Preschool

First, I apologize for my lack of posting. I lost my camera, and post without pictures are not very fun. But the much missed camera has been found and pictures have been taken.

On to the post. Recently I started preschool again with my Princess. She has already been in two co-ops, so it wasn't the first time she's done preschool.

We've been using Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I love the book, however I find it a little dry. I like to add a craft when learning all the letters. We do all the letter crafts in one notebook.

Today's letter was U. I Googled umbrella crafts, and there were a ton of examples of the activity we ended up doing. (so I can't really credit it back to a certain person).

After writing the letter U a few times, there are more U's on other pages. We made an umbrella out of a pipe cleaner and a cupcake wrapper. She thought it was great! And it wasn't very messy, so I also thought it was great!

I love book lists!

I don't know a lot about Kumon. I do know that The Boy loooooved Kumon's My First Book of Cutting when we were doing preschool.

And I learned today that Kumon has free downloadable reading lists. I love a good book list, people! There are some great books on these lists. For example, Level 2A includes Penguin, which is one of my favorite children's books ever.

I can't wait to check out the ones I haven't read yet.

Do you guys have any good sources for book lists? I have a billion of them bookmarked, and I know that we probably couldn't even read all of them in our lifetime--but I just love them so.

The Story about Ping

Have you read The Story about Ping, by Marjorie Flack? It's really old. I loved it when I was a kid.

So I was really excited to find this worksheet on Homeschool Share: Color Ping's Family. (If that link doesn't work for some reason, go to homeschoolshare.com and search "ping.")

Ping has a huge family. This worksheet that I found has a little duck representing every member of Ping's family, and then instructions like, "Color Ping's uncles orange." Ping has seven uncles, so Little Boy picked seven ducks to color orange. And so on.

So there ya go. Reading, counting, and coloring in one activity.

Dinosaur Bones!

I got this idea from...the internet somewhere.

We learned about dinosaurs a couple weeks ago, and for one of the activities Little Boy and Isaac made "fossils."

We smashed some playdough onto the table to represent mud. The idea was to stick dry pasta--representing dinosaur bones--into the playdough to make a dinosaur shape.

Little Boy started out that way--you can see a head, neck, and arms...and maybe legs...in the photo there. But then he apparently decided that wasn't 3-D enough for him. Oh, well. We weren't really going for accuracy.

Latter-day Homeschooling.Com

I might've said this before, but I've been thinking about writing about the websites that I use to find preschool and homeschooling resources. Because literally (almost) everything I do with Little Boy for preschool comes from the internet.

I don't think I would be homeschooling if the internet weren't available.

Anyway, here's a site that I've been reading for awhile: Latter-day Homeschooling. Their About page says that the site:

"...was created as a gathering place for LDS homeschoolers to share their homeschooling experiences, offer tips, resources, ideas and encouragement to each other. Although we are not an official site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we strive to hold to the standards and values of it. If you are not a member of our church, please know that you are welcome to visit our site as well."

They have posts on all kinds of topics (well, they're all related to the Church and homeschooling, but you know what I mean)--different ages, different school subjects, teaching tools, and a big ol' list of LDS homeschooling blogs.

Some posts that I particularly like are this one about why LDS families should consider homeschooling, this one that my friend Megan wrote (she's one of their new writers), and this one that links back to my post about colored celery (haha, I had no idea they were reading my blog).

Anyway, check Latter-day Saint Homeschooling out. They're a great resource.

Preschool on the Go

I'm gonna tell you a secret about home schooling:

You don't have to actually be at home to do it.

I know, revolutionary! Ha. We do school at home 99% of the time, because...well, we're home a lot. And usually when we're on the go, we skip school for the day.

But once in awhile, if we're going to be in the car and Little Boy will be sitting for a long time, we take a little school with us.

{Note: No, he's not wearing a seatbelt in the photo. We were in a parking lot, waiting for Isaac.}

I love clipboards, by the way. Best school-away-from-home tool ever.

Tracing...Kind Of

So, continuing with scaling back on the writing activities--this is another activity that I've seen in lots of places. I can't really give credit to just one source.

I printed out some BIG letters for Little Boy to "trace"--but since he's kind of over tracing with a pen, we've been using little manipulatives to trace the big letters. So it's also a fine-motor activity, yay!

Anyway, here Little Boy's using Craisins to "trace" an upper-case A. We've also used beads and goldfish crackers. I think we might do marshmallows or chocolate chips next--he likes being able to snack on his schoolwork. And really, who can blame him?

Likes & Dislikes

Whoa! It's been almost three weeks since I last posted on this blog. I know that I only have a handful of readers here, so thanks for sticking around even when I don't put much effort into this blog.

So. I've been a little lost lately about what to teach Little Boy. Too many options, I guess. I looked up a few kindergarten-readiness lists for some ideas, and I put together my own list from that. (He's almost at first grade in a couple of areas. Help!) The list that I put together is mostly social/emotional stuff, and it has a few science-y topics thrown in, too. We're still doing our regular routine with reading and math.

