Letters & Numbers

(January 18, 2011)

On the home school front we reviewed the letters N & L.

For the letter N our focus was Numbers. We went on a number hunt at Walmart and Brady wrote down all the Numbers he saw in his little Notebook. We worked on skip counting by 10s and 5s and worked on some early addition skills too. Our N food was Nachos (my favorite) and we talked about different ways we can be Nice to others and Not be Naughty.

The Letter L represented Letters. Brady is almost finished with his Kindergarten reading book! So we've used the last couple of weeks to review. Our verse was Luke 10:27 "Jesus answered, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Which also tied into our "Nice" lesson. His L food was a Lollipop, but thought it was "SO COOL" to eat ABC's & 123's because it had Letters and Numbers in it. :) The Little things that kids Like LoL...and speaking of LoL...we also talked about things that make us Laugh...my favorite was my kiddos, Brady's was Tom & Jerry.

For our craft I cut many Numbers and Letters out of newspaper and Brady had to sort them and glue the Numbers to the Letter N and the Letters on the L.



Pictures were taken on my phone so the quality isnt too great. This week we're taking off to the great state of Texas to visit my mom & sister! have a blessed week!!!

Letters O & T

(February 1, 2011)

Last week we reviewed the letter O & made some super cute Owls! Rylan joined in the fun this time!

They painted their O's added a triangle with 2 green circles for the eyes. This was also an opportunity to teach Rylan some colors & shapes, though he didn't care for it as much as he did the painting! I had to pry the paint brush out of his hand!

Our O food was an orange of course! Brady wasn't too keen on trying an Olive! We talked a lot about the Ocean & our vacation to the beach when saw a lot of different sea creatures up close! Too close for me! A baby shark swam 5 feet away from were we were! We also looked in books & talked about the different animals that live in the Ocean. After we made our Owls we learned a new word: NOCTURNAL because most Owls sleep in the day & hunt for food at night. Another new word was OAR. It was in his dictionary & he couldn't understand why they put a paddle under the O because paddle starts with P! He cracks me up sometimes with his simple logical sense of things.



Brady also reviewed the letter T & made a cute Tree in the shape of a T.

He colored the Trunk & branches, then used a sponge to paint green leaves on it & before the paint could dry, he added fake grass we bought a while back to add some Texture!

Brady came up with a Ton of T words! As you can see by his list some of his VERY favorite Things start with T. Trains Thomas & Toby made the list & Brady wasn't too happy I ran out of room to write Tow Mater from Disney's Cars :) Our story came from the Bible, we Talked about the Trees in the Garden of Eden & the 1st sin. Brady remembered most of it which makes me happy! We also Talked a lot about Trust & Telling the Truth. Our T food was his favorite vegetable, a Tomato! I had considered working on Telling Time for math, but I didn't want to interrupt our addition that we had already started.

As you can see he did VERY well on his on. I like to buy the $1 workbooks to assist with our Singapore book we typically use. Brady likes it too because as he says, "I get to work with my friends." Meaning his favorite characters. :)

He also uses his Cuisinaire Rods to help count the numbers & then add them all together. I'm amazed at how quick he caught on. I'm hoping he's good at math & likes it. I never did! One of my main goals in homeschooling is to make learning fun so here's to praying I can find fun ways to teach the stuff I don't like so much.

CAMPING

For the last five years all the guys on my husband's side of the family have done a camping/jug fishing trip. When our boys & nephews each get old enough they get to go too. This summer was Rylan's 1st time to go & ever since then he has been asking to go camping again. When I saw that 2 Teaching Mommies & Homeschool Creations had Camping Theme printables I KNEW we HAD to do them!

Finding books for our camping theme was a bit hard. We were able to find 3 books & I found a few short stories from Teachers Pay Teachers that we were able to use too.
Here's Rylan chilling in Keller's bouncy seat reading his favorite book :)

One of the BEST things about camping is roasting marshmallows! Brady used mini ones for his roll-a-graph & as counters while doing his math worksheets. The boys also used them for a measuring activity I found on Teachers Pay Teachers; though Rylan ate more than he measured :)

Another fun food activity Rylan did was fishing for M&Ms! I printed it off of Making Learning Fun & he had to match the color of the M&Ms to the correct color fish. Of course he rushed through this so he could gobble them up!

We used the counting/number cards from the preschool packs with clothespins. I wrote #s 1-10 on clothespins & Rylan has to count how many items are on each card. Then I show him what the # looks like & he has to find the right clothespin & clip it to the card. He does get a bit frustrated sometimes when he cant open them well. I am hoping this will really help him with his scissor skills cause he's not liking that too much either...well when I make him hold the scissors the correct way :P

For writing practice Rylan did his usual Do-A-Dot page, this time a tent, & practiced writing the Letter F for FIRE! We even made a pretend camp fire that you can check out in the 1st picture up above. Rylan also practiced tracing lines "bringing the campers to their tent." I forgot to take a picture of it though! Brady used one of the printables to practice his Beginning Sounds & practiced his printing by writing & spelling many camp-themed words.

