Learning With Josiah

Josiah has finished his first week of Pre-K3! We’ve had a lot of fun learning with friends. I am doing a combination of preschool/tot school a few days a week with some of Josiah’s little buddies.

For our curriculum, I am using a combination of ideas found on Totally Tots, RRSP, Letter of the Week, various other websites, and my own ideas. We are doing a letter each week with activities, songs, and a memory verse.

Letter: L

Memory Verse: Matthew 5:16

Shape: Circle

Color: Yellow

Number: 1

Our Learning Board

Each day, we start our preschool day at our Learning Board. The three colored papers at the top are pieces of construction paper the I laminated with velcro dots at the top. They are for our Shape, Number and Sight Words for the week. Also included is our memory verse, song, and application for the week. The little colored pockets are for our props. These all come from RRSP.

Letter Craft

L is for Llama

Sensory Tub

I filled our Sensory Tub with LOTS of circles (left from Lexy’s Polka-Dot Party) and pom poms.

The idea, besides just having fun, was to use the tongs to pull out the YELLOW CIRCLES. We also talked about the different sizes and textures of the circles.

Workboxes

In the preschool workboxes, I put 9 different activities that the children can choose to do sometime throughout the week.

Letter L Roads from Making Learning Fun:

Ladybug Shape Match Puzzles from Confessions of a Homeschooler:

Lollipop Letter Sorting (COAH)

Build a Letter L (Handwriting without Tears)

Letter L Lacing from Home Grown Hearts – sorry no picture

Letter L Corkboard Punch

Odd Olly/Even Elly – Kindergarten

Lexy and I played this game to work on Odd and Even Numbers

Lollipop Counting from Home Grown Hearts:

Letter L Do-A-Dots

Books:

1. Llama Misses Mama

2. 10 Ladybugs

3. Tawny Scrawny Lion

4. My Letter L book

5. I See (Sight word book that we would read each day)

6. The Big Red Lollipop

Other Activities:

London Bridges – sorry no pictures

Making and Tasting Lemonade

Visiting a Llama Farm – pending

Starfall – Josiah had a lot of fun learning about the letter L on Starfall.

Memory Verse Craft – Candle for Light

Song – This Little Light of Mine

Letter L Fun Family Night: Movie and Lollipops!

My favorite picture of the week – Lexy reading to her “Little Bub.”

I am linking up to:

We Made It!!!

We FINALLY made it to the end of the alphabet! Lexy never seemed to mind, but I was getting a little tired of the letter themes. I went ahead and did letters Y and Z this week so that we could finish up. I am very excited about moving on to new things! We get to start our 12 days of Easter next week (Thursday - can you believe Easter is coming up so quickly?). Last year was our first year for doing this, and the kids really enjoyed it. I've got a lot planned for it this year. I'm hoping to post each day what we do, so check back often.

Our New Schedule

We started doing our "school time" a little differently this week, and it worked out great! I plan on doing a more detailed post about our schedule and schedule magnets soon. Basically, after our breakfast/calendar/devotion time in the morning, we do a fun (sometimes messy) activity that can include both kids. Josiah isn't much into anything crafty (painting, playdough, etc). So trying to come up with something that they both enjoy can be challenging. Then we spend the rest of the morning playing...whatever they want to do. I have the centers set up in the schoolroom. They've been choosing to do them a lot, but if not that's fine. The weather has been great, so we've spent a lot of time outside. They also love "make-believe" world. Most of the morning is spent there. I do my best to enter that land with them...sometimes I find it hard.

After lunch, Josiah takes a nap. Lexy has given up naps for the most part (there are occassional days when she still needs one). So, we use the first hour of his naptime as a quite school time for us. I've started turning on some light classical music while we have this time together. I can't believe the difference it has made in the atmosphere. We work on writing, math, learning games, phonics, science, geography, etc (not all in one day!). Or, some days we'll spend coloring and drawing pictures together. Also during this time, we have our own little devotion time together. We spend 10 minutes on the couch reading our own Bibles and praying. Sometims Lexy reads hers, and sometimes she just watches me. After 10 minutes, I let her pick something from her Bible that she'd like me to read to her. All of this usually takes about an hour. During the 2nd hour of Josiah's nap, Lexy has her own quite time in her room...and I get my much needed quite time!

Letters Y and Z

I wasn't very creative this week with our letter activities. We did all of our regular activities: read "first steps to reading," brainstormed words that start with each letter (Lexy is getting really good at this!), and practiced writing the letters.

