Homeschool Revamp

After a couple of months into homeschooling I realized I have taken on a undetaking and have decided (out of necessity) to scale it back. I was preparing a new snack every day for our letter theme, a new book, a new craft, an activity for our theme and a Bible activity. It got to be too much since everything that I was doing was ideas I was coming up with or ideas I found on other blogs that I researched for hours. So while I am trying to still do fun activities I am trying not to put so much pressure on myself. I have bought a Bible cirriculum that so far (one lesson into it!) I am very happy with it. It has activities that are already there to go along with the theme. We are using Favorite Bible Heroes by Rainbow Publishers.

I am trying to use fun activities for preschool that go along with the letter theme, but instead of spending hours coming up with them or researching them I have decided to go with the activities from three of my favorite blogs: 1+1+1=1, Confessions of a Homeschooler, and Mama Jenn. They have awesome printables and fun activities. Carissa at 1+1+1=1 also has new kindergarden printables (Angry Birds is already a favorite) and great sight word printables. I would encourage anyone homeschooling young children to check-out these blogs. I am hoping to start-up my weekly re-cap again soon (I am going to have to find my camera first- as it was lost in the move).

School Week 3, the Letter C

Preschool

Here are this week's boxes:

Transferring jingle bells (a favorite!), Matching the letter

Clothesline

Fall Leaf Sort (all items from the Dollar Store)

Letter "C" Items, puzzle

These are the crafts we did this week:

Cotton ball "clouds" on the letter "C" (printable from here

We made cupcake crayons (250 degrees for 15 minutes, let set until cool remove the paper and then freeze until set up).

Pom Pom catepillar (my three year old got crazy with the pom-poms!), Do A Dot Caterpillars

We read the following books for the letter C:

Curious George- H.A. Rey

The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Eric Carle

Chicken Soup with Rice- Maurice Sendak (one of my favorite stories from my days in First Grade!)

Caps for Sale- Esphyr Slobokina

Harold and the Purple Crayon- Crockett Johnson

Kindergarten

Bible

Our Bible Lesson this week was Adam and Eve disobeyed God. I did not have any crafts for the children, but we read through the lessons in Ken Hamm's A is for Adam.

At the end of the week we used the magnets from So Simple So Sweet to have the children re-tell the lesson.

Fall

We did two fall activities this week. First we made apples from yarn. They were adorable the directions can be found here.

We also made a fall pumpkin scene. The first day we sprinkled the seeds (spices), the second day our vine grew (ribbon), the third day our green pumpkins emerged (little green pom-poms) and the fourth and final day our pumpkins turned big and orange (pom-poms). The original idea can be found here. We used our gnomes instead of Calico Critters (we don't own any but own Maple Towns from the 80's but I am not ready to give them to my kids yet!)

We read books about apples and pumpkins as well as:

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?- Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas

Leaf Man- Lois Ehert

Reading

We did a couple of reinforcing activities:

Pumpkin Poke Cards

Sight Word Cookie Flip

We had a crazy week. We started our week on Sunday (I would never do this, but my husband came home for a couple days and I did not want to have to worry about school while he was here). It was a good week overall and we accomplished pretty much everything we needed to. We were also able to attend a preschool song and storytime at the library (something that we have not done for a couple years, and the kids really enjoyed it!)

I am linking to:

School Week Two, Letter B

This week I created a new bin of toys for T (18 months old). Unfortunately I just took the picture, and I should have taken the picture prior to giving him the bin, not at the end of the week since a few pieces are missing. Here is what is in his bin:
Winnie the Pooh stacking toy (the Pooh bear for the top is MIA- I saw him this morning but when I need him, he is nowhere to be found!)
Small metal bucket with pom-poms to dump
Plastic car
Eric Carl wooden magnet puzzle
Fabric book
Crayola toys (there is at least one and maybe two pieces missing)


Preschool:

Week two was a bit more challenging- I think that the novelty of school wore off for my three year old. We studied the letter B this week. To reinforce the letter we read a book every day. We read Brown Bear (I made the Heads and Tails puzzle from 1+1+1=1), Babar, Babar loses His Crown, The Berenstain Bears Go to the Doctor, and Bess and Bill (a book that is focuses on the letter B).

