Preschool, Letter G Week

Our verse was, "A gentle answer turns away wrath." Proverbs 15:1 The lesson was about the woman to be stoned who was brought to Jesus and his response to them in John 8.  Jesus is so amazing with his responses...especially to those trying to "get him" or "catch him"...when he is never doing anything wrong!  I have so much to learn!

We made our letter G goat....though afterwards, Stevie called it a giraffe.  Well, I suppose that works too, haha.  It might make even more sense because it looks like it has a long neck!

This was one of my favorite weeks so far!  We didn't have many toys or real objects around the house for our letter box, but we had some great or fun books....and time to celebrate Grandparents!  I forgot to take pictures of the books this week, but I wrote down the ones we got.  

We read "Gus and Grandpa Ride the Train" by Claudia Mills.  Stevie loved it, and I did too!  This is a series of Gus and Grandpa...and they are early reader chapter books.  I loved the topic of trains and Grandpa (Stevie loves both), and I loved the little things added to reinforce obedience, forgiveness, trust, patience, and love.  I can't wait to read more in the series!  It is unfortunately rare to find "good" books at the library...post coming soon.

We read "Here Comes Grandma!" by Janet Lord.  This was sort of a silly book about a Grandma 

coming to see her grandchild.  She drives, she takes a train, she skis, and on and on to get there.  Grandparents will sure go through hoops because they love their grandchildren!

We made these little hand-prints for the grandparents for our craft activity.

I found the little saying online, "(Grandmas...) hold our tiny hands for just a little while but our hearts forever!" This isn't a regular sized piece of paper (poster cut in half) but yes, my son has big hands, haha.  He has big hands to do big work!  I've always said he's going to walk ME to kindergarten.  He's tall now and no doubt will be when he's grown. :) We also sent a little note with traced G's saying we love them and prayed for them this week. Tracing letters is brand new for Stevie....tracing anything really is.  So, I tell him his crayon is the train, and he needs to follow the tracks (the dotted lines).  It's enough for him because he loves trains!

We also read Patricia Pollaco's creative book, "G is for Goats."  It goes through the entire alphabet using words relating to goats.  It made Stevie want to go back to the farm.  We made this sheet afterwards from a teaching book I had.  There are G objects to color and cut and put in Goat's Garden.

(I helped him trace this G.  He does pretty well actually, but this was one of his first ones ever, so it was my hand doing it with his....if you're wondering. ;) ) He wasn't so enthusiastic about coloring that day, but the glue was good!

Some sprinkle activities:

*We checked out a book about garbage trucks...my boy is sooo into vehicles.  We also played with his toy garbage truck.  We have a Mighty Machines Garbage Truck movie too.  Those are some of my favorite truck movies...Mighty Machines.

*We pointed out things that are green.

*We watched Canadian geese...it's that season!  They are some of my favorite creatures.  If you don't know much about them, check them out!  I even wrote a children's book about them for college.  

*Glue!  There was glue in our box, but it had been taken out to be used.  Stevie loves to glue!

Preschool, Letter F Week

We've been consistently using "The Memory Bible" book by Stephen Elkins for our verse and Bible lesson.  The verse was "A friend loves at all times." Proverbs 17:17  The story for the verse is Jonathan and David.

We made our letter F into a fish this week.  The website we usually use for the letters make it a fox...and I didn't think it fit super well with being a good friend, haha, so we made it a fish.  It isn't super great, but Stevie looked at mine and said, "fish!"without any clues...so I called it successful.

We also read some nonfiction books about fish through the week. Then Stevie colored the fish in this bowl.  He had to color it orange like a "clown fish."  Thank you, Nemo!  (Yup, a sprinkle activity.)  We also focused on and reviewed the fins of the fish...because they start with f, and of course they are interesting.

I especially liked the bottom book, "About Fish" because the author dedicated it to the One who created the fish.  Super awesome in my book, and I pointed out the dedication to Stevie, and how right it is to give glory to God for all that we do because our talents and interests and all of creation were gifts from Him!

