Tot School: D is for Dance

Kayleigh is 3.95 years old

This week we were focusing on the letter D.  Our verse was another fitting one, Philippians 2:14, especially for my oldest daughter. LOL Our spines for Kayleigh’s activities continue to be Sonlight core p 3/4, Raising Rock Stars Preschool, and All About Reading level pre-1.

Raising Rock Stars

Do all things without complaining or disputing. Philippians 2:14 was our verse this week.  I chose the I Am Helpful virtue from our We Choose Virtues cards to compliment our verse.  We talked a lot about how we should respond when asked to do something.  Kayleigh surprised me by actually doing a few helpful things for me without being asked. Yay!  Here’s our Raising Rock Stars work in action.  She’s still not big on the coloring pages but she is very interested in learning to write so she works hard on her tracing pages. She really enjoyed writing letter D because I told her she need to draw” a nice straight back and a big, fat belly.” “Like Santa?”  Sure…And she was in love with D.  LOL She wasn’t all that thrilled with the length of her verse this week once she was done cutting it out. LOL  As you can see on her RRSP craft, she didn’t want to color the page and she gave the smiley face a “make over instead.”

All About Reading

We had a lot of fun with our AAR lessons this week.  We played a rhyming came with Zecora Zebra using picture cards that came with the kit.  Kayleigh had blast with the letter craft this week.  She grudgingly colored the D and the dog but then she got to “make a dress” for the dog out of fabric and then paint “dog food” that the dog spilled onto the ground. (In this week’s AAR story the dogs were messy. lol) Big hit!  For our tactile letter activity this week, we built our D using the cling pieces that game with our Grasshopper Preschool Prep kit.  That was also a big hit and Kayleigh decided to make A, B, and C too.

Sonlight

We are continuing to read a lot of fairy tales in our Sonlight reading.  There were a lot of princess stories this week and Kayleigh was thrilled.  We also read a couple of new ones that I had never heard of before. Have you read Diamonds and Toads or The Fisherman and his Wife before?  Even at the age of 40, I’m still learning stuff in pre-k.  lol

Other Fun Stuff

Kayleigh continues to work hard on writing her names.  She loves to write on the Crayola Dry Erase Board.  I’m so glad that Carisa over at 1+1+1=1 mentioned this awesome tool.  I love being able to slip all kinds of printables into it.

We worked on her counting skills using these fun activity from PreKinders.  She had to draw the correct number of spots on the dog.  She loved this.  Then we put the cards into numerical order.

Also from PreKinders was a dog pattern block page and a dog and cat grid game.

We did several activities from ABC Animals.  We dot painted our D is for dolphin craft.  Kayleigh is IN LOVE with dolphins ever since she first saw Dolphin Tale.  She gave some dolphins make overs according to the color written on their bellies.  We also put some flash cards into ABC order in our pocket chart.  I wasn’t sure how she would like doing that last one but I guess every thing is fun when it involves a pocket chart. lol

She insisted on “sewing” again this week so we got out some lacing cards from our Lauri Pre-K Kit.  We also practiced our shapes using our Matching Middles game.

 

I found this cute “What number is missing?” printable in our Letter of the Week files from COAH.  We used number stamps and filled in the missing number. We also did some rhyming puzzles that I got out of a Scholastic book flyer. 

And lastly Kayleigh had a little dance show at her Little Gym class.  Watch her as she doesn’t pay attention to what she’s supposed to be doing and I scratch my head wondering why I shell out the bucks. LOL  Must be because she’s cute.

Kayleigh’s Tap Dance

Kayleigh ballet

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One With the Blood

In My Life This Week: 

We’re back to cheerleading and basketball now which means an extra night out of the house for practice. During this season I find myself dreaming and thinking in “cheer.”  Always a good time. lol This year I’m attempting to teach the cheerleaders a dance routine.  It’s proving to be quite interesting.  I should probably take some video before they get good at it.

In Our Homeschool This Week: 

We’ve started reviewing something new for Bible, Who Am I? from Apologia’s What We Believe series.  Like all things Apologia, it is really well done and Mackenzie LOVES it.

This week was our first week Growing With Grammar.  It’s going well.  It’s very different than First/Advanced Language Lessons.  For starters, it’s very independent, there’s very little involvement required from me.  That’s kind of nice.  She reads the text then completes the practice pages.  And there are even tests every seven lessons or so.  Mackenzie seems to like it.  Probably because it’s not much of a challenge for her. It’s definitely not as in depth as ALL.  I probably could’ve put her into level 6.

