18th December, 2009
The Gingerbread Man and the Letter Kk (and one final Letter Mm)
Merry Christmas! We had such a busy week of lifeschool! We had not one, not two, but three playgroups this week. As always, I enjoyed meeting with my MOPS group, Wednesday was co-op, and Thursday we got together with a bunch of friends a a local inflatable indoor jump place. As always, we squeezed some school into Friday. Today will be our last post for a while. We’re taking the holidays off, and I have a date scheduled for little Spud to be born- Jan 13th at 2pm. I hope to squeeze in 2 IBB Units for the months of January and February. Maybe for the rest of the school year. IBB is designed to be year around, so we can pick and choose what we want to do. My goal is to work our way through the alphabet. We’re not quite halfway yet. Of course, we needn’t finish what we started, but we are working on an alpha book, and we’re into a nice routine. Starting in September, I’m thinking about bumping Tater to the kindergarten from My Father’s World, and continuing to do IBB, but using the curriculum designed for younger students for Cheezer with Tater joining us. But, that’s a long time off- and with a larger family!
This week we looked at IBB’s unit on The Gingerbread Man.
But first, we had to finish our M collage. I settled on doing money. I found a great printable from moneyinstructor.com. You do have to create an account to print the worksheets. Tater cut the money and glued it to her collage.
Before changing into our day clothes, we put on paint clothes and painted some great gingerbread paper mache boxes I got at Michael’s for 50 cents.
For the letter K- we did kisses. Tater wanted no part of the lipstick, but Cheezer was game, so monkey see- monkey do.
Hey Cheezer, you have lipstick on your teeth!
Cheezer- with a little help from Tater, colors our letter K clipart:
During Cheezer’s naptime, Tater made a gingerbread tree. I have not inherited my mother’s sewing or cooking abilities. Sadly to say- I did the ugly stuff with the bag decorator.
She’s getting pretty good at using a mixer. I made a mental note today to look into home ec programs for when she’s a little older.
Tater icing cookies:
Finished tree:
Back to our gingerbread men:
Yay!
And one last photo of Cheezer getting her tot school on:
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Happy New Year!
To see what other preschoolers did, please visit Homeschool Creations:
To check on other Tot Schoolers- visit Tot School.
Posted at 9:34 pm | Comments (7)
15th December, 2009
If You Give A Moose a Muffin and the Letter Mm
The Christmas slowdown has begun for us. I had every intention of doing our letter collage this past week, and by week’s end, we still hadn’t done it. Oh well. We did a lapbook on If you Give a Moose a Muffin and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. While I don’t think I got a picture of the completed book, we did have fun doing the activities.
Cheezer helps tater with the “M” mini book:
Moose Story Sequence (this one took a while)
Cookie Story Shadow Match (Tater’s Favorite):
In the very beginning of the week, we did make red and green tissue flowers. We also made brownies that mornin. She actually saw this craft on TV and insisted that we make them. She has tried to replicate the process by herself several times and does a pretty impressive job.
We’re going to be really slowing down over the next several weeks. Baby Spud is set to come in the middle of January. Tater will be doing some tracer sheets, and I’ll use the CLP activity book that I bought at the beginning of the school year. I’ve also thought about breaking out our Explode the Code series and working through those. Looking at them now, they are too simple for Tater, but the repetition and the review will be nice. Keep us in your prayers. Have a wonderful Christmas holiday!
To see what other preschoolers have done this week, visit the preschool corner:
Posted at 7:43 pm | Comment (1)
5th December, 2009
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and the Letter Mm
We had a really rough start to the week. The trip home from Alabama really took it out of us- well- me. However, looking back on our pictures, we really did get a lot done.
We are proud to be Official Itty Bitty Bookworms. You can follow us, and the other official bookworms, at the IBB blog. Each of us uses it differently. We use it as he foundation of our program. Each month when I get the kit, I choose which three books we’d like to cover that month. Each month has four. Three of the four weeks introduces a letter of the alphabet, ending the month with a review. Since we only plan for three weeks, we omit the review week.. I use the alphabet activities provided in the kit- a clip art page we use for our letter chart, and also a letter itty bitty book. It’s how we always start our week. The kit provides a template for each letter, but I prefer to use the templates available at DLTK. It takes a little digging to get to them, but they include both the upper and lowercase letters.
