Alphabet Eggs

Now that Nathan is older, there is no way that he wants to miss out on the fun when Naomi and I do "school". I put school in quotes because really, with as much fun as we have, it seems almost wrong to call it school! :-) I DO call it school though, especially the fun stuff, because I want the kids to have a very positive attitude towards school, and who doesn't love doing hands on things and having fun? Anyways, I digress!

Since Nathan wants to do school with us, I make a big effort to always have something ready for him to do as well. One of my very favorite sites, No Time For Flashcards, is starting a new series called "Alphabet for Starters". I am THRILLED because I know the type of activities they come up with will be tons of fun, and perfect for where Nathan is at. Here is the first post in the series, and as soon as I saw it, I knew we had to do it! Here is what we did.

First I got some of our larger Easter eggs, and filled 8 of them with the magnetic letters from our Leapfrog fridge set. Then I put them in this cute bucket, and put it on a cookie sheet so they would stick to the tray. Since letters are pretty new to Nathan I added the device the letters go into so he could hear the names of the letters from it and from me.

I added in one sweet boy, and he got right to work opening up the eggs. Opening up the eggs is a great workout for their little fingers too!

 

As soon as he opened up an egg, he put the letter in the box to  hear what it was. He could get them in but as you can see by his frown, it took a little concentration!

 

He liked hearing what letter it was, but then he quickly wanted to move to hearing the ABC song again, as you can see by him pushing that button.

 

Nathan enjoyed this so much that we're going to do it again, only I'm going to put some of our different shapes in it. I want to end this by saying in no way did I drill Nathan on his letters, or do I think that is appropriate for a 22 month old! This was a fun activity that gave he and I something special to do together, and was a great way to expose him to some letters. We talked about the letters as he opened the eggs, and moved them around on the tray, but that was it. Fun and exposure it what I think it's all about at this stage!

Karla

Gardening Unit

With the weather warming up, and us spending much more time outside, we have been cutting back on the amount of school that we've been doing. Even though it's been scaled back, we still have done some very fun things! Our theme for the month of May was gardening. We based our studies off of Jolanthe's Garden Preschool Pack, and all of the printables you see are from there. We read all sorts of books to do with gardening, seeds, flowers, and growing. Our favorites books were Jack's Garden, by Henry Cole, and From Seed to Plant, by Gail Gibbons.

To kick off our unit we went to Lowe's and bought some new planters, soil, seeds, and flowers!

We scooped the dirt.

And ate the dirt! Yum!

What's a gardening unit without eating a little bit of dirt?? Washing it down with water made it all better! ;-)

With the weather being warm we spend TONS of time out on our deck. Here Naomi was putting sequence strips in order to go along with the story Jack's Garden. We did this many times, and was an excellent skill for her to practice. It was not only a great reinforcement of what order things happened in the story, but also of the stages of seed to plant.

Playing a matching game with our garden vocabulary cards.

Sorting seed packets based upon type.

Our first sensory tub. It was a hit! We used it in many different ways. The first was to just let Naomi explore and play with it, and use her imagination.

The other thing we did with our sensory tub, was to use it to reenact the story of Jack's Garden, and thus the stages of seed to plant. Here Naomi made rows in the soil, and was planting her pretend seeds.

Pretending to water her "garden".

Tending her growing plants.

Acting out the part of the story where the birds came to visit the garden.

Another view of our sensory bin and some of the tools we used with it. This was the first time I did a sensory bin and it was a lot of fun! If you aren't sure what a sensory bin is, just Google it!

Nathan liked the sensory bin too, but he was only allowed to play with it outside!

We did the celery in colored water experiment to show how water travels up the veins of the celery from the bottom to the top.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but it actually worked out pretty well. When you looked closely you could really see where the water had traveled in the veins of the celery.

We planted bean seeds exactly like it said to in our book. Bean seeds are supposed to sprout quickly and be a great way for kids to see the process. Ours totally bombed. All they did was rot.

Round two with the bean seeds! The people that did their seeds this way had sprouts within 24 hours. Ours did nothing. Epic fail. Again. Maybe I shouldn't have done a gardening unit?? lol Oh well, we watched a time lapsed video of seeds sprouting so we covered it that way. Who needs real life when you have YouTube?? Aaahh well, you can't say I didn't try. *sigh* To preserve my self-confidence I'm blaming it on a bad batch of bean seeds. ;-) We did plant marigold seeds and they are growing beautifully!

