Wow can you believe that week four is here already!  Where does the time go.  This week we are introducing the letter D, number 4.  This week in honor of the letter D, I am making our theme about Dogs with our vocabulary work being canine.  Emmi decided she wanted to learn about Louisiana this week (because on our “fun” map of the U.S. there is a mask for Mardi Gras..lol).  We are doing a song for the theme this week, “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window”.  Also, the shape of the week is Triangles.

We started off the week by going over the previous 3 weeks letters and numbers to refresh the work in her mind and then as we posted the new work on the bulletin board we went over the new letter and number.  After posting those, Emmi wanted to learn about Louisiana so we talked about where it was located and what the mask was there for.  We also pointed out where the other 3 states we learned before were again (Florida, Tennessee, and New York).  And finally ending the day with doing worksheets with Triangles.  I found a great worksheet with a mish-mosh of shapes and Emmi put a circle in the Triangles and an X in the shapes that were not triangles (and we named each shape that wasn’t a triangle too since we have already been learning those shapes – rectangles, squares and circles).

Today we moved on to doing school a little different than we usually do, we worked on the computer.  :-D  I usually try and stay hands-on with crafts, projects, worksheets and coloring, cutting/pasting, etc.  But, since Emmi loves playing games and stuff on the computer (I’m sure most kids do..lol), I went on a couple of websites and played games with numbers and then we played some letters games.  There are lots of fun sites out there you can find with an easy google search for preschool games.  If there is some games that you like to do in particular, like we wanted to do letters and numbers games, you can search that or even better we like searching for preschool games.  :-D

We love playing with Play Doh (don’t most kids..lol)  and a fun way to do letters and numbers and remember them are with Play Doh!

We had fun doing both and Emmi had fun cutting them up into pieces too when I was done and then we got to start over again..lol

Last minute project that I decided to do with whatever craft stuff I had laying around the house.

Supplies:

wooden Popsicle sticks, glue, paper of your preference, pom poms, and a marker(s)

We started by gluing a bottom to our car so that we had something to glue the paper to and it could stand alone.

After that I cut the paper so that it would fit like a box shape car and glued the paper to the frame we made.

Once we got both sides glued on I let Emmi pick out pom poms for her wheels on the sides.

then I made another rectangular shape for on top so we had where the “windows” of the car are for the people..lol

The yellow pom pom is our steering wheel and last I drew people and the “openings” around the wheels to make them look more like wheels on the car..lol

Once the glue dried I took it off the white paper (that’s why we made that frame on the bottom).  This was a fun way for us to play and talk about cars and engines for our weeks theme.

Welcome to Week #3!!!  This week we are learning about Letter C, Number 3, cars with our vocabulary word “engines”.  We also added in a new state to learn, New York.  Don’t forget to pick a shape too, we chose rectangles.  I have kept our bulletin board jam packed with the passed weeks information too, so that we can do a quick review.  Little minds can easily move on and can sometimes forget so to keep it fresh I am consistently keeping up with going over the “old” material as well as bringing in the new material.  Here is a look at our bulletin board this week:

Since we are learning about cars, I printed out the lyrics to “The Wheels On The Bus” and we sang that our first day too.  I briefly went over the new letter and number we would be learning this week and the new shape, but Emmi seems to be catching on quickly to those.  As a fun game in the grocery store (or anywhere you may be that you can do this – we just happened to be in the grocery store), we pointed out letters and numbers.  Now when we go shopping, Emmi will say, “look Mom there is the letter…” and tell me what the letters are.  I found it to be a great way to bring school into more than just our “classroom”.  I think she is really enjoying it, knowing that what’s on the signs will soon start to make more sense as she get to know what each letter is.

As we were finishing up our Week 2, Letter B week, she was able to look at our worksheet and spell bat to us.  What a great feeling for all of us.  It is wonderful to get that far already in the “school year”.

So, this week we moved on to doing cars.  We talked about what cars have (wheels, engines, windows, etc), which brought up the word engines and what they do.  And at this point is when we started singing the bus song.

