Mardi Gras Theme - February 14-18, 2015

This was a really short theme that overlapped the Valentine's theme. I really wanted to work this theme in because it is something I want us to create traditions around. Living in Orlando and having passes to Universal means that we go to the Mardi Gras parade at least once a year, so it seemed like a good way to work in the theme. 

We went and saw the parade with our friends on Saturday night. Some how I missed taking a picture of Drew with his beads, but I have a picture of Luke with his.  Drew wasn't as successful as Luke was at catching them, but he will get better. 

We also made Mardi Gras themed pancakes in Shrove Tuesday. I think they came out ok this time, next year I know to add more color to the batter, especially the purple. 

Drew and I made a sign for Mardi Gras and painted it. We talked about mixing the colors red and blue to make our purple. It was also our first big attempt at staying in the lines while painting. He tends to be a more abstract artist than a stay in the lines artist. 

Once he understood what I was wanting he did pretty good. I did discover I need different paint brushes for him. I only have little skinny ones and he doesn't like them. 

On Tuesday we had a break from Mardi Gras at library story time. They were celebrating President's Day. So, we heard stories and say songs about the presidents. 

Getting a good shot of him dancing isn't really possible. He is in constant motion. After story time the library does a craft. This week we made Abraham Lincoln dolls. It was a very parent involved craft, especially after Drew accidentally cut me with his scissors. I found an area we really need to work on. 

This week since it was a short theme I didn't print any new worksheets and just reused the Valentine's Day ones. I had enough that we didn't repeat many. Thank goodness because his focus on repeat stuff is very very very short. For the repeat stuff I had to bribe with the candy heart pattern pages because he gets to munch on the hearts as he works with them. 

I did manage to get some of our homeschool stuff up on the wall. I still need to work on it, but it gives me a start. I got the bulletin board up that I can change the calendar and decorations on easily. I also found a magnetic white board at Goodwill. Drew has been drawing on it and using his magnets on the letters of the week sheets. Until I get everything figured out there is a big space to hang his artwork and big projects. I kept the clock up in the same space because we are working on telling time. The analog clock is next to the digital on the oven so we can explain the time to him. He is getting good with it already and is understanding that things happen at certain times like his gymnastics class. 

Getting Back In The Swing Of Things - Valentine's Day Theme February 9-14, 2015

One of my biggest goals for this year is to get back into the swing of things with homeschooling. Drew is getting close to VPK age, and even though we aren't going to be sending him to a traditional school for this program I want him to stay on track with his peers. He has some of the basics down, so it is time to expand on them. 

Right now he can count to 10 with no problems, to 20 and only skipping 14, but once he gets to 20 he can count to about 50 or so until he gets bored. He can do some simple math like under 10 addition and subtraction, but in truth it is still more counting because he needs to see it in fingers or objects to get it. He does understand the concept of zero, which honestly is one that surprises me. Drew has his basic shapes and colors down pat, AJ has been working on some more complicated shapes with him like rhombus. He can recognize almost all of his letters, though some still confuse him on signs because they look like numbers, especially Z into a 2. He will identify letters when we are out and about until he gets bored with the game and just starts messing things up to annoy me. Boredom is going to be my biggest challenge with him. 

We kicked things back off in earnest with Valentine's Day. It seemed like a good starting point because there are a lot of good activities and preschool printable packs for it. 

We started with stringing Fruit Loops on to pipe cleaners and making them into hearts. It gave us a chance to work on counting large numbers, stringing in patterns, and fine motor skills. There was also lots of snacking on them and using them as lightsabers until they were made into hearts.

We made Valentine's to take to our playgroup's party. I was hoping we could work on writing his name, but he wasn't interested in it at all that day, but he did work on the letters in his first and last name and what it looked like put together. That was a new skill for him. He also started understanding the concept of a first name and a last name. It was fun to see him get that AJ, Humma, Humpa, Mamie, and me all have the same last name as him.

At the party the kids got to decorate heart cookies and then eat them. It gave me a good idea to let him practice with a knife more often. 

Later in the week we worked with the letter V for Valentine and H for heart. Some of the things we did were use V stamps to fill in the letter V, the letter H to fill in the H, and worksheets to practice handwriting, identifying what is different, and patterning. 

