D is for Dump Trucks, Diggers, and Dinosaurs

This week brought us the letter D. D for dump trucks, diggers, and dinosaurs. What did we do?...

The dump truck brought us a delivery of blocks to cover the D.

Then we used the blocks to practice our counting. I pulled a number card and Kaleb added the blocks to the dump truck. This cute printable came from The Measured Mom (link below).

We used some of the printable pages from Royal Baloo's printable pack - D is for Dump Truck. Kaleb cut out the dump trucks and glued them to the letter D.

The new sensory bin for the week were rocks that I collected from the Dollar Store (big and little) as well as some letter D's.

Kaleb then used the rocks to trace the letter D. I had the dump truck deliver the rocks back to the bin.

I used some of our play dough tools and made a simple outline puzzle. I traced the items onto card stock and had him put the tools in the correct spot. This is great for visual discrimination.

I had a dinosaur puzzle that I added to our school bin. We put the whole puzzle together, talking about the dinosaurs.

He painted a dump truck. This free printable came from Learn Create Love (link below).

He painted dinosaur paper plates. These are super cute and come with a free template from Learn With Play At Home (link below).

J joined in the painting fun.

The dinosaurs turned out pretty cute.

We made alphabet soup with the magnetic letters and letter beads. I had Kaleb scoop them out using a spoon and sort them into the correct bins. He did really well with this sorting activity. I made sure to talk about each letter while he was sorting.

He completed the letter D dog craft from my interactive notebook printables. I apparently forgot to add a mouth so he is drawing one for me.

This was a favorite activity this week - when I was at Wal-Mart, I found some large bolts with nuts. I was looking for a larger bolt but Wal-Mart is limited in what it offers. So I found a package of two. I gave him the nuts and bolts and had him thread the nut onto the bolt and twist it to the end. He then twisted it off as well. This was great fine motor practice.

I saw this cute way to practice letters of names on Boy Mama Teacher Mama. I made this simple name puzzle using milk jug lids and water bottle lids. Then I had one of the dump trucks "deliver" the rocks to Kaleb to match his name. He loved the silly sounds the truck made and after he was done, had the dump truck pick up the load to clean it up. I try to practice Kaleb's name at least once every day.

This last activity was some-what of a fail. I found a recipe for fossil dough online and thought it would be great for dinosaurs. It took a cup of used coffee grounds (which I saved for a week) and one cup of cold coffee. I followed the recipe exactly and it did not come out like it was supposed to. No matter how much flour I added, it was still sticky. I wonder if it was because I was using expresso coffee instead of coffee maker coffee - not sure. So, I gave it to the kids anyway with some dinosaur cookie cutters and spaghetti noodles.

They made dinosaur fossils in the mud by breaking the noodles and adding it to the play dough. Kaleb thought the play dough - he put it right out there, that it looked like poop. I reminded him it wasn't and that he wasn't allowed to ever play with poop, in case he ever had the idea!

So, D week was action packed with a few fails in there but fun. We are onto a week with E. Hope to see you soon!

Links

The Measured Mom - Printable Counting Dump Truck Mat.

Royal Baloo - Zoomin Movin Alphabet printable packs, D is for dump truck and Construction Movement Cards printable.

Learn With Play At Home - Dinosaur paper plate art projects with free templates.

Boy Mama Teacher Mama - dump truck name activity.

Learn Create Love - dump truck craft page.

Living Worldsapart - free printable D is for Dump Truck preschool plans plus a free printable alphabet game.

God Loves A Humble Heart

The next lesson in our bible curriculum was about the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The Pharisee's prayer was all "puffed up" but the Tax Collector's prayer was humble. Jesus said we should pray like the Tax Collector - humble prayers to our Father.

I always start the lesson by reading the story from the bible and having the kids color the sheet that came with the lesson. We talked about which person on the coloring sheet was the Pharisee (and what a Pharisee was) and the Tax Collector.

We talked about "puffed up" prayers and I gave them a balloon. They were to puff up their prayers and for each prayer, they added a puff of air to the balloon. When they said a prayer that was humble, they could let some of the air out of the balloon.

Kaleb had a hard time blowing up the balloon but he at least tried.

Then we talked about a simple way to pray - the JOY method. J - thank Jesus, O - pray for others, and Y - then pray for yourself.

Kaleb is thanking Jesus for his Mousey. Gotta love this :) I love the way he closes his eyes to pray.