Anyway, I think this falls under the social/emotional category. Little Boy definitely knows what he likes and what he doesn't like, but I wanted to talk through that a little more with him. So I got out some papers that I had laying around (I think they're left over from teaching Primary...?) that have a big heart drawn in the middle. I asked Little Boy to think of something that he liked, and then he drew a picture of it in the heart and I wrote down a little sentence at the bottom that he dictated to me. (i.e., "Little Boy likes giraffes.")

(Why, yes, there's a banana sticking out of Little Boy's head. Why do you ask?)

Anyway, in this picture he decided that he liked his ball and his square blocks. I'm pretty sure he picked those because he knew he could draw them. He doesn't draw much. Another time, he said he liked pancakes and noodles. I don't have a picture of that one, but trust me, it's cute.

Finger-Writing

So, remember this post, when I tried to have Little Boy "write" numbers with cotton balls--and it didn't quite work?

Yeah. So I decided to take a step back with the writing-type activities. I didn't get this one from anywhere in particular; I've seen it lots of places. It's pretty basic. And it was much easier for Little Boy:

That's rice in the tray. You could put pretty much anything in the tray, though--pudding, beans, sand, shaving cream...anyway, I took the magnetic numbers off our front door again, so he could imitate the shapes of the numbers and "write" them in the rice with his finger.

Like I said, this was much easier for him. I've got a couple more activities like this up my sleeve--I hope they'll work as well as this one did.

Art: Painting in the Rain

Okay, so this one was a little bit of an "oops" on my part.

The idea of this project is to draw a picture with washable markers on heavy paper or cardstock. Then stick it out in the rain for a few minutes, and the colors will run--if you do it right, it turns out really cool.

So I gave Little Boy a piece of cardstock and some markers and told him to draw whatever he wanted.

And now, I want to make a little side note. The picture above is cropped because Little Boy had written his name on the original paper. I don't put Little Boy's real name on my blog, and here's a decent (and scary) explanation of why.

Anyway, I put Little Boy's picture in the rain and...I forgot about it. I only left it out there for twenty minutes or so, but that was way too long.

Oops. Little Boy still thought it was pretty cool, so I guess it wasn't a total bust.

Weirdest Science Project Ever

These are normal basil seeds. Notice that they are dry. This will be important later.

I read (in The Mailbox, of course) about a cute little science experiment you can do with basil seeds--stick 'em in a bottle full of water, leave them in a sunny window sill, and they'll sprout in a few days. Cool, because then your little tyke can see the roots and the leaves sticking out of the seeds.

And, yeah, that's what happened. We got roots and sprouts within about four days.

But what the magazine did NOT tell me is what happens when you put basil seeds in water. I was seriously weirded out.

Gross, right? I thought something was horribly wrong with my seeds. They kinda look like frog eggs, which is cool, but that's a completely different science lesson and not what I was going for here.

Anyway, I consulted Dr. Google, and sweet Dr. Google assured me that this is normal. In fact, gelatinous basil seeds are a delicacy in some Asian countries.

I had no idea.

So, there ya go. A bizarre, but really cool, science experiment and a little cultural factoid that you can throw in there if you want. Two for the price of one.

Yarn Art

I got this activity out of some kind of math-for-kids book. Little Boy liked it more than I thought he would.

First, he had to sort a bunch of strands of yarn by length--long, medium and short. He was supposed to put the yarn in the envelopes, but that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. So he just piled the yarn on top of the envelopes.



And then I gave him a sheet of paper and a bottle of glue and let him go crazy. I didn't give any direction for the gluing--just glue the yarn wherever.

Oh! And this was the first time he's managed to squeeze a bottle of glue and move it around where he wanted it--without having a meltdown because it wasn't working like he wanted it to. So that was a small victory.



It totally looks like modern art. We could sell that for a squillion dollars, I bet.

The Rest of Our Homeschool Day

So...I forgot to finish the little series I was doing about our daily homeschool schedule.

Oops.

Anyway, here's how the rest of our homeschool day goes. After we do some reading, we do...everything else. That is, whatever other activities I have planned. The subject and format of the activities changes every day, based on what I have prepared and what I feel like doing.

(Because, y'know, this whole homeschool thing is all about me and what I feel like.)

Anyway. The "other" activities are sometimes games we play on the floor:



Here he's trying to pick up beads with a clothespin. I think we were pretending that the clothespins were bird beaks and the beads were birdseed.




Tracing used to be a regular part of the routine--he was obsessed, kinda--until about a week ago. He won't trace at all now. So we'll start that again when he feels like it.




Or we do an art project or a little science experiment at the table. That's a glittery snowman, with enormous snowflakes falling around it.

Most days, we do two of the above. When we're really lucky, we do all three. Sometimes we also do a little video or game from The Head of the Class. I'm planning on doing a later blog post on The Head of the Class, because it's been a pretty good supplement to the other stuff we're doing.

Unless I totally forget to post about it, like I did with this one.

