Chandler’s Minecraft Party

Chandler is, like every other boy his age, OBSESSED with all things Minecraft. I’ll admit, I like that he is at least building and creating things more than he is fighting zombies – although they do pop up from time to time. One of his favorites parts of the game is the Creeper – so for his birthday this year we were all creeped-out! Take a look!

So, when it comes to buying Minecraft or Creeper party supplies – there are none. Of course, by this time next year they will be EVERYHERE. So – we had to get a little creative and make our own for the party. For the balloons, we used a permanent marker to draw Creeper faces onto lime green colored balloons. We did try black duck tape first but it weighed the balloon down too much.

We also used an inexpensive lime green table cloth to make a Creeper door cover. Instead of passing out from the massive amount of permanent marker needed to draw on a giant creeper face we used black construction paper. We took it down carefully when the party was over and now Chandler has it in his room.

With the leftover tablecloth I was able to make another Creeper face for even more Minecraft fun! I also used black construction paper to make a Creeper gift bag for the birthday boy’s gift. Chandler also likes the spider in the game so we made an easy spider balloon decoration with a balloon and streamers.

But wait! We weren’t done Creeping out yet! My dad was commissioned to make a life-size Creeper out of boxes – and he did a pretty good job! Yet another item we must make room for in Chandler’s little man cave.

Before we kicked off the Creep-tastic Minecraft fun we took the boys to play a round of laser tag.

Back at party central we were ready to chow down with pizza and Creeper-Ade (otherwise known as green kool-aid).

What Minecraft party is complete without a Minecraft themed cake?! Thanks to Sassy Sisters in Oklahoma City we had the perfect cake to top off the party! (P.S. It was delicious too!)

 

After cake and ice cream we opened gifts and of course PLAYED MINECRAFT!

     

The party favors were my favorite part – Creeper bags made from little green paper bags and gold (Rolos), TNT (Twizzlers), and water (Hershey’s cookies n’ cream kisses)!

We had a blast and want to thank everyone who came out and partied with us! Hope you enjoyed taking a look at our Creeper party!

Two Very Busy Days

 

We have had a jam-packed couple of days and I have fallen a little behind on blogging because of it. I’m going to attempt to combine all the awesomeness of these past couple of days into one blog post – we’ll see what happens!

The past couple of days have been a bit challenging as far as keeping the preschool division occupied in my house. Here are some of the things we have done…..

We worked on sequencing with these cute little puzzles I found at Target in the dollar bin! (PS there were about 9 puzzles included for a buck – awesome deal!)

We also worked on letter recognition with the letter B. We glued craft balls (because they start with B of course) to the big letter B.

  

In math we are continuing to work on place value while introducing the concept of regrouping. This week we have used a few different methods of learning this concept.

We have used our base ten block set to “build” numbers and regroup them in addition problems. That worked for a while and then I started to lose him. Fruit Loops to the rescue! (And pretzel sticks) We traded our “ones” cubes for Fruit Loops and our “tens” sticks for pretzel sticks. We “built” our numbers like this – the problem in the picture was 28 + 7:

First, we added all of our Fruit Loops together and if we had enough we could trade for a pretzel stick (they cost 10 Fruit Loops). Whatever Fruit Loops we had left over became our “ones” for our answer. Second, we added our pretzel sticks to come up with our “tens” for the answer.

To make things a little more simple for my little learner I made a “regrouping” mat for him to use. Here is how we used it:

First, we built our numbers – in the picture we have 26 + 8. We had 2 pretzel sticks in the top “tens” box and 6 Fruit Loops in the top “ones” box. We also had 8 Fruit Loops in the middle “ones” box.

Second, we added our "ones” (Fruit Loops) and traded what we could for a “tens” (pretzel stick). Here is what it looked like after the trade (we brought our left over “ones” (Fruit Loops) down to the bottom “ones” box).

Third, we added our “tens” (pretzel sticks) and brought them down to the bottom “tens” box. We then had our answer to the problem 26+8 = 34!

We also took a few turns using our base ten bocks on this mat but the pretzel sticks fit better than the “tens” sticks.

If you would like to download and print out the regrouping math you can find it here.

This week we are learning about the story of Noah’s Ark and one of our activities was making a rainbow – God’s promise. We made our rainbows out of Fruit Loops and glued them on to construction paper. Afterwards, the kids wanted to make cereal necklaces – this was a great fine motor activity for both of them- and it gave me a few minutes to get our next activity lined up!

 

 

We’re finishing up our unit on American symbols this week. We made American flags with construction paper shapes and talked about lines and patterns (this was a joint art lesson).

 

We also learned about the Liberty Bell and made our own!

This week we start our study in music. We are using The Story of the Orchestra and spreading it out over the school year. I made up a comprehension sheet for each week to go along with the reading and music (the book came with a CD). If you would like to download the first week’s sheet for yourself it’s here. We read pagers 7-9 and listened to track number 1. 

Part of today’s lesson was to listen to a track of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie with our eyes closed and then draw what we saw as we listened. Here’s my first grader’s take on it: “the girl is riding the horse to go save the boy from the snake”

I was pleasantly surprised by his enthusiasm here. Since his interest had been sparked we talked about the theme song from Star Wars and how that was played by an orchestra. We watched this video on YouTube of an orchestra performing the song – it was a BIG hit with my kiddo!

 

Until Next Time,

Tessa

Games and Chocolate - it’s Monday!

My 3 year old moves fast during “school time” (actually all the time!) and I often run out of pre-planned activities for her. While I was trying to help my first grader with language today I told her to pick something out of the school cabinet to do (we have some puzzles, games, manipulative blocks, etc. that I change out). She came back with the Uno Moo game and I took this opportunity to work on sorting, counting, and patterns with her.
The Uno Moo game has different animals in different colors – we would take turns drawing one animal from the barn and finding the right group for it based on color (you could also do this based on animal type).

We also worked on counting with these little guys!

Finally, we worked on some simple patterns. I would line the pattern up and we would say it out loud together. When we got to the end I would ask what comes next?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, my first grader was spinning for sentences with this free resource from TeachersPayTeachers. Each spinner gave us a noun, verb, or adjective to create a sentence with. We had fun making silly sentences. To help with the copy work I wrote the sentence out on a white board for him.






We had a special treat in science today. We are still learning about weather and are finishing up our unit on clouds. We talked about the different things that clouds do for us and why they are important. One of the things that clouds do is provide shade from the sun. We tested this by putting a few pieces of chocolate chips in two little plastic cups. We set each cup outside, one in the shade and one in the sun. After about 30 minutes we checked on them to see what had happened. As we had hypothesized, the chocolate in the sun melted but the chocolate in the shade did not! Of course, we had to eat some chocolate too!

Here are the BEFORE pics. Chocolate in the shade and then, chocolate in the sun.

  

Here are the AFTER pics.

 

In social studies we are finishing up our unit on American symbols this week. Today we made a a cute little book about American symbols that I found for FREE at TeachersPayTeachers!



Until next time,
Tessa