Tag: preschool

…Now I know my ABCs

Tracy3 Comments on …Now I know my ABCs

Little One has wrapped up the alphabet. And in celebration of her success, I made a notebook of her letter papers that she has done through the year.

For my birthday, I asked for a binding machine, and I’ve already had such a blast using it! In addition to this notebook for my daughter, I also made a sermon notebook for my son and re-bound one of his books that had come apart. Of course, I have many more projects in mind for this new toy as well, so stay tuned.

Most of her book are the coloring pages and dot pages that we have worked on from Erica’s Letter of the Week material, with a few other pages and projects sprinkled in among them. At the back, I’ve added a few of her number pages that she has worked on, and at the front I included her end of the year assessments (again from Erica’s blog).

My official K4-er

And, in honor of my daughter’s absolute favorite book and a core resource for this year, I made a copy of the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom cover and pasted her name down at the bottom as the author.

 

So this officially marks the end of her preschool year. Next stop: K4!

(And just so you get a complete picture of our new school arrangement, the baby was crying his head off the entire time I was putting this book together, with big sister trying her best to keep the pacifier stuffed in his mouth.)

My Kinesthetic/Hands-on Preschooler

Tracy

I recently read a post on kinesthetic or hands-on learners that was absolutely intriguing. For one, it totally reminded me of my daughter in every way, but she’s only three and I hesitated to peg her learning style so early. And then I realized how helpful the tips for this learning style can be for any preschooler. Read through this list of traits for kinesthetic learners and tell me you can’t see your preschooler here.

  • They like to move: fidget, tap, wiggle. Bottom-line, they can’t sit still.
  • They can’t “see” anything unless they’ve touched it.
  • They are usually coordinated and do well at sports.
  • They have a dramatic way of expressing themselves.
  • They enjoy getting their hands dirty.
Now, aside from the coordination factor, I’d say that’s a pretty accurate description of many 3-4 year old (with a few exceptions: my son would definitely have been an exception to some of those).

As I did a little more research, though, I loved the ideas that I saw and could immediately see the potential for my preschooler.

  • Memorize facts by movement (hand motions, jumping jacks, etc.)
  • Take plenty of “movement breaks.” Every 10-15 minutes (or even more often depending on your preschooler), provide a wiggle activity or something to encourage movement.
  • Learn with lots of games and tactile activities—let your preschooler touch!
  • One post even suggested replacing the desk chair with an exercise ball (for older kinesthetic learners, don’t know how well that would work with my preschooler…hmmm).

Reading about this learning style really helped me to understand why certain activities were such a success and why others totally bombed, and it was extremely reassuring. The beauty of homeschool is the ability to tailor learning for what fits the kid. If my preschooler would rather match “Daddy” letters to “baby”  letters than drill through a set of cards as the curriculum instructs, I can go with it! She’ll learn more than just letters; she’ll discover that learning is fun.

Preschooler’s Pick

Tracy2 Comments on Preschooler’s Pick

It’s a constant challenge for me to keep my preschooler occupied while I work with my son, even though she does fairly well with independent work. I sometimes get absolutely stumped—what do I give her to do next? And it’s not as though I don’t have a wealth of activities for her! Maybe it’s the pregnancy-brain. Maybe it’s just that time of year. But I will admit that my hardest days with her are the ones when I have neglected to fill her pockets with activities.

Then, my mom gave me the most brilliant piece of advice: let her fill her own pockets! Ah! What a magnificent change that has made!

So, my three year old and I sat down and made an agreement. She willingly completes the 3 or 4 things I have for her, and she may fill the other 7 or so pockets with whatever she chooses. The result? Not only is she more willing to do what I give her to do, but she contentedly works through her pockets without disturbing my time with my kindergartener. Oh, I can’t tell you the blessed relief that has filled our school room.

Here are a few of the activities she’s done this week—some of my choosing (the academic-looking ones) and most of her choosing.

Our family counting bears are always a favorite. Here she has decided to line them up in a row around the table: "decorating" she calls it.
Pocket #1 was chosen to hold a few duplo blocks, with which she played quite happily for over 15 minutes.
Play do—of course. Why couldn't I think of that?
chalkboard and chalk—another 15 to 20 minute activity
Balancing pom-poms on pegs
The final result
Of course, Mommy had to throw in a few of the activities. She's counting eggs and graphing them at the bottom. And let me add, she took this very seriously, asking my son and I to please be quieter with his flashcards.
Fine Motor Skills: placing dot stickers on the letter N; she also wanted to count how many dots it took to make the letters (23 for big N, in case anyone was curious).

