Week 3 Recap

Letter: short e
Number: 3
Sight Words: to, you, yes
Verse: "God loved us and sent his son." (Parts of 1 John 4:10)

Bible Lesson
We read the story of the Wise Men searching for Jesus, did a fun star craft, made some crowns for the wise men, and incorporated a lot of "searching" in our week's routine, as you'll see . . .

Alphabet Activities/Sight Words
Since we worked on letter "e" this week, we broke out the Easter eggs! Our first activity was an egg letter hunt. I could only find 12 eggs, so I picked the letters Lucy tends to struggle with (b, d, p, q, etc.). I put letters in eggs (along with M&Ms), hid them around the house, then had Lucy find them. Before she could eat the candy, she had to tell me the name of the letter and the sound it makes. Later in the week, we did the same thing with all of the 9 sight words we've learned over the past 3 weeks. This activity was a huge hit and one she wanted to do over and over. I think the candy may have been a huge part of that. Haha.

And I couldn't pass up the letter "E" without some mention of Elsa! I found this awesome printable on Pinterest. You're supposed to dab the dots individually with q-tips. You can see how quickly she got bored of that . . .

Math
We focused on shapes this week, by having a shape scavenger hunt around the house. I armed Lucy with my camera and a checklist of shapes to find. She had a blast!

Literature
I made this unit up on the fly since the book I intended to use didn't come in through the library's interloan program in time. Thanks to good ole Pinterest, though, we managed to come up with some fun activities for Green Eggs and Ham, including a rhyme match and egg painting.

We took it easy again this week. I laid off on the worksheets for the most part. She did two sight word worksheets, one "3" worksheet, and an "E" worksheet. I had to bribe her to do all of them. Haha. Maybe I should just start calling it "incentives" or "rewards." "Bribe" is such a dirty word. She's getting a little bored with the same circle time stuff every day. I might have to start brainstorming ways to freshen that up. And she already has our "days of the week" song memorized. I tell her that we still have to sing it every day so Lena can learn it too. ;-)

Overall, it's still going well. Next week is letter "a," so we're going to do an apple theme. However, I'm totally overwhelmed by the plethora of apple themed units on Pinterest, so I need to buckle down and make some decisions. Stay tuned! :-)

Bible Lesson: The Wise Men Visit Jesus

This week, in our journey through The Jesus Storybook Bible, we read the story of the wise men searching for Jesus. Our first activity was making a star. I found a tutorial on Pinterest for making glue stars. Like I've mentioned before, Lucy loves squeeze glue, so I knew this would be a hit. She's also a big fan of glitter. I am not, but I make exceptions every once in a while. Haha. My trick for maintaining the glitter was to put a sheet of wax paper on the bottom of a rimmed cookie sheet. That way the glitter is somewhat contained in the cookie sheet, and the wax paper prevents glitter from sticking to the sheet itself. Our glue star took 2 full days to dry, but has been sticking nicely to the window ever since:

While we had the glitter out, we made crowns for the wise men.

We also did a couple different egg hunts this week (for sight words and letter sounds) and a shape search, so I reiterated how the wise men searched for Jesus. :-)

Our verse for the week is "God loved us and sent his son." (Parts of 1 John 4:10) This is Lucy's Cubbies verse for the week. I decided I wasn't going to push her to learn two separate verses each week, so we might just stick with the Cubbies verses for now.

Literature: Green Eggs and Ham

My original plan for this week was to read Elmer the Elephant for our "E" unit. But I ordered it too late through the library catalog and it still hasn't arrived. So yesterday, I looked through our massive piles of books and found one that I knew would have a wealth of inspiration on Pinterest: Green Eggs and Ham.

Before I read the book, I told Lucy to listen for rhyming words. She did great at picking them up. Then we did this project that I had prepared earlier:

It's a bunch of rhymes from the book on self-correcting green eggs! (Printable here.) I pointed out to Lucy that almost all of the rhymes ended with the same letters: ham/Sam, tree/see, house/mouse, etc. There was one rhyme that didn't follow that pattern (car/are), so we talked about how different letter combinations can make the same sound. And there was one egg on the printable that I didn't cut out because I didn't think it really rhymed (here/there).

Lucy breezed through the rhyming activity, so we moved on to painting. I had her find a green plastic egg from our stash, then gave her a plate with green paint on it, a blank sheet of paper, and had her go at it.

After she covered the paper in circles, she turned the egg over and dipped the pointy end in the paint, then dabbed inside all her big circles to make them look more like eggs.

Shape Search

My original lesson plan called for a shape search at the park today. But fall is upon us and I'm a wimp about cold weather, so we took our shape search inside.

