Homeschool Preschool:What we are learning this week

by Meghan // May 24, 2013 // Comments off

This week (and last week) we have been rowing The Big Green Pocketbook. Like with all our BFIAR books so far, Lexie LOVES this book. We haven’t done a lot of paper activities with this one, mainly because it’s hard to find any. I don’t know how to create files for activities, but I want to learn! I have so many ideas and applications in my head; I just need to get them on paper (or screen, rather).

This is such a fun book, and there are so many real-life learning opportunities for it. It’s about a girl who takes her big green pocketbook while she runs errands with her mama. They ride the bus from their house in the country, into town.

Many families who have rowed this book took their child on a real bus ride … but we don’t have a bus system here in York (ha!). So, I am thinking if we have time, when we visit Memphis we may ride the trolley! I know she would love that.

This week we have sorta changed up our routine. We have been doing our Bible at breakfast (like always) but then do our BFIAR story (and other favorites) followed by calendar. She has been wanting to read in the big chair downstairs, vs the rug. I love that time together. Max either sits in my lap, or plays on the floor. Since he is crawling now, he is much more into the floor than he is sitting in my lap.

The great thing about schooling at home is learning doesn’t have to look like it does in the public school classroom if it doesn’t fit our needs. As a trained teacher and product of a wonderful public school, I naturally gravitate towards the order and routine of a classroom. But we don’t stick to it like a schedule. We do what works, some days we don’t do it at all and just read books all day, play with manipulatives, etc.

I’ve mentioned before, Lexie LOVES the routine of “school.” She has (on her own) started putting on her little backpack for our learning time, so we can do “school.” I never wanted to put a label on what we do, but I guess because she has been in preschool before, she put the similarities together? I know not all children just love learning, reading books, or doing “activities,” and that all of mine won’t be. That’s the great thing about homeschool- we can modify and adjust to fit everyone’s needs easily.

But Lou is like me, she’s type A and loves school and learning. We will do what she enjoys, so her love of learning doesn’t dwindle.

Our very loose learning plans/activities for this week included:

Bible
Fruit of the Spirit lessons from Raising Arrows (Lexie is loving this!); Galatians 5:22
Luke chapter 15
The Parable of the Lost Coin- originally just a one day reading, she requests this every single day!

Fruit of the Spirit chart

Reading
The Big Green Pocketbook– We did a few rowing activities with this book, but just for coloring/fine motor practice. Everything is just for fun at this age =)
Introduced “No, David!” (this is not my typical type of book to read or enjoy, but when I worked in childcare my 3 & 4 year olds LOVED it. and I know Lexie is old enough to understand the character lessons in the book as “not good choices” vs things we should do).

Phonics/language
Talking about the short vowel A sound (very loosely, nothing formal)
Tracing letters P and A- tracing in shaving cream, on ipad app, with crayons, etc
Building letters with letter construction set
Rhyming words

Science
Growing lettuce and our KiwiBox (which is planting seeds)
Weather
water beads/absportion

Art/Crafts
KiwiBox
making green paint by mixing colors
water beads with shaving cream on light table- we also mixed food coloring to make everything orange (her favorite color) … as it turns out it colors the water beads, permanently!
oobleck in the bathtub

Math
Sorting by size and color (with sorting bears)
making numbers with playdough
building with magnatiles (as always …)

Life Skills
Talking about good manners while on outings (like the girl from our BFIAR story)
Table manners (she tells me “I can’t talk, I have food in my mouth … haha)

We have done a lot more indoor activities this week because it has been cloudy and damp outside. We need the rain, so complaints here! Plus, we didn’t do much last week because we were outside so much.

Putting the goodies from out story in her Big Green Pocketbook

Having a picnic with Bubby

Messy fun

What fun did you have with your littles this week, at home or out and about?

{BIG} Magnet Fun!

by Meghan // May 13, 2013 // Comments off

Oh the magnet fun has began! I remember in elementary school, the kids who took the circle magnets off the chalk tray were envied by all the good kids, too scared to do it themselves.

