Tot School: Ponds

Kayleigh is 41 months old

Raising Rockstars

This week we finished up our Ll unit.   She handled it about like I expected with a few surprises. 

Her tracing was better than expected and she the Ls she traced actually looked like Ls.  Although, I’m sure that if I asked to write an L, I’d get a blank stare and then some scribble. LOL

We also made Ll out of play doh using play doh mats from Homeschool Creations.  Great fun!!

We made a “light” craft that came with the Raising Rockstars bundle.  It had their Bible verse on it.  (Mackenzie is learning the verses with us. 

She did a great job cutting out her verse, Matthew 5:16, and had a blast taping it together.  Tape is such a thrill for her!

She loved that it was bigger than she was. LOL

I wasn’t really expecting her to actually memorize the whole verse.  I was thinking that she’d be able help me say it by filling in some of the words.  But yesterday she just said the whole thing, right out of the blue.  That’s typical Kayleigh.  You never really know what she knows until she decides that she wants you to.  LOL

I even managed to get her to say it on camera.   She was kind of rushing but I couldn’t get her to say it again clearly.  You’ll get the idea. LOL

Kayleigh’s first Bible Verse; Matthew 5:16

That was a nice wrap-up to our first Raising Rockstars Unit.

Pond Theme

We also did a pond theme this week.  Most of our stuff came from 2 Teaching Mommies, Homeschool Creations, and 1+1+1=1.

We used the Pond Life Nomenclature cards from 1+1+1=1 with our pocket chart.   This was primarily a vocabulary builder.

She had a great time teaching me the names of the picture with the pointer.

We played pond match up  with these boards and cards, also from 1+1+1=1.

Not pictured, she matched the pond animals from her sensory bin to the animals on the board.  She LOVED that.

And since I brought up the bin.  Here it is…

We have blue pom poms, blue/clear gems, and blue marbles for water.

Pond animals from various Toob animals. (Farm, river, and frogs and turtles to be specific)

A blue suction mat fish.  We like to stick marbles on those for fine motor.

Lily pads made out of fun and whatever silk flowers that I had on had. 

Not pictured: Spoons, small buckets, and tongs

Generally she likes to play pretend with the creatures in the tubs but this time she actually did some of the fine motor aspects.  She’s a mystery, this one.

She practiced counting playing with the Feed the Frog game that I made last year.  We got all the way to ten before she lost interest in the counting and only wanted to feed. You can download it here.

The following activities came from Homeschool Creations Pond Life Pack and 2 Teaching Mommies Pond Unit.  So cute!

Tracing…

Sorting insects and non-insects

Graphing pond animals

Another sorting activity…

Pond Spelling…with ABC cookies!  Yum!

The Rest

We also did a ladybug shape activity from Making Learning Fun.

She hunted big and little Ls.  She was a really stickler to find every one.  This was f rom Confessions of a Homeschooler pre-k pack.

Her first dot-to-dot from a Kumon Number book.

We built worked those motor skills with some foam, golf tees, marbles, and a hammer.  Anything with marbles and a hammer is a hit here.

She loves the Kumon Let’s Fold book.  It usually ends in a game of peek-a-book with a paper animal.  Woot!

Our game for this week was Melissa and Doug’s Sandwich Stacking Games.  It is loads of fun!  It gets the kids moving, they learn sequencing and following directions, and it’s fun to play “restaurant” with.  The big kids loved it too.

 

Tot School: Trial Run

Kayleigh is 41 months old

Since we’re still in summer mode, we had another easy week.  So we tried out our Raising Rockstars/ Sonlight p 3/4 schedule for a couple of days. 

Our days will be starting with our newly redone morning board.  We tried doing calendar last year but she wasn’t ready; it went much better this time.

The top of our board is your standard calendar activities: days of the week, date, seasons, weather, songs, etc.  The bottom of the board is our Raising Rockstars  components: Bible verse, verse application, song, and key cards.  You can read more about that on 1+1+1=1. 