Additionally, I use the following blogs in order to supplement our activities:
Confessions of a Homeschooler- this mama has some awesome activities on her blog. I am heartbroken when we’re covering a letter she hasn’t done yet. She has GREAT printables. You’ll want to have a laminator, so you might resist the urge to check her out until you do.
Homeschool Creations- Jolanthe also provides a great deal of inspiration. Scroll all the way down to the bottom to “alphabet time” to see each letter’s respective activities.
Refined Metals Academy- is another site that I find myself surfing to get idea for letter activities.
This is not by any means the end of our inspiration, just the sites I seem to visit weekly. I have been more than pleased with our IBB curriculum. We were set to do a unit on a title called Mmm, Cookies this week. However, after reading the book, I decided not to use it. The activities in the kit were wonderful, so I decided to substitute one of our favorites- If You Give a Mouse a Cookie . We’d been invited to a Kid’s Cookie Party this week, and what else says Christmas like cookies!
As I said, I’d planned on taking it easy this week, but we really did get a lot done- naturally. We’re going to continue our study of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie next week, and may even get motivated enough to do a lapbook from Homeschool Share. I’ve already printed, cut, and laminated these wonderful activities from Suite 101.com. It was the first time I had used the site. It’s loaded with advertisements and difficult to navigate due to the fact, but the activities are cute.
The first thing we did this week was to start and finish the craft for our Kid’s Craft Exchange at There’s No Place Like Home Homeschooling Board. We took it all the way to Alabama and back without completing it. I was very proud of how they turned out, and the girls really do most of the work. Our gift was a modified version of this ABC fishing game from First Palette.
I was disappointed to miss our monthly MOPS meeting Tuesday morning. To get our Christmas activities started on time, we did a Santa Beard Calendar and a Christmas Garland.
On Wednesday Daddy took Tater to co-op while I went to an OB appointment. There’s no missing co-op.
Thursday we missed another MOPS activitity but did make our Kids Cookie Party at my girlfriend’s house. Mainly, I sat and let my kids run a muck.
Friday- we managed to get down to “school”. These wonderful M&M activities came from Confessions of a Homeschooler (I didn’t even use half of them).
Language Arts
Pre-writing skills:
Letter Mm alphabet sort:
Letter Mm Chart:
I let Tater do this completely independently this week. She did a great job and was quite proud.
Math – Tater has been getting much better her letter recognition. Once we get 6, 9, and 10 out of the way she’ll know 1-10. She can count, she understands one to one correspondence, just the visual recognition isn’t there quite yet. We introduced the number zero. I remember struggling with the idea in the first grade, so she’s already smarter than her mama!
This activity was a HUGE hit. Who doesn’t love eating M&M’s in school!
Literature
We read for 30 minutes before bed every night, however, something about reading during “school” is so calming. We stuck to the series for our school books. I picked up two more at Kohl’s this afternoon that we’ll include next week.
Life School- I can’t believe I’ve never thought to get Daddy to take a picture, but one a month they trudge out to Home Depot or Lowes for one of their Kids How-To clinics. Home Depot hosts a Kids Workshop on the first Saturday of every month. It is designed for children aged 5-12, but Tater has no problem completing the project. Home Depot seems to have less- commercial, more useful projects than Lowes. I was kind of surprised when I saw the pictures that they used no goggles, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were out. For completing the project, each child gets a pin and a certificate of completion. Both stores offer a kid’s sized apron to keep and take home.
Lowes has their Build and Grow Clinics more often- so far every Saturday this week. You sign up on line in order to participate. Each child gets an apron, a patch to commemorate that activity, and a pair of safety goggles. Again, Tater has no problem participating in the activities. She loves to go “build” with Daddy. Mama enjoys the Saturday morning break.