Here Naomi is using clothespins to mark the letter that her vocabulary words began with.

We also spent lots of time playing outside and in the mud!

Of course Nathan is a part of just about everything we do. I believe he gets a lot out of it in his own way. However, I do try to plan some things that are specific just to him. I have been talking with him about things that are soft or hard, quiet or loud. Here he is transferring these large pompoms into a metal bowl. While he did this I talked to him about how the pompoms were soft, and very quiet when we put them in the bowl.

Now Nathan is all boy, so to keep his attention I mixed it up a bit and started tossing the pompoms into the bowl. He thought that was great and LOVED throwing them in!

When we were done with the pompoms we pulled out his little, wooden blocks. This time I talked to him about how the blocks were hard, and how they were loud when we dropped them in the bowl. It was good I did these after the pompoms because he loved the sound the blocks made as he dropped them it. Had I done these first, I think the pompoms would have been anticlimactic.

Of course after you put something in, you must dump it out!

We also practiced stacking the blocks on top of the bowl. I was amazed how well he did with this! He always impresses me with how well coordinated he is. He liked stacking the blocks, but his favorite part was knocking them down!

You always hear about the terrible twos and how horribly kids behave. This was not our experience at all. Personally, I think age one to two is what is challenging behavior wise. Granted, I haven't raised any teenagers yet!! By one children have reached the age where you need to start setting some limits, mostly for things that relate to their safety. What is always challenging for me is finding that balance between setting those limits, but keeping it appropriate for their age and understanding. That's why I think this age is harder. By two, limitations and consequences are established, and I didn't have to question whether or not Naomi understood. Anyways! All that to give a background to this rather hilarious picture. Nathan was just firmly told no as he was getting into my end table where I keep my breathing treatment stuff. He makes the most horrible face when he's not allowed to get into something! I couldn't resist taking a picture because it's cute and adorable in it's own way. By the way, two seconds after this picture he was back to his smiling, happy little self. :-)

Here you have a little summary of some of the things we did this past month. I wasn't able to capture everything, but you get the idea! We really enjoyed our gardening unit, and I feel like Naomi has an excellent understanding of what plants need in order to grow. She also learned all the parts of a plant, and has fun pointing different parts out when she finds a flower or plant outside. Despite our bean seed failures, it was a very successful unit!

Check out what others are doing at Preschool Corner and 1+1+1+1! I am not doing a theme unit for June since we are spending so much time outside, and have family coming to visit. I do however have some fun little activities planned to keep things exciting around here. I will share them later this month as I find the time. Until then!

Karla

Raising Rockstars Preschool: Unit L

I have started a new preschool program with Naomi! It is called Rasing Rock Stars Preschool, and was developed by Carisa over at 1+1+1=1.  We haven't been doing it very long, but are so far thrilled with it. As much as I love planning for all the school things I do with Naomi, I wanted a program that I could use as a guide to cut down on SOME of my planning time. However, I needed something that still allowed us the time and flexibility to do our thematic units. This program is perfect for that! It is broken into weekly units that has a focus letter, sight word, number, shape, color, Bible verse, life application and song. It's simple to use, and doesn't take us much time. Naomi knows all her letters and sounds, but this is a fun way to keep up on them, tie in our Bible time, and promote consistency in our day. I'm not planning on sharing what we're doing with this program regularly on my blog, but I thought it would be fun for everyone to get a peek at some of the things we're doing every day. I have more fun sharing the activities we are doing from our thematic units, which are in addition to this program! This week the unit focused on the letter L, number 1, sight word "see", and Matthew 5:16 was our verse. The song for the week was "This Little Light of Mine", which went along perfectly.

This is our main learning board for the RRSP program. On the top left is all the printouts I need for the week. On the bottom left is our memory verse for the week. In the middle is life application for the memory verse. After going over the life application one time, Naomi likes to "teach" me the life application portion. :-) On the top, to the far right is our song. The bottom pockets are, from left to right, a prop for our song/memory verse, and then key cards to review for our number, letter and sight word. Once we are done with a unit we put the key cards in the pockets for easy access for review. The items on the board get switched out each week to go along with the new units, but stay in the same format, so it's very easy to use. Making this bulletin board took me back to my teaching days!!  I was going to mount (well have Jim mount!) the board on the wall, but couldn't decide on the perfect location. What we've ended up doing is not mounting it, and this has been perfect for us! I keep it in the office, but it's easy to move our whole program around the house with us, if we need to change locations for our school some mornings. Variety is the spice of life right!? 