I armed Lucy with my camera and told her to take pictures of shapes around the house. I made a checklist of shapes for her to check off as she found them, but she was having too much fun with the camera, so I ended up manning the checklist.

The Checklist

The pictures:

Star (from our Bible craft)

Rectangles

Semi-circle

Triangle pizzas

Oval rocks

"Lena's binky looks like a heart! Come here, Lena! Let me take your picture!"

Tiny diamond

Alphabet Activity: Egg Hunt Letter Sounds

We're working on the letter "E" this week, and Lucy adores all kinds of scavenger hunts, so an egg hunt only seemed appropriate! I decided to take the opportunity to reinforce some letter sounds that Lucy struggles with - as well as review the letters we've learned so far this year.

I could only find 12 eggs from last Easter, so I wrote 12 lowercase letters on slips of paper and put them each in an egg, along with 2 M&M's (one for Lucy, one for Lena). I hid the eggs throughout the house, then let the girls loose to find them with instructions for Lucy not to eat the candy until she could identify the letter and tell me what sound it makes.

Lena was actually very good at finding eggs. Candy is an incredible motivator for that girl. Haha. And Lucy did great with identifying, pronouncing the letters, and sharing with Lena. :-)

Week 2: Lesson Plans

Well week 2 went a little differently than week 1. Lucy's already beginning to resist a little, so I had to scale it back and attempt to make it more fun. Ha. Instead of sticking to my rigid day by day plan, I looked at my whole week's worth of lessons/activities I wanted to accomplish and picked the ones I thought she would respond to best each day. So instead of sharing what we did each day (because I don't think I remember), I'm going to tell you what we did for each subject this week.

Letter of the Week: Uu (only the short sound)
Number of the Week: 2
Sight Words of the Week: up, is, said
Verse of the Week: "Glory to God in the highest heaven." (Luke 2:14a)

Bible Lesson
We read the story of the angels and the shepherds in our Jesus Storybook Bible and made a bead angel to go with it. We incorporated a tiny bit of math into building our angel by counting the beads. Lucy amazes me with her natural grasp of math. I told her she needed 24 beads. She got to 20 and said "only 4 more." I know that seems obvious to us as adults, but I don't think it's that common for kids her age. And I can't take any credit for teaching her. It is definitely innate in her. Haha. You can read about the whole lesson here.

Literature
We did a fun literature unit based on the letter "u" this week, all about Disney's "Up." We read a few books, did a fun craft, then watched the movie together as a family. (Arguably the saddest Disney movie ever. Although The Fox and the Hound is a close runner up.) 

Math
Other than the little bit of counting we did during the Bible lesson, and one worksheet about the number 2, the only other thing we did was this umbrella correspondence craft:

This is something else that comes naturally to Lucy. I've never really stressed number to object correspondence. It just makes sense to her. This project was way too easy for her and she breezed through it.

Alphabet Activities
Lucy did one "u" worksheet and one alphabet activity.

I bought a bag of beans from Meijer for $4.99, dumped them in a bin, and hid the puzzle pieces among them. Then I gave Lucy a large slotted spoon and had her go to town finding the letters and putting them back in the puzzle. She did about 20 of the letters, then decided she wanted to make maracas out of the beads. Haha. Good enough.

Sight Word Activities
We did our worksheets, word-a-pillar, and a fun game.

At first, I intended only to do up this week and review the and and from last week. But Lucy insisted that she knew the and and and wanted to move on. I made sure to review all of last week's a fair amount in addition to learning the new ones. I also learned an important lesson. I can't just point to the words, say them, and expect her to know what I'm saying. Every time I pointed to and earlier this week she said "an." I finally realized she didn't know what I was saying, and in a "duh" moment, decided I should put each word in a sentence for her. We did said this week, so I would say something like "Junie B. Jones said, "That bus is stinky and I'm not getting on it!'" (She's much more apt to respond and remember when I use a character she knows and a sentence that makes her giggle. Although I was careful to use different sentences all week so she doesn't see the word "said" and say "stinky!") I also really tried to point out sight words in the books we read this week, but she gets annoyed with that quickly. Haha.

