Week 5 Where I Live/We All Live in Homes

The topic for this week morphed in the planning. At the library I found one nearly age appropriate book for a 4 year-old, it was the Read-About Geography Series Idaho by Pam Zollman. Much of the vocabulary was lost on my daughter, but some things were nice, like being able to identify Idaho out of the whole United States. Another book we read was A is for Art: Boise's Public Art Alphabet Book, we were able to talk about our city, the ABCs, and art all at the same time. Awesome! We also visited our state capitol last week. It turned out to be excellent timing for Preschool, it was our first field trip.

 We also got to visit Dad while at the capitol, because he works next door.  We are lucky.

We found a book about animal homes, Animal Homes by Brian Wildsmith.  It highlighted different animals and the homes they live in.  We read the book, and then for further exploration, we looked up videos of some of the animals in their homes.  We looked up the beaver and learned about how they build their lodges and dams. We looked up eagles and watched how they catch their food.  It was really fun.

 I also started her on a small sewing project.  She was pretty excited, that's excitement and cheesy posing in the picture above.  I drew a lion on the fabric and she started stitching.  She was tired of small stitches pretty quickly.  But we worked on it a couple times during the week.  It was a simple quiet activity.  I saw this on Pinterest - I LOVE Pinterest! Here is a link to the website where I got the sewing idea.

We also talked about the types of stores you find in a town through the book Around Town by George Haber.  I didn't challenge her to memorize her address, but I think by the end of Preschool she will be ready to learn it.

We had a busy week, so the rest of school was done on my phone.  I had her do letter tracing on the Preschool Fun app.  And we worked on counting up to 15 on the Preschool and Kindergarden app which allows you to set the number of items to be counted and you repeatedly count to that number.  It helped her learn that 15 (not 18) comes after 14.

 We raked leaves in the backyard. And then we chose some special leaves to send to Grandma. Grandma loved her letter!

 Lastly, we made applesauce to can. She is my big helper.  Pretty soon she'll be making the applesauce all on her own.  I wish we'd done a little more direct instruction about where we live.  I'll just have to try harder next week.

Week 4 My Body

This week we were talking about our bodies.  Some simple objectives:

1. Identify body parts 
2. Name body parts 
3. Identify good and bad touches

I started off our week by having my daughter put together a paper doll.  I used this activity to encourage discussion about getting dressed and naming body parts, it was also a nice small motor activity for her. 

 She was pretty excited that the doll looked like her and was a ballerina.

 

How can you talk about your body without a few rounds of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes? We sang it slow, we sang it fast, and we sang it normal.  We had a good laugh each time.

Then we went a little book crazy! We read I Can Do It Myself by Diane Adams, Horns and Toes and In Between by Sandra Boynton, Two Hands, Two Feet by Rick Walton, Crazy Clothes by Niki Yektai, and Head to Toe by Eric Carle.  Maybe we didn't go too crazy.

Lastly, we discussed good touches and bad touches.  My daughter is at an appropriate age to discern between good and bad touches.  I had her brainstorm a list of good touches

• kisses, hugs, gentle touches

Then a list of bad touches

• pinching, biting, hitting, kicking

My husband and I felt it was important to include talking about inappropriate touches.  While talking about bad touches I stated that we shouldn't let people touch our privates. And that if someone asks to touch our privates, we should tell them No and then tell our mom or dad.

We now have four sight words - the, and, you, it - I took the sight words and laid them out.  I then read I Can Do It Myself  and Crazy Clothes,  I would pause for every sight word, touch the word, and have my daughter read the word for the story to continue.  It took a couple pages for us to get the gist, but she knows her four words really well now.  I will do this activity again.

Week 3 Autumn

We started our lesson by reviewing our sight words -- the, and, you.  Then I quizzed her a little. After considering the topic of  pirates for this week, I decided to change the topic and teach about Autumn. First we talked about the four seasons.  Then I brought the focus to Autumn and the changes that take place in Autumn, leaves, rain, temperature.  We followed by reading The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll.

 Later we read Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and worked on identifying the letters as they climbed our tree.  I threw this tree together and cut out the letters on my Cricut.  My preschooler enjoyed this, we laid out all the letters and she placed them at the top while I read.

On  Wednesday we did googly eye math. (Found this idea here). I wrote an equation on each paper and she created a picture to represent it with googly eyes.  She wanted to lay out all the googly eyes first, then she placed them (very meticulously at first) on the pictures.

 

My goal with the math was counting to and writing 12. Each of the equations had a sum of 12.  After she added the eyes and counted them, I had her write the number 12 on the blank space.

Shortly after our math activity we did another letter activity.  We used our imaginations and role-played that we were a hungry bear who wanted to eat some letter fish. (Found this here). We took turns calling out a letter and then feeding that letter to the bear.  Even my 18 month old got involved in the game.

We wanted to play with the fall leaves, sticks, and acorns so I threw together some sensory stuff.  I took a cookie sheet and glued magnets onto the backs of paper leaves, sticks, and acorns and allowed them to play with the magnets on the cookie sheet. (Found this idea here). Later I glued on a ribbon so I could hang the cookie sheet up.  My 18 month old used the sticks as a telephone.

 My oldest grouped all the items and then played make believe like in the movie Epic (we really enjoyed this movie, I would totally recommend it!).