Preschool: the second week, unplugged

Sunday morning we lost power – thanks to Hurricane Irene. Since we have well-water, our faucets were dry too. What a way to kick off the second week of preschool! Thank goodness I prepare my lessons the previous week, otherwise I would have been floundering. Well, as much as one can flounder when teaching a 3-year-old the alphabet.

I started off Sunday on an artistic note… letting the kids paint, with no running water for washing up. Good call!  I had been saving our cardboard toilet paper tubes, figuring they would come in handy for a project, and dug up Look What You Can Make With Tubes to look for something relatively painless to make.  Yes, it was fun, and yes, it was messy – the picture of Josiah doesn’t do justice to the fact that he was covered in paint, sucking on his hand that he had smeared with paint. 

Gwen noticed the animal cage pages - handmade paper bars behind which were put cut-out animals that begin with each letter of the alphabet (these are ancient resources my mother-in-law used in her teaching days).  I had meant to take out the letter A cage the previous week, but we didn’t get around to it.  No matter, we had all the time in the world on Sunday, so we did letters A and B.  Gwen took her task very seriously.  

While the kids were napping in the afternoon, I excitedly put together a bird sensory bin for the week… 

What’s inside:
sunflower seeds
wooden bead “berries”
twigs from the yard
glass dish with blue fabric for bird bath
Scrabble tiles that spell bird and beak
real bird feathers
three pretend birds
a pile of pretend eggs…
…inside a real nest where we watched baby birds hatch

The second week of preschool has been brought to you by the letter B, the number 1, and the color brown.  The theme for the week was birds, and our word for the week was beak.  We continued with the creation story in the Bible, working on Genesis 1:1, the memory verse for weeks one and two.  My fingers were tightly crossed that we would get power by Monday… but no such luck.

Bible
Since we we stayed on the creation story, it gave Gwen a chance to memorize her verse: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  She can’t remember the days of creation, but she has since memorized her verse and our poem from the first week, “Seven Days.”  The latter is a great way to reinforce the week of creation, as well as to teach the days of the week – I use it all the time now when I ask her what day it is.  ABCJLM recommends it in their selection of nursery rhymes and poems, and it’s one of the ones I didn’t switch for something else.  It goes like this (put it to the tune of “Are You Sleeping?”):

“Seven Days, seven days
In a week, in a week
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Saturday, that’s a week.”

To help reinforce the days of creation, I got the idea to make a creation block using one of the small wooden blocks that my hubby made me from scrap wood.  I had her paint the sides, and mod podged scaled-down numbers for the days of creation that have pictures of what was made on that day.  When it was dry, we practiced rolling it, saying the day, and the appropriate creation.

In lieu of music CDs and DVDs, we sang “This is the Day” - which I sometimes sing instead of a prayer – and “Do You Know Who Made the World?” 

Theme
Luckily, it was sunny, so the house was relatively bright during the day. I was excited about using the craft feathers I bought to decorate ”B for birds.”  Josiah offered moral support, and then wanted to glue feathers to his coloring page.  With no “B”s or birds on it. 

I made a quick bird lapbook using some of the elements in the bird theme preschool packs at 1+1+1=1, Homeschool Creation, and KidSparkz.  In the past Gwen hasn’t had much patience for coloring, but she colored each bird the appropriate color and colored the birdhouses in warm and cool shades.     

She seems to be a fan of sticky stuff, so I velcro-d the matching pieces and included some birdies to cut-and-paste onto a tree.  Oh, and the sensory bin was a big hit – Gwen threaded beads onto the twigs, Josiah scooped seeds and transferred eggs to different containers, and the kids were especially delighted when I clipped the birds to their shoulders. 

When I put together their styrofoam bird plains, they were giddy with excitement that I was Allowing Them To Throw Something.  It’s a shame the birdies weren’t more durable, because they had loads of fun while they lasted. 

