Tot School Preschool Weekly Wrap Up The Mitten, Snow, Magnifying Glass and More!

I am so glad that January is over!  This winter is moving so slowly!  But, in honor of the lovely weather we have been having, we finished up this month with a few lessons focusing on snow.

Monday

• We read part of Snowflake Bentley.  I presented our microscope to the big kids, and the little girls wanted a chance to look, too (of course!).
• Since microscopes aren't really for little girls, we used our magnifying glass instead.  I pulled out an activity that I created 4 years ago for Mustang-matching little calendar pictures to big ones.  They loved it.
• We also made fake snow from a science kit.

Not so patiently waiting her turn.

Tuesday

• We read more of Snowflake Bentley (well kind of, I read it to the big kids and Mini Cooper listened.  Explorer wasn't interested today).
• Mini Cooper joined us in making snowflakes, Explorer had fun coloring her I is for Igloo printables (free from 1+1+1=1).
• We colored pictures of this week's president, Martin Van Buren.
• We read the Mitten and used (free) printables from 1+1+1=1 to retell the story.  The girls really loved it when we sneezed at the end and let the animals fall all over.
• I made snow play-doh and we made tracks in the snow with our toob animals.  I used this recipe and added a little vanilla to make it smell good.  
• We also looked at three part cards of animal tracks (free) from Montessori for Everyone.  
• We made Snoopy Sno-Cones with the big kids.
• And, of course we played a lot with the snow play-doh!

Wednesday

• We watched Katy and the Big Snow on YouTube because we couldn't find our book :(.  The reading was okay, but I know the girls will like looking through the pictures when our book surfaces.
• Introduced letter i using our sandpaper letters and sound disks from The Helpful Garden.
• Looked through the classification cards of winter clothes and items from 1+1+1=1 I is for Igloo pack.
• Used snowflakes and beads for cards and counters-wish I had taken a photo of this!
• Played with more play-doh.
• I didn't take pictures on Wednesday, I just wanted a hands on day.

Thursday I was not feeling well so the kids got a sick day (no substitute teachers in homeschooling).  Thankfully, I'm feeling better and looking forward to starting back up tomorrow.  We'll be talking quickly about shadows and Groundhog Day (since we missed it on Thursday), landforms, Olympics, and maybe the letter D if we can fit it in :).

Hope you had a great week!

God Bless,

Lisa

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Weekly Wrap Up: Kindergarten Edition Letters T & I

Reading



On Monday of this week, Mustang picked up our Dick and Jane Treasury and informed me she was going to read the ENTIRE book. And, she did. We have been reading this book on and off for awhile, and she knew most of the words. She worked to sound out the words she didnt know-or had me tell her when she couldnt figure it out. She read for about 2 hours straight. My DH even suggested she take a break at one point and she wouldnt hear of it! She was so excited to reach the end. She told me her next goal is to read ALL the books on our shelves. Lets hope not in one day :).

Phonics & and handwriting:
Mustang worked on her BJU K5 Beginnings curriculum. We focused on letters i and t, and the sight word it (really a review for her). We do not have the worktext for BJU (the curriculum was free to us!) so I supplemented with worksheets:

Letter tracers from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Color by letter: Uppercase and lowercase T from education.com.

Color by letter: Uppercase and lowercase I from education.com.

I also made our own tracer pages to work on the sight word it from Kid Zone.



She also found the letters I and T using this letter hunt sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Math:

In our BJU K5 math, we have been studying numbers 1-5. This is NOT new to Mustang, but we have been focusing on the dot patterns. We also picked up-free at our homechool swap-the teacher's guide for Saxon K5 math. Its not terribly useful without the worktext, but it has the cutest songs to teach how to write your numbers. This is something Mustang is still working on, so it is a welcome addition. She LOVES to sing.



She practiced writing her numbers using the number tracers from Confessions of a Homeschooler (we love her work!).



Mustang also worked on her number booklet from BJU. I gave her foam stickers to cover the shapes in her book.




To review her numbers-I made the count and clip cards (1-5 only) from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I added stars on the back for self checking.


This post from My Montessori Journey reminded me of some things I had still packed away.



The object of this Easter Springtime tray is to take and egg card and a basket. Then, one would fill with basket with the number on the egg. My Montessori Journey used a chicken card, but its from Kidsoup-which is a pay site and I am not a member. I did find these pretty eggs from-you guessed it-Confessions of a Homeschooler in her Easter pack.




I added star stickers for self checking.



