Preschool Week 3, Day 2 (our final day for the week)

Day two, also the last day of our school for the week. It was a short week due to the fact that we headed out of town the rest of the week for a family trip!
We started the day with our routine things, then I introduced Oliver to the Pledge of Allegiance. I thought I would like to start including this into our routine things so that Oliver can start to memorize it. I am thinking we may include the Christian pledge too, but one thing at a time.
We actually don't have a flag in our house. Can you believe it? Not that we aren't patriotic, we've just never bought one. When I get a chance I'll pick one up we can hang in our school area. But to make do with what we had, I used a small flag that is used on our calendar. I showed Oliver the colors, read through the pledge and explained how we respectfully say it.
The next thing was to create a flag for Oliver. I had him paint some popsicle sticks in flag colors, and we'd later glue them together. He likes to paint and does pretty good painting small pieces like that.

We then moved onto the number 2. I had Oliver write over the 2 with his dry erase marker. He did pretty good with it. I then helped him create a 2 with chalk on the chalkboard. His attention isn't very long with writing yet so we didn't spend a lot of time there.

I kept the marker out and tried something new with the letter Aa. I had him search for all the "a's" in the words on this printout. I need to get a smaller tipped marker for him to do this kind of detail or just print out some larger words. (mentally planning for future)

He did some writing exercises with the letter Aa, followed by shape drawing (lines and circles). Then we moved to the felt board to practice creating Aa. He's getting it, but it's still tough for him to remember how Aa is formed. I'm so proud of how well he does with sitting still and working hard on these!

Finally we wrapped up our day reading through Psalm 34:13 and listening to the song that went along with it on Steve Green's album Hide 'Em in Your Heart. You can listen to both volumes for free on Spotify! I'd like to purchase them eventually, but it sure helps to get them free! Oliver really loves music and he will sit and listen to it play for quite a while. Not sure how long if I let him :) I've let him sit there a good 30 minutes before and he was content doing just that! But he sat and listened along to the song and it's great how quickly you can learn a verse just by hearing it in song!

Preschool Week 3 day one

Today we started out with our routine (prayer, weather, calendar). Since we started a new Bible story this week after having wrapped up the days of creation last week, I decided to read from Oliver's storybook Bible for this week's story. We sat and read about Adam and Eve eating of the tree that God told them not too.

{Also on a side note, yes Oliver DOES have a shiner. How? you may ask, well not by any kind of rough housing during play, but more lack of grace on his part. He was up in his room supposedly sleeping at night, but not really, and was messing around on his bed, playing with his stuffed animal friends. He somehow managed to trip into the side of his bed. The next morning I asked him what happened, and this is the result, his first shiner. Poor guy.)

Following along with the story we worked on paint dotting the fruit that Adam and Eve ate. Oliver really likes taking the caps off and on :) He does really well with it now too! 

We then moved onto the number 2 and the letter Aa. I let Oliver create the number 2 using felt pom poms to form the number. He did well with that. I then let him practice writing Aa with a dry erase marker, as well as writing more practice sheets with circles and lines. I love using these with Oliver even if they seem tedious. I'm realizing repetition is great for him, even if it feels boring to me at times (and sometimes him too). It takes multiple times to start getting technique correct, in which he'll one day start writing on his own. 

It was about this time that his brother woke up from naptime, and we had to head out for some groceries. So after shopping, lunch, and naptime we came back for a new Aa activity together. I was ambitious during the boys nap after lunch and made a felt board for Oliver. I will try to post about it soon so I can share how easy it was to make. Using felt pieces to form letters is a great tactile way to teach letters not only visually (what they look like) but how they are built. I say this like I know what I'm talking about. Ha! I did not go to college for teaching, so I don't know how the brain learns to read, but I do know seeing letters and being very hands on in several ways helps him learn it. He does GREAT at puzzles and I thought he'd enjoy figuring out this puzzle. It was frustrating for him immediately as he didn't understand/remember how the parts to big A went. I pulled out a print out of what Aa looks like for him to look at while he used the felt board and that helped him a lot. We'll keep practicing this one and I'll add letters as we add them each week in our ABCJLM curriculum. 

Preschool Week 3!

Here we are at a new week!
This week is kind of an off week, due to the fact that we are heading out of town for half of it. I debated having our regular school, but decided to go ahead and follow through half the week.
Well, day one was actually pushed to Tuesday instead of Monday. I had grocery shopping to do on Monday (plus Jonah was home for Labor Day) and since it was a holiday I decided to wait until Tuesday. So it's been a slower week in school, but I hope we can cover a couple of things for the week, and it may mean doing a few activities in the afternoon as well as morning...we'll see how that goes. Baby brother has been snotty and up at night keeping older brother up, grocery shopping had to be spread over two days, laundry is awaiting since I need to clean it before we pack for our trip, and meals 3x a day x 3-4 people take TIME. And afternoon nap usually ends close to dinner time....so, we'll see how it goes!