Letter
We traced the uppercase B while saying ABCJLM’s letter chant, “line, bubble, bubble,” traced the lowercase B and said “bat and ball.”  I have Gwen trace with her finger before using a pencil, crayon, whatever.  These letter chants seem to help reinforce the correct way to write the letters.  Oh, and a fun little tidbit – she’s a leftie, and it’s been fun trying to help her hold the pencil correctly.  My mom got me a few different pencil grips for her, and I think I’ll get a bunch of the Stetro grips.  Does anyone use pencil grips – speficially for a leftie – and have any recommendations?    

We’ve been using the dry erase center almost daily, and Confessions of a Homeschooler’s letter hunt pages from have been a big hit.  I’ve been carrying the idea over to other pages, like the “Little Bird” story/song that was initially part of the lapbook.  I had Gwen circle all the uppercase and lowercase ”B”s. 

She attacked the Letter B Do-A-Dot page from Homeschool Creations with gusto, and proudly showed off her work. I’m definitely printing these off every week!

We took advantage of the nice weather to hunt for B words outside and compiled a long list; I added this to an index card holder along with the A words from the previous week.

I’ve continued using the trays I got for the kiddos and have been trying to utilize them in organizing specific projects and activities for the week.  I tend to change one or two of the trays, depending on what we’re going to cover the next day.  On a whim, I picked out a few of the spell-a-puzzles from their box and laid them out, and Gwen went to town, doing them over and over again. 

By the end of the week, Gwen just wanted to go outside – especially since Daddy came home from work – but I did get her and Josiah to do a Buttons & Blue Paper craft.  Such a cute project (see bulletin board photo at the end), and Josiah placed all the button on the glue himself, practicing that pincer grasp.  Afterwards Daddy helped her build a birdhouse; I found little kits for $1 at A. C. Moore (come to think of it, she still needs to decorate it).

Number
“Straight down and then you’re done. That’s the way to make a one!” goes ABCJLM’s number rhyme for this week.  Gwen’s pretty good at counting to one, so we didn’t have any issues this week.  Along with the letter index cards, I got the idea from ABCJLM to create a number matching activity, making a separate index card for each number and putting the appropriate amount of stickers on another card (I’m putting both on one card and will cut them in half later).  Since zero would have been pretty boring, I saved both zero and one for this week.  This took all of two seconds, easy-peasy, and will come in handy when we review later.  To reinforce the number one, I asked questions like, “How old is Josiah?”, “How many brothers do you have?”  etc.  

Color
Ah, good intentions… once again I had planned a snack to incorporate part of the week’s lesson, but with the fridge not working I didn’t go to the store till later in the week.  I have a recipe for bird’s nest cookies that are made with chow mein noodles, chocolate chips, peanut butter… but they aren’t the healthiest.  I saw this recipe for Birds’ Nests using healthier ingredients and was so looking forward to making them, but it didn’t happen.  I did incorporate the color by making chocolate pudding, with which the kids were thrilled.  I got out the file folder games, and Josiah did a great job matching the dinosaurs.

Etc.
Gwen continues doing her chore chart every day – she’s gotten pretty good at making her bed and cleaning her room without asking.  We’ve been doing the Calendar Activity at Starfall most mornings, and we usually remember to do her weather watching jars in the evening.

Bulletin Board
By the end of the week this is what our bulletin board looked like:

Book Basket 
Bible
100 Bible Stories, 100 Bible Songs
Theme/Vocab
In The Nest
The Best Beak in Boonaroo Bay
Unbeatable Beaks
My Beak, Your Beak
Letter/Alphabet
Big Red Barn
The Berenstains’ B Book
The Booklets’ Baking Boo-Boo
Burger Boy
Blueberries for Sal
My “b” Book
The Bears Upstairs
Angelina Ballerina
The Fairies’ Alphabet Book
Number
Only One You
One
One Red Dot
My Number Book
Color
Be Brown
Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?
Big Brown Bear’s Up and Down Day
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
DVDs
Beauty & the Beast  

Linking up…

Gwen is 3 years old (44 months) and Josiah is 1 (20 months).

Preschool: off to a great start!