How the magnets attracted each other, rolled across the desk, how they felt in your hands. Aah. Magnets were. So. Cool. (or was it just me?)

My dad mailed us some magnets from his shop.

Saying Lexie (who will be 3 in September) is obsessed is an under statement! As she excitedly opened the box and unwrapped the magnets, she kept saying, “ooh, what is it? Its for Essie? What did Payne send, do you think?”

We spent 2 hours playing with these magnets the day she got them in the mail. They come out of truck parts (engines, transmissions, oil things, and what not? I don’t really remember all the things my dad said they come out of ..). But Payne is a mechanic, and a build-it fix-it guy to boot.

These magnets are so strong, even I have a hard time pulling them apart sometimes. Seriously.

You can tell all those little plasticized, weak, kiddie magnets we won’t be buying them, because we have awesome magnets to play with!

We decided to set the bigger magnets up across her table and predict which one the smaller magnets would roll towards. Then she would flick the small, cylinder shaped magnets towards the row of bigger magnets and see where it went.

Sometimes the magnetism just made them all crazily attract to each other, and we would suddenly have a huge clump of magnets!

I had as much fun as she did. Very cool. So thanks Payne. 🙂

Here is a video of her playing with them- she can’t get enough!

How do you use magnets for learning fun with your children? Let me know in the comments!

Learning this week: Winnie the Pooh, coloring, and playdough

by Meghan // May 10, 2013 // Comments off

I am starting a new weekly/bi weekly update series on what specifically we have done this week in our homeschool or learning in general. Fun crafts and things will usually have their own posts, depending on the time and energy I have to blog them.

This week, Lexie is 4 months away from her third birthday! Oh em gee. I really cant believe my baby, my brilliant, strong willed, determined first born is almost three. (Remind me of this when she is turning 13, and 23….).

Last week we started reading our first chapter book- none other than A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh!

How appropriate, seeing how as a child my Memaw video taped every. single. episode. of Winnie the pooh (the new adventures mind you, not these ridiculous computerized versions… And long before Tigger or piglet had their own movies! I had the real deal, let me tell you).

Lexie loves to read, and she absolutely loves to pretend to read serious, big word books. Her little (formerly my own) Precious Moments Bible is so worn, because she brings it to me and says, “what’s this say?” Then I will read it to her, and she goes off and “reads” it to her dolls or the engines. (Yes, the engines are part of our family now …)

Her devotional is literally falling apart. The cover is falling off, the pages are creased and crinkled. She has most of the pages memorized up to this date. It is by far her favorite book in the house.

We’ve had it since CHRISTMAS! It is 5 months old.

You must appreciate her passion for God and reading though…

So anyway, I thought with all these things combined, she would enjoy a chapter book read aloud.

Wow. To say the least.

I have to distract her ~~bribe her~~ so I can stop reading, or we would have the book read in a day. She likes to take the book and pretend she is reading it. What she recites is a mixture of Winnie the Pooh, meets The Little Red Hen, meets the Bible… Quite eclectic, and entertaining.

Lexie has started coloring inside the lines! I know coloring books aren’t developmentally appropriate and hinder creativity. I know. I know.

But she refused to draw! She is my little perfectionist, type A, right brained baby, and drawing pictures is not her thing. Two weeks ago she would shove a blank piece of paper across the table, crying and panicking, refusing to color! “No mommeeeeeee! You show me, you do it! Essie doesn’t know how!”

But give her a coloring sheet and she will color in the lines, draw pictures on top of it, make numbers and letters all over it … So maybe she has a blank paper phobia? (No, that’s not funny because it is a huge possibility.) But I understand her thought process; she doesn’t know how to draw a picture like she sees in books, and therefore doesn’t want to do it. Obviously I want to teacher her to do things out of her comfort zone, or things she doesn’t think she can do really well. Slowly she has started coloring on some blank spots on her papers, so I am going to try blank paper again and see what happens.

