R is for Rock

This is a little bit of a different post. I am behind on a few things and decided to do just one big wrap up post rather then two seperate posts. We do all our schooling together. I do put out seperate trays for each of my kids, but they are free to try each others trays. Mustang is required to finish her reading and writing before she can start trays, and eventually she will be reading to Charger. I also missed a number of pictures due to a dead battery, but I got most things.

Our letter this week was R, our sight word was Rock. Our phonics box this week had a rock, rattle, rolling pin, rhinosaurus, rabbit, and a ring. I didnt get a picture of it.

We read the book Race to the Finish from Dragon Tales. The Dragon Tales characters work together to race up rainbow mountain. It was a good fit for our R week.



We had our own race. We ran through the school room, through our tunnels and back again. It quickly turned into a recess for playing with the tunnels.





Then, we raced our wind up rabbit and chick. I got these at the Dollar Tree. This was great fun! They didnt walk in a straight line, so the race didnt work out, but we had a ton of fun letting them run around the kitchen.



We read Lots of Bots by Kiki Thorpe. It is from the Wall-E movie, but it was great! It is a rhyming book and has tons of onomatopeias as the sounds of robots are described. The pictures are fun, too. Highly recommended!



We also read Oliver Who Would Not Sleep! by Mara Bergman man. This book is about a boy who rides his rocket to the moon instead of sleeping. Very cute book! One of our new favorites. Afterwards, we made a rocket as part of our first stART project. I found the rocket craft idea on Adventures of a Flake.




We made fingerprint rainbows. I got this idea from Homeschool Creations. I helped Charger dip his thumb in the paints and then print on the rainbow lines. He did a great job of relaxing and not fighting me. Mustang quickly changed to fingerpainting, but it looked good too.




Charger colored R's with the rainbow crayons we made as part of our Raising Rock Stars lessons. Or at least he was supposed to. Instead he enjoyed lining them up.



Tot School trays-Charger is 27 months old

I gave Charger flashcards and foam shapes to match up shape and color. He was very good at this. Sorry for the terrible picture!



He played with his shape sorter. He loves this toy and asks to play with it often. He is great with the basic shapes, but he confuses the half circle and eclipse.



I gave him this tray to seperate the rabbits by color. He wanted NOTHING to do with it. He looked at it and said 'no thanks, Mom.' He did look at them with a magnifying glass later.




I got out our clothespins and sour cream container. Charger had a blast! At first, he put them on upside down. When I showed him how to put the clothespins on correctly, I didnt expect a change. I left the room and came back a little later to find him with all the clothespins on correctly. He was so excited he kept saying 'I did it, I did it.' I looked down and he said 'eight, Mom.' And there WHERE eight! He cant count to eight, but he knew there were eight.




While I was fixing dinner one night, I emptied an egg carton and he wanted it. I remembered how much I liked playing with them as a kid and handed it over. He loved hearing the squeak of the foam under his fingers and mashing in the egg slots (what do you call those?!).



Preschool Trays-Mustang is 4 years and 4 months old.

We continued with our Bob and Dod series from Progressive Phonics.. She does very well reading these. Mustang can also read the words The & And. She hates writing, though. She is getting much better at hearing the sounds in a word and actually spelled sun today when I asked her what letters she heard. I can tell we are getting close to real reading and its exciting!

At Cubbies she said 5 verses in 1 night-to my surprise-and got her first patch.

Mustang matched uppercase and lowercase letters on raindrops.




She built a felt rainbow.



I made her a basket of folding cloths-she didnt touch them.



And I had her measure ribbons, pipe cleaners and felt strips with these cool mats from Walking by the Way. Well I thought they were cool, but she only measured a couple before she said she was bored.




Trays for both kids:

I found these awesome lacing beads at the Dollar Tree! There are 2 1/2 packs here. Both Mustang and Charger enjoyed these a lot.



Sorting shapes. The bag holds foam circles and squares. They each sorted the shapes, Mustang used the blind-fold. Both did very well with this tray. Mustang tried to cheat, though.