Here are some more sprinkle activities:
*Play with play food...and eat real food, Ha, that was a tough one!
*We started the week visiting a farm open to the public.  It was wonderful!  And, it was lined with beautiful wood, white fences, which start with f.
*We visited the fish section at Walmart...honestly, we do that frequently.
*I'm pretty sure it was this week Stevie picked me a flower while we were out playing.  He found a few drying up daisies and picked one for me!  Daddy's teaching him well!
*We got a fire truck movie from the library....and we watched it a lot.  A lot, haha.  I went on to do some research after because it focused on a station in NYC in the 90's or early 2000's....my memory is failing.  This station lost a number of firefighters on 9/11.  It is still so heartbreaking and my heart and prayers go out to the family members and friends of those lost at that time.  We will never forget.
*We talked about those who are family and friends (we put the family picture from last Christmas in our letter box).
*Stevie was in love with that little batter-operated fan from Matt's old job.  Of course he liked being in control of the on and off buttons, but it shows a moving sentence in blue lights when it's blowing.  It really is pretty cool!
*We checked out other F books from the library to go with other F words.
*As in each week, we prayed for our "F" family and friends.

Preschool, Letter C Week

Our verse was, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  We used "The Memory Bible" by Stephen Elkins for our verse, lesson reference, and verse song on Day 1, and the cd was used through the week.

We made our letter C crab.

We read "The Cow Loves Cookies" by Karma Wilson (2 of Stevie's favorite C things).  We ripped and glued the cow's spots, and he helped me draw and color cookies!

 We read books about cars.  I especially liked "Cars: Rushing! Honking! Zooming!" by Patrcia Hubbell.  He drove his cars on the laminated C...we pretended there was a bridge at the end of the C and lifted the car up to start back over at the top of the C.

Stevie is in love with "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle, so we made a fuzzy caterpillar with a clothespin, pom poms, and google eyes.  I made a simple leaf, laminated it, and punched holes for the caterpillar to follow either on top or chomping with the clothespin.  I tried to make the holes in a C shape...always reinforcing our letter.

 You could also give your child some leaves to punch on their own. This is a great fine motor task, but Stevie isn't quite ready for it yet...it's too frustrating still to use the puncher.
We also have colored circles of construction paper.  Make long caterpillars and count the circles, or make patterns.

Of course, we had to do more with cookies!  This was a cute book, actually a big book I snatched from a garage sale for 50 cents!  These children make cookies...it goes through the process and ingredients.  It ties in with the C theme and also "creating"...our C word "created" from our verse.  After reading, we made our own chocolate chip cookies and enjoyed them!

 

Here are most of the items in our C box that were explored throughout the week.  This is still one of Stevie's favorite parts of our school routine.

 This was our pocket chart for the week that included our verse stick and pocket flashcard...I took our C families out of the picture for privacy. :). The sticks are now in our Abc verse and prayer pail!

Sprinkle C Activities:

*Cutting play food/veggies.  We have some plastic veggies with velcro to cut, another win from a garage sale.

*Play-doh to create and cut. Also use cookie cutters.

*Snack on animal crackers and crackers. (...or cookies, cupcakes, cake...)

*Have a celebration

*Cook pretend or real meals together

*Look for real caterpillars

*Notice all different colors of cars

*Practice being caring and compassionate

*Make cards for C friends we prayed for

*Brown construction paper circles with numbers beside or below them.  Stevie puts 1,2,3,...chocolate chips on the "cookie."  At the end, he got to eat the chocolate chips!

The idea isn't to sit down and check all of these off my list one by one.  I have these ideas that are easy to sprinkle in our day when we need an extra activity, or they just happen spontaneously, and we make the C connection.  That's what it's all about. Finding and practicing what we're learning through everyday life-living and through things...and using some other inexpensive ways to have fun learning our letter and God's Word.  This is one aspect I'm loving about homeschooling.  I know exactly what he's learning, and it just flows through our whole day.  It's awesome!

You are probably noticing how there are a lot more activities this week.  Stevie is just loving school.  I still focus on 2 organized school days, but he asks for school every day.  Since he does, we keep it short and simple, and I have to have a lot of ideas on stand-by.  I didn't mention it earlier, but we're still including prayer, the calendar, and the weather chart with songs.  Stevie loves using a pointer!

Preschool, Letter B Week

This week focused on the letter B.

