Tag: letter of the week

Preschool Letter and Number Assessments

Tracy3 Comments on Preschool Letter and Number Assessments

I like to have official assessments for my kids, even though I often have a very good idea of what they know before we sit down to assess. My main reason for doing them is just to have my kids used to being tested and assessed so that it is never a cause for fear or trepidation when they are older.

So, when the little one wrapped up letter “Z”, I pulled out my fun Chicka Boom Tree assessments and some stampers (like these). The first time I used these assessments with my son, I admit I was at a total loss as to how to use them, and I made the whole ordeal much more complicated than it needed to be. This time, though, I just relaxed and let her tell me what she knew. She chose which letter to do each time, told me the name and sound of the letter, then stamped it before choosing another letter. It went very smoothly.

 

For the numbers, I once again handed her the stamp and sat back to see what she knew. She found each number in order as she counted, up to twelve and then got stumped. I praised her, put the stamp away, and then we finished counting the numbers together.

Her end-of-the-year preschool accomplishments:

  • She can identify all her letters and sounds for capital and little letters.
  • She can identify her numbers up to 12 and can count to 20 unassisted.
  • She can count to 100 when assisted with the tens (20, 30, 40, etc.—she gets stumped at these transitions).
  • She knows her colors and the names of basic shapes.
  • She has lots of fun memories and can’t wait to start reading.

And if nothing else, that last accomplishment tells me we’ve had a very successful year.

 

 

Preschool’s First Week

Tracy1 Comment on Preschool’s First Week

The little one’s workbox pockets are full, and she is back to school! Here’s a peak at what we’ve been doing.

She’s threaded buttons, and it was hilarious to listen to her. As each button slid down her string she  whispered, “I gotcha!” I’m not sure if she was fishing or capturing “emeny” soldiers, but either way she was winning.

Matching "A" to "a"

We reviewed the letter A last week, and began working with the letter B this week. In this activity, from Erica’s Letter of the Week printables, she is putting the ants back together. It’s a good review of color sorting, as well as matching the capital letter to the lower case letter.

Another one of Erica’s fun activities are her clip cards that coordinate with the Letter of the Week: B for butterfly. With this activity, I wrote the numbers 1-10 on ten mini clothespins. Then, she matched the numbers on the butterflies to the numbers on the clothespins as we said the names of the numbers together. This was a nice twist on our usual activity of clipping the correct amount of clothespins to the cards and helped her with what she struggles with, number recognition.

Next up for the little one, some coloring pages, letter puzzles, sticker dot activities, and a new magnet sheet activity.  No wonder she was so disappointed with her empty activity pockets this summer!

The rest of the plans…

Tracy4 Comments on The rest of the plans…

Well, we’ve covered my two subjects that took the most planning. Today, I’m sharing the rest of the year!

Bible

For Bible this year, I’m hoping to do a survey of sorts of the entire Bible. My goal is to give the kids an idea of its message as an entire book instead of a lot of individual stories. So, here’s how I’m trying to accomplish that with a four and a half year old kindergartner and a soon-to-be-three preschooler. One of the things I’ve picked up for Bible this year is 50 Great Bible Stories audio CD, which tells the story of the Bible in an audio book format. I’m wanting to foster a little more independence and the feel of their own quiet time with God.

Together, we’ll go through What the Bible is All About for Young Explorers. With this book, we’ll be learning the books of the Bible within each category: the books of the law, the books of history, the books of poetry, etc. I figured that broke down the task of memorizing the books of the Bible into bite-sized pieces. Also, What the Bible is All About provides great outlines, synopses of each book, and the purposes of each book within God’s greater message of the Bible. We’ll cover all of that, but probably focus on memorizing a short summary of what each book is about, or a key verse from the book. I’ll make adjustments as we go along.

Critical Thinking

This is a subject we don’t want to neglect, as part of their classical education. I have it positioned in our day right before math, and I have a few different ways I’m wanting to teach it.

We’ll start out the year in the Building Thinking Skills and add in Lollipop Logic as the year progresses. BTS starts very simple with grouping similar objects and tracing a path between objects without touching their sides. Lollipop Logic progresses to organizing a process into the right order (building a tower, picking apples from a tree) and finishing analogies. I have my son doing three pages a week from these books. On the other days, we are going to play with our teddy bears.

With the teddy bears, we’ll work on finishing patterns and get into a little bit of graphing this year. The little one will follow our routine, doing her teddy bears (working on grouping colors and sizes) on the days Brother is doing his pages. On her workbook days, she’ll have a few pages of her own from these fun books.

Phonics and Numbers

My son will be working through the A Beka Kindergarten books for this subject and reading through the A Beka little readers, as well. I’ll adjust the pace as needed, but so far he’s  done great. I’ve started in the books this summer and skipped about 60 lessons of review work. He never missed a beat. My son is the child that stays motivated by a challenge. If I have him doing the same thing for too long, he gets very bored. With that said, I’ll probably cut some of the handwriting assignments. On some days he is assigned two manuscript pages and copywork! That’s okay to keep a classroom of kids busy, but I’ve got better busy-work planned than handwriting. And handwriting is one of those skills you can incorporate into so many other areas of study. So, all that to say, I make adjustments; I don’t follow A Beka “by the book.”

For the little one, she’ll be doing Erica’s Letter of the Week curriculum. I had her doing some of the activities last year: the coloring pages, puzzles, and motor skill activities. This year, I’ll have her doing it all. She is so excited! She has really been upset with me for not filling her pockets this summer. I’m thinking she’ll be very ready to do “school” with me this fall. I’ll also have lots of her “toddler” activities interspersed to keep her busy.

And that does it for curriculum this year! Our schedule, in summary, will be about 15 minutes per activity, or about two hours a day.

See what other’s are planning at the “not back to school” blog hop, and thanks for stopping by.