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”.

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

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.

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.