In social studies we finished up Korea.  We’re almost finished with Tales of a Korean Grandmother.  Mackenzie is still getting a hold of it and reading on her own.  Always a sign of a good book.  For her “Choose Your Adventure” project she made a brochure on Korea.  You’ve got to love word process programs that make it so easy. 

We are now moving on to China. We’ve been waiting impatiently to get to our China study because we have been dying to use the China activity box that came with the core. Finally, our time has arrived.   Her current read aloud is about Hudson Taylor and his missionary work in China.  She’s already written a little mini-report, on the Forbidden City, for one of her Eastern Hemisphere Explorer assignments.  I probably should’ve read it over before I posted it but grading is next on my list after I get my post written.  =o)

In science, we have moved onto a lesson on blood.  And boy was it fun!  we got to make a model of blood. Out of candy.  Woot!! Check it out…

Our corn syrup "plasma”

Red hot “red blood cells”

White Jelly Bean “white blood cells” Sprinkle “platelets”

How cool is that?

My Favorite Thing This Week: 
Watching Mackenzie score her teams first basket at her game this week.  Not only didn’t she duck when the ball came at her, she took the shot. Progress.  Go Mackenzie!!!

Tot School: Cc

Kayleigh is 3.75 years old

This week we our focus has been the letter C. I have to say that her memory verse this week was fabulous, Colossians 3:20.  Woot!

Raising Rock Stars

As I already mentioned, our verse this week was Colossians 3:20 “Children obey your parents in all things for this is well pleasing to the Lord.”  Very timely because behaviors and attitudes in both of the girls have not been well pleasing in either of the girls as of late. I love it when God works things out so nicely.  And I enjoy hearing my older daughter groan when she hears the new verse and mumble, “He always does know what’s going on doesn’t He?”  Yes my dear he always does.  lol

Kayleigh worked hard on coloring her verse, two fisted no less, “reading” her vocabulary cards, learning to write C, and cutting out her verse. Once again, the verse was of satisfactory length.  We’re still working on memorizing this one.  She seems to be stumbling over” well pleasing.”  Part of me thinks that she just doesn’t like what it implies. LOL

All About Reading

All About Reading continues to go well.  Kayleigh really likes it and is doing a great job.  So far there hasn’t been anything terribly challenging so I’m considering spending up the lessons a bit.  I haven’t really make up my mind though.  I hate to ruin the good groove that we’re in.  Decisions, decisions.

This week we played a fun rhyming game called “Out of the Wagon.”  I’d put in three picture cards, two of which rhymed, onto our wagon picture.  Kayleigh would decide which two rhymed and then tell the other one to “get out of the wagon!” Zecora the Zebra would help her push the oddball out.  She wanted to use our Handwriting Without Tears pieces again for her tactile activity but no pictures.  Her craft was finger painting the C to look like a cookie and then glue on little “chocolate chips.”  Yum!  Then we ate some real ones.  By we I mean her because they’re not on my diet.

Sonlight

We’ve been reading a lot of fairy tales this week.  Kayleigh was cracking up over The Emperor’s New Clothes.  I never realized how much I dislike Jack and the Beanstalk until I was reading it to Kayleigh this week. He disobeyed his mom, snuck out of the house, and stole.  I don’t like him.

Other Learning Fun

We also did some other learning activities using ideas from 1+1+1=1, Confessions of a Homeschooler, PreKinders, and stuff from our stash.

We have a new app on the iPad that she really likes called Dots-for-Tots. I like it because I’m working on counting objects with her, she likes to count at her own pace regardless of the number of objects, and this has been helping with that.  It’s kind of like a dot-to-dot and it counts out loud with you.

We did a couple of activities from the ABC Animals.  I was cracking up when she saw the word caterpillar at the bottom of the page.  “That word has too much letters.” Bwaa haa haa!  And apparently she thinks caterpillars are creepy.  She decided to call the ones on her craft pickles because “I wike pickles.”  As long as you know that pickle doesn’t start with C.

I pulled out some of our Letter of the Week activities from COAH.  I love that I have these already cut, laminated, and ready to go.  We did some color matching, sorting by size, and lacing.  She’s still very into lacing.

We practiced counting by “feeding the cat”, made a caterpillar out of pattern blocks, and worked on our colors and color words using three-part cards.  All of these activities came from PreKinders.

We worked on shapes and ordering by size with some of the activities from the Hungry Caterpillar pack that we did last year.  I believe it’s been updated recently but I haven’t checked that out yet. 

From our stash we did a C alphabet maze, patterned with our Learning Links, and worked in our Kumon Number book.

And that was our very busy week.  This is the third week in a row that we’ve managed to check off everything on our list.  I think we might be on a roll.  Click on the buttons at the top of the page to see what other tots have been up too.