Tot Tuesday

Kaleb has found a new favorite toy. This is great news for me since it will give me a little extra time teaching J (everything helps). He has found Mr. Potato Head.

During Math, he brings me the container of Mr. Potato Head and begs me to open it. He then sits on the floor and proceeds to put it together.

Pieces in and pieces out...it keeps him occupied through Math...

and makes us happy.

Monday Memories

It was Sunday morning and I was eating the breakfast my DH made for me (we actually had some bacon). Kaleb wanted me to read a book to him but I was busy, so J stepped in. She read him his favorite book - Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? which just so happened to be our book of the week.

They were having fun practicing the animal sounds of each of the characters in the book. It was so fun to watch. I love moments like these. Hope your week gets off to a good start.

Sonlight Week 2

Our second week is well underway and we are having fun. I have added some activities to the regular schedule, not because I felt that Sonlight was lacking in activities but because literature is my true love. I felt like we should incorporate some activities with books.

In addition to our regular math, we are exploring different ways to represent numbers. I found this great mini number book. Every day we work with two numbers and discuss ways we can represent them. We write tally marks, dot patterns, number words, number sentences, and dots on a ten frame. We use dominoes to see the different number sentences we can create. They are a great visual for our math.

B is the chosen letter of the week for the Sonlight curriculum. She practiced writing upper and lower case "b's" and created a page with pictures we found in magazines.

In Science, we read about light and weather. We learned the correct order of colors for a rainbow. This ties in nicely with learning our color words.

We even created a rainbow with a prism that I had from my teaching days. She thought this was especially cool.

We learned about early settlers. J wove a basket from paper. This was a little difficult for her which surprised me. Last week when she sewed her dress seemed to be an easier task than the basket. But we got through it. Maybe I should have chosen a place mat to weave instead of a basket.

This picture is how are day looks. Kaleb pushes the small kid chair to the table and stands on it to see what we are doing. He insists on coloring or trying to do what J is doing. If he doesn't get results, he will grab what she has and run.

One of our read-alouds for Sonlight is The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I was concerned because of her age but she has loved this book. She constantly begs for more than one chapter a day. This is a project that we did so she could act out the story. We made our own boxcar from a tissue box and we used items from her toys to create the scene. She has been playing with this all week.

In Social Studies, we are reading about the Egyptians. Here is J's name using hieroglyphics. Discovery Kids has a hieroglyphic page where you can type in your child's name and print out what it would look like in Egyptian. Cool!

I found some Egyptian paper dolls that J colored from Practical Pages.

And here is her Egyptian headband from First Palette. I knew she would love this, her favorite animal is a King Cobra. She wore this headband all through lunch. We completed our week with some Science experiments. We have definitely been busy. Hope your week went well too. Happy Sonlight!

Book of the Week - Kindergarten

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I will use my last dollar to buy a book. I love books, especially books for children. Literature is one of my loves. It is one of the reasons I chose Sonlight for J's curriculum. It is literature based. In addition to keeping up with J's lessons for kindergarten, I plan on focusing on a book a week. For each week,  I will share some of the activities that I planned/found based on the book. The activities I share will be a variety for both tots and older kids.

Our first book of the week is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle. This book is already well loved by my tot. He is constantly bringing me the book, grunting for me to read it. I chose this book to focus on first because I have already made a tot bag with activities for Kaleb and it is the perfect book to teach J her color/sight words. Here are some of the things we did.

We watched a video on You Tube on how to spell red. This was great. The tune was catchy and it offered visual clues and even had a time when you could sing it without the words. J loved this and it definitely helped her to remember how to spell red.

I was surfing on Pinterest and found these great color worksheets from Michelle Griffo. They are 10 free pages of writing color word practice. First, you write the word, then color, find them, and then cut and paste the word together. These are great.

We did a color experiment that I found at PreKinders. It even has a downloadable recording sheet to write what happened. First, we placed 3 different colored Skittles in a bowl. Then, J poured water over them completely. We discussed what might happen and I wrote down what she said. Then we waited.

It didn't take long, the colors started to bleed into the water and then the "S" removed itself from the candy. I took a picture but you really can't see the "S" floating around in the picture but it was fascinating to watch.

Then J recorded what happened on her worksheet. This was a super easy experiment to play with colors!

As J learns her color words, she is stamping them on this Brown Bear color sheet that I found here. I bought these alphabet stampers in America this summer and I absolutely love them. They come in a plastic carrying case and the letters are marked on the case, so you know where to put them back. I only bought the lowercase letters since we are going to work on sight words and such with them.

J painted some paper brown so she can make her own Brown Bear. She used several different objects to make different effects on the paper. She used a fork, sponge, large paintbrush, and a pipe cleaner to paint her brown fur. The templates for this art project can be found at first-grade-garden.blogspot, scroll down. This blog has some great ideas!

