Learning with Ladybug ~ age 4y, 6.5m

Welcome to our weekly preschool at home blog feature, Learning with Ladybug! As you probably know, I scrapped our preschool plan and built a new one based around our current needs.

We have a few main preschool categories, you can read the entire plan here, I will break my weekly posts down by category so you can see what she did each week within a certain area. If we have a letter focus, I will do a separate post to make searching easier. I will do the same for any themes we do.

See our entire Home Preschool Plan here!

{disclaimer: affiliate links are used in this post}

Spielgaben ~ Play Based Learning

We Continued our work with set 3 {cube blocks} from Spielgaben this week and I was continually amazed with how much we did with 9 little cube blocks.

We worked on lesson 3-3, focusing on center pattern play, she really enjoyed this!

She asked if we could tape the blocks together again, from a previous lesson. Spielgaben encourages repetition of activities that kids love, so of course we did this! We move slow because she asks to repeat many favorites!

She asked for the curved blocks from a different set so we played with those too…

On another day we used the colored squares to build a Creeper from Minecraft, her favorite! Her brothers have totally gotten her into Minecraft!

Here she was using one of the worksheets in our dry erase activity center to copy shapes shown with the blocks.

FYI ~ I am not being paid at all to continue to share about Spielgaben, I was given the set to review and write one post {this one}. What you will see from here on out is just because we are loving it so much!

Jim from Spielgaben saw my blog posts and emailed me to say thanks and offer my readers a deal on the pre-orders now being taken! If you contact Jim from Spielgaben, he will give you a discount if you mention my blog! Regular price to pre-order is $405, and my readers can pre-order for $355 {these are AUD prices but the conversion is similar, it actually favors USD right now so your price will be lower than AUD}. Shipping is free. Contact Jim with any questions!

Messy Fun

We have always had lots of messy fun but I am making it a more intentional part of our plan. Almost all of my ideas are pinned here on my Sensory play board. I am trying to have one planned messy creation experience per week, even if it just making a new batch of something we’ve already done.

We made homemade SNOW! We were inspired by this recipe shared over at Growing a Jeweled Rose. I loved the idea of the “snow” being cold and sure enough, it was!

When we mixed the baking soda and shaving cream together it was chilly! I didn’t measure anything, but put in about a can of white shaving cream from the dollar store, and added some baking soda until it made a nice formable mixture.

This messy play was a HIT!

The next day I let her choose a color and we added in a couple of drops of gel food coloring.

I did not cover our snow and we went out of town for a few days and came back to find it like this, a bit hard and crumbly.

The kids had fun breaking the “rocks” apart. I am not sure how long it might have lasted had I covered it.

It was time to surprise them again, this time with adding vinegar!

I let the boys join us and didn’t tell K what the liquid was, and told him to taste it {since he guessed water}, he soon learned he was wrong!

This was such a fun messy play. we will definitely be doing this one again!

All By Myself Preschool Boxes

She spends about an hour in the afternoon playing with her boxes. Usually this hour starts right after lunch, but if she wants to play messy stuff first, I let her. I am basically requiring her to float between her boxes or the messy play table, or if she wants to be difficult, she can take a nap. I sneak in to snap photos, but mostly she plays alone. Sometimes she comes to get me to show me something too.

We haven’t been able to do school on the 5th day recently in the afternoon {when she has her box time} so I only made 4 boxes this week. I tried something new this week and created 2 themed mini-bins. She LOVED the pond one! I had a collection of mini sports balls that we never used so I made a box of those too. She wasn’t too interested but loved the squeezy balls!

In her 4 small sensory bins this week: corn kernels, bird seed, sports ball collection, pond life mini collection

Not too many action shots, but here’s what I caught…

Favorite items this week: pond mini bin, shape cookies, wooden truck puzzles

See all items that rotate through our boxes here!

All the Rest

E is for Enthusiastic! Integrity Time was fun again this week! We met a new character, Ellie the Enthusiastic Elephant, and brought back our other characters to reinforce what we have already learned. The more we use this program, the more I love it!