We don’t have any wall space for hanging this stuff due to the insane about of bookshelves in our school room, oh the trials of being a Sonlighter lol, so I made it out of heavy foam board.  It folds up and slides neatly behind a shelf when not in use.  Love it!



Here’s the little miss counting the numbers with her pointer.  She wouldn’t have anything to do with that last year so progress has been made.


Using her Raising Rockstar prop (RR from now on) to sing our song. 

Raising Rockstar Activities

Unit Deets

Letter: Ll

Verse: Matthew 5:16

Number: 1

Color: Yellow

Shape: Circle

Sight Word: See

Here she is working on her RR binder which will hold all of her verses, projects, and key cards.  And it will be a nice little keep sake when we’re finished. 

Coloring her Bible verse for this unit.

Cutting out her vocab cards.  She did a really good job staying on the lines for the most part.

“Reading” her cards that we put in her binder.  She LOVED this!

Pre-writing using “Get Ready for L".  She did surprisingly well with this.  She normally scribbles and misses the lines entirely.  I guess she wasn’t kidding when she said she wanted to write like sissy. LOL

I didn’t get any pictures of it, but she also really liked “reading” the mini-book that goes along with the unit.  The purpose of that is mainly for working with the sight word, but since we’re not really doing sight words, we read it just for fun.  It was very repetitive and with the picture clues, she was easily able to figure out what to “read.”  She felt like a “big gurl baby.” 
She is very in love with being a baby yet wants to do big girl stuff and “big gurl baby” is apparently her way of having the best of both worlds. LOL

Other Activities

In no particular order…

Ll Maze.  Find and stamp all the big and little Ls.  Ideally, you’d do it in order, to make a maze, but she’s not ready for that so she just stamped them as she saw them. 

This is something that I made and will make available to you once I have them all finished.  I think I’m on 

V so soon.  =o)

Playing on ABC Mouse.  She also did the L unit on Starfall but I didn’t get any pictures of that.

An ABC puzzle.  This was the first time she’s worked on a puzzle of this size and she was LOVING it!  She did it over and over and over.  She was so proud that she could do it.  With a little help of course.

I printed this ladybug number book from Making Learning Fun.  We did it a little differently.  We didn’t attempt to write the number words, we just stamped the correct number of spots on the ladybug.

Dot painting L is for Ladybug.  This was from COAH. For the first time in the history of the world, she only painted on the dots.  Normally it’s all over.  And I had told her she could paint it however she wanted. LOL

She worked in her Kumon Let’s Color and Easy Maze books

Ladybug color match and big/little L sort, both from COAH.

Her star boxes, which are available after her guided activities are completed, contained Magneatos, Lacing Bears, and instruments. 

Read Alouds

She loved all of her Sonlight read alouds.  So much that we read extra.

This first book is part of RR and is where the Bible verses come from.  It didn’t really hold Kayleigh’s attention, as it doesn’t have a lot pictures.  So I’m not sure if this will work for us yet.  We’ll see.

My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God's Word in Little Hearts (9781581340051): Susan Hunt, Yvette Banek: Books

She likes this Bible okay

101 Favorite Stories from the Bible (9781885270474): Ura Miller: Books

but she really loves the Family Time Bible so I think we’re going to switch. In fact, she went and got it off the shelf after being unhappy that 101 didn’t have a picture of the snake in the Garden of Eden.  LOL

The Family Time Bible came with core pre-k but it’s an easier version than 101 favorites.   Sadly, the Family Time Bible is out of print.  Mackenzie LOVED this Bible for years and it shows the wear.

Family-Time Bible: for families (9780842365765): Kenneth N. Taylor: Books

This treasury is one of the best I’ve seen as it has full size pictures. Woot!!  This week we read Baby Says, Pete’s a Pizza, Harold’s Purple Crayon, and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

HarperCollins Treasury of Picture Book Classics: A Child's First Collection (9780060080945): Tegen Katherine: Books

All-in-all, our trial run went well.  I saw some things that I might tweak and I  have a possible review item coming up that might alter my plan a bit more.   Especially if we like it.