For our snack time we ate bear cookies (Teddy Grahams), bear candy (gummy bears), blueberries, bananas and made brownies.

To reinforce the letter B our crafts were butterflies made from tissue paper and pipe cleaners, made binoculars, did do-a-dot paint on the letter B (from Confessions of a Homeschooler), glued buttons on the letter B and made brownies.

These are the trays that I created for my princess this week:

Coloring book and Shape Hunt and Sort


Measure it and Counting/Matching (Gummy) Bears


Play-Doh Mat and writing on a dry erase board


My old Quiet Book (made by my Grandma) and Pom-pom Patterns

Letter B items and A-Z Spoon Match-up (she was definately overwhelmed and next time I think I would only do 4-5 at a time)

Stencils and Practicing folding

Kindergarden:

Bible

We continued on with days 4-7 of creation. For day 4 we created the ocean with foam pieces on blue paper, day 5 we made sun masks, day 6 (not shown) we "named" the animals with our huge collection of little animals, day 7 (not shown) we reviewed with our creation magnets from So Simple So Sweet, and then created the Days of Creation mini book.

Math
We are still working in our Singapore math book but I had J do an acitvity with manipulatives (number magnets and mega blocks) I think it was too easy for him so next week I am hoping to come up with harder activities for him.


Food Group Mini Unit
We continued studying healthy eating by making a healthy snack tray for our refrigerator (it currenly has string cheese, yogurt, and carrots and it also had watermelon, strawberries and grapes but the kids demolished those off very quickly!). We watched a DVD about healthy eating made by Scholastic and made a lap book from Learning 4 Fun.



I am linking this post to:

First Week of School

Here is the re-cap of our first week of school:

First I decided to start T, my 18 month old, with boxes of activities every day. His first box was a double stacking toy, a mirror, two books, plastic baby bead toy and plastic Easter eggs with pom poms in them (idea from
Fun & Engaging Activities for Toddlers)

Preschool:

My three year old little princess had four busy activities in her plastic bins every day. My son is learning to read and in order to keep her occupied I gave her activities to complete every day.

Day 1: Coloring and Cutting practice, Fruit Loop "beading" on pipe cleaners, Play Doh on a mat, Practicing her name.



Day 2: Number counting, puzzle, letter A items, spooning flat marbles


Day Three: Scooping colored balls into the matching colored cup, felt cupcake decorating (Unsolicited Advice), measuring flour with measuring spoons (by far this has been the favorite of the week for both of the older children), Leap Frog Magnets

We also learned our letter A this week. Each day we had a new activity for the letter. We glued construction paper apples onto the letter A (I cut our each of them by hand). We also read a book about apples and had an apple as our snack.

The second day we read Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock. We also made fingerprint ants and ants on a log snack.


We made popsicle stick A's and read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.


Kindergarden:
We are working on the numbers 7 and 8 in math, and are reviewing some of the basic sounds in reading along with some easy readers. J is also reviewing one letter a day in handwriting.
For Bible we started the story of creation. Our memory verse is Gen. 1:1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I have found the best way that he learns his memory verse is to sing it. Each day we learned about one day of creation. I could not find an activity I really liked for the first day of creation, so I took the kids down to the basement and turned off the lights. We would say "and God said let there be light" and would take turns turning on and off the flashlight. Day Two we created the sky (blue construction paper with cotton ball clouds) and the third day I had them color a picture of what God created on that day.


Our mini unit is healthy eating. For the first day we talked about the food groups and glued pictures of food to the correct part of the food pyramid.
We watched the Reading Rainbow DVD: Gregory the Picky Eater and we sorted play food by food groups.
Overall we had a pretty good week and we were able to do everything we had planned. It did not always go as smoothly as I would have hoped but with three little kids I think we had a successful first week of school!