I printed off Letter Y and Z handwriting sheets from Home Grown Hearts. I laminated them, because dry erase markers seem to make everything more fun! Lexy loves using these minature "re-writables." They have their own little eraser attached to each marker. Lexy has been getting sloppy with writing her name. Notice in this picture that she wrote it backwards and didn't put much effort into her letters. I know that she can write it better, but just doesn't seem interested lately. She did a great job of tracing "Y is for Yarn" and the letters.

We also worked on filling in space and staying in lines while coloring this hidden "y" picture sheet.

Lexy still enjoys looking for letters in nature and around the house. I've tried to take pictures as she points them out. I want to print them all off and create an alphabet book out of them once she has found all the letters. Today, she discovered that her scissors create an "x." To see my original post about this click here.

We're still having grip issues. I gave in this week and broke her crayons into tiny pieces to help with the grip. I hate broken crayons, so this was hard for me. However, she was holding them correctly!

St. Patrick's Day Activities

Each day, we talked about a different aspect of St. Patrick's day, and they did a craft. When we talked about different St. Patrick's Day traditions, Lexy was horrified that people pinch you for not wearing green. When I told her this on Monday, she quickly decided that she didn't like St. Patrick's Day! We tried to have fun anyway. Even Josiah (my anti-crafter) joined in on the crafts this week! We also enjoyed the St. Patrick's Day parade!

Lexy also added a St. Patrick's Day story to her story notebook. I printed it from here. She added the missing words and illustrated it. It is titled, "The Leprechaun's Walk." She had fun walking the leprechaun on the popsicle stick through the story!

Outside Fun!

We enjoyed the long-awaited nice weather this week by riding bikes and picnicing at the park!

We are looking forward to some more outside fun this weekend as we take a weekend trip to Mama and Papa's cabin!

Bible

I am now posting our Bible time in separate posts and linking up to Raising Rock Stars. Check back on Tuesdays to see all of the creative ideas my husband is coming up with!

To find some great ideas to do with your preschooler, check out the Preschool Corner every Friday!

Mrs. Wishy Washy Literature Unit

Although we do a lot of reading in our house, I've never tried focusing on one book for the whole week. So, for the letter W, I decided to try something new. I put together a literature unit based on the book "Mrs. Wishy Washy." We had a lot of fun, and the book was simple enough that both kids were able to enjoy it. Here are some of the activities that we did.

Sensory Activities:

1. We made our own mud by mixing cocoa with water. Then we made a tub of soapy water. The kids rolled the farm animals in the mud, and then gave them a bath in the soapy water. Lexy enjoyed re-enacting the story as she did it. Soon, Josiah wanted to add trucks to the mud mixture. This was TONS of fun for them, and lots of cleanup for me. If I'd only had Lexy it wouldn't have been such a mess.

2. We printed a playdough mat from here. They made playdough animals using cookie cutters and put them in the tub.

3. Lexy made a pig picture and painted "mud" onto the picture. The "mud" was a picture of shaving cream and brown paint.

Literature Activities:

1. I found felt board character printables for the story at Monkey See, Monkey Do. We told the story using the characters. The kids enjoyed putting them onto the board and playing with them.

2. I printed Sequencing Cards from here. Lexy put the story in order using the cards.

3. I printed this book. Lexy put the book in order and added the missing word "in" on each of the pages. We also attached the animals to make it an interactive book.

4. We acted out the story as a family. Each of us had an assigned role. They had fun jumping and rolling in the mud.


5. Lexy worked on site words more this week. I printed off the puzzles from here that went with the site words we have already been working on.

Geography Activities:

1. We discussed the differences between living on a farm versus living in a city. Lexy sorted farm pictures from city pictures.


2. Lexy created her own version of our city. She glued rectangles on as buildings and houses. Her city is by no means proportional or accurate, but it was cute to see what she thought was important to include. She included our house, the swimming pool, Mamma and Pappa's house, their pond, Abby (their dog), ballet school, church, the Children's Museum (with a dinosaur sticking out of it), a friend's house with her swingset, Daddy's Work, the grocery store, the park with a sandbox, and the fair. I added roads for her, and then she glued vehicles onto the roads.



Math Activities:

1. We worked on counting by tens using this activity printed from Making Learning Fun.



In the Kitchen:

1. Both kids helped make some chocolate pudding. They had fun dipping animal crackers into the "mud" and eating them.


Science Activities:

1. We talked about the differences between real mud and our chocolate pudding mud.

2. We made bubbles by blowing through straws. Then, they were able to observe that you can poke objects through bubbles without the bubbles popping if the bubbles were wet. They had a lot of fun with this, until Lexy got a mouth full of bubbles and didn't want to blow anymore.