 

She also had fun playing in the lapbook my son had made last year on "n"ests. She built a nest for the bird out of feathers, dry leaves, yarn, and sticks.
Here's a closer look at our lapbook.

Other activities included a coloring book, a note for Daddy, a coloring page, and some of her own flashcards.

I can’t wait to see what else she decides to put in her pockets. And it certainly takes a load off of me. And just in case you need a few more ideas, here’s a link to Erica’s blog where she relates some activities for her toddler/preschooler.

How to have fun with flashcards

Tracy1 Comment on How to have fun with flashcards

I love to use flashcards with the kids. It might sound dry and boring and really old-fashioned, but we do have fun with them. And the kids respond really well to them. Here are a few ideas of how we use our flashcards.

  • I try to introduce new flashcards only one or two at a time. We talk about the new flashcard, and then I hide the new card in the stack, close to the front. Every time the new flashcard shows up, the kids stand up and shout “hello” to the new card (I join in with them until they are doing fairly well on their own). Then, I hide the card again just a little bit further in the stack. We do this several times depending on how many cards there are in the stack. For example, I just added the number 8 to the little one’s stack of numbers flashcards. We talked about the number eight, counted to eight, traced the eight on the card. Then, I hid the card about 2 to 3 cards from the front as we both said, “Goodbye, Mr. Eight.” When she got to the card and recognized it as our new card, she jumped up and we both said, “Hello, Mr. Eight” and then we hid it again.
  • Another game we’ve played with flashcards is our matching game. This works particularly well with the capital and small letter flashcards. First, I spread all of the cards out on the floor in random order. Her job is to match the baby letter to the daddy letter. When she makes a set, she hands the cards to me and tells me the names and sounds of the letters.

  • My son loves to beat his own time, to see how fast he can get through a big stack of cards. But every now and then, he gets stuck on a new card; and I have to get really creative. This last week the cards that gave us trouble were his new phonics sounds “ou in out” and “ow in owl.” He kept wanting to say short a or long o for the sound. After a few days of failed attempts, I finally thought of the wolf cry. He loved it. And the sound really stuck for him. So every time those cards come up in the stack we howl like wolves, and he remembers to use the right sound.

You can have fun with flashcards and drills. It’s all in how you choose to use them. So, it’s your turn. What are some fun ideas that you have used with your flashcards and drills?

Preschool Play and School

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I thought I’d spend today updating you on the little one’s activities. She has good days and bad days in the school room; and though overall I’d say we have a blast, we still have days that are much less than successful. Of course, I don’t often think to grab the camera during the fits, so all you ever get to see is her sweet smiling face. But just to encourage you, my little one also has days when nothing is going to make her happy.

On our better days, however, we play with some of our Letter of the Week activities.

Then, she usually has a couple of fine motor skills activities: cutting, threading/lacing, and other coordination fun. This time, I had her balance the pom-poms on top of the pegs. She was thrilled with this, and experimented with different sizes for awhile to see which ones worked best.

We also love our teddy bears. I pull these out 2 to 3 times a week and use them with both of the kids. With the little one, we practice color sorting, size sorting, counting, and filling shapes.

Last of all, we tackle some counting and number recognition. I went ahead and pulled out my pumpkin cards the other day, just for the fun of fall.

She always amazes me with what she is learning, many times picking up on lessons when I thought she was most uninterested or resistant. I don’t force her to do “school” with us, and sometimes she’ll opt to go play rather than finish her pockets. But most of the time, she loves being with us and having big girl things to do just like her brother has. And, of course, we love having her playing alongside.

Learning Casually

Tracy3 Comments on Learning Casually

My newest experiment with our schedule has been our casual Fridays, breaking up the week with a little more informal learning—rather unschool-ish.

One of the fun activities that we got to do the other day was play one of our Dr. Seuss board games.

The particular game is based off the Dr. Seuss ABC book, one of our family favorites that I happen to have memorized. (I’m sure I’m not the only mom who has one or two of their kid’s favorite books on immediate recall. Please tell me I’m not.)

The game is simple. A spinner lets each player choose to go a certain number of spaces or to go to the BIG or little letter nearest to them. Each space is designated with and upper or lower case letter, and after landing on the space the player gets to find and collect the matching card that has both the letter and Dr. Seuss phrases (from the book) that use the letter’s sound (i.e. “A”=Aunt Annie; “a”=alligator). The object is to collect the most cards before the first player crosses the finish.

A little bit of a review for my son, but lots of fun for him to help teach his sister her letters and sounds, and definitely a lot of fun for a casual school day.

Preschool’s First Week

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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!