I hope that everyone had a happy and safe New Year! So many resolutions, right? Well not so much for me. My number two resolution is to make sure that we find our way with a schedule so we can continue to be on the right track. And my number one resolution is to continue to spend as much time with my family as I can.

What is your resolution?

Granted we haven’t done things according to any curriculum but we have enjoyed doing holiday projects along with keeping up with our worksheets. I have slacked on keeping our bulletin board routine to see how well we would do without it. But I have missed that routine and think we will go back to doing it now that the holidays are over with. We did painting with Christmas trees and presents which was fun. And we also got more involved with doing painting with our sponge letters that we got a while back. That was a fun way to do our letters. It wasn’t too messy either with the washable paints. They washed right out of the sponges so we could continue to reuse them. I do have to go out and buy more paints though as it was a spur of the moment project and I only had red…which was festive! lol

For Christmas Emmi got a few workbooks with Care Bears and another one from someone for kindergarten level materials which will be great once we start moving passed Preschool materials. The workbooks are a nice way to do more things besides printing up the worksheets online, although those have been fun as well. I have learned that I like sticking to a schedule for school. It does us a lot of good. So I’m glad that we started preschool at home to give us an idea of scheduling and what to do and what NOT to do. lol

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. We have off for the next week and I’m going to use that time get us back on a schedule/routine. Can’t wait!

We were sitting down, getting our shoes on to go outside to play and all of a sudden, “show me how to tie my shoes”.  Of course I was happy to sit and show her.  So we sat for half an hour practicing.  She did great.  She just had to get the hang of getting that one loop around the other to pull it through.  It’s going to take some practice, but I’m glad that she is taking interest in tying her own shoes.  She has sneakers that she loves to wear and it will be great if she starts to help.  :-)

We have slowly made our way to letter J and number 10.  :-)  Taking our time has been a great luxury.  One of the joys of home schooling.  But in the meantime I am teaching her to spell her name as well as making sure she has her personal information (phone number and address) memorized as well.  Which is just as important as the other things we are doing.  But I am getting her back on track with our bulletin board and worksheets.  This week we are not only doing the letter J and number 10 but we are also learning about Utah and we going over our shapes again.

I also put up a sheet for me to go over some vocabulary words this month…so that sheet will stay up this month because it is for the holidays.  It has words like decoration that I can teach her.  Meanwhile we sung Jingle Bells when we were hanging up the decorations picture since Jingle Bells has a J in Jingle.

Here is our bulletin board this week:

Emmi turned 4 this passed week and with her bunches of presents I got her something that I thought she would enjoy with us for school  It’s not just any old dry erase, although they are the greatest “blackboard” in my opinion.  :-)  You can buy all kinds of color markers for them and they aren’t as messy as chalk can be but chalk can be fun too…lol.  But, I got her this dry erase book I found at the store.  There are a few different pages and mostly it’s for kids who are learning to write, but there are letters already printed on some of the pages in different ways that they call “fun letters”  here is an example:

And this is just one page, you can flip to the next and you will find more letters, up to the letter Z of course.  Plus, there is an “about me” page where you can write in your child’s favorites and information.  For older children there is cursive letters too and a place to “write a story” which is where we did our practice for numbers.

If you are looking for a fun alternative to your regular chalkboard or dry erase board, keep your eyes opened for one of these…lots of fun!

Okay we all know what happens when Thanksgiving comes around and there are children in the house…turkey hand prints!  Yup, you got it and we are going to be doing it this week for sure!  Just simply grab some paper that will fit your child’s hand prints on it and go ahead and trace the hands.  You can do it for them or sometimes I like to do some extras and have Emmi trace her own too just for the practice of tracing and learning the coordination.  Then you can either draw on the eyes or glue on a wiggley one, whatever you like better.  Emmi loves the wiggley ones.  and don’t forget to color the fingers for the “feathers”.  :)

We are going to do some schooling this week but the holidays are always lighter than the rest of the year.  Gosh I feel like we’ve been slackers because the holidays give us so much extra time off but we make good use of it.  Enjoying time with the family is always great.  What are you plans for the holidays??

Hope everyone has a joyous Thanksgiving!

A week for a new letter and number.  We are learning I and 9 now.  We’ve done some coloring pages and we have been practicing  our numbers when we are at the grocery store.  :) I’ll say, “where are we going?” and she will have to tell me what number isle we are going into before we keep shopping.  She loves it…lol.  The simple things that amuse little ones..haha.  Tonight we found a tip online about the letter I to make an igloo.  So with a white piece of paper and her new ruler, I held the ruler and Emmi drew lines with her ruler.  She was so proud of herself making straight lines.  After we did the lines I cut up the paper into strips and then she cut them into squares for the “ice”.  Then we took a piece of blue construction paper and some glue and we made an igloo with a doorway.  Afterwards she had me draw a polar bear and a man in the doorway…I’m so not an artist..lol.  But, it was fun.