 

I want to get in the habit of posting his work so that I can look back and see where he is improving. I have a hard time judging that on the day in day out basis. It should also get me in the habit of documenting and keeping a portfolio of his work for when he starts kindergarten. 

Most of the sheets we used this week were from www.overthemoon.com Valentine's Day preschool pack. We used some from Living Life by Learning, www.giftodcuriosity.com, and PreKinders.com

Zoo Theme

I know it seems like forever since I posted here, but we haven't stopped homeschooling. We did take a break on introducing new concepts to reinforce some of the ones we had already worked with. We are now back to new concepts and new themes.

The theme for last week was zoo animals. It was a really fun theme. The recommended book of the week was Good Night, Gorilla . I carried that theme a little further by getting some Curious George books to add to it. Drew loved "Good Night, Gorilla" and Curious George Visits the Zoo . He would just sit down with the books and point out things to me. He especially liked the part in Curious George where a little boy was crying until George gave him a balloon.

I found a great zoo theme preschool pack from 3 Dinosaurs. It has puzzles, memory games, matching animals together, and coloring pages. I love the fact that she makes packs just for toddlers. I did limit which ones we did. Instead of 12 animals we matched 3, and for the matching animals we did 4. He loved the pack!

This was the first week I had introduced music to our homeschooling. I played the Curious George cd whenever we were playing inside or out. He really enjoyed dancing. I think I will be hunting a cd for each week theme from now on. I like the Curious George one because it was music and not just silly songs. We did try the silly song cd, but it was scratched and didn't play on our cd player. That is the downside of borrowing things from the library.

We finger painted elephants this week, too. Elephants are one of Drew's favorite animals. I was happy to be able to include them this week! He painted several other animals, but this was my favorite. We also talked about the colors and what happens when he mixes them all together.

Zoo week was a fun week. I liked adding extra elements and playing things a little more by the ear. We are still trying to figure out our schedule for things, but they are meshing a little better.

Homeschool Supplies

When I thought about homeschooling I forgot about setting up a space to keep the supplies. I had thought I could just keep them with my craft stuff, but that turned out not to work. When I wanted something for Drew to do I had to go hunt my my craft room, and by the time I found his stuff he was over wanting to do it. So, I cleaned out a section of our kitchen cabinets that we weren't really using and moved his stuff in. This has worked so much better, especially since it is right next to our eat-in table.

We have Crayola Colors 24 Piece Puzzles for different weeks colors. I got them from Wal-Mart in the dollar bin. They have 24 pieces, which works well right now. I wish they had had the yellow one when I was buying mine, but they were all out. I like these puzzles because they have lots of objects of that color for us to talk about, and isn't just a picture.

The boxes are from Ikea and fit in the cabinet fairly well, but they have to be turned long way. If we keep the boxes in the kitchen I will probably go back and get another color so the orange doesn't stand out as much. But for now they are working great at corralling the little supplies.

In this box we have stickers, foam letters, foam sheets, glue sticks, bath crayons, and laminated Bible verse cards. A bit of a hodgepodge, but since most of the things are stickers it works.

The other box has our Crayola Washable Watercolors , Crayola Washable Crayons , Crayola Washable Markers , poster paints, stapler, and Crayola Washable Kid's Paint . These are the supplies I was always having to hunt for and now that they are in the same box I can make a quick grab for the one I think will be the least mess that day. Huge word of advice, buy the WASHABLE version of Crayola supplies. They are slightly more expensive, but the clean up is so much easier and will keep you from pulling your hair out. You will notice a box of non Crayola markers in the box, I used them once and they were hard to clean up and I haven't used them since. The poster paint is non Crayola washable, but sometimes I just need a good poster paint.

We have our books of the week in here, too. That way I always know where they are and I can pull them out. I was keeping them on the counter and one had an accident with Drew. Thankfully, the library has a policy that as long as the page wasn't torn out it isn't "damaged". But, we will be keeping library books up in the cabinet for a while. We also have our collection of play-doh on this shelf. I like the box we got at Wal-Mart. There are 16 little sticks in the box and covers all the basic colors.

Our Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Baby's First Blocks is on the shelf, too. I love this sorter! A friend gave it to Drew for his first birthday, and it is great. I keep it up on the shelf so that when I need it all the pieces are together. We are missing one of the blue circles, but that is ok, I will find it one day.

For Drew's first Christmas I made him a set of cloth letters. Since the curriculum we are using does a group of letters at a time, I just have these pulled out. The others are mixed into his toys.

