B is for Buses, Boats, and Bikes

We are off learning about the letter B. Kaleb is still fired up about school, begging until sometime tears. I was planning on focusing on one vehicle for the letter B but decided to combine them all. If I need to go back and fill in a week or two, I will review with a focus on one instead of all three. Part of the week, we worked on the Interactive Notebook pages for B that I posted earlier.

I used the blue rice from last week to make our B sensory bin. I added letters and a mini puzzle. Kaleb was more interested in taking the boats and using them in the water.

I gave him a small bin filled with water and he played with the boats.

One of the fine motor activities I planned this week was using styrofoam and golf tees. I gave him a small plastic hammer which he used to hammer the golf tees into the styrofoam. If I had a bigger piece, I would have written a letter B on it and had him pound them into the letter.

Next, I opened a bag of marbles and had him place a marble on top of each golf tee. Not so easy if they weren't in the foam straight.

I found some flat bottomed glass beads to work with the next activity. I printed this free game from Sara Dean's TPT store (link below). I was thinking boats = fishing. We are working on counting and one-to-one correspondence. I gave Kaleb a fish and he fed it the correct number of glass marbles. I had him use a sand shovel for some motor skills. We counted the marbles and he fed the fish. He did not, however, like the fish who had a 0 on it. He felt that poor fish needed some "food" because he was sad.

Next activity, I programmed some bus cut-outs with numbers 1 thru 6. I gave Kaleb a die which he rolled. When he landed on a number, he added the correct number of blocks to the bus.

He traced the capital and lower case letters with a bus. He noticed that part of the letter B looked like the McDonald's sign. Oh, boy!

He painted a bus blue. This cute printout I found at  Action Alphabet (link below). After it dried, I put the wheels on with brads. He loved that his bus could roll.

He placed blocks on the letter B. This time, he grouped blue blocks together (all by himself).

I made a simple fishing pole using a magnet from our Science and a short wooden dowel. Kaleb went fishing by size using the free printable (link below) from Rita Mitchell.

He made a sailboat from a paper plate. To practice cutting, he cut all of the pieces of construction paper and then glued them on himself.

I also made a simple game using mini traffic cones that I found at the Dollar Store. I programmed each cone with capital and lower case letters A and B. I made rings from two pipe cleaners and had him try to throw the ring on the cone. When one landed on the cone, he would exclaim "Big A, Mommy!"

Growing Kinders (link below) had this cute five frame bus printable with children counters. I made it into a game by adding a number cube. We would toss the cube and add the amount of children to our bus. Then we would talk about who had the most children on the bus (greater and lesser numbers).

Lastly, we made boats from sponges and discovered that they would float. One of his favorite things this week was to play in the water with the plastic boats. He asked if he could keep them. We are moving to the letter C but we may return to the letter B since we had to condense our week into a couple of days due to an impromptu mini-vacation - a couple of days at a time-share that a friend of ours offered us :)

Links

Worldsapart - Wheel School Letter B Interactive Notebook Pages, free printable. Also, B is for Bike printable pack and lesson plans and B is for Bus lesson plans with free printable game.

Sara Dean - Fish Number Match free printable game.

Action Alphabet - Wheels on the Bus coloring page with moveable wheels.

Homemade Preschool - Wheels on the Bus free printable. This website is a new love of mine. They have super cute worksheets and such- all for free, no sign up required.

Rita Mitchell - Fishing by Size free printable game.

Growing Kinders - Kids on the Bus 5 frame free printable.

Pacheco's Bilingual Patch TPT store - free printable Row Your Boat Hat craft.

Letter B Interactive Notebook Pages - revisited

A couple of days ago, I posted my Letter B Interactive Notebook Pages for download but I hadn't had the chance to show them in action. We are using these pages each week to reinforce our letter learning. I am adding the pages to a spiral notebook for review. Because of this, most of my printable pages are printed on standard printer paper. You could print them on card stock for durability and laminate, if you desire.

Kaleb has truly enjoyed cutting items out lately which is great for fine motor skills. Here he is cutting the pictures for the B flap books. I trim the pictures from the larger page to make them more manageable. He then cut them out and glued them underneath the flaps.