It feels like forever since WordPress and I had a date. Too bad Hurricane Irene had to come between us; we were without power and running water for five days, and I have to admit, I was a tad grumpy.  A tree came crashing down in our yard, but luckily it fell away from the house.  It’s amazing how much we rely on technology – the simple flick of a light switch, turning on the faucet to wash your hands, watching a movie to escape a long day with the kiddos…

We had just wrapped up our first week of preschool, and it went really well!  I have combined ideas and concepts from two curriculums: ABC Jesus Loves Me (ABCJLM) and Brightly Beaming Resource’s Letter of the Week Prep program.  I played around with the content so it would fit into a flexible 36-week, 3-day-a-week schedule.  Here’s my basic outline for the week, in case you’re interested; I’ve been using some of Homeschool Creation’s preschool planning forms to outline the specifics for each week.

The first week has been brought to you by the letter A, the number 0, and the circle shape.  The theme for the week was on the four seasons, and our word for the week was Autumn.  This went along nicely with the Bible story of creation as we were able to discuss the wonderful things God gives us – like the vegetables that grow in the garden in the Summer.

On Monday morning we had breakfast, and I had intended to serve apples (because, duh, the letter A) but I forgot to get them at the store.  No matter – we could have apple butter on our pancakes.  I enthusiastically opened the jar… to find green fuzz growing inside.  Off to a great start!  Fine – applesauce it is.  I formed an ”A” using chocolate chips on the pancakes, but Gwen was unimpressed.    

Bible
We have been using 100 Bible Stories, 100 Bible Songs for the story of creation, and I love the fact that there are songs to go along with each story.  The creation sensory bin was a huge hit… as well as a huge mess.  Big Mistake.  The kiddos were more interested in throwing the rice around than finding the elements of creation.  At least it kept them occupied for a while, and no doubt stimulated their senses (especially when I admonished them for the mess).

For lunch, I used muffin tins to create creation-themed edibles.  Day one: raisins and yogurt-covered cherries (night and day); day two: whipped cream and edible snowflakes (sky); day three: blue jello with graham cracker crumbs, a carrot, and a strawberry (water, earth, plants); day four: cut out sandwiches in the shape of moon and star, pepperoni slices (sun, moon, and stars); day five: goldfish crackers (birds and fish); day six: animal crackers (animals and man).

Theme
My Mom had given me the Baby Einstein Seasons Discovery Cards back when Gwen was first born, and I dug these out, spreading them over the table so she could sort them into seasons.  We also played with the matching and sorting cards from the seasons lapbook, but she got impatient with the activity, no doubt wanting to get out and enjoy the current season.

It was a beautiful day, and I spread out a roll of paper for our Autumn craft – a fingerprint tree with Fall colors.  I was really excited about this one… but my acrylic paints were all dried up and it took forever to mix some paint for the kiddos.  I also totally forgot that the kiddos were supposed to use the sides of their hands for the tree trunk, but it was still fun. 

Here’s a similar idea using a handprint as the tree trunk.

I found mini water color paints at a party store, and we painted a seasons page with four different trees. 

I had printed a leaf page at Twisty Noodle, and customized it to read “Autumn Leaf,” so we traced the lines with glue and sprinkled red and yellow glitter all over it. 

Letters
Twisty Noodle is great for coloring/tracing pages, and you can edit the text and layout to customize the finish product.  I printed out their capital letter A as a tracing page, and so began our foray into learning the alphabet.  I love that ABCJLM has a chant for each letter; for example, “pull down, pull down, across” is for the capital A, ”curve and down” for the lowercase.  After tracing, we formed playdough letters on the lines.

  

I had printed out a whole bunch of letter A pages.  Josiah colored some, and I was able to spread them out for the whole week.  We glued cotton ball “smoke” to an A-train smokestack, and Gwen decorated some letter “A”s with fruit and animal stickers. 

We visited friends on the second day of school, and I ambitiously brought along some school stuff.  Gwen’s 2-year-old friend had more fun making the Alligator A than she did.  At least it looked cute on the fridge.

When the kiddos got sick of the sitting down stuff, I played some letter A songs from our Cedarmont Kids DVDs (“Father Abraham,” “I’m in the Lord’s Army,” etc.), gave the kids some instruments, and we boogeyed for a bit.

