R is for RAINBOW

I am taking two weeks to do each letter of the alphabet with my preschooler and Kindergarten/Grade 1 child. The first letter that we have looked at is the letter R.

We started by doing a whole week on Robots which was a whole lot of fun! (check it out here)

I decided to also touch on the Grade 1 Alberta program of study objective of "Creating Colour" by continuing our lesson in R with Rainbows. 

The first day we watched some videos on Rainbows. The kids really enjoyed all the different "Sing a Rainbow" versions. We also watched some PBS videos on how rainbows are made. 

Next, I gave the kids some bingo daubers and let them have at it. My kids are extremely kinaesthetic learners so smashing the daubers on the paper to make the ink fly was the highlight of this project. While they didn't make a rainbow, they definitely enjoyed themselves seeing all the colours that they could choose from to make for a really open ended art project.

My oldest son just did a science project on polymers for his Grade 3 Celebration of Learning, and so the next project that we did with the younger boys used the same materials.

One polymer that my kids LOVE to play with are water beads. If you have not had your kids play with water beads before you need to stop reading this post right now and buy some off Amazon and then come right back!

Water beads are SO much fun! They are sold as a substitute for soil for plants and for decoration, but as a learning toy they are much more useful! First I had the boys try and separate the beads into all the different colours, which was a true test of fine motor skills. Next I had them use pipettes to fill the test tubes with water. It took about an hour for the beads to absorb all of the water, but when they did the kids dove right in! It is one activity that really fills that need for sensory play. The beads are slimy and bouncy so the kids kept squishing them and popping them, and then sorting them again and again and again. They spent at least a good two hours each day just playing with them. So the $1 investment for the beads it was well worth it!! 

The next polymer that we played with was "InstaSnow". This stuff is incredible! You just use a tablespoon and some water and it expands to a 4th of a cup or so. To make the rainbow I took a little bit of the snow, put 3 drops of each food colouring into separate cups (using 2 drops of red/ 1 yellow etc to make orange etc.) and then put them all into a shallow dish in the correct order. It was so pretty for about 10 mins, and then it was all mixed up. All was not lost though, as it showed the kids what happens when you mix all the colours together....grey!!!

We saved the best for last. As a kid I remember making rainbows with Fruit Loops and loving it! I happily bought the colourful cereal for my kids to do the same. Of course they were able to sneak a few into their mouths without me noticing (or they think that I didn't notice). I always like to have a box of Fruit Loops in my craft room as they are really fun to play with, completely non toxic (lol), and they smell good too! I absolutely loved the rainbows that the boys made - they went up on our display wall as soon as they were dry! 

Once we finished our project with the Fruit Loops our lesson on the letter R and rainbows was complete! However, the boys had a different idea. My middle child decided to use the Fruit Loops and make himself an R out of them and exclaimed "Look mom! A rainbow R!" He was so pleased with his creation.

My older son who was participating in the crafts was influenced by the rainbow theme going on as well. Later that day I found that he had organized all his Trash Pack by colour. It was neat to see them take the lessons one step further.

R is for Robot

As a part of getting my blog back to where I want it to be, I will be showcasing some of the homeschooling that we do every week. I will be linking to relevant blog posts and activity sites to help new homeschoolers get some ideas and inspire them for their own schooling at home.

Last week we learned all about the Letter R.

First we started out with a whole bunch of videos on YoTube with our favourite being the one by the StoryBots. These videos are so great and they have one for each letter of the alphabet. I will be getting the kids to watch more of them for sure!





We raided the tool box and made robots out of tin cans and screws. A glue gun is an absolute must for a project like this! The kids also looked through our letter bucket and found the letters that they needed to put the word Robot on the front of their creations. We touched on how recycling, and reusing also start with the letter R and how important they are for keeping our planet green!

Once they had made their creations they were inspired to play with their robot puzzle game that teaches numbers so we were able to sneak a little math into the project as well!

They continued their robot exploration by using this great magnetic robot kit and working collaboratively to build many different robots on the fridge. I loved watching how creative they were!

We read some books on Robots; Robomop was their favourite. We of course practiced writing the letter R on many different worksheets and books. (this was not their favourite part of the unit...)

The kids happened to get a Cogsley for Christmas and he was really put into use for this unit. The kids have a lot of fun turning all of his gears and knobs. He does have 6 learning objectives, but my kids love the dancing mode the best. I was just happy that I had an extra robot themed item already in my schoolroom!!

To finish off our unit on Robots and the letter R we watched the movie Robots for our family movie night.

This was just a handful of all the different things that we could have done this week using this theme. I could have done it for another week!! (and watched Wall-E as well.)

Many of the ideas that I got this week came from my Pinterest board on the letter R make sure you check that out as it will get updated as I scan the web for more ideas with future letters!!

Next week we will be continuing our learning with R as we showcase some of our work with Rainbows which touches the learning objectives for the colours for grade 1.