Here is her finished bear, pretty cute, huh? That's it for the book activities for Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Stay tuned for our next book of the week for more educationally fun activities.

Book of the Week - Tot

Our first book of the week is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle. This book is already well loved by my tot. He is constantly bringing me the book, grunting for me to read it. I chose this book to focus on first because I have already made a tot bag with activities for Kaleb and it is the perfect book to teach J her color/sight words. Here are some of the things we did.

I have six bins that I have begun to fill with activities for Kaleb each week. These bins are in our school room and I use them to keep Kaleb occupied while I am teaching J. These are our Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? tot bins for the week. (Don't worry, those scissors only cut paper)

I gave Kaleb the bin with the finger puppets that I made for the tot bag. He loved these. He took some time to place them on his finger and then we practiced the animal sounds.

I read the book (again) and left the ending page where all of the animals are located open. I showed him how to match the puppet to the animal.

We practiced the color matching clothespin wheel. I did not push actually matching the colors but we worked on opening and closing the clothespins. This will be an activity we will revisit.

I gave him the bin with the two-part magnetic puzzles. He liked these. I tried to show him how to put the animals together but he just wanted to do it his way. He placed all of the magnets on the board. This kept him occupied so I could teach math to J.

Kaleb tried out his new scissors with the Brown Bear cutting sheets that I included in his tot bag. It may be a long time before he masters this but he had fun trying.

For an art project, and since J was going to paint, I let Kaleb paint with some brown paint and a brush. I first had to clean off the table entirely and cover it with large pieces of craft paper. He loved painting and got upset when I removed him in order to clean up. Well, I can say he loved his Brown Bear, Brown Bear activities for the week. Stay tuned for our next book of the week.

Tot Tuesday

J loves her brother but there are times when she desires to play with her toys without his interaction. She will build herself a barricade of chairs so she can play on the dining room table without having him destroy what she is doing. She is finding that it doesn't always work. Kaleb is learning to climb, learning her defense strategies....so he waits until it is time to strike....

During quiet time, she feel asleep (she rarely does this) and had the unlucky chance of not waking up first! Kaleb woke up and immediately went over to her toys.

He didn't break anything, he just played quietly with her animals. So I let him play on until she woke up and figured out what he was doing. He actually plays quite nicely when he is alone.  Sometimes, though, she will actually play with him.

Here they are playing "bear" with her animals from Brave. They played good together for awhile, roaring like bears and laughing.

It always does my heart good when they can get along. I love moments like these. I hope you are able to enjoy moments like this one.

Sonlight - 1st week

I can begin to tell you how much I prepared for this school year. I struggled with using Sonlight, not because I didn't love it but because I was afraid of it being too hard for a kindergartener. I love the books that Sonlight chooses but worried over whether J could relate to the chapter books that Core A included. Well, we started our first week, even though we were fighting through jet lag and mini-colds.

I wanted a picture to remember her first day, even though she has been in "school" for the last few years. This is her first official school year and her grade would be more like k/1st. J drew herself in the corner.

The first letter that Sonlight works with is the letter F. J practiced her handwriting on a dry erase board that I found in 'Merica.

We played a Twister type game while reviewing the contents of the world. We will play this all week to learn the names. Here, she is putting her head on North America. (I added that one for laughs)

For Bible, we discussed creation. We learned what creativity and orderliness meant. J is coloring her bible workbook page for creativity.

We reviewed patterns using our foam blocks for Math. We have also started a calendar book to practice the months, days of the week, and the date.

J working on her handwriting, the letter F.

We read about first civilizations and created a cave drawing of animals. I was unable to find chalk pastels here to create a true replica of a cave drawing. But we did use our chalk from our chalk board.

J created a letter F page complete with stickers and pictures from magazines. Sonlight works through one letter a week which is basically review for her. She is familiar with her letters and sounds.

Last year, I found 2 metal carts with 3 drawers each. I am using these carts for a workbox type system. I place each subject in a drawer along with all of the supplies needed to complete the day. The last drawer is the fun drawer. This drawer houses fun stuff for the day. I put games, art projects, paint, play dough, just about anything fun. Today's fun item was a game based on The Hungry Caterpillar that I found this summer.

After reading about early peoples, J sewed her own dress for a doll/dog. I cut the pattern from pink felt and she sewed it with purple yarn. This project took 2 days.

Our first Science experiment was discovering if the bottle was as empty as it looked. We learned about some properties of air. Well, it was a busy week, and I am thankful it went so well. I have been stressing over this for awhile. Hope your first week of school went smooth and looking forward to many more weeks.