We definitely enjoyed the literature unit and plan on doing more! Other activities that we enjoyed this week include: music class, ballet class, library group, MOPS, and church.

To see what other preschoolers have been doing this past week, check out the Preschool Corner!

A Bit of This and a Bit of That

Well, last week we did a Whole Lot of Nothing, and this week we did a bit of everything. It was a very eclectic week, but we're starting to get back on track around here after a week of sickness. We had fun with the letter V along with other activities this week. AND...we FINALLY have ink in our printer, which makes planning much easier!

Reading

Since Lexy has learned to identify all the letters (upper and lowercase) and knows the sounds they make, I've decided to move forward with reading. I'm taking this VERY slowly and only doing as much as Lexy seems interested in. We found and printed some great site word activities here. I was also given a bunch of used homeschool materials. A Beka's Handbook for Reading was included. We started going through these lessons, and Lexy really enjoys it. She wants to learn to read. For now, I'm keeping these lessons very short. I don't want her to get bored or frustrated. So, we stop before she's ready to stop...an idea that I got from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.





Letter V Activities

A few things we did for the letter v - read First Steps to Reading Little V, did a letter craft (made violets out of tissue paper), brainstormed words that start with v, and played with Josiah's new Vet's office! They had TONS of fun painting with vehicles. We used brown paint to look like mud, and I poorly drew some roads on poster board. They painted with the vehicles. Then, Lexy added stop sign. Afterwards, Josiah was covered in paint and had to take a bath. We put all the vehicles in the bathtub, and they gave them carwashes! Fun! We also did a spontaneous, mini science activity that Lexy came up with on her own. She rolled vehicles on the tile floor in the kitchen and then on the carpet in the living room. She said that it didn't roll as far on the carpet because it is soft and the tile is hard.





Bible

This week's Bible story was on the Prodigal son. Alex planned several cute crafts and games to do with them. We spent this week reviewing previous memory verses rather than adding a new one.

After our morning devotion and breakfast, I've started putting on the Singing Bible. While I clean up the kitchen from breakfast and throw in a load of laundry, the kids listen to it as they play. Lexy's favorite part is about the birth of Jesus. She and Josiah danced around and pretended to be Mary and Joseph, or maybe Josiah was a sheep...??? I really like the Singing Bible. It covers the Bible from Genesis to Revelation through songs with a narrator in between. Highly recommended!



Writing

Lexy is coming along with her writing, but we still have grip issues. We practiced writing the letter v. She also wanted to write a lot of names of people she knows. As I was washing dishes, she would ask me how to spell the name of someone she knew. I would tell her, and she would write it. I was really able to see what letters she wrote well and which she struggled with. She tends to write primarily in uppercase, except for her name which is a mixture of both.

Science/Math

Fortunately, both of Lexy's magazine subscribtions came this week which made planning easier on me. We took one afternoon and did her "Big Backyard" magazine. She wanted to do the whole thing and every activity in it.

She counted out 25 steps to see how far a kangaroo jumps. Then we took turns jumping to compare our jumps with the kangaroos.

We also played a game out of High Five. We practiced ordinal numbers.

We played a game of Go Fish. I'm needing to make my own version of this game so that we can practice higher numbers.

We made our own beaver snack and talked about shapes. My own little eager beaver got ahead of me, so we didn't cut the head into a circle or add triangle ears.



She made a triangle collage. She drew her own triangles by connecting 3 dots. Then she cut them out and created a collage.



We also played with popsicle sticks again, but she wasn't as into it this time.

Life School

Besides helping in the kitchen, Lexy helped me match 3 loads worth of socks.



Library Class

This week in Lexy's preschool storytime, they read and did activities revolving around denistry. She made a letter d necklace, picked cavaties out of playdough teeth with tweezers (cute idea, but realistically you can't pick out cavaties). They cut smiles out of magazines. Then on the magnetic wall they sorted teeth by the number of cavities found. She also sorted foods into 2 groups - good for your teeth or bad for your teeth.









Girls' Night

Daddy went to a late IU game one night. Since Lexy had taken a late nap, and I knew she'd have a hard time going to sleep anyways, we had a girls' night. After putting Josiah to bed, we made hot chocolate and popcorn and watched movies in Mommy's bed. Of course, she picked Madeline. As the picture shows, she had her Madeline doll with her. I couldn't get her to take her eyes off of the movie to take a picture. She LOVES Madeline. She's been picking up on lots of French words through the movie, books, ballet, and her Madeline doll that speaks French.



For some great ideas to do with your preschooler, be sure to check out the Preschool Corner!