Letter O and More

We jumped back into our normal routine this week, except that we added a member to our preschool! I am watching a friend's little girl for the month of January. It ahs been fun for Lexy to have someone to play with and "do school" with.

Daily Binder

I have been wanting to do this for quite awhile, because Lexy has become bored of our big calendar routine. I just wasn't sure how I wanted to put it together until I saw this on Refined Metals Academy. We tweaked it a little to fit our needs. Currently, we have the following sections:

1. Calendar - Here, Lexy writes in the dates. This is helping her with learning to write her numbers.

2. Weather Graph - She places stickers to graph the weather each day.

3. Geography - We have 3 maps - US, continents, and World. We're currently working on the US. as we visit another state or mention someone that lives in another state, we locate it on the map.

4. Alphabet Chart and Assessment - Each day, we review our letter songs with our chart. I like these because the sound songs also are a short review of the Bible stories that we've covered. We use the chart from Hubbard's Cupboard. Although Lexy knows the songs and can sing them, she usually listens as I sing. I'm fine with that because I can see her little wheels in her head hurning as she is thinking about them. She usually stops me several times and asks questions about the bible stories. Many times she is concerned why Joseph's brothers threw him in a pit. Also, in this section, I've included an assessment for me to mark off the letter sounds that she knows. I haven't done a formal assessment, but just mark them off as she's shown she knows them.

I plan to add a Memory Verse section soon with the charts to each of the verses she has memories. this way we have an easier way to reivew them.

Alhabet Activities

We covered letter O this week and focused primarily on Owls.

1. The girls drew letter Os on the window with window crayons (my best stocking stuffer purchase). They quickly turned their Os into people, faces, and lamps.



2. They decorated Os with Cheerios. You can see their different personalities.



3. We read Owl books that we picked up at the library.

4. We read our First Steps to Reading letter O book and found things for the pocket chart that start with O.

Math

I have been searching for new ideas for Math and Science. I tend to focus heavily on literature and phonics. I've found a few possiblities on Amazon, but haven't purchases any yet. So, this week is another week of random Math activities.

1. We played an owl counting game for review of number recognition.

2. Measuring - We discussed the ruler and different ways of measuring things. We traced Lexy's hand and then cut it out. Then she took a basket around and found things that were either "longer" or "shorter" than her hand. Next, she wanted to measeure LOTS of things to find out how many "Lexy hands" tall they were. I was ready to be done with this activity before she was...I guess that's a good thing.

3. We counted jumps on the trampoline each day and tried to get more jumps than the day before. Her highest was 101.



4. We read Monster Math books.

5. We played with popsicle sticks and made shapes, letters, buildings, and animals, etc. Lexy enjoyed trying to teach Josiah his colors. He helped us seperate them in color piles.





Science

I got Mudpies to Magnets from the library and am attempting to be more puposeful with Science activities. Our focus for Science this week, other than Owls, was snow. We had our first good snow accumulation.

1. We caught snowflakes. I got this idea from here. It took us several attempts due to errors on my part. Luckily, I had my 3 yo daughter there to correct my mistakes... "Mommy the paper is going to fly away." Silly me, I just set it outside with nothing to hold it down. As she says that, I turn around and it begins flying away. I have to step outside in my slippers to get it. Several other silly things like that later and we finally got our snowflake...It was actually two snowflakes side by side touching. Lexy's observation was "It looks like a star, Mommy!" Too bad it didn't really show up in the picture.



2. We talked about what causes snow to melt. We melted snow in our hands.

3. All of the kids played with snow INSIDE (they outgrew their boots from last year and I haven't replaced them yet). I enjoyed it much more inside :) They noticed that the snow became harder after playing with it for awhile. I had to keep bringing in fresh, fluffy snow.





ART

Lexy spends lots of her time at her art table. She received a lot of new supplies for Christmas. She enjoys cutting scrap paper, using glitter glue, stickers, feathers, ribbons, and stamping. She also spent some time making her own thank you cards for Christmas gifts.



Bible

Our Bible story this week was from Matthew 5, being salt and light. "Turn On the light and shine." Our memory verse that we are working on is Proverbs 30:5.

Other

1. Fine motor skills - The girls made braceletsand necklaces with beads, pipe cleaners, strings, pom poms, etc.



2. Lots of building - We played with blocks and magneatos. Josiah is really enjoying building towers as tall as he can make them now. He still likes destroying his sister's towers too.

3. Imaginary play - A big portion of our day is spent pretending. Lexy loves to play baby dolls. Sometimes I have a hard time entering the fantasy world, but I'm trying. Somehow everything we end up doing turns into fantasy...even popsicle sticks become mommies and babies!

4. Playdough and painting


I am really looking forward to Letter P week. We have a lot of fun things planned!

To find out what other moms are doing with their preschoolers check out the Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.