Part of this program includes a PowerPoint show to go along with each unit. Naomi and Nathan both really like these! Here is a shot of the kids watching the show one morning as they were eating their breakfast. We had a busy schedule that particular day, so it was a good way to squeeze two things in at one time! Hooray for laptops!

Doing some practice lines in order to get ready to write L.

Finding L in our verse, and then tracing a large L.

Writing the L on our L vocabulary words.

Cutting out the vocabulary cards all by herself! I like that this program requires some type of cutting every day. It's great practice for Naomi and she's getting quite good at it!

Naomi reading the "see" sight word book. We read this together every day.

Writing her L's. She got very good at these!

Cutting out "L is for....." discussion cards. Naomi wrote the L on all of them, we talked about them, and then she cut them out.

Each week there is an activity where you cut out your memory verse, tape the stirps together, and then measure to see how long it is. Naomi was very impressed that it was taller than Nathan and her!!

Coloring her Bible verse. I don't think we'll do this next week as she's not really into coloring.

Color by number words! She didn't mind doing this, but again, I think we'll do play-doh, or something else so practice the sight word, other than coloring. I am proud of how good she's getting at it though! I have to say, I always hated coloring too so I can't blame her. lol There is also a craft that goes with the memory verse that we enjoy, but I didn't manage to get a picture of us doing it.

Depending on the week, and Naomi's interest level, we do some additional letter activities. I normally find these at Confessions of a Homeschooler's printables, or Homeschool Creation's printables.

L is for Ladybug! Naomi really enjoys these dot paints.

Cutting out pictures that begin with L and making a collage.

Each weekly unit has a focus color. Since Naomi has known her colors forever, I was just going to skip over this part of the program, until I had a brainwave! Naomi may know all her colors, but a certain boy who just turned one doesn't, and what a fun way to include him in our school time! The color for this unit was yellow, so all three of us went on a yellow hunt. This is what we came up with: a whole basket FULL of yellow things! Our hunt was so much fun and all of us had a blast! What I couldn't have predicted was how much the kids would actually play with this basket of mismatched yellow junk.... errr.... treasures. ;-) I am the queen of organization, so our toys are all nicely sorted by type and category. The kids play with all our toys a ton, but have never had a basket full of yellow stuffed animals, play food, balls from the ball house, Easter eggs, blocks, bath toys, baby toys, etc, etc. I couldn't believe what creative, out of the box, play this lead to! Is there such a thing as too organized!?!? Naaahhhh...... ;-) 

 Nathan really dug these color cards I printed off from Homeschool Creations, and laminated for him. I used a scrapbooking tool to round all the corners so he didn't poke himself. As you can see in the previous picture, we had fun matching the real objects to the pictures. It was fun because everything was yellow, but it opened the door to some great vocabulary development too.

Nathan's favorite items by far were the many ducks. This boy LOVES ducks! He can say duck and will quack on command!

This hat provided lots of fun too. Not only was it super cute when he would try and wear it, but it lent itself to several games. The favorite hat game was taking some of the smaller items in the basket, such as the eggs and blocks, and tossing them into the hat. Nathan though this was HILARIOUS!

Another favorite game (that I didn't get a picture of) was with a yellow stacking ring. I would hold the ring, and he had fun experimenting to see what yellow objects would fit through it, and drop to the ground. He thought it was funny when things would fall through the hole, and also when they just sat on top of the ring. By the end of the week he was holding the ring himself and dropping objects through it. What great fine motor development! I could go on and on, but needless to say, we had lot of fun with our yellow basket!

Nathan even did some yellow dot painting! He loves to color, draw, and paint. I have a feeling he might be very artistic!

So there you have it! An inside look at some of the things we do every week! As the weather warms up, and we spend more and more time outside, we will be doing less "paper" school, and more "life" school. I love all the activities we do, and so does Naomi, but we are also looking forward to warm days, playing in the yard, and splashing in our little pools. Check out what others are doing at 1+1+1=1 and Preschool Corner. Until next week!

Karla