Afterwards, we moved on to some worksheets and talked about New York and how there is the Statue of Liberty and New York has mountains and Niagra Falls, etc.  I learned where it was on our map too and we reviewed the other states we learned in Week 1 and Week 2 (Florida and Tennessee).  The dry erase map that we have really makes learning the states fun.  It has fun stuff to remember about each state on one side and the states are blank on the other.  So first we find it on the “fun” side and then we flip it over and find them on the other.  It has really helped Emmi to remember their locations.

On days one and two of this week we mostly did coloring and tracing and learning the new letter as well as going over the old ones too.  Emmi was practicing learning her letters in this next picture:

She got really excited the better she was able to draw them and was even practicing them on her doodle pro the passed couple of days…lol.  She would be the teacher and draw them and then ask me what they were.  :-)  As the week goes on we are going to get more crafts done (and I would suggest more crafts to those children who enjoy doing more art projects than worksheets) but Emmi really enjoys coloring and drawing as well as the cut and paste worksheets too so we tend to stick with those a lot.  But the crafts are fun too and I hope to get her more involved with art projects with week now that our house is feeling better after having a touch of the flu.  :-)

We enjoyed doing a few worksheets this week.  Again, we kept it light due to everyone here being sick all week.  there were a couple of days we didn’t get to do much at all but go over things.  We grabbed a worksheet for the letter B to learn to recognize not only the capital letter B but also the lower case.  she traced it inside and we went over finding the letter B in the words at the bottom of the sheet.

We moved on to the number 2 worksheet.  What I did, I went into my purse and pulled out some pennies and grabbed Emmi’s change jar too.  Then as we did the worksheet, tracing the number two and then she practiced writing it herself.  Afterwards, she drew two circles in the jar.  I asked her to take two pennies and put them into her own jar.  It helped make the worksheet come to life.

We took a few minutes break from worksheets and talked about Tennessee.  She pointed it out a map we have of the United States, since that is where Grandma lives..lol.  We talked about a guitar since the map shows a guitar to help kids remember and I mentioned how Tennessee has mountains and valleys.  It was a great way to talk about our vocabulary word and how it relates to things today instead of just dinosaurs.

Finally, we worked on circles.  I really enjoyed this worksheet and how it helped to bring numbers in with the circles.  Kind of two lessons in one deal.  :-D  I asked her to find the number 1, the number 2, 3 and 4 and then I told her to find what colors needed to be used and she colored the numbers that were in the circles.

Luckily this week was a breeze for us since we were sick and we did mostly worksheets.  Emmi knew about all the stuff we did this week, it was just a matter of getting involved.

After getting familiar with what to expect to learn for the week, we did some fun stuff with dinosaurs.  I gave Emmi a coloring page with the dinosaur of her choice and she colored while I read some dinosaur facts to her.

There were lots of fun facts for kids.  It told us about how dinosaurs laid eggs and that some ate plants and some ate other dinosaurs.  We read how dinosaurs had bones and that is how scientists discovered and learned more about dinosaurs and how the lived millions of years ago.  It was a lengthy fact sheet but as we talked about each fact as she colored and it really kept her interest.  After I read all the facts, we went over some of the facts I read to make sure she learned some fun stuff about dinosaurs, including our vocabulary word, valley.

We started the week out by decorating our bulletin board with our new work.  This week has lack quite a bit of projects due to  us all getting the flu, so I apologize for the lack of content this week.  I was hoping to get done so many more fun things. We are learning about dinosaurs, the letter B, the number 2, circles and Tennessee But here is our bulletin board for this week:

Emmi wanted to pick dinosaurs for this week.  She loves watching The Land Before Time.  And all dinosaurs are called “Sarah” and “Littlefoot”.  lol.  If you look at our board, we have a page with fun songs about dinosaurs in the top left corner.  Next to that is an outline of two dinosaurs to remind us of what we are learning this week.  Right next to the dinosaurs I put in a picture of a valley since we did valley as our vocabulary word this week.