To see what other preschoolers did this week, please visit Preschool Corner
Posted at 10:34 pm | Comments (4)
30th November, 2009
Ten Fat Turkey’s and the Letter Nn
It has been a while since I updated. We got little done in the way of school the week on the 16th because my grandfather passed away. We had already planned to be in Alabama for the holiday, but we left earlier than anticipated. We used the week to participate in our normal activities. We went to MOPS and Playgroup. We did start our discussion on the Letter Nn, and we finally got around to Hodge Podgeing some leaves we’d collected.
We packed and left for Alabama on Friday- which is usually our busy school day. We did do a lot of school in Alabama. There isn’t much to do in the thriving Metropolis of Marion, Alabama. Once again, Itty Bitty Bookworm proved it’s worth. It took me minutes to prepare for our study of Ten Fat Turkeys.
But First
Alphabet:
We didn’t get around to our typical alphabet activities, but we did do our collage. For the letter N- we chose noodles.
Math:
After reading Ten Fat Turkeys we worked on a clothespin counting game from the IBB kit. I even took my laminator all the way to Alabama. To say that I am addicted to it is an understatement. I’m so glad I chose to get the cheapy version, but once it has melted its last, I am going to get the Xyron so that I’ll have the ability to make stickers and stuff. Not that I’ll actually get into it, but I’ll have the ability.
The game came in handy all week long. Tater even put some imagination into it, used the clothes pins to give the turkeys legs, and made her own little turkey army. Clothespin game in action:
On Tuesday we got up early, got all dolled up and drove an hour to the nearest Portrait Innovation. Did I mention lack of stuff in Marion? I wasn’t pleased- at all- with any of the photos, so we’ll be doing them again. There are 2 of us missing in this one, but we’ll never manage to get all of us in one. Funny thing though- the ones IN Alabama- absent.
Life School:
More IBB:
Wednesday, we were back to school. Daddy read Ten Fat Turkeys again. It was so cute because Tater knew the nonsense words that Daddy didn’t know.
My favorite activity of the week was the hand print turkeys. We made 2 sets, one to keep and one to leave for Manini (Tater’s word for my mama). The poem came from the IBB kit.
More Talkin’ Turkey:
We talked about being thankful and completed this Give Thanks Turkey Craft from DLTK- Kids. I had Daddy start to help her with it, but, well, he’d be the parent doing the science project for his kid. We were just thankful to have the time with Daddy, and that he was interested- if even for a little while- in joining us.
Then! Tater made a red velvet cake with Manini. I love this picture!
On Thursday, Daddy helped Ada do an itty book on the First Thanksgiving, and then we called it a week. I’m sorry that I don’t remember where the booklet came from.
Posted at 6:31 pm | Comments (4)
13th November, 2009
Hush! A Thai Lullaby and the Letter Rr
The R says rrrr, the R says Rrrr, every letter makes a sound, the R says rrrr. If you don’t have Letter Factory from Leap Frog get it. It’s amazing at teaching phonics to youngins. If you have a Costco card, they have it there cheap right now.
Letter Rr
This week we studied the Letter Rr, and since we read Hush! A Thai Lullaby with its rice barn, and since when talking about the letter Rr, you must, simply MUST do a day on rainbows (be sure to scroll down [or click] to see the our first lapbook- on rainbows). We just absolutely HAD to dye some rice. I’ve been planning to do this for- well, ever, and was excited to finally have the motivation to do it. For whatever reason, Tater squished each of the plastic bags over her head. It really brought to mind those old ziploc commercials.
The finished product was great. We used the opportunity- again- to talk about primary and secondary colors. Incidentally, our yellow and blue makes green color turned out better than the out of the box green.
With our rice, we made a rice rainbow.
When we discussed the Letter Rr, we did our “Little R” booklet and our R chart.
Math
Since I got my laminator, I was finally able to complete the clothespin counting cards that I downloaded free from CurrClick.
Itty Bitty Bookworm
Tater had a great time reading the book Hush! A Thai Lullaby
We talked about ladders. Daddy used one to paint our foyer this week, and well, its residence has been the foyer for some time. She built a ladder from craftsticks.
We colored the character cards from the IBB kit. Tater made a “rice house” for her elephant.
Who came next? We used the character cards to talk about “who came next” in the book. We love sequencing.