We are still working on counting. The balloons were programmed with the numbers 1 thru 6. He added flat bottom glass marbles to each balloon while counting them.

He surprised me with this game - the capital and lower case letter sort game. He asked me if I made this game and I told him yes. He then got up and gave me a hug saying, "Thank you mommy, thank you."

Lastly, he made the letter b into a boat with the printable pages. I was more interested in giving him cutting and gluing practice than what the outcome was. He made it into a boat. In the background of this photo, you can see a Mickey binder that I found at a discount. He is thrilled with this binder and is constantly asking for item to place inside his "school book." So, some of the sheets that I do not add to the spiral notebook go into the binder as well as his bible coloring pages and other things he completes.

Hope you are finding these pages helpful. If you have any questions, let me know.

Sonlight B + C - Week 2

We have finished week 2 of Sonlight B + C combined. We had to cram the whole week into several days because we had a great surprise - an impromptu mini vacation at a time-share that one of our friends offered us. We couldn't pass up getting away for a few days so we condensed everything for the week into three days. So, sorry for the lack of pictures.

J is working through Learning Language Arts Through Literature. She has learned about nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and she has worked through some phonics and spelling. It really is a complete language arts curriculum. I like that it varies the activities and uses games to reinforce concepts.

We played long vowel/short vowel bingo this week.

This is the first year we have worked through a set spelling curriculum, All About Spelling. We already had the letter tiles from All About Reading. J is working through her first spelling list. I had her spell the words with the letter tiles and then spell them on paper to make sure that she had grasped the words. We will probably work through the first few lists quite quickly since she seems to already know the words.

J loves reading her bible story book and she is doing well at it. She reads a new story every day.

For bible, we learned about never giving up when we pray. We read the parable about the Judge and the Widow. The Widow did not give up with her pleas for justice and the judge finally relented.

We talked about judges and their jobs. We made a gavel snack from snicker minis and pretzel sticks.

"Order in the Court!" Not too much from this week but it ended well for us - a mini vacation - yay! See you next week.

Letter B Interactive Notebook Pages - free printable

My next set of Interactive Notebook pages is now available for download - Letter B. We are adding each set of pages to one of the inexpensive notebooks that I found during the school supply sales.  Because of the holiday, we didn't get to photograph all of the pages with Kaleb but I wanted to post this anyway, so you could download them.

The first pages for the letter B are mini flip books which Kaleb glued pictures that started with the letter B. I added a few more pictures than book so he could have a choice of which pictures to use. He then glued the extra pictures on the side of the page.

I let him cute and glue the pictures himself as we discussed them....b is for....

He is doing really well with those scissors. I did cut the pictures from the main page smaller so they sou;d be easier to handle. But he cut out all the pictures himself after that.

Next set of B pages, I created a beach ball letter sort. Each ball is programmed with capital and lower case letter b's. I cut the ends from an envelope and glued them to the front of the boats, creating a pocket to place the balls in. Kaleb will separate the beach balls into each pocket. I also glued a pocket to keep the pieces and two writing strips to practice writing the letter B. If you would like, you could laminate the writing strips so they can be used again.

We are still working on counting so I added balloons. Kaleb will add pom poms or flat glass beads to each circle while counting and working with his numbers.

I added the B puzzle which I made magnetic and used on a cookie sheet instead of adding it to the notebook. But it can be used in the notebook as well.

I also added a letter craft - turn the b into a boat. This can be a cut and paste activity printed on colored paper or paint and cut.  Hope you enjoy the B interactive notebook pages. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Download Letter B Interactive Notebook Pages HERE.

A is for Airplane

Kaleb was chomping at the bit on Monday to start school. He was so excited, constantly asking when was it his time for school? We started with the letter A - A is for Airplane Unit that I created for Wheel School last year.

I planned about 5 or 6 activities for each day and placed what I needed for each activity in a ziplock bag. The bags were then put in a blue rubbermaid container to keep all of his school things together. I had originally planned to buy some plastic drawers for his school stuff but with all of our moving around, decided to wait until we get more permanent.

We started out with capital and lowercase letter A's. He traced the A's with airplanes. These blank letters will then be used for other activities.

He then traced the letters using the foam blocks that I found at the Dollar Store. He decided to use all of the circle blocks to trace the lowercase a.

