Merida/ Brave activities

Disney Brave Activites and Snacks

 

The original plan was to just do centers and a sensory tub during our "Brave break."  But it was so much fun that we just couldn't help ourselves!

 

 

Pretend bagpipes!

paper bag, newspaper stuffing, paper towel tubes, construction paper, and yarn

This idea came frm Crayola.

The Highland Games!

My super athletic/ fun/ creative husband set up feats of strength, speed and endurance in our backyard!  All I had to do was dress them in "tartans." (Any excuse to wear a costume!)

 

Bear Claw snack:

This was a Teddy Graham soft paw with peanut butter and almond claws.

 

 

After the Highland Games, we had a traditional Scottish meat pie.

I made individual servings in a muffin tin. 

 



We turned just about anything into the triplets' pastry.  This is a Krispie Kreme custard filled donut.  But we also drizzled a little powdered sugar icing on a biscuit, put a cherry on top and used it for a breakfast one.

Merida/ Brave centers

Disney Brave Centers

 

This was so much fun :)

During our "Brave break" many of our centers were downloaded from the royalbaloo site. 

Awesome stuff! We also had a center that was full of some of the worksheets from royalbaloo. (Merida even made worksheets fun!)

 

Sequencing arrows from longest to shortest:

Evan (2) put the arrows in order and named the colors

(and used them as weapon A LOT....**sigh**).

Katy (4) put them in order and measured.

Bear counting: Counting by ones for Evan (2) and by twos for Katy (4)

I quickly learned to make a rule that they could only eat what they counted.  Otherwise, this just became a snack center!

Sorting by size or character

Roll a graph

Sticker stories

Two and four piece character puzzles

Gummy bear addition and color sort

Spelling and letter recognition:

I used some old scrapbook paper that looked like Scottish tartan to make this center. After glueing on a blank piece of white paper to the center, I laminated each piece so that I could change up the words and latters with a dry erase marker.

Katy (4) spelled sight words with clothespin letters.

Evan (2) matched letters.

 

Brave memory/concentration

Merida/ Brave sensory tub

 

Brave Sensory Tub

We decided to take a "break" for a couple of weeks and have some centers themed from

Disney's Brave movie.

 

What's inside:
-Blue aquarium rocks
-arrows made out of toothpicks/clay/ constuction paper
-orange grosgrain korker ribbon (Merida hair)
-felt targets
-plastic trees
-a black bear toy
-witch's cauldron (from the Dollar Tree...I think it's really supposed to be a salsa bowl!)
-a 4 inch Merida doll
-light blue pom poms (wisps)
-a donut from our kitchen set with a ball of red playdough on top (the pastry)



ocean unit decorating

We hosted an end of summer beach party/ playdate that cooresponded with the ending of our ocean unit.  So I let all of my kids' crafts be the decorations. Here is what my kitchen looked like. (Unfortunately, I had to take these pics with my phone because my husband had the camera at a convention, so bear with me!...I couldn't figure out how to rotate them, so some are upside down...drama!!!)

 

On our window, we had sharks, Rainbow Fish, a coral reef, and octopi.

The sharks were from here. We practiced cutting and our /sh/ words.

The octopus was from here. They used sequins on the bottom of the tentacles to make suction cups.  Evan (2) had to glue on sequins to match the corresponding numbers 1 thru 8.  Katy (4) glued on sequins to match the cooresponding number words one thru eight.

Katy made the diver.  She is holding a story in which we focused on chacter and setting.  In her illustration, the setting is created with marker and a photograph shows the character and action.

Again...I can't believe I had to use my phone!  This was super cute with packing paper sand.  The kids painted on glue and used an old spice shaker to sprinkle on real sand.  We sponge painted a coral reef (in the daytime, the light shown through and made it really colorful).  We taped on pipecleaner seaweed and used ocean creature window decals.

 

Sea Turtle facts - The sea turtles were swimming on the ceiling in a tulle "East Atlantic Current." (Thank you Finding Nemo!)

Paper towel roll sand castles.  This idea is from here.



Ocean unit food

Ocean Unit Food

 

As usual, snacks are a big motivator in our house!

 

"fishing" for goldfish crackers...pretzel stick fishing poles and peanut butter bait

sea turtle made with an apple slice, grapes, and peanut butter. 

I found this idea here.

Clam with a pearl. I found this idea at familyfun.com, but attempted to make it slightly healthier by using Ritz crackers, strawberry cream cheese, and a yogurt raisen for the pearl.  We read "The Pout Pout Fish in the Big Big Dark" to go with it.

This was an on-the-fly idea that they gobbled up so fast, I had to snap a picture with my phone!

It's a cottage cheese coral reef.  cottage cheese with a couple dots of food coloring and a sprinkle of goldfish crackers

Octopus hotdog lunch - Just slice the octopus and drop into boiling water to get that curling affect.  Serve it with shells and cheese and a rainbow fruit reef!