A fun indoor/outdoor activity is going on a letter hunt, just finding all the things that start with a specific letter.  I made up an index card for “outside,” and one for “inside,” using some alphabet stickers on each one.  I had Gwen help me find items beginning with the letter A, and wrote them down on the appropriate cards.  If we had a sticker with a corresponding picture, that went on the card as well.  I tried having her shine a flashlight on the items because I knew she would get a kick out of it, but it was too hard to see the beam. 

So far, Gwen’s favorites have to be dry-erase activities and computer time.  The letter hunt worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler were a hit, and I was surprised how quickly she caught on.  I slid the sheets in a page protector to use with a dry erase maker and she searched for the uppercase and lowercase “A”s a few times. 

I was thrilled when I snagged a Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center for 50% off at A.C. Moore and started putting some of her worksheets in there; it makes even the simplest piece of paper seem like an important project.  I have oodles of pre-K workbooks that my mom has given me, so many of the pages and activities come from these sources.  The ones pictured are the A-Z Uppercase/Lowercase Matching Cards from Confessions of a Homeschooler; I just kept them altogether instead of cutting them out. 

She loves working in the computer, and asked for it almost every day. After putting Josiah down for his nap, we would do some more work, read some books, then go to one of the interactive websites I’ve bookmarked.  Starfall’s letter activity is a favorite; she caught onto the songs and was doing it by herself in no time.  We also read some of the interactive stories on Peekuboo and took a peek at the Cheateau Meddybemp’s Fun With Letters.

Numbers
The Dilly Dot Markers were a hit with both kiddos, and they came in handy for decorating the number zero.  I like them, although the orange looks the same as the yellow, and I thought the tip would be larger.  I wonder how these compare with the Do-A-Dot markers – anyone?

Just as with the letters, ABCJLM has number rhymes.  Zero goes like this: “Around, around, around you go. That’s the way to make zero!”

Shape
I didn’t have a lot of activities about the circle, both because it was such a simple concept Gwen already grasps and because it can be worked in on the other areas – the earth God created, the moon (we did a sun, moon, and stars craft), etc.  We talked about round food we were eating, did some cut and paste with round shapes, a dry-erase book about shapes, and made paper ice cream cones with round scoops of ice cream.

ABCJLM’s gross motor skill activity for the week was a game called Put Out the Fire!, which the kids thoroughly enjoyed.  Play with water?  Heck yeah!  Of course, they improvised the rules and ended up pouring buckets of water rather than wringing a sponge.

At the end of the week, this is what our bulletin board looked like:

Our Book Basket
Bible
100 Bible Stories 100 Bible Songs
Baby’s First Bible
The World God Made – The Story of Creation
Theme/Vocab
What Makes the Seasons?
Fall is Here!
Names for Snow
Wake Up, It’s Spring!
Listen, Listen!
Four Seasons Make a Year
The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree
The Little House
Letter/Alphabet
Angelina Ballerina
Llama Llama Misses Mama
My “a” Book
Berenstain’s A Book
Alpha Tales – The Adventures of Abby Alligator
Imogene’s Antlers
The Fairies’ Alphabet Book
Number
Zero, Zilch, Nada: Counting to None
Zero
My Number Book
Shape
My Shape Book
The Shape of Things
Round Is a Pancake
DVDs
Cedarmont Kids Platinum Bible Collection
Veggie Tales God Made You Special

Linking up…

Gwen is 3 years old (44 months) and Josiah is 1 (20 months).

Highlights

I’ve finished the laundry and the dishes and don’t feel like doing anymore housework, so I thought I’d share a few highlights from last week.  I realized I forgot to share the kiddos’ reaction to the ice cream sensory bin.

The verdict…

They loved it!  Of course, it got played with the most on the first couple of days, but every once in a while Gwen will ask me to open it for her, and as soon as Josiah sees her playing with it he moseys on over.  I’m sure if I just left it out they’d play with it, but have you seen the contents?  There’s no way I’m leaving all those pom poms out in the open.

Guess what I finally made?  The homemade play dough!  I didn’t make pretend ice cream like I had planned, but I did use spices and food coloring along with mint and orange extracts to make it look and smell nice.  I love play dough - the texture is so much fun! - so I joined the kiddos on this one. 

