in the bins

We have a set of shelves that hold 4 big bins and 8 smaller ones.  Each older boy gets his own row of 4 bins with school"work" in them each day, and the baby gets the big bins on the bottom 2 shelves. Theoretically.  So anyway, when I say "go get a bin" the kids know it's time for a little schoolwork.  These pics were taken over the course of many days, so don't go thinking we're superschoolers or anything ;-p

The grid game, this time with snack instead of stickers (draw a grid, roll the dice, place that many pieces.  Keep going until the grid is full).  Number recognition, counting, patience.

 

Story sequencing with three and four part cards.  These are from when my mother was a teacher in an entirely different state before I was even born! 

 Beginning addition with legos.  I have some paper that is longer than normal and have discovered that if I fold the end over it makes a perfect place to hide answers.  Or sometimes it's a pocket.  For this one, I folded and then cut so boy #1 could fold back individual answers and not see the rest.  He really liked this!

 Boy #1 has not been very interested in drawing for most of his life. The day we got our new dry-erase board that has a slot for papers to be inserted and holders for the markers and eraser changed all that.  To our surprise, he's pretty good at drawing recognizable things, especially vehicles.  Some of them are so great he has to take a picture before erasing.  This one is a rocket ship, inspired no doubt by the Space Exploration book we got out of the free box at the library :)

 Mittens.  I think this day I had him organizing them by # (1-25), but they could also be sorted by color or matching pairs (left and right.  not too hard since they're all solid).  We went on to measuring how many mittens tall or long various objects were.

Beads on a shoestring (or sweatshirt string in this case) never get old. I think he did some patterning.

Ordering dinosaurs biggest to smallest.  We continue to be fascinated and I admit I can name most of the ones pictured here.

I downloaded some "Mitten" things to make my own preschool pack.  This one was matching beginning consonants (the letters are written on the clothespins, the pictures are of animals in the book).  The popsicle sticks have words from the book written on them, Boy #1 matched the word in the text to the word on the stick while I read.  Surprisingly fun for him, as was the rest of the pack.

My mom made this number thingie.  Boy #2 moved most of these marbles to their proper position using a spoon, and then gave up and did the rest by hand.  Good counting and 1:1 practice.  We also talked about all the different possible shades for each color.

Tracing letters and shapes in a bag filled with some hair gel and food coloring.  Note: you don't need nearly as much gel as you would think because you want the drawing to stick around long enough to be completed.  This works on fine motor control and muscle memory. I duct-taped the sides for longevity.

Hmm, bad pic.  this is putting nuts and washers on various bolts and screws that have been first sorted by size. 

Boy #2 LOVES puzzles.  These 2 are vintage, and he made them more difficult the next time by putting them together upside down.  His idea.  I love the colors and crazy shapes of the pieces.

I lined up the clothespins along the can's edge, he took them off and put them in.  Over and over.  I presume eventually he'll line them up himself.  The other 2 boys helped him with patterning the different size pins.

We read a LOT of books.  Boy #1 read his first book all by himself last week!!  I should show you my bookshelves sometime, they're overwhelming impressive.

I got this stacking block tower from an etsy seller.  When put together correctly, the pieces alternate between dark and light.  This one keeps him occupied for a long time, especially if I line up the pieces in the right order (which is not always followed, lol).