If you remember we have four shapes in the top right hand corner that we weren’t changing since we are continuing to work on the same sheet.  This week Emmi wanted to do circles.

On the bottom, you can find sheets with the letter B on it and the number 2 as well as we are learning about Tennessee this week.

The last day of the week I went over the letter A again.  The most important part of going over the letter A was teaching Letter A has a capital A and a lower case A (we called it ‘big A’ and ‘baby A’).  Here are some worksheets we practiced tracing:

Then we practiced the number one with this last worksheet.  It has tracing and practice writing along with circling the objects that only have one item in it:

I also want to add in a picture I took of some great books that I picked up that are fun to do instead of always doing worksheets:

I have a large bulletin board that I got out so every day we can look at it and refer to what we are learning.  Since I taught about cows this week, you can see they are up there and I talked about them living on a farm.  This week was a breeze and I kept it that way to help ease her into the routine and keep from discouraging her from learning.  :-)

You can also see we have a worksheet on the bulletin board that has different shapes.  We are practicing a different shape each week, so this worksheet will be up for the next 3 weeks as well while we go over all the shapes.

We also are going over the letter A and the number one, so those are in the hearts on the board too.  I even have a letter A with the children with apples up.  As well as we are learning the different states.  I know most people don’t start teaching about the states for a while, but since my daughter takes an interest in where her different relatives live, we started with Florida (where we live).  I would suggest if your child is not ready for any one of these, to start with something that they are and work your way through.

Here is a worksheet that we worked on with Florida, I printed up a fun colorful  page with all sorts of stuff that you can find throughout Florida and then I gave my daughter a page that is a duplicate of the one of Florida on the board and had her draw things she saw on the colorful page.  It was a great way to have her learn these things that are associated with the state and have a great time doing it.  :-)

After that we practiced our squares, she got to trace them and learn the difference between squares and rectangles:

Finally we worked on Cow Facts.  I just printed out some fun facts about cows she would enjoy (she wanted to drink a cup a milk afterwards because milk comes from cows..lol)

We are doing numbers too this week and here is a small project we did. I did a quick search and found a project where she gets to cut out the numbers and we have to place them in order. We are concentrating on the number one this week. But, as something in addition to tracing and since she could already recognize the number one, we did this project.

Supplies:

Paper to cut out the numbers, Scissors, Glue

This is a great way for them to learn cutting on the lines and the glue is always fun for them!

Another day we are doing projects. We are having such a great time too. Since we are learning about cows this week and where they live and what baby cows are called, I decided we would do a creative learning experience about cows.

Supplies:

White paper (but you can really use what paper you enjoy), Foam Pieces 4X6 (construction paper is great too), Scissors, Glue, Your imagination!

We talked about how cows live on farms and that baby cows are called calf’s. We took our white paper and we got into doing a creative picture of cows on a farm.

First, we cut out the sky any way she wanted too, it’s not there is any special way the sky looks, it’s all about engaging her mind to understand cows and where they live:

After doing the sky (which took a bit since she got carried away cutting..lol, we went ahead and did the grass (you will notice she didn’t want to cut the green…hmm..I wonder why…) and then we went ahead and took a red piece and made a barn. Since we are learning about squares this week, I drew a square and that was our barn for her to cut out:

Finally we drew a mommy cow and a calf and glued them onto the grass.

We started homeschooling (preschool) with Emmi last week. We are doing a letter and number a week. But we started with talking about the whole alphabet and we did a project with poster board and foam pieces. Emmi LOVES to use glue and there is lots of glue…these letters are NOT going to fall off!

Supplies:
Poster board, foam sheets, marker, scissors, glue

Here is the steps we took to make this simple alphabet project:

First I printed out the letters so I could have my own stencils

Then I cut them out

I turned the letters upside down so the marker wouldn’t show when we glued them (I did that after seeing “A” and “B” lol) and I traced them onto the foam sheets

Then it was Emmi’s turn to glue (she got tired of tracing and cutting so I did 25 out of 26 letters..lol)

okay here is the end result hung up in her room. Don’t mind all the junk she has..lol