Preschool/Kindergarten activities/file folder games

I have a few links on the side from when I first started this blog and my oldest was only in preschool.  I was really excited about FFG and the kids liked them, but eventually things tapered off.   Well now that I have a 3,2, and almost 1 year old, I'm looking to get back into file folder games and other bagged activities for preschoolers.  It's becoming clear that it's a necessity.   I'm going to spend a few days, hopefully, working on making a bunch of things and organizing it all and having a preschool bin for them to get activities out of to play with during school.  So hopefully I'll have some pictures soon, since pictures are fun! 

In the meantime, I was reading a thread on the WTM forums about this very thing and found a bunch of great links, and I also went through my bookmarks folder and here are a bunch of links about preschool activities and file folder games:

My old preschool/kdg links
my old 'lots of games' links

preschool centers ideas/links
preschool activities ideas
LOTS of preschool activity ideas
Montessori preschool ideas
Tot School
ChildCareLand FFG
more TotSchool stuff
Totally Tots - cute blog
Shirley's Preschool Activities
Preschool Education
Preschool Express
a blog with ideas
another blog

Aztec, Inca, Maya

Maya, Aztec & Inca Hands-on Heritage Activity Book
Life in Ancient Mexico Coloring Book
Time Travelers New World Explorers
Story of the World Vol 2 and 3
Trail Guide to World Geography

We actually made it through Meso America in about 3 weeks.  And I had it scheduled for 2 weeks, so that's not bad for us!

We did Lesson 11, 13, 12, and 14 out of the Time Travelers, covering Pizarro, Magellan, de Soto, Verrazano, Cortez and Coronado.  Along with that, we used SOTW Vol 2. chs 32 and 33, and ch 1 out of Vol 3.

For the first week we did week 6 out of Trail Guide - Mexico geography and the second week was week 7 - Central America.   (I love Trail Guide.  It's so fast and easy and the kids are learning a lot through it.  It takes some time to actually memorize the countries/capitals and we're not totally there yet, but it is a very thorough geography curriculum! And very easy to move weeks around to tie the geography into history.)

We did a Stone of the Sun worksheet from the activity book and looked at pictures of it online.  We also looked at a fantastic photo set of Peru/Macchu Picchu on flickr.

We watched a History Channel movie In Search of History: Lost City of the Incas and
Treasures of Peru: Dr. Merry's Nomad Travel  and Mexico to the Max.

We also colored Mexico coloring pages, a Mexican flag, a pueblo diorama from Time Travelers, and an Aztec war club and 'feather' headdress from the activity book.    There is also a neat Inca artifact craft in the Time Travelers that we didn't get to, but probably will eventually just for fun.  I just never had the supplies for it.  There was also some handwriting/penmanship sentences in Time Travelers that we used.  We also did the explorers books/maps/timelines in Time Travelers....when we get to the end of the unit I'll post pictures of all of that.

I'm so bad about doing the food in the Time Travelers, but I bought some instant mesa flour to make tortillas with the kids for Aztec food.

I have the first Classical Conversations audio cd, and we did history tracks 16 and 17; songs about Meso-America and the Aztecs.


3 more craft ideas I found:
Aztec calendar
Mexican pottery
Aztec Sun



The handle-less clubs and headdresses:

Diorama

We made the paper dioramas from the Time Traveler's cd.....it's so funny to see the difference between boys and girls.  Aiden's Coronado is getting ready to kill, and his soldiers are getting ready to steal a donkey, and all of Alysa's soldiers and Indians are friends.  They loved doing this, and this was a fairly easy project to do.   The paper people don't really stand up that well, so I taped them down.



Aiden's diorama



Alysa's diorama

Renaissance/Reformation quotations

Here are some more quotes I've found for this time period....I actually don't know when Thomas a Kempis lived, LOL, but he was in the christian history book and they had a couple of quotes that I just loved so I wrote them down....so now I won't forget them, lol.

“The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.” - Leonardo Da Vinci

 

 

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” - Leonardo Da Vinci

 

 

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.: - Leonardo Da Vinci

 

In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

— Galileo Galilei

 

I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. — Galileo Galilei

 

Jesus has many who love his kingdom in heaven, but few who bear his cross.

- Thomas a Kempis

 

They who love Jesus for his own sake, and not for the sake of comfort for themselves, bless him in every trial and anguish of the heart, no less than in the greatest joy.  And were he never willing to bestow comfort on them, they would still always praise him and give him thanks. - Thomas a Kempis

 

 

 

“...I stand convicted by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s Word, and I cannot and will not recant anything.  For to act against conscience is neither safe for us nor open to us.  

        On this I take my stand.  I can do no other.  God help me. Amen.”

– Martin Luther

Multi-Mental Vitamin

Someone linked to a couple of posts by MMV and they were so great and encouraging, I'm linking them here......

Simple ways to inject fun into your children's learning days

Thoughts on education and parenting- lots of links here

Advice to a new homeschooling mother

We do not bounce off the walls in this house. We only bounce on Dad.

When a parent asks you to do something, you do not whine or complain or refuse. You do it. After you do it, you may whine or complain. And then we can refuse to let you [insert favorite activity here].

It all begins with me.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

Parent-teacher

Feed a cold; starve a (spring) fever?

Books, books, books

We're still plugging away at Explorers...................slowly.     I'll have to do another post soon about where we're at.   I unpacked more books from the basement and got them on the shelves!  Now the kids have almost all their books on their own bookshelf.