Our boys enjoyed the fireman lapbook that we did so much and asked to do one about policemen.
And we did!
Both of the boys are very much into firemen and policemen at the moment, so we took advantage of that this week and I put together a policeman lapbook for Zachary and Kaleb. A certain little someone was being a little stubborn during some of it and didn’t want to do it all. Zachary, on the other hand, was able to do most of the cutting for the booklets on his own and then I glued it all together for both of them.
We did other activities as well during the week ~ made a stoplight craft {included in the lapbook file}, made red/yellow/green patterns using paperclips, dressed up like policemen, directed traffic, played with our cars/trucks and read lots of books too {see below}.
This is a picture of the inside/outside and back of our policeman lapbook that we did. I used a blue file folder {of course} ~ no fancy folding, and just punched it with a 3 hole punch when we were done so we could put it into a binder to keep on a nearby shelf.
The front cover is a coloring sheet of a policeman that is part of the full lapbook file. On the back we put the P for Policeman letter tracing sheet that we worked on {included in the lapbook file}.
Inside the Lapbook
~ Count the Fingerprints: 1:1 counting up to 10. I’d highly recommend using a washable ink ~ I’m just saying.
~ Shapes in Signs: A look at signs we see all around us and the shape that they are.
~ What Color is the Police’s Hat? A coloring book to identify color words.
~ Police Patterns: Make simple {or more complex} patterns using a police officer and a magnifying glass.
~ Sign Matching: Play a fun game of memory together with street signs {I recommend printing this one on cardstock}.
~ ABC Matching: Uppercase and lowercase letter matching cards {print on cardstock and laminate to reuse!}.
~ Catch the Robber: A tracing activity to use with your preschooler {I would recommend printing this on cardstock and laminating so you can use it later}.
You can download individual pieces for the police lapbook on my website or the full file {it’s around 2.5 MB}. I have a few additional resources on the website too for you to visit. If you decide to do the lapbook with your kids, let me know and I’ll link to you from my website. :)
Stories & Books We Used
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Starting this week, I'll be sharing what we've been doing with BOTH of our boys. I'm focusing on one theme each week with them, but will be showing how we cover the same theme with activities geared for different ages or modified so they both can participate.
This week’s fun {a.k.a. learning} was all about leprechauns and rainbows. We had to have a little fun with St. Patrick’s Day! A lot of the activities we did eventually ended up in our Rainbow Lapbooks.
Bible
Rainbows = Noah. I’m sure that’s not any big surprise! We read the story of Noah from several of our kid’s Bibles each morning, played with our Noah’s Ark set and used this mini-reader as story sequencing cards for Zachary.
We also have some great flannel board punch out pieces that we used on our flannel board to have Kaleb play out the story of Noah this week.
Coloring
Drawing rainbows ~ Kaleb doesn’t often like to sit down and try to draw on his own. This week I asked him to make a rainbow…and he did!! Granted it only ended up with three colors before he hit his drawing limit, but he even tried to make little arches just like a rainbow.
Dot Rainbows ~ Originally we were going to use our dot markers to make rainbows {til Mommy discovered that she had purchased the wrong set of markers…}, so instead we used this M&M Sorting mat for to Kaleb practice coloring in small circles.
Cooking ~ Pistachio Pudding
We were going to make pistachio muffins, but time ran out ~ so pudding it was! Really, the boys could have cared less ~ it was edible. And green.
Fun
The rice box got pulled out this week and a little leprechaun lost a bunch of his gold. The boys had fun digging around and filling up their bowls with the gold {spray painted kidney beans}.
Math
Counting 1 to 10 ~ We used the same set of cards for the boys, but both did something different. Kaleb is counting from 1 to 10, so we worked on counting with 1:1 correspondence and pointing to the numbers as we said them to help him identify the numbers.
Zachary took the same cards and used them to count backwards from from 10 to 1. We printed off the rainbow numbers from Erica’s site ~ I just printed them off four to a sheet, rather than on individual pages.