Last week we played outside a lot, so I don’t have many pictures of learning activities… But we did manage to squeeze in a little bit of intentional inside learning fun.

We used playdoh to create letters. Then we talked about the letter sounds, and different words that had that beginning and ending sound. It was fun and she loved it. We also cut out shapes with cookie cutters, and worked on her fine motor skills. She had a lot of fun!

We decided Max needed some “playdoh,” but since he obviously puts everything in his mouth, we had to be creative. Another mama online told me about shaving cream in a baggie. I had a really hard time keeping the bag taped to his tray; and eventually he chewed a hole in it… but he had a lot of fun! I added some non toxic paint in the baggie and let him squish it all around.

That has pretty much been our week. We haven’t done any Before Five in a Row in a week or two. I have ordered a printer and am waiting on it so we can do our lapbook/memory book activities to go with the books. Today she found and picked up The Big Green Pocket Book off the shelf downstairs, so we read it. Five times. In a row. Needless to say, that will be the next book we row! haha

What have you been doing with your children this week?

Light Table Fun and Magna Tiles

by Meghan // April 23, 2013 // Comments off

Well, there was a big day in our house a few weeks ago. It took J.Tom several nights, and a couple of weekends to complete, but he built the kids (well, just Lexie for now…) a light table! I had seen them over at Play At Home Mom. We used several of her tips for building your own light table, found on her site here.

For months I drooled over the light table and all the fun activities it provided. I couldn’t wait for JTom to get some free time to make her one. As you probably know, we try to keep the house free of toys that don’t encourage learning or using the imagination. The light table was a definite YES item! It is awesome. A light table can be used to learn about shadow, light, contrast, color, size, shape, and many sensory activities can be done using it. So, after much hard work and me splurging on a few things to use with the table, here it is

The box, with hardwire outlet for lights

J.Tom working

laying out the lights. He lined the bottom inside of the table with foil to reflect more light

the table top, upside down. The bottom is hinged, so the bulbs can be changed
(for when they go out AND to black lights! FUN!)

Building with Magnatiles- GREAT investment!

Let’s line them up!

“I will build you a house mommy!”

Her church and coins

The transparent Magna Tiles are a must have, whether you have a light table or not! They really are so much fun, but I think they are one of those things- either a kid has the personality that loves them, or they could care less. I would (but probably shouldn’t) say that most boys are going to love them, and some girls may not be very interested in them. Lexie happens to really enjoy playing with them; she has a huge imagination, can focus on one thing for quite some time, and loves to build. They are a learning tool (which is the only reason I was okay with spending so much money on them) I was going to put away and only pull out at certain times, but she enjoys them so much, we keep them out at all times! J.Tom and I both play with them at least once a day with her. And we all share with Max; at 7.5 months old he is learning about shapes too! =)

Right now, Amazon has the 100 piece set for 20 free shipping! I really wish when I’d bought her 38 piece set that they’d had this deal! Apparently, they sell very quickly, and since they are such a hot item, the price sky rockets when you purchase from anyone other than Valtech (through Amazon) because they aren’t always available through them (yes… I did that much research on them before I purchased haha). I paid $50 for the 38 piece set, and would have gotten the 100 piece for $120 if it had been offered at the time; you really need more than 38 pieces to construct really fun, elaborate shapes and “buildings.”

Valtech, the company that makes and sells Magna-Tiles , is also having a promotion through Amazon right now. When you buy the 100 piece set above, you get the Magna Tiles Manipulative Guide free! Just be sure to follow the instructions on how to get it. Rather than show the Guide as “free” and $0 in your cart, it will take a few dollars off everything in your cart until it totals $10 off (which is the cost of the book). The book is a great resource, because there are so many ways to use and create with the Magna-Tiles, you couldn’t possibly think of them all. So the guide helps you be even more creative and intentional during learning.