This week Brady also worked on putting words in ABC order & practicing compound words. We had really cute camp-themed printables for these activities, but apparently I deleted the pics! WHOOPS! Sorry! I got them from Teachers Pay Teachers so go over there & search "camping" to see all the cute stuff they have.

I found this cute shape matching game from Making Learning Fun. Rylan had to tell me the names of shapes he knew (some were pretty tough) then match the flame to the correct camp fire.

Brady also worked on reading his shape words. I found this at Homeschool Creations.He also practiced reading his number words 1-20 by matching the oar to the correct canoe. (from Teachers Pay Teachers)

Here's Rylan working on size sorting & shadow matching. He absolutely LOVES shadow matching because of watching Peter Pan chase his shadow. It makes me laugh at how things travel over for some kids & makes them likes things better...or worse sometime :)

Our original plan was to take the boys camping Friday night, but we all ended up getting pretty bad colds during the week & we didn't want to chance it. So I set up the boys tent in the school room & they slept in it EVERY SINGLE NIGHT during the week! (pictured at the beginning of post). Friday we were all feeling much better so we built our own campfire in the backyard & roasted hot dogs for dinner!

And lets face it, camping wouldn't be camping without SMORES!!!

Keller LOVED marshmallows & graham crackers! After he finished eating them he would smack his lips asking for more!

This week was more relaxed due to sickness, but I figured that's what camping should do anyway right? Relax you. The kids loved reading, playing, & sleeping in their tent inside & we have decided to keep it up in the playroom next to the book shelf & now the boys call it their Reading Tent :)

We definitely made some fun family memories with our backyard camp out dinner! Doing a theme each week really makes me think outside the box & helps us do such fun things we might not of done without a theme leading us that way.

I pray you all have a blessed week!

Transportation

Like most boys, mine LOVE things with wheels! I saw the Transportation Pack from Homeschool Creations last spring & knew it was something I had to do with my boys! The activities are so colorful & inviting that my 3 year old Rylan didn't want to stop "playing school!"

Reading, Writing, & Spelling

Here are the fun books we read this week to go with our transportation theme.


At the Resource Center I found a Wheels On The Bus book & felt bus complete with the people & items on the bus that go along with the song. I really wish I would have recorded Rylan singing while he played with it!


After reading some of the books, we began the week by going over our transportation words & pictures. Rylan matched the pictures together.


Here are the boys practicing their writing skills. Ry traced various kinds of lines by "flying" the airplane to the cloud & Brady practiced writing the upper & lower case letters that began his transportation words. He also practiced writing his sight words in salt, which he just thought was COOLEST thing! :)




Math/Shapes/Colors/Puzzles
I printed off the train below from Making Learning Fun. Brady practiced counting by 5s & 10s with it by lining the cars up in the correct order. He also used the train printable from Homeschool Creations to practice his ODD & EVEN numbers. Anything involving trains is sure to keep my boys focused!



Brady used transportation counters to help with his subtraction work & the boys both sorted them by vehicle & color & made patterns with them.


I found these AWESOME shapes from Making Learning Fun that looked like roads. I had Rylan drive his car on them to trace the shape while we went over the names.


He also matched the transportation pictures to their shadows & put together small 3 piece puzzles of them too.




Crafts, Games & MORE!

If you read my blog often you know I'm a sucker for a good craft! I let the boys use various kinds of plastic transportation toys & sponges to paint with & use transportation cookie cutters to play with their play-doh.



They also played their Cars game on their Clickstart Computer from Leap Frog. This was their reward for working hard during school!

Brady had his Geography Co-op this week & while he worked on coloring his continents & oceans we discussed the different ways we could travel to each one from where we live.

Brady is in 1st grade, but even though the packs say preschool, they have MANY activities that are applicable for him. Brady also carries on with his other 1st grade work, but I try to incorporate as much of the themes I'll be doing with Rylan into Brady's curriculum to spice it up & make it fun for him too :)

I hope you all have a blessed week!!!

Math Review

When we started school back up I spent a few weeks reviewing some math skills Brady learned in Kindergarten. He practiced counting to 100, counting by 2s, 5s & 10s. Below is a picture of him counting by 10s using a Chicka Chicka 123 tree we checked out from the Resource Center.


He did some workseets with pictures to review & used counters to help as well.

I gave him dominoes & he had to write out addition problems for each one. He really liked this!

He's remembered a lot which makes momma happy! We haved moved on to subtraction review while continuing with other math concepts as we go over other things in our studies such as graphing, odd & even numbers, etc. Below is a picture of Brady helping my stepmom in the store she & my daddy own. He had a blast helping the customers with their money! Couldn't ask for a better hands-on lesson than that one! :)

Have a blessed day!