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!

Preschool Week 2, day 5

We did it! We made it through another full week! Woohoo!
It seems to have gone by so fast. Even though there were some off days, we successfully got through two full weeks. Oliver did so good throughout them and I am proud of how well he's taken to it. It's definitely a learning process for both of us. Being consistent, being prepared, keeping it fun, and watching him learn is fulfilling. I realized that his prep for preschool started a long time ago whenever I took an opportunity to teach him something. Really that is in our daily life. Having him help me with activities here at home and giving him responsibility for tasks were stepping stones to where we are now. He is learning how to figure things out on his own (problem solve) and it comes into play when he gets frustrated with a new skill like threading wooden shapes.
Homeschool to me is amazing because you are always teaching as a mom, and starting a focused school time is just opportunity to hone in on certain areas that Oliver doesn't know yet, or is not very strong on. I love being able to show him new things, and to also show him how fun it is to learn. Knowledge is a gift that will not leave you. Once he's got it, that's it!
Okay, so for our last day of the week we went through our routine things (prayer, Bible verse, song, weather, calendar) then reviewed our days of creation. I found a video on You tube that goes through all 6 days of creation set to classical music. We watched that together and Oliver really enjoyed it. The video is here (also know that the graphics of Adam and Eve are naked, just so you know what's coming).
We talked about day 7, and what it means to rest. For our creation craft, I couldn't find anything other than using the letter "Z" for sleeping online. Not very original. I decided to associate rest with sleep, and drew a bed for day 7. Oliver used paint dots for some fun coloring and then he glued down two giant marshmallows for pillows.

I then had the idea that we would make a pillow together. I cut out a small rectangle of fabric and hot glued one end and the sides together to make a pocket. I let Oliver stuff it with cotton batting, then I hot glued it closed. The stuffing it part was a little tough for Oliver to do. I took over it and handed the pillow back when it was dried. We then searched for different animal friends ( and small lego people) that would "rest" on the pillow. 

I was wanting to make homemade pretzels with Oliver at one point this week so I decided that this afternoon would be a good opportunity. While the younger one napped we went to work in the kitchen making whole wheat home made pretzels! And did you know there is a point in the baking where you let your dough sit and "rest"? Ha! Another way to include our review of what God did on day 7. The recipe we used for our pretzels is here. Overall it was tasty. They are definitely best eaten hot out of the oven. A few days later, they aren't really too great as the freshness is gone. Also, Oliver did so well with helping make these. He rolled them and did so good at watching me fold them into pretzels he even did a few on his own. I am amazed at how much he retains at only 3. By slowing down the process and explaining each step along the way, and showing him how to do them, he picked it up fairly quickly. Good job Oliver! And it was yummy snack. Right before dinner (oh well). 

Preschool week 2, day 4

Today was a pajama day. Someone woke up a little grumpy and did not want to do school.
This was stated before breakfast. Not getting a good nights sleep, not being a morning person, and not having eaten yet could all be factors in this. Plus the fact that he is only 3, some days are just a little harder to get up and go.
So we kept it low key and I let Oliver stay in pajamas.
After a little guitar practice, we did our routine things, then reviewed our days of creation. Today we learned about day 6, when God created man, woman and the animals. I had drawn out day 6 for Oliver, and my people sketches had to be the worst yet. I have an art background and I'm pretty embarrassed at how poorly drawn Adam and Eve were! I don't think Oliver cared, and I don't think you can see the horrendous figures in this photo (ha!). But Oliver and I talked about what God did on this day, and I let him color with markers. We then moved onto counting. I had written numbers on some paper and Oliver had to match the number with the same amount of felt balls. It started out as more of a game for him to line up the balls (he loves to put things in a row) but once I helped him get a little more focused he did great counting and matching numbers with balls.

We ended our school time with color matching again. Oliver looked for black this time on the pictures. I especially like the black spots he found in the frog picture! It was a low key day for sure, but I'm proud of what Oliver is learning with identifying and counting.

Preschool Week 2, day 3

On this day, Oliver wanted to wear his Melissa and Doug construction vest down for school time. He had his hammers too at the table! I think he had three or four at one point but was content with the two (one for each hand) while working. We went outside for our weather check and I love this shot of him gleefully looking up into the sky at the sunshine. Oh sweet boy!
He then counted to 11 back inside and proudly found the number 11 on the calendar (that wasn't the date, but anything that encourages counting is great!)

We were working on day 5 of creation, fish and birds. I spent some time the night before going through magazines for pictures of birds and fish. I cut them out, and on a big sheet of construction paper wrote "fish" and "birds" on separate halves with a line drawn down the middle (I added in clouds and water lines later to help Oliver understand what went where). Oliver sorted through the pictures and places them on the right sides. He loves to search for things and complete puzzles, so this was a lot of fun for him.
A side note: I like to save the materials I make, even though they are so simple (um, also I need to get a laminator for these things) so that I can either use again later, or re-purpose. I thought that I could even use these images for sequencing later, having him sort the size from smallest to largest.

After sorting, we did a little painting with watercolors. I drew day five with fishes and birds for him on a piece of paper with the number 5 on it and he painted it in his choice of paint colors. Lots of green going on here!

After paints we worked on color finding. Oliver already knows his colors so I thought a recognition game would be fun for him. While I was searching for fish and bird pictures I cut out pictures that were just pretty or interesting with color in them. I laid these out and gave Oliver one color of felt pom poms (I picked up a bag of assorted colors at the dollar store) and had him find that color in the pictures. It was a good searching game for him to look at details and take his time. Some pictures only had a little bit of that color so he had to focus on it. He liked this game a lot! We ended the day with some more writing practice with his dry erase marker and worksheets. It was a good school day, we seemed to get a lot in!

Oliver's second week of preschool, days one and two

Sooo, funny story.
I was going through my photos from last week (second week of preschool, done!) and for some odd reason I don't think I took photos on Monday. I'm trying to think through our week and I cannot for the life of me remember what happened on Monday. Did we take a break? I'm fairly certain we did have school that day but I can't remember what we did. Ha! My memory is terrible. Always has been and I'm embarrassed at my lack of memory merely one week ago. Seriously?
Ah well, moving right along. Last week was fairly smooth. There was a day or two that Oliver wasn't quite as into school as he was the week before. One day he quietly told me "I don't want to do school", after I had reminded him at breakfast that we were going to start soon (with much excitement!!). We kept it pretty low key that day and stayed in pajamas throughout it. On Tuesday we celebrated the actual birthday of little brother, so with family over, we didn't do too much for school time. I have one photo from it. We reviewed our days of creation and I had Oliver do this craft for day 4. I think it's my favorite piece of art he's done yet. I had him glue down stars, a moon and a sun on a black piece of construction paper. He did just that. All squished down in on corner with gobs of glue (I took a photo with my phone, so the quality isn't too great).  I love it! It makes me smile whenever I look at it, but I'm proud of him for doing it on his own, no matter what the outcome is.

After review of day four and our routine things done we didn't really do much else as we had family in that day.