Monday, September 23, 2013

Pre-School and K-4 Report

Welcome back to week 3 round 2 of our school year.  This week seemed to go the most smoothly .  .well, Thursday was a little iffy but I can fix that in the future by not planning 5 cutting, gluing and coloring activities in one morning for 3 different kids.  Wow.  I couldn't keep up.  We also did something fun every afternoon and I have found that really helps to diffuse the day by breaking up day.  Even if it is only a 10 minute thing to do it gets all three boys sat down, and doing something totally different. 

Here's are week in photos!
Monday - 
 Josh working on one of his math worksheets from our Confessions of a Homeschooler curriculum.  He's also working on using a pencil vs. a marker for some of his worksheets. 
 I ordered/downloaded this set of number poem cards from Teachers Pay Teachers that includes the full color card with the poem as shown above, a black/white card to color with the poem and one without the poem.  Such a simple resource to have when teaching numbers.
 Nate was working on making a pattern on the letter's E as that is the letter of the week for the younger boys. 
 Our craft on Monday was making Sandpaper Trees.  I always like to give credit for ideas I use but . . .I cannot find where this one came from currenlty.  For this craft, I cut out the trunk and some branches and had the boys make their tree.  Just as a side note, sand paper does not glue well to sandpaper - you need to glue it right to the paper; don't overlap it.  Lesson learned :-)
 Then we took tin foil and rolled it into balls and dipped them into paint to stamp leaves on our tree.

 The boys had fun and made three very different trees.  I love seeing creativity.

Tuesday: 
 Our Bible lesson this week was on young Timothy and how he learned from Paul to be fair.  We played a game where the boys drew out a card and I read what it said such as "Tell a boy with blonde hair - "I'll be fair""  Needless to say, since they can't read, I made lots of stuff up HA!  Not to mention that I brought this lesson into real life all week but saying, "Now, is that fair (being kind) or unfair?"

 Nate loves his curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler as well.  Cutting skills are a must . .. he likes to cut tiny pieces and this week I had them glue the pieces onto the pattern worksheets.  He enjoys that activity alot.
 The boys all love the Do-A-Dot markers - this is one of the activies that Josh got to do that was part of the preschool lessons.  Allowing him to do many of the same worksheets as the younger two on top of his own work has really made him happy.  He gets the best of both worlds - review of the younger topics plus introduction to the new topics.
 I came across a cute idea from Toddler Approved to make nature plates.  While the munchkin was napping, the boys and I walked around the yard and gathered things from nature that reminded us of fall.  We picked sunflower petals, purple flowers, leaves from the willow tree and yellow/orange leaves from the neighbors tree, black eyed Susans and some weeds.  Yes, weeds.  That was not my choice.
 One of the great things about this project was glue.  We tend to use glue sticks more often because they aren't quite as messy but for this project it was glue all the way and lots of it. 


 The finished projects were true masterpieces and included such things as glue waterfalls and glue snow drifts that took about 4 days to dry.  ;-)

Wednesday - 
 We started our morning with an unplanned game of Hungry Hungry Hippo that I turned into a counting activity.  Every time all of the marbles had been gobbled up, we had to count them.  This was also a good lesson for Josh that he can't win every time and he can't steal other people's marbles to make himself the winner.  Yes, he likes to win. 
 Josh loves clocks and time so we started our Kumon Telling Time book.
 Nate also is working out of a Kumon book on cutting and pasting.
 Awhile ago, my mom picked up all kinds of learning books/activities for the boys.  Josh had some down time on Wednesday so I pulled out one of the books and he did several pages. 

 Our afternoon activity is thanks to my mom.  The last time she had the boys they convinced her to buy a marshmallow pop kit and we made them today.  Nate liked the chocolate but Josh loved the whole thing. 


 Josh asked me to buy everything to make them again "sometime".  I wonder if I could put carrots in the chocolate??? HA!

Thursday - 
This is the first activity that really challenged Nate this week.  First, he had to put the elephant # cards in order from 1-10 and then count out the correct number of discs to put on each card.  I love to see him challenged :-)
Our "fun" activity I posted about on Saturday  . . .we put Training Wheels on Josh's bike, which he loves.  I often have to move the truck to the end of the driveway and park "horizontally" so that it blocks the end of the driveway completely so he and Nate can ride bikes up and down the driveway, into the garage and back out. 

I forgot to share this earlier - I mentioned my mom and picked up some fun stuff for the boys for school.  Well, this is another  item we just got out this past weekend.

 This is an awesome floor size tracing and activity book to use with dry erase markers.  I had put it away when my mom first got it because the boys weren't ready to use the markers yet.  But, a week or so ago, I got it out and leaned it against the wall; they finally noticed it on Saturday and have played with it every single day.  My husband said we need to find more of these because they love them :-)

That's our week!  I'm still holding off on the daily notebooks.  My thought now is to use it starting in the next 6 week rotation but do it in the afternoon when we do our art/craft/food activity.  That way they can do what they want in the book but if they go play, that is fine too.  I'm counting this year as just an introduction to it :-)