Life School
On the swings with Daddy. Not sure why she wanted on the baby swing.
First time playing the Wii. She’ll be a better gamer than me by the weekend.
To see what other preschoolers have done this week, click here.
See our previous post for more information about our picks for this week.
Posted at 11:35 pm | Comments (6)
9th November, 2009
Week in preview
We’re doing IBB’s unit on Hush! A Thai Lullaby this week. We’re also working on the letter R and Rainbows. Recently, Tater has really showed a very young and affinity for information seeking. Information Literacy is a positive when having a mama that’s a stay at home librarian. Suddenly the big piece of card stock inside of the huge mailer marked “diploma”, (that, incidentally wouldn’t fit in the mailbox so was left at our front door, and incidentally, flew away, but fortunately, I just happened to find in the bushes before a rainstorm hit) is worth a more- but not as much as my student loans. Last week she wanted to go the the library to get books on penguins; today she wanted to search on the computer for a picture of a raccoon because she’d never seen one. I am thrilled that she knows where to go to get information, and to continue her search for information, I’d like to strive to provide companion books that are relevant to what we’re studying that week.
To follow the multicultural theme, I thought of:
Each of these books have illustrations from around the world. The former sets to prove that despite our differences, we are all the same on the inside. The latter showcases cats from around the world.
For our study of rainbows I chose Planting a Rainbow, which incidentally isn’t about rainbows, but colors of the rainbow. Since we studied the growth cycle of the pumpkin last week, this book seemed a perfect follow up and review of the growth cycle. Naturally, since we are studying rainbows, we must absolutely do Noah’s Ark. I love Lucy Cousins’ (think Maisy) Noah’s Ark. Although this book doesn’t specifically discuss the promise of the rainbow, it is a great and simple book for Noah’s Ark.
Tara, the creator if Itty Bitty Bookworm has started developing Bible Mini Units. She sent us a download of Noah’s Ark, so we’re going to be doing that this week in addition to the IBB unit on Hush! A Thai Lullaby.
To compliment Hush! I’m excited to use my childhood favorite with new illustrations by Marla Frazee- Hush, Little Baby. You’ll fall in love with the red-headed big sister in this version.
We had a great day today, and I can’t wait to share it with you! We dyed rice in every color of the rainbow and we’re now waiting for it to dry to craft with it. I only wish we had made more.
Posted at 10:37 pm | Comments (2)
5th November, 2009
Mid week check in
I just wanted to take a minute and upload this Library Thing Widget. I can’t get it to load in the post, so you’ll have to see the widget at right. See a theme? We’re using Itty Bitty Bookworms unit for Time to Sleep this week- from November year 1. We haven’t made it to the activities yet, but we’ve started our own work on the letter B (great activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler). We’ve also been to the library to check out books on bears- both fiction and non fiction. We’re trying to grasp the concept of hibernation right now. We have a “cave” set up in our living room with all available stuffed animals. Now that we’ve read Time to Sleep, well add the other characters (that we have) that also hibernate to the den. We did our reading before bedtime in our cave in the floor, and the floor is no place for a Mama 29 weeks pregnant.
Tater is in a not listening- testing my boundaries stage that is really testing my ability and resolve to home school. With that in mind, we may not get to much this week in the form of curriculum. She’ll always sit still for a book, so for that I am grateful.
Tomorrow is a big day for us. Tater goes in to have her dental work done. She is going to be sedated. Then immediately afterwards Mama is going to the dentist. I broke a molar today. I had great teeth pre-pregnancies, not even a cavity. Now I’m destined for dentures I’m sure.
Posted at 1:25 am | Comment (1)
31st October, 2009
“P” is for Pumpkin (Seeds)
Like always, the week started out slow. Since we didn’t get any “school” in last week, I did tried to squeeze in the letter D so that we could complete this month’s letters from Itty Bitty Bookworm- H, D, and P before moving onto November.
D is for dot.