We started each time with prayer, weather song and chart, the calendar, and our B pockets with the flash card and B sticks...our verse and B friends to pray for.  Our verse this week (always shortened), "On my bed, I remember you." Psalm 63:6

Our letter box is always Stevie's favorite!  Here are some of the things that were in it this week in addition to the pictures in our pocket chart:

Then we read together.  The first school day, we use a Bible lesson for our verse, so we read about David the shepherd boy who wrote and sang praises of thanks to God out in the fields...and at night to bring him peace.  We used His Jesus Storybook Bible for the lesson.  Another resource I use and will be using quite a bit is The Memory Bible book and cd's by Stephen Elkins.  This book goes through the alphabet twice, Old Testament first and then New Testament, with verses.  The book gives the verse for the letter, a little preview devotional, and the Bible story reference and paraphrase to study when learning the verse.  Then there is a song to learn the verse at the end.  The cd's read the text for each day ...read by Kirk Cameron... and then sing the song for you to learn it.  I will be using this book quite a bit, but for last week's week A, I chose a different verse and story, so I didn't use it.  That may happen sometimes.  But, the songs sure get stuck in my head and are a great way to memorize.  I had gotten it for a couple of bucks on Amazon last year when I was looking for verses put to music.  We play the story and song on repeat while we do our craft/project/prewriting practice.  So, we used the book for our first day's story/lesson this week and used the song on cd all week during table time.

Stevie wanted his foot in the picture, and why it's sideways, I have no idea.  I neeed my laptop running again.

Then we made our letter craft...a bumble bee you all heard about.  We close in prayer, including our B friends.

Our 2nd school day, we read this book and did this project, bear and blanket.

And our 3rd day (because he asked for it) we read this book and made a bear with a basket book (different b things in it's basket) from a teaching book I had.  Does the bear look familiar? Ha.  Then we made him a little boat...because he had to have a boat after the book.

Here are some sprinkle B activity ideas I had on-hand (We were able to do most of these at some point through the week, and Lydia is easily included and entertained by them as well):

*Play with mega blocks (these blocks are only brought out once in awhile)

*Read more books about bears, backhoes, buses, bridges, etc. While snuggling in his blue bean bag chair

*Play with backhoes and trucks in dry beans

*Blow bubbles

*Make and eat banana bread

*Look at bugs

*Watch Bob the Builder

*I have a Take it to Your Seat game to make patterns out of a Bears buttons.  It's cute, but the pattern concept is still ahead of Stevie, so I showed him some patterns and mostly he played with the buttons making train tracks and roads.

*Basketball is a must!

*Bouncing on a big exercise ball

*Bike rides

Just trying to reinforce that words are all around us, and they use the letters we are learning!

More Sprinkle Activities

Ok, this is my last homeschool post until I post something else.  (I have some drafts, but...)

Anyway, Stevie wanted to do school today, bless his little heart.  He asked me.  He wanted to read the apple book again...had to be on the floor and on the blanket.  Then he wanted to do an apple...I think he meant he wanted to color or do a project.  So, we did.  It turned into crazy school because Lydia was not going to miss this (it wasn't naptime yet), and though Stevie wanted to do school, as I suspected, his interest didn't last super long because he just got a little wild with the markers.  The apple and caterpillar were blue of course.  We'll work on the color coordination as time goes on. ;)

At the end, I pulled out our Aquadoodle mat.  I believe I got the thing for 10 cents at a garage sale.  (I got a travel one for 25 cents at another one....good for church and ...travel.).   I really think I should have my own tv show on extreme garage saling...or something because I have scored awesome and amazing deals.  (I mean for real, I got an entire bin of girl's clothes for$10...and that included the Rubbermaid bin!). I'm cheap, and the kids and I went to sales all summer long.  Does such a show exist?  The show following would probably be Hoarders.  Anyway, I love the Aquadoodle more than the kids probably do.  In case you are unfamiliar, it uses water in markers and on paintbrushes to make your pictures or writing practice or whatever.  Completely mess free...just wet!

I had gotten these sponges from...the Dollar Tree (I really should get paid for my advertising), and I was pretty excited.  They were exactly what I wanted for the Aquadoodle and for painting, for sensory bins...whatever!  I snatched the fruit ones too for our unit on the Fruit of the Spirit in the Spring.  These were in their craft section.  So, we used the airplane today on our mat for the letter A.

