This week in preschool #7

Preschool with friends started this week! We did some awesome activities, centered around farms and the letter P.  We sang "5 little ducks" and watched a Curious George about going to the farm.  We danced to Old McDonald and Perfect Piggies (Sandra Boynton).  We used our ribbon dancers and some maracas during music time.

 We made pig puppets.

 We practiced one to one correspondence by counting balls in an egg carton.

 We read some awesome pig/farm books and acted like farm animals.

 We sorted items by things that start with /p/ and things that don't (can you spot the things that start with /p/?)

 We had popcorn and pudding one day and animal crackers the next.

 We painted pigs with "mud" (well, 2 of them painted their pigs).

We played games with the pool noodle - learning about over and under.  And sang "1, 2 buckle my shoe".  Between getting ready for this preschool and the total lack of sleep I get at night, I kind of slacked off on the non school days.  Hopefully kids will start sleeping at night and I can start functioning during the day for more one on one preschool time!

This week in preschool #6

We played a memory game.  I put out some of her toys (and yes, Spiderman, dinosaurs, and tools are my DAUGHTER's toys) and then she would close her eyes and I would hide one.  She had to guess what was missing.  She was pretty good at it! 

 We found some leaves outside and I showed her how to do leaf rubbings (and coins too).

 We practiced the fine motor skill of cutting.  After a while, she switched to her left hand, because the right hand was "very tired from all this work." But she loved it!!

 We practiced counting things by placing them one at a time in an egg carton.

We painted.

Then I got the idea to let her paint over her letters.  She has a hard time with the marker, but the paintbrush seemed to be a lot easier.  

She painted and painted and painted, right until dinner time

And I tried not to stress when her paints ended up like this. 

 She dipped the brush in the paint, then the water, then on the paper.  It drove me crazy, but she insisted that she liked it that way.  And, after all, I did buy the paints for her.  Since I'm trying some more process art (freestyle, vs trying to copy something), I decided to let her do it her way.  No matter how hard I had to bite my tongue.  

This week we started preschool with 3 other kids and it's going great - lots of new activities to share!! 

This week in preschool #4 & #5

I got a little behind in my blogging, but we've still been doing preschool! Little one loves it and asks me all day when it's going to be time for school.  Next week we start having other kids come over 2x a week for 3 hour preschool.  I'm excited and nervous at the same time!!
Here's what we've done lately:

Sensory/describing
I put these items in a paper bag, one at a time.  Then, little one had to reach her hand in, and tell me what it felt like.  It was great practice for describing! I did have to prompt a little (bumpy or smooth? hard or soft?) Then, we wrote down her describing words on the paper in the right box.  She loved this!! We'll have to do it again!!
Objects used:
Keys, screws, mini duster, candle, rug gripper, squishy toy dinosaur, sandpaper and chalk.

 In an effort to get over my issues with art (I am terrible and can never think of cute things to do!), I let her spend one day painting.  Luckily for me, she thinks markers are paint.  I let her use graph paper to draw on, just to spice it up.

 Then I remembered why we don't use markers much.

 We introduced calendar time.  I just printed off a simple calendar and we put a sticker on each day.  We say the day of the week, then count how many days we've had in the month.  I colored the days Daddy doesn't go to work in yellow.  Next month, I'll put a little star or something on the days we have something fun happening.

 We did patterns with pipe cleaners and beads.

 We played with foam stickers

 Sorting by color

 Then by shape and size

 We played with rice - maybe not as educational, but definitely fun and a broom and vacuum make for easy clean up!

We did more writing practice - I'm trying to do this just to get her to practice the skill of getting her marks to go the way she wants them too.  This time, I put a dot at the top of each number and that helped her know where to start.  It really helped!

I'm normally not a huge fan of workbooks, but I found some at the dollar store, so I figured I'd give them a try.  She definitely like the picture ones, but not so fond of the writing pages.  Maybe next time I'll let her use a marker.  They are kind of lame, but for $2, it gives us something to do.

Finding the one that's different.  She then colored them to make the different one match, which I thought was a good idea,

Tracing practice.  

Last week in preschool #3

Monday:

We matched the alphabet cards I picked up from Target.  I keep trying to do new things, but she really loves matching the cards, so I figure we'll keep doing it! She's really getting good at identifying the "baby" letters! Thought about taking a picture, but it would pretty much be the same as last week's pictures!

