Week 23: Fun with Letter and Number Review

Review weeks tend to pose a bit of a challenge for me especially since we share teaching responsibilities between three moms. I am never 100% sure what was taught at the weeks away from my home...so I decided to add some activities I found over at Confessions of a Homeschooler to our review week. The activities you see here are part of her K4 curriculum which I have been using for a couple weeks with Addison (in conjunction to our ABC Jesus Loves me Co-op).

 

Below is a game to work on matching upper and lowercase letters. The lowercase letters still give these guys some trouble, so it was good to spend some time on this.

 

Next we journaled for a bit. The topic today was to draw some place you'd really like to go.

Addison drew the ferris wheel at Disneyland...

Jack drew the bottom of the ocean (complete with a shark!)

And Noah drew some things that come from Mexico. (His mom just got back from a trip there :)

Next we had a letter hunt. I put these giant floor mats all over the house and the kids had to run around and find the letters I called out. This was such a hit we played again on Thursday.

 

We also played this number matching game. Each student got a few cards with specific numbers of items printed on them. I put the number tiles in the center of the table and they had to match the correct numeral with the amount of items pictured on each card.

The journal assignment for Thursday was to draw a picture of something that is scary.

Addison drew the haunted house from an episode of the Magic School Bus...

Noah drew the T-rex at the dinosaur museum...

Jack drew "beetle bugs" and a spider.

Then we played a number matching game. I handed out clothespins with numbers written on them and the kids had to place each clothespin on the correct part of the wheel.

 

And we played with these AWESOME letter builders I got from Learning Resources. The set comes with cards that tell the kids how to build every upper and lowercase letter. We had FUN with these...

 

It was a great week! Nice work guys!

Week 9 with the 4's: Review and Some Haloween Fun

Due to more illness, I only had the 4's for one day this week (the sick one this time was ME!) But we did lots of fun activities as part of our review week. We started with calendar time and we spent a lot of time focusing on the numbers in the 20's...counting, and identifying numbers that high is still a bit challenging. We also read the story of the Generous Widow (Mark 12:41-44) since this is a story we didn't get to in earlier weeks. We talked a lot about what it means to be generous. And the kids were able to retell the story to the other moms later, which was great to see.

We read The Day Jimmy Boa Ate the Wash, and Charming Opal. And we enjoyed some Halloween-y snacks.

 

We also did a letter hunt. I placed some note cards with all the letters we've talked about so far this year on them. Then I gave the kids scissors and magazines and they had to find the letters in the magazines, cut them out and glue them to the cards.

 

Next we did some name-writing practice. They wrote their first and last names.

 

Nice work, Jack!

To get us in the mood for Halloween, we used candy corns to practice sorting into number groups. I gave the kids sticky notes with the numbers 1-5 written on them. They had to use tweezers to put the candy into piles of the correct number...and they couldn't use their fingers at all! This was a good workout for those little hand muscles.

 

Then we used pattern blocks to work on visual perception skills. I made a shape out of a few blocks, and asked the kids to copy me and make the same shape with their blocks. Noah was GREAT at this. He got it right away and was able to help the others.

We also had some free time making pictures out of these blocks. I have some picture cards that we will use with this set soon...Addison loves these blocks so much, she asks to "do puzzles" often.

 

We worked on balance by walking on the garden hose...

 

And for the grand finale of review week, we played with catapults! I made these out of sticks, plastic spoons, and rubber bands I found the basic instructions here. We launched candy corns, candy pumpkins, and pom-poms. We had contests to see who could shoot the farthest, and which projectile flew the best. We all agreed the pom-poms were best!

Look at the anticipation!

 

Great work kiddos!

 

A Little of This, a Little of That

I've decided I like review weeks. At first I was intimidated to plan two mornings full of activities that would keep the kids engaged without a lot of help from the curriculum. But it turns out these are great weeks to do more hands-on stuff than we normally have time for. And the kids seemed to really enjoy it.

We started today with the calendar (they all know it's October, finally!) and we read the story of Moses crossing the red sea again. Then we moved right on to an activity to practice counting. I found this idea on Pinterest, and it proved to be very challenging for our kids...I think this is definitely one to come back to periodically.

I put a bunch of Duplo Blocks in a container in the center of the table, and each student got a paper with a graph of sorts on it.

The kids were instructed to build "towers" to represent each number on the paper.

 

 

Look at that focus!

 

Nice work Jack!

 

 

After some serious coaxing (it was apparently more fun to make one giant tower than to make a bunch of small ones), they all got it.

 

Then we moved on to a science experiment. I put a giant tub of water in the middle of the table, and passed around a container full of random objects. The kids had to choose an object and decide if it would sink or float. As they made their predictions, they dropped the item in the water.

 

Jack picked the apple first. Everyone was surprised that it floated!

 

 

Annabelle tried to sink her pom-pom.

 

 

It was so funny to watch them carefully place their items in the water as if trying to will them to float...especially the spoon and the rock!

 

Next we read "Little Blue Truck Leads the Way" while we had our snack...I thought it kind of went along with Moses leading his people out of Egypt...ok, it's a bit of a stretch!

 

Next we made some handprint trees as part of our secret ongoing project :)

 

 

 

 

Even CJ got in on this one!

 

It's a masterpiece!

 

 

To wrap up the morning, we played a letter review game on the back patio. I drew giant letters (capital and lowercase A-E) in circles with chalk. I gave each kiddo a bean bag, and they had to throw the bean bags into the correct circle as I called out letters. It took them a minute to get warmed up, but they soon got competitive!

 

 

 

Everyone stayed for lunch today (I love days like that!) so the kids and the moms got to hang out and socialize a bit after school was done. What a great morning!

 

 

See you next week!