Week 5, days 3 and 4

Why hello!
I have been having a crazy week with two sick kids. SOOO that means I am behind on updating LAST weeks school days. I am lumping them together for the sake of my own sanity.
Here we go.
Day 3:
After routine things, we worked on some counting. Oliver can count very well, even into the 20's but he doesn't yet recognize what the 20's look like. And he gets some of the teens mixed up. I thought it would help him see the numbers both in order and out so that he can remember what they look like. Here is my attempt at capturing me in the frame with him. It's a sad attempt. I set the timer on the camera and took a few shots but Oliver was so fascinated at the blinking light on the camera that I didn't really get him counting. But it's a very real moment! ha!

We moved onto some letter sorting. I made the whole alphabet (lower and upper case) in wheels, and made a car for him to put the wheels on. Cute concept but once it was all done, I realized it was WAY too much for him to sort through. A wee bit overwhelming. Thanks for that idea Pinterest.
Well, it's not a Pinterest fault.
I think the thing about some pins is that they don't specify age. And you have to take into account where your child is and what they know at their age. I switched it out (when I realized it was even overwhelming me) and only pulled the letters in his name. We made it into a memory game at that point and I had him flip over the letters to find their matches (lower with upper), then we put them into his name. A better plan!

Day 4:
Our final day for the week.
It was a low key day for sure. Oliver started the day with some play at the table (see the friends he brought along? I do believe these are Aleksandr's toys). We did our verse together, and read a book about words, and I had Oliver tell me what words started with the letter B. He then did some painting with the letter B. Meanwhile Aleksandr was enjoying his new found skill of balancing on the the choo choo train. Silly boy! This one is a wild one for sure!
And that ended our week!

A shared school day (preschool week 5, day one)

Week 5! Done!

I am a little late in posting this but I will try to remember what we did last week. 

Starting with day 1.

It was a special school day for us because Oliver's little buddy Elijah came to share school time with us. He is very close in age to Oliver and they enjoy playing together whenever we do get together. His mom is thinking about starting a school time with him as well, so to encourage her and to do something different in our routine we started the week together :). 

It's quite a bit different preparing for 2 kids as opposed to only Oliver. I really didn't fret about how it would go, I just made sure I was ready with activities for the both of them. Because Oliver has been doing school for a little while now he knew what to expect. Elijah was new to it but I think he enjoyed participating in the activities and seeing how we did our routine things. I know his mama was encouraged to be able to start something on her own (she told me as much) after our day was over. I am so glad for this. I think it's a wonderful blessing to be able to sit and teach your little ones. I know we already do day in and day out just by being mom's. But investing the time into schooling is so fulfilling. I know that she will reap so many rewards just by watching her little guy learn, and get excited about new things that they cover in their schooling. It's a special time (even if it is only 30-60 minutes) each day that is set apart for just the two of you. There may be interruptions from other children, but the focus is still there and I know that Oliver knows this too. When he learns something or figures out how to do a new skill I am quick to heap lots of praise on him and he just beams. I love seeing his little face light up in understanding over something. Praise, praise, praise! I don't think you can over-praise your children. I am learning this in my daily walk just as a mom. I think this can go along in life too. Praising others when you see something that merits it. Praising my husband, praising my God, praising friends. Encouragement goes so much farther than we think it does.

Okay, so to our schooling. 

We started the day going through our routine together. Prayer, weather, calendar time, song about days of week, and pledge of allegiance. Elijah enjoyed it all, and participated quite well, even doing the weather card. We moved onto our Bible story, Noah's Ark. I read through the story in Oliver's children's Bible. To help keep them focused, I pulled out our toy ark we have and let them participate in putting all the animals into the boat with Noah and his wife. They thoroughly enjoyed this part. It was hard to wind it down back to the story!

After our story and ark time, we went ahead and started our craft to go with the story. I had drawn out rainbow templates for them to fill in with paint dots. It was a little slow going as Oliver was not very excited about sharing the paint dots. But we finally had them equally fill in their rainbows (and once they got going they did a fabulous job) and then moved onto glueing down clouds. 

After the rainbow, they moved to Oliver's little table to work on their names. I had drawn their names with boxes under each letter and taped the papers down to metal cookie pans. I had some scrabble letters with magnets on them that were stuck down on top and they sorted through and placed the letters  on corresponding letters in their names. They both did a great job at this. I kept this activity for Oliver to keep practicing on all week. 

After names, we moved onto an activity of choice. Since I had one set of each thing, I pulled out counting lady bugs and color finding. Elijah chose color finding, and Oliver chose counting. 

I have to say that they did not sit quietly and do these activities independently. They are 3 years old. This photo was the moment of stillness before they both gave up on counting/color finding and decided to run around and play. And that was the end of school time! 

It was a great experience and I know Oliver loved having his buddy there. We hope to do this again often. I'm excited about it and may even branch into inviting a few more buddies. We'll see how it goes!

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 Day 3

Okay day 3. Getting even more into routine now. Oliver knew right where to go when we started our school time and was just as excited to get started as he was the past couple days. Yah! We went right into our routine items (weather, calendar, prayer, verse, song) and then went to the first activity. Focusing on the number zero again, Oliver practiced with the dry erase marker. He is doing great making circles, I just keep asking him what number it is to help him remember it's not the letter "o" but the number zero. Kind of tough since they look the same. We also worked on day 3 of creation which is the trees and plants. While my intentions were to have him paint it, I changed my mind and chose something more textural. I tore up some different colored tissue paper (for grasses and flowers) and some brown construction paper (for trees, and sticks). He did great with the glue bottle today, and while there may have been some ginormous piles of glue on the paper, he got the motion down. Squeezing, stopping, putting paper on it, and tap, tap, tapping the paper. 

We then moved onto working on the letter D. This is something I added in. The curriculum doesn't introduce letters until week 3, and I was feeling ambitious and creative the night before while prepping and came up with this game for Oliver. Because he already knows all his letters (smart boy!) knowing what each one says is a brand new thing he has yet to get down. Next step to reading! So, I cut out some D's in some yellow construction paper (great idea-keep LOTS of construction paper on hand for teaching, crafts and learning play!), gathered up a few things that started with a D and put a yellow D next to each one. I didn't have a lot of items around but Oliver had fun searching for the yellow D's next to (or on, taped on a door). I was hoping that finding the D on the item a D started with would help him to visually lock it in his mind. "So door starts with what letter?" 

(I have to admit that I didn't keep up with follow through on this, as I decided to hold off on letters at the end of the week, I felt we were covering enough just sticking to the curriculum, and didn't need to rush as we'd be there soon enough in week 3. But it's still a fun idea I plan to use when we get in letters. Will update if it helps him remember!) 

We wrapped up our school time with a little watercolor painting. Working on colors here, again this information is not new to Oliver, he already knows his colors, but we'll keep on with basics to start and move into color theory (my hopes anyways) later. This ice cream cone project is in ABCJLM. You cut out ice cream scoops and a cone (I also did a cherry, um, over achiever here) and work your way through building the layers of colors on each scoop. I let Oliver paint the cone, and I think the cherry. He amazed me at his precision. I've never given him a shape to paint and he was very thorough in completely covering the entire shape with paint, rather than just making big strokes. Great job Oliver!