Tuesday:

Writing practice - I wrote numbers 1-10 on a paper and had her trace over them with a highlighter.  On another sheet of paper, I wrote her name, brother's name, mommy and daddy.  Then she traced those too.  In hindsight, this was probably a little too much, as she told me, "this is very hard work, can you help me?"  But she still did pretty well! 

Wednesday: too busy - we didn't get to preschool today

Thursday - busy and mommy had a headache.  I counted Word World on PBS as our preschool

Friday: More with the alphabet matching cards! She asks to do these everyday!! This time I got out all the letters (5 at a time) and had her match the mommies and babies. She did really great! As we do it, we sing the song from Letter Factory, (to tune of Farmer in the Dell) "the B says "buh" the B says "buh" every letter makes a sound, the B says, "buh".  

baby quilt finally done!!

I finally finished the quilt for my baby boy (who is growing up way too fast, btw)! My mom helped me with the binding, as usual.  And by helped, I mean she did it for me of course. One day I'll bind my own quilt!

 I love it!! I made a similar one for my friend's baby last year and loved the fabrics and pattern so much, I bascially copied it.  This one I decided to do a second border and when trying to find to time get to the quilt shop with a newborn and a 3 year old, I found the strips of blue and polka dot sewn together.  I had intended to use them on my friend's quilt, but cut them too small.  I made new ones for her, but these worked perfect as a border!

It's backed with super soft minky - thanks to Fabric.com's sale at $5/yard!!!

 Love it!!

Last week in preschool #2

Monday: Made banana bread (with chocolate chips!!) and learned new words: recipe and ingredients.  We also talked about reading a recipe and the different sizes of measuring spoons and cups.

 Tuesday: Intended activity - sorting her massive collection of balls by size and comparing how many fit in various sized containers.  Lesson I learned: use only one container.  Also, don't do preschool during what used to be nap time.  Actual activity: Word World on PBS

Wednesday: Skipped preschool because we were swimming in the morning and grocery shopping in the afternoon (having something to eat for dinner trumped school!!)

Thursday: found these darling letter matching cards at Target's dollar spot (LOVING back to school stuff!!) and we practiced matching Mommy letters to baby letters.  She loved this activity so much.....

 ....we did it again Friday!!

On Saturday we were doing stuff around the house and busy all day.  At the end of the day, she said, "Mommy, we forgot to do school!!!" She was totally disappointed! I'm so glad she's enjoying it- because I am too!

Last week in preschool #1

My cute daughter is 3 and I've been meaning to do some preschool lessons with her.  I have some skills in this area, since I am a certified teacher and taught for a few years before little bit came along.  But the disadvantage to being a teacher is that I tend to overthink things.  I couldn't start her preschool lessons until I had a curriculum outlined.  What?  Seriously?  Last week I finally decided that I just need to get going - something is better than nothing!! I'm not really into drilling preschoolers with flashcards - I really believe that this time in her life, learning should be through discovery and play and most of all, fun!! I'm all about introducing literacy concepts, but I'm not stressing about having her on a certain reading level before kindergarten.  If she shows interest in reading, I'll teach her. If not, we'll stick with reading readiness activities.

To help me remember what we've done, I decided to do a weekly post talking about what we did in preschool that week.  Plus, it will keep me honest in keeping up with it!! Next month, I'm running a little preschool out of my house (just 2 other kids will be coming) and I'll post some ideas from that one as well.  

So here we go! 

Last week in preschool...

 We played with her name! I wrote her name on a sheet of printer paper and gave her some cranberries.  I showed her how to cover the letters with the cranberries.

 When she was done, she got to eat them!!

 Since the cranberries were small, the next thing we used to cover her name were goldfish crackers.  About half way through, she said to me, "Mommy, this is very hard work.  Can you help me?" So I helped with the last few letters!

Then she got to eat them!

The next day was a simple literacy activity.  I wrote the names of things on sticky notes.  Then we looked at the word together and she had to place the sticky note on the appropriate object.  She loved it! When we were done, she gathered up all the notes and put them somewhere.  The next day she asked me if we could play school again and pulled out the sticky notes! It was so cute!! 

I only started on Thursday, so hopefully next week will have a few more activities.  My goal is to do school for about 20-30 minutes 5 days a week.