She also did the “My Letter” book that is included in IBB for each letter. She has great coloring skills. I remember when I was in the third grade, I was especially proud of a picture I had colored and went fishing for a compliment from my teacher. She told me that I colored like a kindergartner. It’s one of those things that has stuck with me forever. I resigned to the fact that I wasn’t good at it so I just didn’t, ever, again. As an adult, I’ve discovered that I am quite creative. I can even do a little drawing, and I like to imagine if I had been encouraged instead of humiliated, how I might have enjoyed such things more. To see that Tater naturally loves to do something that took me decades to gain confidence to do makes me proud and gives me hope that I can do this homeschool stuff, if just to shelter her from the disparaging comment of a tired, underpaid educator who just isn’t thinking.
This week was the Halloween party at co-op. Ain’t she cute!
I did some pumpkin activities available from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I only took pictures of 2 of the activities I printed from this site, but it was a great resource this week. I did get a laminator recently, and I absolutely love it. Tater loves it too; she asks to make things “hot”.
We did read the book for this week’s curriculum- It’s Pumpkin Time. I was the story mom at co-op, and took it to read- and then- misplaced it somewhere between here and there. Hopefully, I’ll find it sooner, than later because it is a library book. On our trip to the library this week, we picked up some other pumpkin books to supplement this weeks activities.
When we talked about carving a pumpkin, Tater seemed to be worried that it would be dirty so we washed it.
We scooped out its innards.
She ran to get the book It’s Not A Pumpkin to use as a template for drawing the face on her Jack-O-Lantern.
SMILE!(okay, so I drew on the mouth)
We used the seeds for our alpha template. P is for Pumpkin (Seeds).
From IBB, we made a paper plate pumpkin. In studying activites for pre-writing, I’ve read often that tearing paper is a great one, but, well, seeing is believing. I couldn’t believe how much difficulty she had with this. I’m quickly discovering that if it doesn’t come naturally to her, then she doesn’t want to do it. This pumpkin was a struggle.
We made a P chart, and yes I spelled potato wrong and had to cover it up. Since Dan Quayle, every time I write it, I think “don’t spell it wrong, don’t spell it wrong”, and since I’m thinking of the e- I write the e. Ugh.
Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere pumpkins.
Our jack-o-lantern:
The pregnancy is starting to wear on me. I was the mom who let my children go to bed when they were tired. It wasn’t uncommon for one or both to be awake at 10pm- or honestly, even later. Recently, especially since Daddy started working until very late in the evening, I find myself watching the clock. Tonight at 6:30, I was ready for bedtime, but instead, we headed to bed to read. Reading to my children gives me the greatest joy I have an addiction to books and information that I love to share with my children. It’s instantly calming for all of us. Tater has recently became very interested in penguins. She asked this week to go to the library to get books on penguins. As a librarian and a mother, it was a very proud moment that I’ve written on my heart. We read about penguins for over an hour tonight. We also read our Halloween and pumpkin books again, and this really great book on Rapunzel.
And, don’t worry, I didn’t forget Cheezer. She isn’t a kid that would ever go hungry. Whenever she’s hungry, she brings me a bowl or plate and says “eat, eat, eat”. This week at a friend’s house she started plundering through cabinets until she found a bowl, took it to my friend, stood on tippy toes grunting “here here here”. My friend got it, and Cheezer got fed. I’ve never had to worry about her appetite or even being picky. I know – she looks like a little boy, and the hand my down pjs from my nephew doesn’t help, but, to me, she’s so cute, I could cover her in syrup and eat her!
Posted at 12:11 am | Comments (7)
16th October, 2009
Mrs. Wishy Washy’s Farm~ Oct 13-16
We spent Monday in our car, returning from a quick trip to South Carolina to meet up with my parents for the long weekend. We spent Tuesday catching up on sleep, and then swimming lessons. On Wednesday we had co-op. On Thursday and Friday- we got around to doing some school. Tater made up for the lost hours by insisting we do school for 5 hours Friday night.
She’s getting very good at lacing cards. I picked these up at a yard sale for 50cents after I plopped down $11 for an inferior set at Borders. Go figure.
The letter for this week was “H”. I decided to start using templates that included the lowercase letter also. Her finished book won’t be uniform, but it just makes more sense this way. We did hearts and then an Hh letter chart.
On Thursday we read Mrs. Wishy Washy’s Farm for the first time.