One of the activities required plastic eggs which I was sure that I packed when we moved here but, after several days, I could not find them. So, I had to adjust the activity. I had them wait in their room while I hid milk jug lids (4 of each color - blue and red) around the house. Their "job" was to find the four lids and meet me at the table for their weekly pay.

I then payed them one candy for each milk jug lid they found. Kaleb was reluctant to give up his lids but then, when he saw the "payment" he relented. After they were paid, I told them they had to pay their taxes. I proceeded to keep asking for "money" until they had nothing left and I asked how they felt about me-the tax collector. Was it fair? Did they like it?

We made Pharisee and Tax Collector puppets.

Lastly, we discussed what God does for us. We wrote everything said onto papers to add to their notebooks and I had them draw pictures.

My favorite picture from this lesson - Kaleb was thankful that God gave him Mousey but he was frustrated that he couldn't draw Mousey. J offered to draw him. What a sweet thing to do! See, they sometimes do nice things for each other! I have proof.

Links

Mission Bible Class - has some addition ideas for teaching the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

Homeschooling Hearts and Minds - has a cute craft idea of making an abacus from beads and popsicle sticks.

Luke the Book - has a video on youtube about the parable, haven't checked it out completely so please review before watching with your kids.

Sonlight B + C Week 5

We finished Week 5 of Sonlight B+C Combined. We read about ancient civilizations, South American animals, and did some more magnet experiments. We finally made some headway this week with our read-alouds - finishing both Homer Price and Red Sails to Capri. We started our new read-aloud - The School Story by Andrew Clements. I discovered that, after dinner, if I pull out a quiet activity such as markers and stencils or play dough, the kids will sit and listen while I read a few chapters. This has been a good way to catch up on our reading.

 Now, I don't feel like I am so behind any more. I am still not doing as many hands on projects as I would like but I have to remember to forgive myself. I am about 6 weeks away from having another baby and I am getting ready to move to another house without the aid of my DH. So, the timing is a little stressful and I will be glad when it is over (the move, not the baby yet - I am not prepared).

J is reading from the Beginner's Bible reader. She reads a story each day. We are slightly behind in the reading schedule but this doesn't bother me as much as being behind in the read-alouds.

J working on her handwriting. She works on a page a day but if she rushes through the page, I make her do it over.

She has plenty of review games with her reading curriculum. She is reviewing the 4th sound that "y" makes by reading the cupcakes and placing them together.

More practice reading, I try to sneak in as much as I can each day. Whether it is reading a recipe for me or reading her brother a book!

She took her first spelling test this week. She worked with the words all week - rainbow words, writing sentences, and drawing pictures.

J is working on her Science sheets about animals in South America. Even though her entire curriculum last year was about animals, she still loves learning/reading about them. J's highlight of the week was after we read Red Sails to Capri and we googles pictures of the secret cave - she couldn't believe that it was real! She wants to visit someday. Who wouldn't? Well, hope your week went well. See you soon.

Letter D Interactive Notebook - revisited

We are about a week behind our Interactive Notebook Series. I still wanted to post them for those using them week by week. But I did not want to speed up the learning process for Kaleb. We will stay on this track for awhile. This week, our letter learning was D. Kaleb worked on his D notebook pages.

I like to start out with some flip books. We talk about different words that begin with the letter D.

Kaleb's scissor skills are greatly improving. He loves to cut out the pictures and glue them under the flaps. He gets disappointed with himself when he over cuts, though.

Next, we worked on our one-to-one correspondence. He chose a number and then fed the dog the correct number of dog bones.

He liked "feeding" the dog the most with this page. We only worked with numbers 1 thru 5 right now but the pages include numbers thru 10.

There was also a dump truck letter sort game

He liked this game and he really wanted to glue down the dump trucks. I told him we could a little later so we could review more this week.

The alphabet dog was another game. The idea behind it was to use different colored blocks or pom poms to cover of each the letters.

Kaleb loves the color blue and insisted on finding all the blue blocks for every letter. He did tell me what letter he was covering so it was still a review. Kaleb has been loving is alphabet notebook. He is happy to have his "own" school book. Hope you are enjoying the Interactive Notebook printables as much as we are. See you soon.

Letter E Interactive Notebook Pages - free printable

My Letter E Interactive Notebook Pages are done and ready for download. We are currently one week behind so I will post pictures of Kaleb working through his letter E pages next week. We have an up-coming move and I am praying that it goes smoothly, without any hitches and without getting further behind in school.