Another fun school game we have been playing that I would highly recommend is called “Franklin Goes To School”. It is a great board game for preschoolers and children up to age 8.  The questions vary for the age of the child to make the game harder for the older children, which means you can play as a family too!  The way I played with Emmi was she would spin and we would do the question but when it came to my turn and I went, she would “help me” answer my question too.  So she had double the learning and tons of fun!  You will def enjoy it!

We started these great worksheets today that you cut out the patterns make something fun.  First we did a house where you cut out the shapes…great way to remember shapes.  It really put a fun spin on it.  Once we did that, we glued all the shapes where they were suppose to be according to the directions.  And we moved on to another one to practice cutting.  The second one was a mountain scene (both of these can be found at: http://www.eslkidstuff.com/CraftsTour.htm and there are more available too for members).  We cut out the mountain scene and once we were done with that I put a spin on it by bring out a piece of poster board.  Then I told Emmi to pick where she wanted the house, the mountain, the clouds, sun and trees.  She glued them all on where she wanted.  And to be continued as tomorrow we will color the pictures and perhaps add more…you’ll see all the pics then.  ;-)

Update:

Here is the picture for this project…we got so wrapped up in other fun stuff I forgot to post this.  As you can see I helped…lol.  You have must love my Santa and his reindeer..haha!

Wrapping up October was fun with Halloween.  We drifted away from our daily school routine a bit and brought it back this passed week.  So I decided to skip a lot of the extras and double up on our letters and numbers.  No new shapes or states though.  I didn’t want to bring in too much.  So, we did a few work sheets that were fun this week, concentrating on the new letters and numbers (G, H, 7, and 8).

These were great worksheets that we did to learn the differences between capitals and lower case and also different things that started with the letters as well as learning the sounds of them.  So we colored them in and talked about the what else started with G, like ghosts and Halloween.  :-)  Many of our worksheets were like this as well as practicing drawing them together.  We didn’t forget our other letters we have learned so far!  :-)

We also did other worksheets this week that had to do with the number 7 and 8.

Here is one where we got to practice all the numbers.  I know that 9 and 10 are on here and we didn’t dwell on them but did practice them since they were there and she didn’t want to leave them out.  :-)

Then I found this fun one and we got to sing and do numbers at the same time!

To find these and other great worksheets go to: http://www.eslkidstuff.com/Worksheets/

Finally…I am settled in my new virtual home.  :-)  Sorry for the setback…if you noticed the old post then you have at least found me at my new PERMANENT home here.  I know it set me back on some posts but I’ll catch you up.  Not much too exciting with Halloween hogging all the fun here!  lol  But, we did have a great time trick or treating…hope everyone else did as well. Emmi was a princess.  She had a great time.  We collected a lot of candy, which was fun.  The weather was a little hot here but that is normal for us.  And now with the time change we are trying to get used to that.  :-)

This week has been a week of being laid back more than usual.  As you can see on the bulletin board, my printer is on the fritz and I’m waiting on it’s replacement…thank goodness for warranties..lol.  Week 7, a week of learning the letter F and number 6.  I added a new shape, ovals and if  you notice on the board I colored them in to help Emmi recognize them.  That worked pretty good to.  I added California to our list of states.  But, haven’t really touched up on it too much, I think next review week we do I’m going to stop teaching more states and do more fun games with them.  But, I did get Emmi a puzzle of the united states that we can do together too.  She loves puzzles so much I’m going to save it for her birthday that is in November.  That will be fun for us to do over and over again.

I added Rainbows to our theme this week and I even printed up a coloring page for Emmi to color the rainbow.  If you notice on the bulletin board the letter F practice lines with fox on it, we did that this week too.  As well as….you guessed it, more sponges!  LOL  I did numbers this week, up to the number 6 for Emmi to play with.

Funny part about doing the letter F this week, this weekend we even went to a birthday party and Emmi got a party gift of a fish to color on that holds a picture.  That was great since we talked about fish and how they start with F.

Since review week was our week for Halloween Theme, I came up with a fun project (granted I did most of the work but Emmi LOVED the end result). Going back to the foam fun we have, I decided to do a foam witch project.  We get in packages and some of them have foam pieces in them.  What better way to recycle than make them into some fun.  Now you can use foam pieces for lots of things.  Tub toys like we do or painting so you can dip in your foam and get the picture of your foam piece on your paper.  Here is the steps we took.