I also have a binder to keep all the lesson plans. I was trying to keep them loose and that was failing horribly. I have the summary for the year printed out and put in the front pocket with the laminated scripture verse of the week. Then I have the weekly plans with sheet protector dividers to hold that week's coloring sheets and complicated crafts. I also have a tab to keep track of the full list of lesson plans in the back that tells me more than the basic spreadsheet in the front does.

Example of everything for one craft in a sheet protector.

So far this system is working well for us. There are supplies that are still in my craft room like my card stock (not the cheapest option, but I already have it and so I am using that instead of construction paper), my printer, my silhouette, and lamination machine. Most of these things are too big for the cabinet, and where they are is convenient for when I am working at my desk getting things ready for the week.

Feuerwehrmann Sam

Photo Credit

Drew is obsessed with Fireman Sam! Fireman Sam is a firefighter who lives in a small Welsh village of Pontypandy. He helps save the villagers when they get themselves into sticky situations. It is a really good show. We have just watched all the episodes Netflix has repeatedly, to the point that I was getting very tired of them. Well, the other night AJ had the brilliant idea to turn on Feuerwehrmann Sam. Fireman Sam in German on YouTube.

This really was brilliant! German is going to be our foreign language of choice (namely because my brain can process it), and I have been looking for a way to introduce Drew to it. Our library doesn't have any German for toddlers videos or such, but they have a lot of other languages, so I was sad. AJ fixed this! It has actually been really fun watching Sam in another language, even the episodes I have seen many many times.

Yes, we do have a cow cutout in our living room.

I am amazed at how Drew will really watch it in German. I am hoping he is picking up on the language. I am surprised how much I can understand when I am not watching the screen, as opposed to when we accidentally get an episode in Russian. I am so thankful that technology allows us to have these options and be exposed to other languages.

Red Fish Blue Fish

The Book of the Week is One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

Photo Credit

We tried reading the whole book this week, but Drew's attention span just wasn't there (we are dealing with some teething problems aka 2 year molars). We did talk about the title fish though and read those pages several times. Sometimes, you take what you can get and just move on.

We did a few fish crafts this week with red and blue. These were a little hit or miss, again because the attention span just wasn't there. We did fish cut outs, glued tissue paper scales on, stapled them together, and stuffed them to make 3D fish. 

Drew was really into the glue stick part, but didn't care for the sticking the scales on. We played 52 pick up with all the tissue paper several times. Luckily, Drew likes to sing the Clean-Up Song and helped pick them up. When there were finally more than a few scales stuck down I stapled them together. Drew LOVED the stapler. He even helped with the pushing it down part on the second fish.

I am not sure this is what they were supposed to look like, but hey Drew was happy with them. Sometimes, I just have to let go of my perfectionism in his projects. They are his projects and as long as he is learning and having fun things don't have to come out perfect or even like what they look like on the website. I am really having to let go of having to "go back and fix it." Especially when he is really happy about how something comes out.

We did add a couple of additions to our family recently, that just happen to fit into this theme. AJ bought two beta fish for Drew. Drew LOVES them! Red and Blue are a topic of many of Drew's conversations in the morning. It is fun asking him if he has said "Hi!" to them yet?

Blue!

Red!

I think Drew likes Blue much more than Red. He will call both of them Blue, even though he can say red. Even as I am typing this he can see Red on the screen and is saying "Blue! Fiss" It is very cute. I also think it is cute the way he says "fiss" 

 

We also did a hand print project for One Fish Two Fish. We were supposed to be making fish out of the hand prints, and it mostly worked. Though Drew was much more interested in just putting down random hand prints and smearing the paint. I knew this project was going to be an "end up in the tub" one.

Blue hand!

Red handed!

He really got into this one. He loves playing with paint and will ask to "pint" frequently. Normally, he just gets the watercolors because they are easier to clean up, but today we used the poster paints. It was fun when we just started smearing paint. He would ask for a color and point to the jar, and then I would paint his hand that color and he would press it down. I am amazed at how well he knows the colors, even if he won't say the word for them.

Again, I am having to let go of my "perfection". This isn't the way I thought the fish should look, but that is where Drew thought the fish should go. So, we have some swimming to the left, some swimming to the top, and a fish and a half swimming down. I guess it does look more like a real fish tank this way.