Rainbow Size Sorting ~ Kaleb started sorting the rainbows by size and then lost interest.
Big sister Laurianna quickly stepped in and had him stomp on the biggest rainbow that was left in the pile to help him finish sorting them. He thought that was hilarious!
Cereal Sorting/Graphing ~ I had all the pages printed off, the Lucky Charms cereal ready to be sorted ~ and then two little boys snuck into the kitchen and ATE THE ENTIRE PROJECT. So much for our Lucky Charm sorting activity.
Roll a Rainbow ~ A fun number recognition activity where you roll the die to get pieces and build your rainbow. We ended up gluing ours onto Zachary’s lapbook.
Rainbow Graphing ~ These were meant to be large printables, but I just changed the print settings and printed off 2 sheets per page so that we could add it to our lapbook. Zachary had to count the rainbows and then graph how many there were on a bar graph. This was the first time he’d really done graphing and he was so proud of himself! :)
Roll a Leprechaun ~ I thought this might be a little hard for Zachary, but he was so excited to play this. Basically Zachary had to figure out the number on the die that he had rolled and then draw a specific part of the leprechaun. He was so happy with his {girl} leprechaun that he wanted her put on the front of his lapbook.
Phonics & Spelling
Zachary had fun playing this great shamrock phonics sorting game. He read each of the words and then put them into the word family they belonged.
We also worked a little more on All About Spelling {Level 1}. While it may not seem rainbow related, we tied it in by using some rainbow colored M&M’s as rewards for Zachary’s spelling work. When he finished the lesson he made a rainbow row and gobbled them up. :)
Science
Color Mixing ~ Even though we’ve done this before, it never ceases to interest and amaze all of our kids. We just used water and food coloring in small plastic bowls.
We first read the book White Rabbits Color Book and then set up our three primary colors {red, yellow, blue}. I filled those containers up with more water and left three empty ones. The containers were each on a foam sheet that represented the color in the bowl {none under the ones that weren’t filled yet!!}.
The boys each guessed which color would result when we mixed the two choices together and then Kaleb put down the right color square for our new color to go on. We put our colors in a circle shape, similar to the color wheel that we added to our lapbooks.
Color Words ~ We named and wrote the colors in this minit book for our lapbook. Kaleb colored in the squares and named the colors {I wrote them} and Zachary wrote in the color names as I spelled them for him.
Songs and Rhymes
Color Songs ~ Carisa has some great printables for color songs that we sang this week and then added to our lapbook.
I’m a Little Leprechaun
{Tune: I’m a Little Teapot}
I’m a little leprechaun
Dressed in green
The teeniest man that you have ever seen.
If you can catch me,
So it’s told,
I’ll give you my pot of gold!
Additional Resources
Here are links to some of the great resources we used this week! I’m all about using what is already available is someone has gone through the trouble to put it together and it fits what we need!
R is for Rainbow ~ Erica has some GREAT printables all about rainbows. We used several of them this week. Don’t forget that you can make the printables smaller {i.e. fit more than one on a page} if you are worried about printing off too much.
Rainbow Lapbook ~ printables and links from Carisa @ 1+1+1=1
Little Laplinks {April} ~ Links to some lapbook printables and other sites that have completed rainbow lapbooks
R is for Rainbow ~ Michelle @ Delightful Learning linked up with her preschool rainbow ideas ~ she has some great ones to share!
Stories & Books We Used
Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
There have been quite a few of you asking me if it would be ok for you to continue linking up with the Preschool Corner because your child had turned 5.
YES!!! Please do! :)
We’ll be transitioning our boys in the upcoming weeks and BOTH will be included in the Preschool Corner. It will continue to be called the Preschool Corner, but in honor of adding a ‘step-up’ level, I put together a new button for you all to use.
Those of you who already have it linked in your sidebar might have noticed the little change. Otherwise, here is the new button and code for you to use if you would like to grab it for yourself!
Our boys enjoyed the fireman lapbook that we did so much and asked to do one about policemen.