I included the alphabet letter puzzle. This usually doesn't make it into the notebook because I like making it magnetic for easier use.

I added an alphabet review game. Match the pictures not he eggs to the correct letter. I only added the letters that we have finished so far.

I added two types of flip books- the simple ones and the cracked eggs. Glue the main part of the egg to the paper and the flaps close in front of the book.

There is also a nest/egg letter sort. Add envelopes to the backs of the nests and place the eggs in the correct bird nest. Not pictured is the letter e craft page - make the letter e and egg and the envelope page for the letter e pieces. Enjoy the E Interactive Pages. See you next week with F.

Download Letter E Interactive Notebook Pages HERE.

B4FIAR - Corduroy

In addition to our letter of the week school plans, I have decided to add in Before Five in a Row books. This week, we rowed Corduroy by Don Freeman since we were learning about the letter C. I wasn't sure how Kaleb was going to react with reading the same book every day but he actually liked it - he liked it so much that he and J reenacted the story after our school day was over!

C is for Corduroy - Kaleb used buttons to trace the letter C. Corduroy lost his button to his overalls and tried to find it in the book.

We played a free game that I found from Gold Country SLP's TPT store (link below). We used large buttons for place markers and I added a number cube. We played this several times this week.

Kaleb worked on some bear patterning strips that I found from The Measured Mom (link below). I only used the ABAB pattern strips to start with. I did not want to overwhelm him.

I printed the button shape book from Home School Creations (link below) and we used the large buttons that came with one of my Melissa and Doug Games. Kaleb matched the buttons to button shapes on the pages go the book. We discovered that we had more circle buttons than any other shape. It took him awhile to match just the shape - he wanted to match the shape and color of the button pages.

Because Kaleb loves school right now, he gets upset if we don't start the day with his activities. Sometimes, I allow him to play on the iPad while I am working with J. When I told him it was time for school, he informed me that he was learning his letters on the iPad  and showed me where C was. He was super proud!

Since Corduroy was a bear, I added the bear counters to the pop corn and had him use the tongs/tweezers to pick each bear out. Then, he placed the bears in the correct color cup. While he was doing this, we practiced counting and his color words, which is a skill I placed on his learning objectives for the school year.

I made a simple game from an egg carton. I wrote numbers in the egg cups and added a button. Kaleb would shake the carton and then open it to see what number the button landed in. Then, we would count foam blocks for that number. After all the blocks were gone, we counted to see who had the most.

We made a simple piggy bank from a chip canister and I added number bottle caps as well as plastic coins. We counted them as he placed them in the piggy bank. This was a hit with J as well.

I found this cute button printable from Living Breathing and Loving TPT store. I cut the cards and added a handful of small buttons. I had Kaleb choose a card and say the number while adding buttons. We worked on the numbers 1 thru 6. The printable includes numbers up to 12.

He painted his very own Corduroy Bear.

I gave Kaleb some buttons and a few spaghetti noodles with his play dough, an idea I found at Cheerios and Lattes (below). He played with these for some time. He called the noodles trees and pressed the buttons into the play dough with his hammer. Not quite the fine motor activity I planned but he still had fun.

For some extra fun, I made some bear shaped pancakes for breakfast. Yummy! The kids are waiting patiently with Psych the fish for breakfast.

They loved this book, J included! A friend gave me some baby items and inside the bag was this white teddy bear. J took to it, calling it Corduroy (even though it was white). I went to the craft store, found some green felt, and made overalls complete with white buttons just like Corduroy in the book. Now they are re-inacting the story, complete with a Corduroy of their own. I love how things sometimes work out.

All of the mini books and printables that I printed will be placed in a Corduroy book folder for Kaleb to enjoy later. I will be saving the games for later use as well. We will be working on a few things this week pertaining to Corduroy, trying to finish up some skills that need to be reviewed and some ideas that are just too good to skip. All in all, it was a good first time "ROW." I wasn't sure how Kaleb would respond to BFIAR but he loved this book and activities. So we will be rowing more soon.

Links

Gold Country SLP - Corduroy Freebie game.

The Measured Mom - free Bear Counter Pattern Strips.

Home School Creations - free printable Corduroy pack to go along with B4FIAR.

Living Breathing and Loving TPT - free button number printable chart/cards.

Cheerios and Lattes - button and spaghetti noodle fine motor activity.

Homeschool Share - free Corduroy printables and mini books.