Using his planes, he played the shape parking lot game. He threw the die and "landed" his planes in the correct spot. I took this time to talk about the color of each shape (this is on his learning goals that I wrote up before he started school this year). I found this free printable game on Happy Brown House (link below).

I found some chopsticks that look like a clothespin at the Dollar Store and this free cloud math printable from Miss Kaili Bug TPT store ( link below). I added some cute blue and white pompoms and had a fine motor activity. I wasn't sure this activity would be liked but it ended up being a hit! He loved it and we played for awhile, taking turns. He would only let me place the white pompoms on the cloud while he worked with the blue.

The last activity for the first day of school was a new sensory bin. I colored rice blue using food gel to represent the sky, added foam clouds, white/blue pompoms, airplane counters and letter A's to the mix. I have to say coloring rice with food gel gave the rice and awesome blue color - the only downside was when J played with it, the blue came off on her hands. It washed right off but I am not sure why the color didn't stick.

My parents gave these cows that spit little balls out of their mouths to the kids for Christmas last year. They are so cute and what better to knock the cups off the stool? I wrote capital and lower case letter A's on the cups and had Kaleb knock them to the ground. Then, I would ask him if the letter A was big or little.

Kaleb worked on a roll and graph page that I created for my A is for Airplane tot pack. He used mini-airplane stickers to keep track of what picture he rolled. Since we didn't stick the stickers, he can reuse the graph another day.

Kaleb was so excited about school all week that he even took the time to work with an airplane sewing card.

Another sensory project was to "paint" with shaving cream. I added a drop of blue food coloring to make clouds.

We worked on our colors by sorting large buttons into colored cups.

He also worked on learning his name. I created a simple sheet that he can trace the letters of his name and match letter tiles as well. I made a second set of name letter tiles and then hid them in the noodles. He had to find each letter and match them to his name.

One last activity was to stick airplane and letter stickers to our capital and lowercase A's. We used the letter print outs all week and this was a good ending project for preschool. It was great to see the enthusiasm for school from Kaleb. I pray that it doesn't leave. He was so thrilled to be part of our school day that he literally begged for it. We are on to the letter B - for boats, buses, and bikes. See you soon.

Links:

Wheel School: free printable A is for Airplane tot pack and preschool plans.

Wheel School - Letter A interactive notebook pages, free printable.

Happy Brown House - free printable Parking Lot Shape and Number Game.

Miss Kaili Bug TPT Store - cotton ball cloud counting free printable.

House of Burke and My Small Potatoes - both blogs had great ideas for the airplane sensory bin.

Parable of the Lost Coin

This year, we started to work a couple of subjects together to make the school day go somewhat smoother. One of the subjects is our Bible Time. We are working through Telling God's Story Year One - Meeting Jesus. It is a hands-on bible curriculum that offers enough activities to do for the week. You pick and choose what you would like to do. Our first week was experiencing the Parable of the Lost Coin - Luke 15:8-10. We talked about how happy the woman was when she found the lost coin and how happy we are when we find something that had been lost.

"In the same way, I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Luke 15:10 NIV

Our lesson began with reading the bible story and coloring the page of the widow looking for her lost coin. She searched high and low for her coin, knowing that if it was lost, she lost a day of food and oil for her lamp.

I found some wooden disks that I created a secret message on each one. Then I hid the coins in some corn meal. Giving the kids little brushes, they had to sweep away the dust to find the coins.

J translated the message by putting the letters in the correct order.

I made a simple message for Kaleb that spelled out "Jesus" and had him match the numbers on the coin to the numbers on a paper strip. Telling God's Story is not aged for preschool but I found he can do most of the activities and those he can't, I adapt. Then, we played coin hide-n-seek. We each took turns hiding the coin around the room and trying to find it. And how happy they were when they found it!

Then, we made our own coins by painting the wooden disks with silver paint.

We learned about some of the designs on Roman money and created their own designs on the coins that they painted the day before. Kaleb made car designs on his coins.

And what good is having coins without something to put them in? We made little coin pouches to place our new coins in. Our first week with this new bible curriculum was eventful. They both loved reading the story, playing the games, and creating the crafts. If all the weeks are like this, I am sure I will only have to call them once to tell them it is time for bible!