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!

 

Week 8 with the 2's: A Case of the Crazies

The twos were in RARE form this week! They were happiest playing together making "forts" out of blankets heaped in the yard, and playing in the toy kitchen. The actual amount of structured school was minimal...but that is FINE. We need to keep reminding ourselves that the whole purpose of doing "school" with the 2's is to encourage them to peacefully co-exist with other people, to sit quietly for short periods of time, and to free up the 4's for more intense learning activities. So even though it was a little crazy around here, we accomplished all those things.

Story time and Bible time were great. We read The Little Rabbit Who Liked to Say Moo, Animal Hide and Seek, and built an awesome scene full of animals on our Bible felt board.

Pumpkin cookies for snack!

And I got out the rice bin for some sensory play (we had a friend visiting too!)

Doc worked his skills screwing and unscrewing this cap for a WHILE...

And Juliette dug for hidden gems...

Got one!

 

This rice bin fits under the bed perfectly and is a great thing to pull out when we need a little distraction :) I've had the same one for two years and it's still a favorite.

 

**Gus is transitioning from two naps to one at the moment, so he had a pretty rough week and spent most of our school time hanging out on Evelyn's lap...hence his absence in these pictures.

Week 6 with the 4's

It seems the kids are mostly back to healthy this week, with the exception of a few runny noses. What a relief! I decided to change up the order of activities this week. Normally we jump right in to calendar and Bible time, but I decided to see how the kids would do making their own snack from start to finish...oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! I had all the ingredients ready to go, and I moved our "kid table" into the kitchen so everyone could gather around and participate in all the steps. Here is a peek at the little bakers at work...

The recipe called for 3/4 cup of sugar, so each child filled 1/4 cup...they concentrated SO hard!

And we took turns creaming the butter and sugar...

And we used our muscles to mix in the chocolate chips by hand.

The kids did great using my Pampered Chef cookie scoop! Way to work those hand muscles!

 

 

While the cookies baked, we told the story of young king Josiah with the felt board. The Bibles I have don't include this story, so I just told it as best I could with the felt board. They actually seemed to get it pretty well.

And then we traced V's and W's using our tactile letters. And we discussed what sound each letter makes and listed a bunch of words that start with each letter. They are getting SO good at this.

We made V's and W's out of popcicle sticks. They had a hard time with the W...

Then it was time to try out the cookies! They snacked while I read Tales of Oliver Pig...and of course, they thought it was SO cool that Oliver and his mom made cookies just like we did...

Then it was time to practice writing last names...this needs some work to say the least! Ha ha! The kids had a rough time with this activity, but at least we know we have stuff to work on.

This girlie wrote each letter in  different color... :)

 

I also thought it was interesting that they can form many of the letters quite well, but placing them on the lines is a huge challenge.

Then we colored some pictures of King Josiah. I had to talk to the boys about why coloring is important and good practice for learning to write. They both used their crayons to scribble all over the paper without ANY effort at all to stay in the lines...I think they weren't very happy with me after this conversation, but I wanted them to know that it has a purpose, and that even if they don't LOVE to color, they should at least put forth a little effort.

The last thing we did on Tuesday was a visual perception activity using wood blocks. I set up a row of blocks that were all different shapes. I asked them to study the row, and then they had to close their eyes. I took one block away and they had to decide what was missing. They all did GREAT at this activity.

 

On Thursday, we had the special treat of having a friend join us for school. Evelyn was babysitting two kiddos for the day who happened to be the same ages as our kids, so we just added them right into the mix. It was fabulous!

 

 

 After calendar, Bible, and memory verse work, we gathered at the table to practice writing X's, V's, and W's. This was HARD for the kids! I gave them the angled letter worksheet from the curriculum, and they found staying in the lines very tricky...but they all did an excellent job concentrating.

 

Next we made a Bible scroll craft in honor of young king Josiah. They loved crunching up their paper bags!

 

They painted the scrolls using water colors. All the kids loved this part...

Sorry no pictures...

 

 

And then we practiced making letters out of play dough. Most of the kids found this really hard...making snakes is still pretty challenging for this crowd.

 

 

To wrap up the day, the kids practiced making patterns out of pop-beads. This was tricky for a couple reasons...they had to choose the two colors they wanted to make repeat, and the beads require some fine motor skills to snap together. It took most of the group a few minutes to figure out what to do, but they eventually all got the hang of it.