I forgot to mention, there is a super cute youtube video for kids called Andy's Airplanes, a cartoon boy who flies planes.  He even gets to fly in the Blue Angels.  It's about a half hour and is actually a kids cartoon I can easily tolerate and even enjoy.  Cute music, educational, good story line.  Fits great with the A theme.  I really hope they are able to make more!

I just wanted to make a note of these...to remember myself...because if there's a time I have two in homeschool, which is likely, I will need these extras!  Lydia keeps me hopping!

Letter A, Day 2

Today was our 2nd and "final" day of planned preschool for this week.

Here's what we did:

Our regular start with prayer, weather, calendar, and we did the pockets again with the same card and sticks for review.
Verse with motions John 1:3, "All things were made by him" and review of who we're praying for.
Quick recap of God's creation..."all things"

We read an apple book today, learning neat things about the apple, starts with A, and is one of God's great creations!  It has great pictures, "Apples for Everyone" by Jill Esbaum.  It shares so much simply...that I'm thinking of all the ways I could use it down the road in school.

(Lydia enjoyed the book later.  She is in love with all this school business, especially Stevie's table and chair....and the posters and school supplies and letter box.  I hope she keeps that enthusiasm!)

Then we moved to the table for our apple tree page from a teaching book I had and a dot letter page (I was given copies of the dot pages, but they can be found here.  I purchased my dot markers at the Dollar Tree...of course!

Ha, Stevie likes blue trees I guess, and in case you can't tell, the apples he glued on have pictures of A things.  Oh, we use clipboards for some things...really helps him not be distracted or frustrated by his papers slipping because this way, they don't!  I'm considering putting all of his work into a book...we'll see.

After some seat work, we moved back to the blanket to peek in our A box again (it's been dug into all week) and end with prayer including our A friends.

At lunch, we looked at a real apple, noticed it's colors and shape, and we cut it to find and count the seeds.  My picky guy wouldn't eat it...and we had a difficult time with the cutting part (he likes things to remain in their "normal" state...he's my sensory and order kid), but we did ok.  I ate some and so did Lydia.

Also, each week, I want to be sure I have a picture of Stevie with an object for the week.  My goal is to edit with text, Aa, and our verse....then stick it in one of those cheap little photo albums so he has his own ABC book, ta da!  Make sense?  Then he can teach Lydia with his little book...while birds sing sweetly in the background...or something.  If our pictures are good, haha, we may also print those off a little larger to use as our ABC wall border as we go...since we don't have one.  

That's A week in a nutshell.  We went on a nature walk to see "All things made by Him", and we've watched our airplane movie from the library, and we still have several A books to read.  Tomorrow, our craft/popsicle sticks go into our pail to make room for our B sticks!!

Our First Day of School, Homeschool

Today was Stevie's first day of preschool....at home.  At this point in time, we have decided not to go the regular preschool route.  I may or may not write about our reasons, but if you're really interested, I'd be glad to talk or email about them, so just leave a comment.  Anyway, I decided to do some of the regular first day things because we'd do them if he were going somewhere else, so why not do them here too?  I wanted his picture, we had a pancake breakfast, I still need to trace his hand (put it on a ring and do it every year to see how he grows), and...we had to make an emergency milk run to Wegmans.  Oh well.

In case anyone would find what we're doing useful, I thought I'd post what our school day generally looked like.  Stevie's 3, so it was short and to the point.  We're only doing 2 planned days a week right now with a few extra activities sprinkled in through the week.  Afterall, learning takes place all day on a variety of topics....so I don't need to press the seat work too much at this time. I am also trying to be conscious of his weekly therapies...and those demands on his little self...he needs time to play and be a 3 year old boy too.

Our little school room:

Ok, nuts and bolts:

We began with morning prayer.  Then we did the weather chart: looking out the window, singing "What's the Weather?", and spinning the wheel to match the weather.  The calendar was next, which Stevie loves from Sunday School.  We used an unsharpened pencil for a pointer today.

Next month, the calendar will be filled in for each day, but we're only technically doing 2 days this week, so I decided to just do the final week in August until September.

Then we moved to our pockets.  Stevie liked this!  

