Tot School: The One Where We Change it Up a Bit

 

Kayleigh is 3.75 years old

It’s hard to believe that another year has gone by.  It’s even harder to believe that my baby is going to be four next month.  Ack!  And my big baby 11.  Double ack!  Bitter sweet.

At any rate, growing girls mean changes, not only in age, but in ability.  While my little miss tries to be difficult and hide what she knows,  I can see that she has been soaking up what she’s been learning like a sponge.  And it appears that my little darling is showing signs of reading readiness despite her attempts to hide them.  Ha!!  I’m on to you Kayleigh.

In light of this we’re changing it up a bit.  Along with our Sonlight p 3/4 and Raising Rock Stars preschool work we are adding in All About Reading  pre-1.   It has been a perfect addition so far because it’s so easy to implement. And it’s fun.  Kayleigh is LOVING it.   She won’t necessarily be able to read after completing it because it’s more of a get ready to read program.  I’ll let ARR explain it in their own words.

Our new All About Reading program is unique because it begins with Level Pre-1 for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and it focuses on what we call the Big Five Skills. These five fundamental pre-reading skills include letter knowledge, phonological awareness, print awareness, listening comprehension, and motivation to read. It is this specific set of skills that helps pre-readers understand the basics of language and how it works, preparing them to learn to read.

With All About Reading Level Pre-1, your child will play special games, enjoy little crafts, and engage in charming story time activities, all the while absorbing these all-important Big Five Skills.

At the moment, I’m only planning on working on one letter a week so it adds maybe 15 minutes to our “school” 3 times a week.  It goes through all the capital letters first, focusing on recognition and a lot of rhyming and word play, then it goes on to lower case and more phonemic awareness.  And it involves a puppet which thrills Kayleigh to know end.  Zacoura (she renamed it after some zebra on My Little Pony lol) now does all of her school with her.

The only change in the rest of our time is that I rearranged the RRSPK order to follow along with AAR.    Our Sonlight books fill in the AAR read aloud requirement quite nicely. So it’s all blending very well for us.

So here’s a peek at what we did.

Our Sonlight read alouds came from the 20th Century Children’s Book Treasury.  We, of course, had to read extra.  This was always one of Mackenzie’s favorite books as a little one too.  Chock full of wonderful stories.

This week in AAR we talked about capital A and played a lot of rhyming games with Zacoura.  Zacoura was also very helpful during our calendar time.  Our only issue was Kayleigh getting offended when I wanted to take a picture of her with her goggly-eyed alligator. lol

Our verse this week was Proverbs 15:1 A soft answer turns away wrath.  A very fitting verse for everybody in the house.  I saw those Crayola Dry Erase Centers on sale this week and I picked one up.  She loves writing on that thing more.  It will save me a little laminating too.

We did some other activities using stuff from my LOTW stash, tot school printables, and games and manipulatives I have lying around.   I was pleased to see that she is finally getting the hang of, and enjoying, lacing cards.  The Lauri puzzles with a hammer are always a big hit.  She wasn’t as interested in working with tongs this week but she did a great job on a color by number sheet.  We also did some shape sorting and matching, folding from our Kumon book, stamped her name, some pre-writing in the dry erase center and some letter matching using magnets.   She’s also been a jigsaw puzzle maniac.  She got several Melissa and Doug jigsaws for Christmas and has been doing them non-stop.  I took pictures but I forgot to add them to the collage.

And Kayleigh is also working on a super-fun review item that she just LOVES.  KinderBach.  She is thrilled to have “piano class” like her big sister.  I’m thrilled that we can view the lessons on our iPad.  (And those are all the sneak peeks you’re getting!)