Supplies:

foam piece, marker that you will be able to see on the foam you use, scissors, a stencil or in our case we printed out what we wanted to use as a stencil

I took the printout that I printed and cut out our witch that we chose and here is the witch after cutting it out and I’m getting ready to trace it.

Then once I traced the witch I cut it out and here is the finale (Emmi loved it so much that she is the one who wanted to take this picture):

Remember this doesn’t have to be a witch, this project could work with any theme!  and I’m sure Emmi will want me to do this again..lol.  If you have any foam ideas, let me know! Enjoy!

We had a pretty good week with review week 6.  We went over our states and had a good time with our map.  Emmi even made a game that she was Mommy and I was Emmi.  lol

She did very good learning the new state Texas and of course we reviewed the other states which we continuously do regardless so she can remember them as we go.  :-)

We also had fun with the foam letters that I posted about in a previous post.  They really help her with knowing her numbers.  She plays with them every day in the tub.  I guess every kid has a toy they really enjoy…lol.  She loves playing with sponges.  haha.  Moving on to other letter activities.  Stencils!  She played with another stencil thing I have for letters.  And told me all the letters she was coloring in.

Adding to our letter fun, we did our snip it book:

I picked this up a while back at my local Walmart.  There are lots of pages for children to practice their cutting and pasting and in our case this week we kept it as the cut and stick (some of the pages you just peel off the paper and they are sticky so you just stick the colorful paper you cut fast to it).  We did Cake for the letter C that we learned in week 3.

Emmi really enjoys cutting up the paper and sticking them on.  Here is the final picture:

All in all review week was good, nothing to heavy and it kept her appeal.

This week I decided that since it’s review week, we can do a Halloween theme.  So we will probably try a craft with Halloween this week and she is helping to make a pumpkin pie.  Reminder, repeat for Thanksgiving. Needless to say we are laying back and enjoying review week.  Going over A, B, C, D, and E.  As well as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and our shapes that we have learned too (rectangle, square, circle, triangle, and star).  Since we have many states to learn I did introduce a new state, Texas.  With worksheets and crafts this week has gone by quickly.  I did do a bulletin board this week too.  So I printed up some sheets for the letters so we can do sounds with the letters.  On the Halloween picture I took the bottom where there was empty space and wrote in the numbers since I ran out of space quickly with the letter sheets.  I added a small picture of Texas too as well as a couple of sheets with shapes on them.

First off, thank goodness I was told this early…organize!  Keep your child’s work well organized.  Don’t forget that at the end of each “school” year you will have to do some sort of evaluation in order for your child to “move up” a “grade”.  FYI I use the quotes since really we are home schooling so what “grade” is your child in is not a question to worry about as much as is your child doing well and progressing as he/she should.  Each child is different.

Okay don’t let me get off topic here..lol. I can do that from time to time.  Chatty…no not me. Back to talking about organizing.  So I decided through my walk at my local Kmart store that will be closing permanently here that I would look at the stationary dept they had left and see what sales were happening.  Not good ones!  What kind of out of business sale is this I asked myself.  Well, moving down the isle I discovered folders on sale for like 10 cents.  Okay now we are talking.  This could work.  I grabbed a ton.  I grabbed one for each week in a school year, 32 weeks. And we can’t forget to grab a few extra because let’s face it, we are inexperienced and may find a few extra to be handy.  But, at least I’m trying right.

I also found some stencils there with letters, numbers, and shapes.  Woo Hoo!  We are always learning these!  Must have in my book.  :-)  And I’ll be honest here, I don’t have the most pretty handwriting.  With that said, I was happy to grab a pack.  And when we played with them, Emmi loved them.  :-) I couldn’t help myself either!  Here is the folders:

Of course I did one for each week but you get the idea with just a couple I’m sure.  I only got up to week 5 at the time and when I have time I’ll do a couple more.  The good news, I should haven’t to do this again for a couple more years as I learn more about organizing.  In each one of these I took her worksheets and coloring pages and whatever projects that she did (that would fit well into the folders of course) and put them into weeks.  Granted she won’t get evaluated this year, but I’m practicing so I can figure out more ways to get better at this.  Here is one of them opened up for you to see what I mean:

If you have any tips you want to share, please comment, we would all love to hear it!

