one of my favorite parts about this craft (besides how great it looks at completion) is that children form the letter A for the Ant's legs before they add the pompoms! We always share which additional materials you might need, and we try to keep those reasonable.

Another craft idea I want to include here, is these cute little clothespin alligators:

They are so fun! I love their mouths that kids can open and shut. But not all of us have time to get the materials together for that, so I created a paper printable alligator like this for our Letter A packet:

One thing I'm really excited about are the letter cards that I created for our packet. Each of them has a schtick, included to help the kids remember the sound for that letter. So this one, for A...

...our cat character, Glimmercat, has climbed up the A to try to get those apples in that tree, but she slipped and says, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!" (short a sound) as she slides down the A. We even created a little song to the tune of "Say, say oh playmate"...

...to make it all that more easy to remember. A says (Aaaaaaaaaa!).

Letter of the Week for Y

Letter of the Week for Z

Supplemental Activities for "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"

I have mentioned before, (here),how much I love the reading program "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". With my own kids in mind, I created some additional supplemental worksheets to go along with it. Because we needed some things like this:

And some things like this:

And even some things like this:

So, we have Phonics printable packets that look like this:

These packets are intended to be used alongside the Distar Reading program, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and each packet includes everything needed for supplementing when you are following through the lessons in order. So, when you have finished lesson 10, you will be ready for everything included in the "After Ten" packet.

We have created packets up to Lesson 50 at this point, and each of these packets are now available in a bundled packet here in our store.

ABOUT THAT READING PROGRAM:
I love the comfortable intimacy of sitting down on the couch to read with my kids. I love the ease of reading through the daily lesson. And I love the overall sense of it. It just breaks down "Reading" into this easily understandable activity. And the pictures and stories in the book help it stay fun.

The book's authors suggest that it is a stand alone program (and it is!) and that the only other materials you will need are a pencil and paper, to write out the sounds for writing practice.

This is true, you don't need anything more than the book to teach your child to read.

But, since my children love crafts and getting to put their knowledge of their learning to work, I decided to make a collection of worksheets, activities and crafts (about 25 items) called "After Five Phonics", as a Set to supplement the first 5 lessons of "...100 Easy Lessons".

And then, I kept on going, making packets for every five lessons that included extra activities...

and worksheets...

mini books,

...even crafts that went along with the new sounds being learned.

When I used this program before, I wanted practice sheets for the writing part of the program. If you are familiar with "How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", you'll remember that sound introduction happens in a different order than the ABC's are usually introduced. But even the way the sound for "A" is introduced is a challenge, as in the "100 Easy Lessons" book, it looks different than most lowercase A's do in Kindergarten workbooks. And what I really wanted, was something more like this:

So now I have it. With nice colorful imagery, in case someone wants to print it out, laminate it and reuse it over and over (which would really be helpful). I also included black and white options for those who prefer to print these out at home without using up their color cartridges:


Sample worksheet from the "After Ten" packet

The teacher side of me kicked in and whispered, "You know, some supplemental activities that added more sound/letter recognition would be really nice..." So I made some of this:

And then added some of this (mixing in some shapes and color practice):

And then I remembered how I used this program for teaching in a combined classroom, and I REALLY wanted some nice colorful flashcards...so I made some of these:

Let's look at another one of those craft pages:

If you're not exactly sure what you're looking at there, that is a "Mat the Rat" Craft, from one of my freebie reading stories. This one here, in fact:

You can download this Supplementary Worksheet Packets.

And speaking of my store, that's where you can find all the supplements mentioned above!

Introducing the GlimmerCat Supplementary Worksheet Packets.

Filled with additional reading materials and fun crafts, these worksheet packets enhance the DISTAR reading program, offering dynamic engagement to all kinds of learners. You can purchase them in separate packets or grab the entire bundle.

Phonics Activities Bundle for Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

An add-on that can bring a spark of joy and excitement in your children's reading journey.

"GlimmerCat's packets were a lifesaver! They made the reading lessons so much more enjoyable for my kindergartner. The flashcards are perfect for on-the-go learning!" - A satisfied homeschool mom

Pages

Make a Basket Like the Ancient Civilizations

Letter of the Week for I

Letter of the Week Packet for A

Supplemental Activities for "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"