I keep it in jars so it doesn’t dry out; not sure how long it’s supposed to last.  I will probably make a blue version with glitter to go along with the creation story for our first official week of preschool.     

Besides ice cream, Summertime is for popsicles, smoothies, and berry-picking, all of which we have been enjoying in abundance.  I make smoothies for the kiddos almost every day, perhaps every other, using my homemade yogurt and frozen fruit, sometimes adding some orange sections or orange juice if it needs thinning.  Since we go through frozen blueberries like nobody’s business, I’ve taken advantage of the picking season and have gone three times already – to Schartner’s Farms in my neck of the woods, and a skip and a hop to Sweet Berry Farm (they have a cafe with yummy offerings and ice cream to boot!).

I also [finally] tried a recipe for fudge popsicles which I had bookmarked from Smitten Kitchen when it was first posted.  They were sooo good!  I used dark chocolate, organic whole cane sugar (a lesser amount), a combination of cocoa and carob powders, and coconut milk for the milk.  I don’t think the kiddos care when their desserts have been tampered with to make them healthier.  

Since I knew we were going to be enjoying popsicles on a regular basis during the Summer months, I decided to add a book to one of my Amazon orders (you know, to qualify for the free shipping) and got POPS! Ice Treats for Everyone.  I want to make all the recipes, of course, but started with the coconut pop – just like a frozen macaroon!  There are some pop recipes on the author’s website.

My dad has been wanting to take the kiddos to a polo game for a while (supposed to be something fun to do outdoors, and the horses… kids like horses, right?).  We finally went on Saturday, and while it wasn’t the most exciting thing for me, it was fun to go with the family. 

If we go again, I’ll bring a book and some snacks.

What have you been up to?

Wordless Wednesday: I miss the days when love came so easily…

Gwen as a newborn

Chore Chart for Kiddos

For a while now I’ve been wanting to make some sort of chore chart for Gwen.  I figure having the visual helps reinforce the things I ask of or expect from her on a daily basis, as well as motivate her to complete tasks. 

While searching for homeschool resources, I did come upon various printable charts – but most of them were pretty basic graphs with simple word descriptions, not very impressive for a kiddo who doesn’t yet know how to read. 

Earlier today, when going through my binder of craft ideas for the kiddos, I came upon an article I had ripped out of a Parents magazine for cute chore charts with corresponding pictures – just like this one.  To my frustration, the one pictured in the article was not on the website – but there are some other blank charts.  Then I thought, why not make my own?

Earlier today I was delighted to find this Funny Font Book, which helps younger children differentiate between letters when there are so many typefaces and versions of the same letter.  I immediately downloaded it, re-sized the pages so I got four per printout on photo paper, cut out the pages, punched holes, and secured them with a metal ring.  Hm, metal rings… maybe I could make a similar flipbook for chores.   

I googled “flip chore charts with pictures”, and though it’s not what I originally had in mind, one of the results landed me at Proverbial Girl Duck and her post about positive rewards and chore charts.  I love the system she implemented, and was even further delighted when I realized she downloaded it from Homeschool Creations – already a favorite of mine!   

I printed out the chore chart (in purple) along with the chore cards on photo paper, picked out a few of the cards that might go in each category (morning chores, afternoon chores, or those for reward), and cut small pieces of velcro to attach to the front and back of each card. 

On the backs of the cards I put a star sticker, so when the chore is completed it can be turned around and – voila! – you see a star. 

I also pasted the main chore chart onto a piece of purple construction paper, just for fun.  I was going to put her name somewhere, but I’m not sure if I want to use marker, stickers, whatever – maybe I’ll leave that up to Gwen.

Tomorrow I’ll introduce her chore chart, along with Proverbial Girl Duck‘s idea for “warm fuzzies” – pom poms earned for doing reward chores or good behavior during the day, which when the jar is full can be turned in for a movie night or other surprise.  

I’m not sure where it would best be displayed – figured it would get messed with on the fridge, and she would probably end up playing with it if left in her room.  Can’t wait to see what she thinks of it – getting “warm fuzzies” just thinking about it!