We are going through the alphabet for most of the year, one letter a week. Stevie only knows a few letters, so I wanted to do some basics.  (He struggled so much with speech and saying nouns for his needs, like milk, that abc's were certainly not on our radar.)  So, in the left pocket, is a letter A flash card from the Dollar Tree (the pocket envelopes and many posters are from there too).  I loved the crispness of them and the realistic photos instead of cartoons that are hard to distinguish.  Stevie was able to pull the card out and tell me it was an "apple."  We talked about how apple starts with A....super brief phonics...and how A is the letter of the week...showing him the A's on the flash card.  (I also liked how they highlight the beginning letter of apple...you will see in the pocket chart.). 

I then told Stevie to take the sticks out of the envelope on the right.  One has "A" friends and families (cousin Abby for example) and one has our A verse, "All things were made by Him." John 1:3.  We talked about how we'll pray for the A's during prayer time.  Then he repeated the verse broken up after me, as I did simple motions.  He's never been into the motions, but I will keep plugging away because they help for memorizing the verses.  I used the big craft sticks...instead of paper or whatever, so that when we have finished our A week, they will be placed in the little black pail shown on top of the bookshelf ($1 in Target dollar bins).  When they are inevitably carried off or pulled out (by Miss Lydia or intentionally by us), we can review our verses and remember the A people in prayer again...as well as whatever other letter sticks may get pulled as time goes on.  

Then while on our blanket, we read about God's creation to go with our verse...and God creating Adam (A) and Eve.

We repeated our verse and moved to the table with our A box...and A sticks and flash card.  The craft sticks and card were put in the pocket chart.

Inside the A box were items we had on hand and colored pictures from a phonics teaching book I had.  He was free to explore the things, saying what they were, and I would say "a, a, apple, apple starts with a."  He repeated.  He loved the box...obviously recognizing some toys, but he thought it was fun, taking them out and setting them up on the table.  We talked about how God made the apple, acorn, ant, etc.  All of the pictures went into the pocket chart ($1 at Target in their seasonal dollar bins...I also got a super cute apple pocket chart for a dollar at a garage sale...wahoo!).

The black A on the outside of the A box is a bulletin board die cut letter from a pack at the Dollar Tree, and the blue foam A is from a foam abc puzzle from the Dollar Tree (umm, I love that store).  The additional letters from the pack and puzzle will be used each week in the box and for other letter activities!  Getting our money's worth!  I put the toys and A objects back in the box...but since school time, Stevie and Lydia keep diving in because they love it.  I would like to have it for review on Thursday and through the week...we'll see, haha.

Then we made our A craft, the alligator, with music playing.  This craft idea is from here:

After the craft, we moved back to the blanket with our A friends stick and closed our school day with prayer, including the A friends.

Stevie really wanted to do more, so then I set up the painter's tape A on the floor for him to drive his trains on.  Sort of a pre-writing skill and extra emphasis on our A theme.

I will probably have similar activities and sensory play things for the end of our time if he wants to keep going.  I think he just really soaked up my attention and wanted more (Lydia was napping).  He didn't have therapy today either, so he had more brain "steam" and energy.  We also already had snack before we began...just due to the time we can start (around 9:45 or 10am)...again dodging therapy sessions and trying to coincide with Lydia's nap...as long as she will. :)
Basically, the plan is for Day 2 of the week (Thursdays) to be a repeat...but the book will be about apples (the basket on the floor contains all A books, ours and from the library, and Stevie's Bible).  I will do another post after that day to show our project and "stuff."  That is also our basic schedule for the rest of the abc's.  We'll have a new verse, Bible focus, craft, pre-writing practice, and extras for each letter.

The sprinkled activities (that happen outside of our "classroom time") planned are: nature walks to find things God made, looking at apples inside and out (cut open) and eating them, watching a movie about airplanes from the library...probably more times than I can count, reading extra library A books, reviewing our memory verse each day, and praying for A friends...as well as making a note or picture for them to let them know we love them and prayed for them.  Obviously, throughout our day there are unplanned teaching moments too. :)

That's our plan for the next 26 weeks in a nutshell, haha.  Sorry for being long winded...just didn't know if other people would be interested.  At the end of those weeks, my general plan is to move into counting with Creation and colors with the Fruit of the Spirit, which will end our "school year."  We'll see!

Still smiling after day 1! I need to print this picture...because it shows exactly how I want our mother-son relationship to be!