9.21.09-9.27.09, Bb is for button

This week we didn't do very many activities at all as I was at a MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers) convention in Nashville, TN. Next week 9.28-10.04 I am planning on catching up around the house and resting from the MOPs convention so we probably will do no activities, hence no blog post for next week.

Planning Sheets

We didn't get to more than 1/3 of the "planned" activities, but we still had fun learning. I found these planning sheets on 1+1+1=1 where tot school is hosted by Carissa.

B is for Button

The girls glued buttons onto the letter B using glue sticks and Shelley Lovett's Alphabet Outline Collage. She has so many ideas and free printables.

Name Writing & ID

Chloe is getting even better at writing her name.



Miscellaneous

I accidentally put her 2 sandwich halves on top of each other and she thought that it was all one sandwich. So of course Caitlyn tried to eat it all together as one double decker sandwich. She is definitely her fathers daughter in this way.


NOT PICTURED:

Address
We have been working with Chloe on our address and she can easily rattle off our street number and street and then when prompted can say our city and state. she is still having trouble with the zip code but we're working on it.

ABC Song
Caitlyn worked on the ABC song this week. She is starting to enunciate her letters more and more each time we sing it.

Line Tracing
As Chloe was working on her letter writing, Caitlyn was doing pre-writing exercises by tracing lines. I again want to stress that we do not push our kids to learn, we are child led in our instruction/learning activities. As soon as they are done we stop and move onto something else.

Counting Bears and Mats
We continued our work with counting bears and mats this week. We organized by size& by color.

9.14.09-9.20.09 Aa is for Animal and Arrow

This was a light pictures week. I wasn't feeling well so there were more videos. The girls watched their new favorite - Hermie: Buzby which teaches that rules are cool. They also watched Leapfrog Talking words factory. I think that the concept that letters make words is starting to sink in a lot more for both my girls.

This week I will begin going through the alphabet (one letter a week) and trying to center some activities around the letter of the week, as well as shape, and color

We focused on the letterA, the color blue and the arrow shape. Starfall and Bible stories also continued this week.

Blue Hunt

We went on a blue hunt to encourage the girls to look for things that were blue and also picking things up and putting them in their baskets (leftover from Easter-I LOVE re-purposing things, less to buy!) The funny thing is that this is an activity I made up on the fly. It wasn't until later til I saw this idea on TotSchool hosted by Carissa. I made up a song to the tune, following the leader.

We're going on a blue hunt, a blue hunt, a blue hunt.
We're going on a blue hunt to see what we can find.





Caitlyn's final items Chloe's final items

Aa is for Animal and Arrow

We didn't do much with the letter theme this week but we did use the Alphabet Outline collages from Shelley Lovett and put animal stickers on them.

Arrows

Chloe coloring and tracing some arrows. We also looked at arrows on signs around town (not pictured).

Not sure but still cool

I'm not exactly sure what program this is on their computer but I think it helps teach other languages. The 2nd picture is either Hebrew or Greek.

9.7.09-9.13.09

One of the struggles I am having is trying to have individually beneficial activities for the girls while still teaching them at the same time. Because they are a year apart, they understand a lot but not at the same level . Although they are not twins, I have been finding that I have been trying to school them in that way. I'm sure that as time goes on that it will become more clear how to do both group and individual work. Starfall continues to be the girls favorite learning tool. When I say that it is learning time, Caitlyn runs straight for the computer. I have started including a bible story or bible story time each morning while they are eating breakfast rather than them watching TV.

Mama & Baby Matching Flashcards

Chloe found these cards (one of the cool items from Bridget) and began interacting with them. After giving her free reign for about 5 minutes, I began working with her on matching the mama to the baby (aka the Capital to the Lower case words)

Puzzles

Caitlyn was working on our board puzzles that have the picture on both the puzzle piece and the board that you match up. She has really improved with these puzzles. Chloe is doing pretty well with the 25 piece puzzle (the picture on the far right). She uses the puzzle piece outlines on the board to help with puzzle piece placement. I wonder if there is something we can do to help her get the puzzle putting together a little bit better.

CK sound

Chloe and I worked on the ck sound&we talked about words that rhyme that have the ending ck.

Popsicle Stick Matching game

I can't recall where I got this from. You write the number on one stick, the number word on another, and the number dots on another and then match them up. This was the first time we did this and Chloe did pretty well. I think we'll wait a few weeks and try again.

Letters in alphabetic order

Chloe was able to do this activity with little direction from me. This activity grew out of the capital & lower case matching letter game.

Letter ID game - Capital Letters

Although Caitlyn knows her letters, I wanted to test her. I put the letters on the floor and then called out a letter and she would find it and pick it up.

Blocks

Caitlyn was building towers and sorting her blocks by color. It's interesting because I was considering packing these away but since she showed interest in them this week, we will leave them accessible.

Lower vs. Capital Letters (game matching the Lower and Capital Letters)

The girls LOVED this activity and both participated. Chloe wanted so much to help her sister but I tried to gently discourage her so that I could make sure that Caitlyn was learning too and not just having Big sister always help her out.

Counting using math cubes

Counting Bears

We just got these (and many other cool things)this week, thanks to another mom and former teacher in public school. We started to use them on the counting mats, separating by color and to simply get a feel for them. The girls really liked them and we will be incorporating them more in our learning time.

Miscellaneous

We read bible stories every morning this week from a variety of toddler and preschool bibles that we have around the house.
We started to work on even numbers but the girls were not quite ready for this activity. I'll try again in a few months. (not pictured)

We worked on assessments this week to get a better idea where the girls are starting off for the year. They were both further along than I thought they would be. We will continue to do assessments on a quarterly basis to make sure that we are on track for our goals for the year.

Chloe found the letters of her name but then became bored and began rolling with the letters. She knows how to spell her name, can id her name and has even learned to write her name.

I just had to include this picture of Caitlyn because she was so concentrated, focused and ADORABLE while trying to balance the magnet bars (can't remember the name)

A trail of kitchen items