Reading

So, after we do a bit of calendar and weather stuff, we move on to reading. If we have some Bob books handy from the library, we'll read one of those:

(I've blogged about Bob books before.)

And then we do a lesson out of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. If we don't have Bob books around, then we just skip straight to this book.

Little Boy is flying through Ordinary Parent's Guide. He just caught on to reading really quickly, and he can't get enough of it ever since.

(I've blogged about The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading before, too.)

I want to point out right here that I don't really think of Little Boy as "advanced" just because he reads well. Every kid has strengths, and this is one of his. If you want to read about something he was not good at, go to my personal blog and search for "potty training." Heh.

Next up in our preschool day: everything else!

Weather and Calendar Time

So, after doing all the church-y stuff, we move on to calendar stuff. It only takes a couple minutes.

We chart the weather using this graph from Confessions of a Homeschooler (scroll down to "Calendar Time" and click on "Weather Graphing"). I like this because it's also a sneaky math activity. I think this is all the weather graphing we did in November. Remember how I said we don't do everything every day?

And then there's calendar time. We take a look at a regular calendar to see what the date is, and if it's a holiday or something, we talk about that. Once in awhile, we sing a little song about Days of the Week or Months of the Year, but Little Boy memorized those so quickly that I don't really bother anymore.

And then he switches our "perpetual calendar" to the right date. (I got it at Target last fall for...I dunno, maybe two dollars.) He insists on doing this by himself.

And that's it. I'd really like one of those pocket calendar thingies (like this one), but for now what we're doing works for us.

Next up: reading!

Our Changed Schedule

{Last May. A lot has changed since then.}

Some of my first posts on this blog were about what "Learning Time" looked like at our house.

That was almost a year ago. Looking back at those posts, I can hardly remember doing some of it--Little Boy has learned so much since then.

I think our preschool routine is more like a slow evolution than a sudden change--it changes so slowly that I hardly notice it.

So I thought I'd do a few posts on what our preschool time looks like now. I really don't do all of these things every day, but I try to do most of them. And on really, really good days, we get to all of it.

The very first thing we do is read a scripture and talk about a scripture story from this schedule that some kind lady posted on Sugardoodle. I don't follow it exactly. But we've kept up with the scripture of the month and we do a different scripture story each week, even if it's not the one on the schedule.

After that, I read a story out of the Friend. Most of the stories and activities are a bit too advanced for Little Boy, so I adapt them or skip over the ones for older kids.

Up next: calendar and weather!

Marshmallows and Toothpicks

I don't think I stole this idea from anywhere in particular, but I didn't come up with it on my own, either. It's a pretty common project.

And all you need is toothpicks and mini marshmallows. How's that for cheap?

{Had a little too much fun with the photo editing. Heh.}

Anyway, the gist is that you stick the toothpicks into the marshmallows. If your kid is pretty little, you can just leave it at that. As your kids get older, you can have them make shapes and little sculptures.

Little Boy loved it, but he insisted on copying whatever I made. He's really into this building stuff, but creativity isn't one of his strengths right now. Oh, well. I finally stopped building and made him think up some shapes on his own.

I don't have a photo of all the stuff we made, but we used up a whole lotta toothpicks and marshmallows. Not ALL the marshmallows, though. We had to save some for snacking on afterward.

Days of the Week

We sing a little days-of-the-week song sometimes when we do calendar activities during "learning time." (Yeah, we still call it that.)

I didn't know whether the days of the week were sinking into Little Boy's head, so I printed out these Days of the Week cards from TheHeadoftheClass.com to see if he could put them in order by himself. (I love that site. I'll write more about it later.)



And...he had no problem with it. Yay for songs!

Science: Salt Melts Ice

Here's yet another idea that I took from The Mailbox.

I filled a couple of Ziploc bags with water, and (carefully) stuck them in my freezer. The idea was to make ice lumps, and there's really not room in my freezer for two bowls of water, so...Ziploc bags had to do. And only one of them leaked!

The next day, I filled two bowls half-full of water, added a lot of salt, and some food coloring. And I unwrapped the ice lumps.

After explaining to Little Boy about how salt melts ice (at a four-year-old's level, of course), and showing him how to use the dropper-thingy, I let him loose.



I think the food coloring is supposed to make the salt water easier to see than if you used clear water or plain salt.

Little Boy had fun with the dropper, but the melting didn't work as well as I'd hoped. It was still hard to see much melting going on.

The salt water did finally melt a hole through a thin part of one of the ice lumps.



So...I don't really recommend this experiment. Unless you can figure out a way to make it work better...maybe use smaller ice lumps?

Winter Art Project: Snow Drawing

Here's another idea that I stole from The Mailbox:



It's super-easy. Have your kid draw a picture of a snow scene (you can't tell from the photo, but Little Boy drew a snowman with a bunch of snowflakes falling around it). Then go over the lines with a glue stick and dab a cotton ball over the glue-sticked areas. Bits of cotton from the cotton ball will stick to the picture.

Ta-da!