Opening tray. There are two boxes, a jelly jar, a makeup bottle, a makeup compact, and a jewlery box. Charger was only able to open the boxes, Mustang could open the jelly jar and makeup bottle, but couldnt close them. They both needed help with the the makeup compact, but it held their attention as they tried many times.




Sorting rocks. Both Mustang and Charger liked this one. Charger loved the magnifying glass that I included on the tray.





Bingo markers on a rainbow. Charger only did a few of them. Mustang did the whole rainbow. The rainbow is from Making Learning Fun.




Sequencing Rabbits. Mustang really liked this one, Charger wouldnt touch it. I found this one on Childcareland.



And our sensory buckets:

Rocks & Rainbows




Life School

We dedicated Mini Cooper on Saturday. We went up as a family and stood before our congregation to let the Lord, family, and church know that we wanted to raise Mini and all of our children in the ways of the Lord and under the guidence of His word. Even if we teach them nothing else, it is our prayer that we will teach our children the fear of God and His amazing love and forgiveness.




I hope you enjoyed reading about our week! We will be taking the week off, but will be back in 2 weeks with the letter I. To check out what others are doing in their schools, check out Tot School for ages 1-3 and Preschool Corner for ages 3-5. God Bless!

Preschool Letter L

We took the week off last week, and it allowed me to really prepare for this week. Because of that, we had one of our best weeks yet. I wasnt throwing things together at the last minute and I was able to really focus on the kids and their learning.

Our letter this week was L. Our sight word was Love, in honor of Valentine's Day.

Reading Mustang continued onto book #2, Dod and Bob in the Progressive Phonics series. She has been pointing out words that use d, o, and g in them. She can read dog, God, bob and dod without prompting. It is exciting to see her learning the basics of reading.

She also worked on this language tray, an idea I found on My Montessori Journey.



I created a set of lowercase hearts, which are available here, and had her put them in order A-Z. I then gave her a set of uppercase letters from the Dollar Tree to match up with the lowercase letters. Finally she matched picture cards to their beginning letter sound. I sat and worked with her on this and was both pleased and surprised at what she did and didnt know.




She is very good with her letters, but we are still working on our beginning sounds. She has always had speech issues, she substitutes letters a lot. This is making it hard for her to correctly identify her sounds. I am very interested to see if, as she starts to realize the correct sounds in a word, her speech will improve.

Writing Mustang practiced writing her letters d, g, o, and b with the worksheets provided by Progressive Phonics. She does pretty well with these, but one afternoon she did not want to work on it. She kept procrastinating and took a good 2 hours of taking breaks and excuses before she finally finished. I think I may set the timer in the future. This is one of the few traditional school elements that I have her do and her response makes me very confident of my choice to use non-traditional styles for the rest of our learning.

Arithmatic Mustang sorted heart beads by color, counted them, and then placed the correct number with each set of beads. Another idea found on My Montessori Journey.





She counted hearts and clipped the correct number with a clothes pin. This download was from Nicole at Tired, Needs Sleep.




She worked on patterns with heart strips I made for her. They can be downloaded here.




and she sorted hearts by size




We combined Math and Language with this tray. Mustang had to match the numeral with the written word for each number. She only knew the number one by sight. But, we worked together and as she sounded out the numbers she was able to match them. I could tell she was very pleased with herself in the end. The hearts are available here.



Practical life trays:

Spooning gems with a melon baller into a heart mold.




Transfering heart petals with tweezers.




For this one, Mustang was supposed to put pipe cleaners into the holes of the parm container and then use the beads to decorate the pipe cleaners. Mustang had other ideas. She decided to thread the beads onto the pipe cleaners and then bend them into arches to create a tunnel. She also informed me that Mini Cooper wanted to watch her.




One of the most fun projects of the week was when we made candy necklaces :). Well, actually EATING them was the best part. I made sure there was one for me to make too :)




I hope you enjoyed reading about our fun. For a ton of great ideas to use with your Preschool student, check out the Preschool Corner on Homeschool Creations. God Bless!