When you make a purchase following the links in this post, I earn a small amount of money back on your purchase (sometimes only pennies); but this is much appreciated and helps support this blog.

I got the counters (little transparent circles) here.

She enjoys using these with the Magna Tiles. She sorts them by color, puts them inside the boxes and buildings she makes, etc.

I plan on doing many more posts on our fun with the light table. So stay tuned! Also, what kind of fun would you like to see using the light table?

Sensory and Exploration Fun: Water Beads!

by Meghan // March 25, 2013 // Comments off

So … in the blogging world of preschool, home school, and public school there are these marvelous little things called “water beads.” They are non toxic and meant to be used in flower arrangements. But, lo and behold, they make fabulous fun for children. (and mamas… and probably daddies and grandparents too.) You can get them relatively cheap, these are like the ones we use:

I wasn’t sure what or how to do them… So I sorta winged it. The water beads start out like this:

Ours came in a plastic bag. That little bag, which you can only partially see, can take an entire gallon of water! I used maybe a fourth a gallon of water on ours, and you will see how big they became…

I started out by letting her touch the hard plastic beads. We talked about what they felt like, and compared them to other things in the kitchen.

Then we added water! I asked her what she thought would happen if we added water. She said “oh, I don’t know?” So, of course, we added water to see what would happen!

After we added the water, we let them sit a while. The above picture was probably after a few hours…

At this point I let her touch them and see if they seemed different. Of course they were, they were no longer tiny and hard, they were bigger and squishier!

Not so sure…

“OK, I’m getting the hang of it, these aren’t so bad!”

At this stage, the beads were not yet expanded all the way, so they felt like they had little edges all over them, like a squishy golf ball.

Later that afternoon:

Here’s where the real fun begins! This is after 4-5 hours. The beads have absorbed most of the water, but are still slippery to the touch. When I asked if we should check on our beads, she said “oh yes!” First, I asked what they felt like now, were they bigger or smaller than before, etc. Then I asked her where all the water went … she replied “Oh! It’s in the beads!!! The water is in the beads!” She was SO excited.

I gave her some measuring/prep bowls, a strainer and let her go to town.

She seriously had so much fun! Here she was lining them up.

oooh- big mess!

She decided she needed to put her feet in, “Can I put my feet in? Oooh, what does it feel like?” —yes>

Later that afternoon, Piglet needed to take a dive in the water beads.

Then, by her suggestion, we needed to add water!

Have to try a piece of ice

yum!

oooh, let’s put our feet in the water beads with the ice!

Scooping, pouring, do it again!

I’m not kidding when I say she did this for hours. These are a great learning tool, and of course it’s just fun for kids.

Just FYI: these cannot go down the drain or in the washing machine! They can hold SO much water and will clog your drains.**

To dry them out, spread them out on a cookie sheet (or something similar) where they have plenty of room for the moisture to evaporate. Then put them in a bag to reuse them! The instructions that came with ours say they can be reused for up to two years.

JTom is building Lexie a light table soon (hopefully by Easter)- Woo hoo! And these are going to be SO much fun on it!

Sensory and Exploration Fun: Oobleck

by Meghan // March 23, 2013 // Comments off

Oobleck, or Ooblick is a lot of fun. We have done it before, but Lexie was much smaller and it wasn’t very successful. I believe the idea came from a Dr. Seuss book. We did it when I worked at an early learning program in AR. It was so much fun, even the teachers looked forward to the days we did Oobleck.

Here is the recipe we used in case you would like to try it:
1 part water
1.5-2 parts cornstarch

Yep. That’s it! I lean towards the bit more water side of things, I think it makes the sensory part more appealing and easier for little hands. It is actually a good therapy for increasing muscle strength in hands for people of any age. When you grab oobleck, you can ball it up into a thick, almost powdery …. something. I’m not sure how to describe it! But when you let it lay open on your hand it becomes a liquid Hrm. Ok, I don’t know how to explain what it is, so we will show you. This was by far Lexie’s favorite “at-ivity” yet!