We did a lot of reviewing along with the new stuff we learned.  Especially since this coming week is review week for us anyways.  We did  a lot of coloring pages and playing on the computer. I also made up some sheets and went over our numbers, letters and shapes to keep them fresh.  Emmi was happy to inform me that she enjoys the worksheets which I’m so glad that she does.  But I think this week for review we will try to do a craft/project of some sort and do more worksheets.  Our bulletin board probably won’t be used much this week except with what we learned in week 5.  And here is an example of one of the pages I did for her to go over the letters, numbers and shapes.  I would point to one and she would have to tell me what it was I was pointing at.

Okay well, this question is asked in our house a lot!  lol  Between owning two businesses and then when we go grocery shopping or whatever, my daughter probably can’t help but to want to play store.  Well, I thought of a fun way to play store AND do school fun!  Ya gotta be creative!  So, what I did was I made money with the numbers we have learned and the shapes we learned.

After I did that, I made up price tags for her toys she wanted to play store with

As she “bought” stuff, she would tell me what number and shape was on her price tags and would pay with the money and tell me what number and shape was on her money.  it was fun. If you noticed I just took some of another piece of paper and made a circle around the toy and attached the extra piece to the price tag with tape so it didn’t fall out.  She thought it was more like a store this way too.  So you might end up doing this more often then you think.

We’ve made our way to week 5!  Working our way to letter E and number 5 already.  Our bulletin board has all new stuff this week.  We changed our shapes page to a big star.  The first day of school this week we did some tracing with stars which was fun.  I found some stencils at Kmart for letters, numbers and shapes.  This was really great for making stars on paper and making a sky.  I showed her some pictures and we pointed out stars in them too.  Then we talked about our new state, Wisconsin, and how it is called the dairy state and we looked at their state bird too.   Lastly I grabbed a sheet of paper and in the first column I had listed out of order A through E. In the second column (again out of order) 1 through 5 and in the third all the five shapes we learned.  The object was to see what Emmi knew from what we learned so far.  I went in order doing letters, then numbers and finally the shapes.  But, I kept each column random so she couldn’t just sing the alphabet or count the numbers.  She did really good but next week when we review the first five weeks we can concentrate more on that.

In the meantime, we did some coloring pages with the number 5 and letter E on them.  Along with our theme of the week, Jungle.  We went to Busch Gardens on Monday, which we do often and have seen the animals before.  But, the more she does school, the more she wants to do more school..lol.  So we love going to check out the animals and made our way over to the lions and zebras and hippo.  We got lucky because when we got there we got to watch them talk about them and feed them.  It was neat to see them cooperate like regular cats.  They also fed the hippo and she came right up to the viewing window too.  So, needless to say she was anxious to learn about them all so I made this week Jungle week.  We have talked about the animals you can find in the jungle (and by the way I turned Jungle into our vocabulary word too).  :D  I traced a zebra onto a blank piece of paper and asked Emmi what zebras have, stripes!  Then I told her to draw the stripes and the jungle too.

We took a night this week and did a more unschooling method and used the computer on sesamestreet.org and watch and played the videos and games on there.  I did the numbers and the letters but it was different and made the night fun.

Since dogs are our a part of our theme this week, I decided while I was at Walmart to pick up some supplies.  I got some “Fuzzy Stix” which are the wires with the fuzz on them and they are all different colors. Plus I got some wiggle eyes and also I found the alphabet sponges.  Each of these are all only a couple of dollars each.  I try to be creative without breaking the bank.  :D  A great idea for the sponges (which is why most people buy them) is for painting.  You dip them in a paint and you can do all sorts of projects with letters.  I bought them because Emmi loves these little surprise sponge animals that come in a capsule.  You put the capsule in water and in a while it comes out of the capsule and becomes what ever little sponge shaped animal they have put in there.  We have a farm theme and also a jungle theme of these sponges.  She loves to play with the little sponges in the tub.  So when she saw these, she loved the idea of the letters she could play with in the tub.  I told her she have the letters we are learning and each time we learn a new letter she gets another sponge…lol.  She was all for the idea so now she has the first four letters:

Then we did our fuzzy stix dogs.  She helped my husband and I pick out our colors for our dogs and we both made dogs out of the fuzzy stix and glued on the wiggle eyes too.  I have to give my husband all the credit for the little dog, he is way more crafty than me…I’ll have to take lessons I guess..haha.

This week that was fun night of crafts.  Emmi is more and more interested in school.  As soon as we get home she can’t wait and asks to do school.  :D  We have done a few worksheets this week too of course.  We have done a few on the letter D and what starts with D.  We have worked with numbers and counting as well as a couple of sheets on “What does NOT belong”.