On Friday we did some very cute activities inspired by Wishy Washy. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to introduce the color wheel, so after reading the book again, we focused on the page where the animals are in the hardware store. We talked about primary colors. The concept was a little much for her, but she did understand by the end of the activities that two colors mixed together make another.
We made our first T chart. This was a suggestion in IBB, and it was PERFECT for us. We just went to the Zoo in Columbia South Carolina, so we made our chart with two columns: Animals on Wishy Washy’s Farm- and animals we saw in the Columbia, SC Zoo. We did a picture walk through the book, and then looked through our pictures from this weekend.
We painted with bubbles. We got better as we did it more and more, but the pictures I saw online were much more pretty than ours turned out. Tater’s face- however- was beautiful.
After we scrubbed and changed, I decided to introduce patterns. Tater has no grasp on numbers yet. She’s only three, so I’m just dropping it. She can count and quantify- but number recognition is lost on her. I almost didn’t do this IBB activity, but it took only a few minutes to explain it- and she was hooked- and did it for over an hour. (glimpse the color wheel in background0
As I’ve said before, the great thing about IBB is the print and use ease of it. I print out the entire month and divide each book into its respective folder. When that week arrives, I spend just a few minutes each night preparing. On weeks I have more free time, I pick more activities to do, when there is less, I prepare for less. I can’t wait to get my laminator- so that I’ll be able to use all the items in the kit fully.
Today Tater finished everything I had planned for her. We did a lot today, and she wanted to do more, so I got out some tracer sheets that I’d found this summer, and- as always- the worksheets from the CLP activity book. I’m not a worksheet mom, but if seat work is what she wants, seat work is what she’ll get.
And as always: Cheezer
Next week I haven’t decided if I’ll do Barn Dance or Ten Apples Up On Top. Both books are above Tater’s reading level, but the activities with both are really fun. I’m leaning towards Barn Dance. She made a scarecrow in co-op last week and has been talking about them every since. Decisions Decisions.
Posted at 8:27 pm | Comments (11)
13th October, 2009
Will You Be My Friend?
This week everything came from Itty Bitty Bookworm. Each month focuses on three letters- one for each week, and then a review week. We’re lagging a little behind, still doing lesson plans from September. We love them so much, I can’t just skip them! It was so nice just to print everything out and prepare, and go. I did use contact paper on some of the IBB activities so that Tater could get more enjoyment out of the games. I did get the $ for a laminator for my birthday- but I spent it on Pampered Chef instead. For now- the contact paper will do.
We reviewed L, F, and E with this cute little mouse-cheese match game. It coordinated wonderfully with the book for this week, Eric Carle’s Will You Be My Friend.
IBB also included a cute color match game. I covered this in contact paper also. Tater loved it and asked for it several times this week.
Tater loves to read her books all on her own. She spends most of the week memorizing the words and typically knows it by heart at the end of the week. This was a nice change for her, since the book allows for ad-libbing- she loved it.
We used these animal cards from IBB to make our own head/tails matching card. After the were color, cut, and covered in contact paper, she even took the opportunity to put the animals in the correct place in the book.
And as always- for our weekly Cheezer picture:
Tater made a snake out of a paper plate. She’s an expert at using glue now- without making a huge mess.
It isn’t a week without a cooking project. This week, as it often is, they requested muffins. Tater loves showing her little sister the ropes.
I have been looking for a Memory type game for a while now. I don’t want anything character based, and it seems that Dora and Blues Clues have cornered the market on kid games. When I saw this set on sale at my Wegmans, I snatched them up- and they were a huge hit. We can even talk about “healthy food” vs “junk food”. Perfect.
I also picked up this Eric Carle card alpha letter match. It took her quite some time, but she got through it. It was perfect that this week we did an Eric Carle book this week.
We had a break from swimming lessons this week, but we did have two playgroups- one from MOPS, and one from our co-op. She loves both, so much so that I do have a little guilt that I don’t “let” her go to school, but she is learning SO much at home. The one on one hands on she gets from home can’t compare to the “socialization” she’d get from preschool.
Posted at 10:58 pm | Comments (5)