Ocean Unit sensory tub

Ocean Sensory Tub

 

Here's what's inside:

-sand from the beach at the Gulf of Mexico

- sharks from Joe's Crab Shack

-shells also found at the Gulf

-a pack with a sifter, shovel, and small castle bucket (not pictured) from the Dollar Tree

-clear glass beads (sea bubbles)

-sponge coral.  Click here to learn how to make it.

-fish finger puppets and a whale toy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ocean unit centers

Ocean Centers!

During the month of August, we studied the ocean!

These are the centers that were on our shelves!

 

Short vowel sort- I made these plates look like "fish bowls" with stickers.  Each fish bowl was labeled with a vowel.  Katy (4) had to match the middle sound of the picture cards to the vowel on the fish bowls.  I got this activity from here and then changed it to match our theme :)

 

Goldfish cracker math from prekinders. Color sorting for Evan (2) and patterning for Katy (4)

Ocean puzzles...The Phineas and Ferb sand caste puzzle was a big Dollar Tree hit!

Again, I used those blue plates to make a counting activity.  Evan (2) placed the sea creature beads on the stickers to practice counting and one-to-one correspondence and Katy (4) practiced skip counting by 5s.

These came from a cute water color painting pack from Walmart.  It featured sea turtles, mermaids, fish, an octopus.....

Pattern blocks from prekinders. A big fish from big sister and a little fish for little brother!

This was the most fun center!  My husband's grandmother brought this pretty dolphin wrap back from Hawaii.  We used it as our ocean.  Each child had his/her own color fish.  The little fish had paper clips on the back and we used a magnetic wand to "fish" for them.  On Katy's (4) fish, there were sight words.  Evan's (2) fish had letters to read.

 

Ocean Writing Center - foam stickers, stencils, markers, writing prompt pictures, and ocean words booklet

 

July 4th snacks

My kids LOVE to play with their food!

Katy (4) as the Statue of Liberty

Her torch is a green ice cream cone with a cupcake baked inside.  We added a little orange icing and with yellow sprinkles for the flame.

Bald Eagle Marshmellow

I found this on Familyfun.com.  It was very easy.  We didn't bother with melting the white chocolate.  Sprinkling a little water on the marshmellow made it sticky enough for the coconut.

Graham cracker flag

graham crackers, cream cheese, strawberries and blueberries

July 4th sensory tub

This sensory tub was inspired by the Fourth of July!

Here is what's inside:
- Blue rice
- American flag toothpicks
- red pompoms
- pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters
- red and silver star sequins
- a strand of red, white, and blue beads
- tiny blue cups
- a bald eagle statue
- "fireworks" made from metallic pipe cleaners
 (Thanks to Counting Coconuts for this idea!)
- The letters "USA" from our magnetic letter set

Keep an eye out because I'm going to add a few things to this tub to revamp it for our maps unit (which will sort of be a continuation of learning about our country for July 4th).

July 4th centers

For my first "real" post, I want to share our July 4th centers.  Center time is when we practice skills. I try to keep a variety of math, literacy, fine motor, pretend play and ss/science baskets avaliable at any given time and rotate them out. The most difficult part for me is leveling the baskets so that the skills benefit both my children (ages 2 and 4).

Writing - Katy (4) could write about any topic she chose, but the cool star pen and stencils gently encouraged her to write about more than princesses :-)

I have a whole set of these stencils with different themes. They are great because she can concentrate on her writing without stressing out about the illustrations.  (I have a bit of a perfectionist in that regard.) Plus they are fun!

USA puzzle

Drawing a star - This has a series of 6 simple cards with directions of how to draw a star.

Counting Cards - These were geared for Evan (2).  He used star-shaped beads to add the number of stars indicated to each flag.  It turned out to be a great fine motor exercise for those little pinchers too!

Guess the shapes - This turned out to be a great leveled activity since Evan (2) could just pull a shape out of a hat and name it, but Katy (4) had to feel the shape inside the hat and verbalize which she thought she had. (How many sides, corners, rounded....)

Patriotic concentration - Even Evan (2) could "play" by finding a match with the cards face up.

Abraham Lincoln's Logs

Money/Value sort and match

Sight Word Practice - Each of the star "ice cubes" have a letter written on them to practice spelling high frequency words.

Beginning letter/digraphs - These big cardboard stars were stuffed into a box with old decorations.  I can't remember ever using them, but they made great cards for our pictures.  (It's amazing what a difference it can make to make the same old activity visually appealing!)

Skip counting - Evan (2) really enjoyed practicing lacing these little star-shaped beads onto pipecleaners.  Katy (4) picked a card from a pile and made groups of ten to match the number.