Pre-K co-op: Lesson ideas

   (The previous posts about the Pre-K co-op are HERE, HERE, and HERE.)

We've had some great lessons and some that were just so-so during our time doing the Pre-K co-op.  (And flops here and there, too.  My homemade telescopes stunk.)  I'll share some of my personal favorites (and I'll keep updating this post until we finish in May).  In some cases, this is not all the kids did that day, just what really stuck out to me.  

(As a side note, some of the topics I listed HERE were pretty broad.  When we made up the topics, we lumped some things together that seemed related, and then after a mom had picked her topics, she could prune them down however she liked.  For instance, the mom who selected "Germ theory/bacteria/viruses/microscopes/vaccines/Louis Pasteur and pasteurization of milk" only addressed the first four topics.)


Mount Vesuvius/volcanoes--I made a salt dough volcano ahead of time (it takes a couple of days to dry).  The kids painted it with tempera paint, and then we took it outside and did the classic baking soda and vinegar explosion.

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·       China/Chinese characters/Great Wall--The kids had a race to see who could build the longest Great Wall first with wooden blocks.  That was a fantastic activity for them; they're so used to building things tall that it took some concentration for them to figure out how to build something long.  The blocks included all kinds of shapes, so they had to figure out how to orient each shape to maximize its length on the floor.  That was possibly my favorite activity for the whole year, and it took no preparation time for the mom doing it.  Just great thinking!  They also learned how Chinese characters are different than our letters and learned how to draw three or four of them.  They drew them both on the sidewalk with water and paintbrushes and also with black paint on their journal pages.  

·        Pottery--A friend brought her pottery wheel and showed the kids how to throw a pot.  They also got to paint pottery of their own.  

·        The Olympics—The kids made their own "torches" and ran races.  

·        Democracy in Greece—The kids voted on chocolate or vanilla ice cream, the results were tallied up, and they enjoyed that flavor of ice cream.  They also dressed up in traditional Greek garb (stolas out of bath towels, laurel wreaths, and home-made sandals one year; hoplite helmets and shields another year--oh, to show you the pictures from those!).

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·         King Arthur/knights/castles/swords/armor and chain mail/crowns/catapults/and a little later gunpowder and cannons--One mom put a lot of work into making a giant castle out of refrigerator boxes.  She didn't do it the second year, though!

·         Monks wrote books/illuminated letters/printing press--The kids first illuminated the first letters of their names with paint and then "silver foil" (HERE'S a website to print the letters).  That was the slow but beautiful way to make a book.  Then the kids got to stamp in homemade books (blank paper stapled together) to see how much faster that was.  (I rounded up scrapbooking stamping supplies from friends so that I could give each kid a stamping block with their name ready.  We also had a couple of stamping blocks ready with "runs so fast" so that they could quickly stamp "Jake runs so fast" throughout their book.  We also had other phrases like "The End" at the ready.)

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 Vikings--The kids cut out longships and glued broken popsicle sticks on for oars.

·         Byzantine mosaics—The kids used squares of construction paper to form pictures.

 Thanksgiving--We had a Thanksgiving party and made apple pies.  The kids got to use one of these apple corers/peelers. 

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·         Telescopes/constellations--The kids stuck glow-in-the-dark stars to large pieces of black construction paper in such a way as to form Orion.  We then wrote "Orion" on the page with glow-in-the-dark paint and they took them home to stick on the ceiling above their beds.  (It's also cool to show them pictures the Hubble Space Telescope has taken!)

·         Spice trade/salt preserves food--When we had slightly older kids, one mom made--I kid you not--a board game for them.  It was a map and there were fewer spaces between Europe and India if you went through the Middle East than if you went around Africa--but then you had to pay taxes.  They had to figure out which made more sense for them.  (Michael heard the word "tax" a few weeks later as I was paying sales tax on an item and he was horrified!  I think he thought the store was running some kind of racket.) 

·        Benjamin Franklin and the first fire station--We took a tour of our local fire station.  Fun!

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··   The Pony Express--They played Red Light Green Light with horse commands (giddy-up, whoa, etc.). 

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··      Germ theory/bacteria/viruses/microscopes--One of my friends had the fabulous idea to swab everyone's mouths the week before with a Q-tip and grow it in agar in a petrie dish.  (This would have never, ever occurred to me.)  The results were impressive.  The other contender for my absolute favorite lesson of the year. 

·         Texas/cowboys/state flag--You could make cornbread and butter or have the kids make a Texas flag out of construction paper (looking at an example and then having to figure out how to replicate that on their own paper is trickier for them than you'd think!).

·         Electricity--We shocked ourselves by rubbing a styrofoam plate.  Idiots, yes  :)  We also stood in a circle and squeezed each other's hand in succession to show how electrons jump from one atom to another. And...I also had them pretend.  We "lived" a whole day without electricity and had to figure out how we'd do everything.  I felt really underprepared that day and then it turned out to be a hit.

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··      Photography--One of the moms had the kids dress up in western outfits and took their picture (no smiles).  Using photo editing software, she changed it to sepia.  Pretty cool. She also let them run around the neighborhood with cameras.  They liked that.

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         Parachutes--I made three parachutes of different diameters out of plastic trash bags and tied identical pig figurines to the bottom of each one using yarn.  They predicted which parachute would land most quickly, we recorded our hypotheses, and then we went upstairs to test our theories over the railing.  I explained the results.  
  

·        NASA/man on the moon--We live close to NASA, so we took a backstage tour.  :)  We will also make rockets using several basic shapes.  I will make a model first and, after giving them the appropriate shapes, will them to reproduce the rocket on their paper.  Great for visual orientation. 

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