Week of May 30-June 3: Pinoeers

This week we learned about pioneers in preparation to go to Living History Farms!  We also reviewed the letter Pp, the number 3 and continued with the word IN.

Books

We read the following books this week:

Theme Introduction

This week, we introduced the theme in a manner we're going to when we start Preschool in the fall. We sat down, talked about the theme, which was pioneers, and we brainstormed what we already knew about it. I wrote it all down on the white board, and we referred back to it every day. Please don't judge me on my art skills.

Discussed covered wagons and what we would pack in ours.

Sight Word

We continued with the word IN. Arthur is getting really good at reading the words we've learned.

This week we continued doing some circling of the word, and we even found it in a work sheet that went along with the week's theme. All the work this week can be found at 3 Dinosaurs

Letter Review

As with every week, we practiced writing.

Math

Instead of working with our review number this week, we worked on some easy math as an introduction to addition. Since he's not there yet, I wrote the numbers, but he did all the  counting to get to the numbers.  We also did some simple which picture doesn't belong activities.

Field Trip

This week we were able to take what we learned in the classroom and apply it to the real world. We went to Living History Farms, which is a museum that shows what life was like on farms in 1700, 1850 and 1900 Iowa, and in a town in 1875 Iowa. Arthur had a lot of fun. He really liked visiting the farms and seeing the animals.  He also liked all the hands on activities there were.

Working in the corn field.

Looking cute

Learning at School

Making a seed bomb

Crushing up cinnamon

Next week we return to fairy tales and folk tales with Little Red Hen. We're going to finish up IN and start IT, review the letter Ll, and bake some bread!

Week of May 23-27: Little Red Riding Hood

Posting this a bit later than Friday because my son turned three on the twenty-second, and I've been super busy partying it up with him! But with all of our celebration, we were able to fit a little summer learning in. This last week we read did activities based on the story "Little Red Riding Hood."

Books

The books we read this week were the following: 

It was fun to read the story and then compare and contrast the stories to each other. Another fun activity we did was retell the story on our felt board. We found  awesome printouts here. It was fun to tell the story over and over again using these printouts.

www.pre-kpages.com/lrrh

Sight Word

This week we finished up our work with the word TO and started learning the word IN.

To finish up the word TO, we worked on in our interactive notebook. The interactive notebook pages are something that I created myself. They are simple and as Arthur gets more advanced, I'll alter what sorts of activities we include on our interactive notebook pages.

Interactive Notebook

When I introduce a new word, we always do the same activities. Other than my interactive notebook, I get all of my sight word activities from 3 Dinosaurs. The first thing we do is color the word. This word then gets added to a ring, and we use it as a flashcard. Every day we flip through the words to review and practice the sight words we've already learned.  Throughout the week we practice finding the word in sentences and tracing it.

Color the word flashcard pages

Practicing circling the word in sentences

Theme Work

This week we didn't do much in terms of work based on our theme. We did a few pre-writing practices and size activities. All found at 3 Dinosaurs.

Prewriting Practice

Size Work

Find the picture that is different.

More Prewriting Practice

Number and Shape Review

This week we reviewed the number 2 and the letter Rr. In order to review we practiced tracing the letters, using tracing sheets I found from The Measured Mom. We also "trace" the letters with goldfish using mats I found from Totschooling.  For reviewing numbers, we're doing Star Wars themed number activities I found from 3 Dinosaurs.

Letter Tracing

Star Wars Number Review

Miscellaneous Activities

One of the fun games Arthur and I do during school time is color sorting. I bought a package of multi-colored pom-poms from the dollar store, and then pained some toilet paper rolls to match the poms. Then I have Arthur sort the poms into the correct toilet paper roll. It's a great way to practice sorting skills, practice colors, and work on fine motor skills all at the same time!

This week we're going to participate in Homeschool Days at Living History Farms, so we're learning about pioneers! Look for the next post to be Friday or Saturday!

Week of May 16-20, Jack and the Beanstalk.

This week marked the start of our summer lessons. We finished up the totschool lessons that I had planned out for the year last week, and since Arthur loves going to school, I decided to continue lessons loosely through the summer.  Each week we'll frame our lessons around a different story or book. We'll continue to learn sight words, and we'll review letters and numbers as we go. 

For the summer lessons, I created a new board, see above, so we can start getting into a morning/beginning of class routine. I want to start this so that when Arthur starts school at 4, some of it will look similar to what we were doing at home.  We sit on the rug, and we sing songs and talk about what day it is, the days of the week, the weather, and what we're learning. We also take the time to read a book. This week we read three different versions of Jack and the Beanstalk.

After we read (or listened to) each book, we would talk about the similarities and differences in each one. Arthur was quick to point out that each story had Jack, three beans, a cow, a beanstalk and a giant. From there, the stories would all differ.

We completed several different activities revolving around the story. We used worksheets that you can find at 3 Dinosaurs and Totschooling. We love these websites, because they have so many great resources for different levels.

Coloring the large bags of Gold Yellow, the small Orange (3 Dinosaurs)

Syllable Dotting (Totschooling)

Completing the pattern (3 Dinosaurs)

Matching (3 Dinosaurs)

Shape Tracing (3 Dinosaurs)

We continued work on the sight word TO. 

Circle the word in the sentence (3 Dinosaurs)

Tracing the word (3 dinosaurs)

We practiced the letter Jj this week.  As we go back and review letters, we are taking the time to practice tracing the letters and building up our writing skills.

Finally, we completed an art project to go along with the story. We decided to use Mickey Mouse as our Jack, since we read that Mickey and the Beanstalk book this week.

Next week we're going to be reading the story Little Red Riding Hood, completing our lessons on the word TO, and learning the word IN, and reviewing the letters Rr and Ww.

A New Direction

It's been almost two years since I've used my blog for anything.  I've been busy. We moved from Florida to Iowa. We bought a house. We adjusted. Arthur has grown from a little baby to an almost three year old.

This last year I've been doing "Tot School" with Arthur. It's like a pre-preschool. It's very informal, it was meant to help him learn his lowercase letters, count to twenty, and learn fun themes through hands on activities. It has grown to so much more. This week, we started learning sight words. My almost three year old has been practicing tracing letters. He's so enthusiastic about learning, that I want to encourage his passion, to go with the flow. Something that I had originally only meant to do for a couple hours a week has turned into something we do at least an hour a day.

Next year, rather than sending him to preschool, we're keeping him home. I've been working hard at designing a curriculum to use with him. I've scoured Pinterest to gather materials and ideas, and I've put together a curriculum that I think will be fun and challenging for us both. I'm setting up our basement as a real classroom, and my goal is to send him to Catholic School four year old preschool reading.

That's where this blog comes in. I would love to share our journey here. Once a week posts about what we did that week in school. I will post where we found our materials, where we got our ideas, if they were not our own, and post about things that we created ourselves.

I'm really excited about this next journey in our lives, and I can't wait to share what we accomplish with all of you!

We are going to be doing some mini-Fairytale and book based themes and projects throughout the summer, so I'm going to start there. Preschool will go along with the school calendar! Blog posts will go up on Friday! Until then, here's my highlight from this week's Tot school!