What Mustang wanted to do was to separate them all by color. She is very stubborn lately, and is trying to figure out her boundaries! My usual focus is not whether or not she knows the material, its whether or not she wants to follow directions.




She made a graph using this cute animal cut out I found at education.com.

Other stuff:






Mustang finally started her Kumon Book of Pasting. It went pretty well. I am hoping that this will help her learn to cut on the lines better.



During 'free time' she almost always chooses some sort of art. She loves to draw and would do it all day if I let her!

I decided to do three separate wrap up posts this week, but fell asleep writing this one. Not sure if I'll get the others done or not! It's 80 degrees outside, so I think we will be going out to play. Hope you have a great weekend! God Bless!

This post is linked up at:



and

School Letter I

Mustang is 4 years 5 months, Charger is 27 months, and Mini Cooper is 6 months

I realize I say this often, but we really did have a fun time last week at school. I am always thankful to see how things work together-not always the way I ment them to-but fun and educational anyways.

We FINALLY had a nice day so we went for a Nature Walk. And we had our Raising Rock Stars lesson, too, but I havent blogged about that yet. I also introduced our short I sound box.

Here is a view of our shelves this week: The first set of shelves have books on top and then a few standard toys that stay out all the time {Noahs Ark, Toy Farm, Shape Sorter, Etcha Sketch, and blocks}. The second and third sets of shelves had trays and activities for the week.


Since our letter this week was I, I introduced insects. I found these awesome insect cards from Montessorimaterials.org. I purchased bugs from the Dollar Tree and was able to find everything except a fly and a butterfly (which I am now on the look out for!). I set out this tray and we matched up the bugs and cards together. I thought they might return to the tray on their own, but they didnt.



We also started our map learning this week. I is for Illinois, so we started there. I made this little book from printables I found on Homeschoolshare.com in the State Symbols Tab Books section.



We colored Illinois on our US maps which I found here, and put together our Melissa and Doug US Map.




Charger colored his Word World characters from Carisa's Word World Tot Pack.




He matched frogs and dragonflies with this cute Frog Food game from Filefolderfun.com. The dragonflies were soon flying around the room.




Charger transfered pom poms from one ice cream cone to another using tongs.



For this, I had Charger put a plastic Easter egg in each of the holes of the drying rack. He was a little frustrated when Mini Cooper rolled over to help out. She, on the other hand, LOVED it!





Mustang spent a lot of time working on the sound box, here is an insect she drew :)



She also played this inchworm game from Confessions of a Homeschooler.



And her new love, the Geo-Board I found for 75 cents at the thrift last week!



Mini Cooper spent the week army crawling after balls from our ball pit. She is ALMOST a crawler, she even gets up on all fours, but then she goes back to her tummy and army crawls and rolls till she gets where she is going.



Well, thats our wrap up for this week. We have a few more letter I things I'd like to do, which may or may not show up in next week's post, and then on to letter T. If you would like to see what others did this week, check out 1+1+1=1 and Preschool Corner. God Bless!

Sound Boxes: Letter I

This is the do-over version of this post lol! I came back to do a small edit 2 weeks later, and deleted the entire text. So, I am sorry if its not exactly like the first time.

I found the idea to make Sound Boxes from What DID we do all day? I love her blog and Montessori ideas. A sound box is a collection of activities to teach a phonetical sound. I thought I would start out with our letter of the week. I short I. I found out that this is a very hard sound to make a box for, as there are limited amount of objects that start with short I. But, I had a lot of fun making it and wanted to share the idea with you!


I got most of the ideas for what to put in the box from What DID we do all day?, but I added a few of my own.

Here's what's in our box:



Sandpaper letters

Letter I objects: Insect, Iguana and Instruments {which I since removed and replaced with Indian-which of course needs to be moved to Native American when I can find another I object}.

Letter I cards, one set was cut apart and put inside the I box. The other set I left together for matching. I downloaded these from Our Montessori Story

The Letter I for Iguana from our flashcard set.

Lowercase and uppercase I is for Inchworm sorting from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Find the I snowman game from PreKinders

How to Build an I template from Tired Need Sleep

I'll take I printable book from Alphabet Avenue {scroll down to Alphabet Readers Zip File}

Worksheets from Starfall that my friend made into a cool book for Mustang.

This was a bit of work, but Mustang really enjoyed exploring the box. And, all but the worksheets were printed on cardstock and laminated so *hopefully* they will be used by Charger and Mini Cooper {and any other kids} as well.

God Bless!