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