Challenges
I was surprised that Lucy's already starting to whine about doing school. It's only week 2! My biggest frustration/question with homeschooling is how much should I push her? Seriously. She's 4 years old. It is not a big deal for her to really be learning something every day. I know that kids her age learn best through play, and it's not necessary for me to push the worksheets and "sit-down-learning." Buuuuut, at the same time, she has to understand that obeying me is not optional. And when she goes to real school next year, she has to do what the teacher says when the teacher says it. She doesn't get to say "No, I don't want to do this." For the most part, I laid off a little on the bookwork this week. I really want her to do handwriting, and improve writing her lowercase letters. I'm worried that she doesn't know how to write them correctly on the lines. I worry that if she was going to real school, she'd be working on that, and will be behind if I send her to kindergarten not knowing it. But this week, I only made her do one worksheet for letter "u" and one for number 2, in addition to the sight word worksheets. I did this mostly through bribery. Lol. "If you finish this worksheet, you can have mac n' cheese for lunch." Or Frozen stickers or a TV show. Not sure that's the best approach, but it seems to be working. I'm open to other input! :-)

Sight Word Activities

This week's sight words were up, is, and said. We talked about them every day during circle time, did worksheets, made our word-a-pillar (that I forgot about last week), and did sight word "hopscotch."

I actually spent $9 on a download from teacherspayteachers.com for some new sight word worksheets. Lucy likes these ones better than the free ones we had been using.

Word-a-pillar:

Isn't he cute? We review the words on him often, and will add to him all year!

"Hopscotch" - I use that word only because I don't know what else to call this game. When Lucy was little, I used to draw shapes on the driveway and have her "hop to the square," or "march to the circle," etc. She loves this game, so I decided to add the sight words to it. Of course, it's freezing cold today so we improvised and made shapes out of tape to do this activity inside. I haven't figured out how to make a circle out of tape yet, and my star is pretty funny looking, but Lucy doesn't care. :-)

Lena liked helping. :-)

I stuck with the same kind of directions, just subbing in the sight words. "Skip to said." "Twirl to the." We combined all of our sight words from the last two weeks for more variety and review.

Lucy played with the sight words willingly once, and begrudgingly a second time. Haha. Then we played with just the shapes for a while.

The Shepherds and the Angels (With a Verse Memorization Tip!)

Week two in our Jesus Storybook Bible is the story of the angels proclaiming Jesus' birth to the shepherds. We combined a little bit of math into our Bible lesson, by making this bead angel. (Source)

The website tells you exactly how many beads you need for both the body and the wings, so I had Lucy count them out. It was 34 for the wings, and 24 for the body, so counting might be difficult for young kids. Lucy's a counting pro, though. (She was totally born like that. It is nothing I have taught her. Haha.) 

We had our angel sing the song/verse we're learning this week: "Glory to God in the highest heaven." (Luke 2:14a) My number one tip for teaching kids scripture is to put it to song - whether it's to the tune of a different song they already know, or just a catchy tune you make up. I use subliminal messaging and make sure to sing or hum the song quietly while we do crafts or worksheets, and pretty soon Lucy's singing along. Sneaky. ;-)

Literature: Short U and "Up"

We're working on the short vowel "u" this week, and our sight word is "up." So it only seemed appropriate that we read Disney's "Up." I searched in the library catalog and found the following two books:

My Name is Dug

This doesn't really tell the story of the movie. It's mostly just about Dug, the dog. But I was thrilled to realize that his name is spelled "Dug" instead of "Doug," which lent itself nicely to practicing the short u sound. In the book, Dug also talks a lot about peanut butter, which also has a couple of nice short u sounds. :-)

Bird's Best Friend

Truth be told, I've only seen the movie "Up" once, so I didn't remember much about it. I was so happy to flip through this book and see that in addition to Dug the dog, the kid's name is Russell, the house lands in a jungle, and the bad guy's name is Muntz! Perfect!

After reading the books and finding as many short u's as possible, we did a fun craft:

I was inspired by this, but I'm a bad mom and hate finger-painting. Plus, Lucy adores using "squeeze" glue, so I knew she'd love gluing the pom-poms on. Then, I had her write "Up" on the paper to reinforce this week's sight word. Isn't it cute??

Week One: Complete!

Well the first week was a success! I learned a few things, was surprised by a few things, and was overall pleased with how it went. Here's a quick  ridiculously long recap:

On Tuesday morning, I gave Lucy a little "first day of school" surprise. If she was going to real school, she'd get a backpack, lunch box, and other fun school supplies. So I bought her an Elsa lunchbox (that she thinks is a backpack - haha), a Frozen folder and Frozen notebook. Then I printed off a sign for her to hold:

Lucy was so excited to be starting school and she wanted to get started right away. Lena ended up sleeping through circle time, but Lucy loved it. Then we did our fun alphabet activity: igloo building. I was very impressed with my artistic abilities in drawing an igloo:

The lowercase letters are written on Avery labels and cut in half. I "hid" them all around the house (just sticking them on stuff), then Lucy found them and put them on their corresponding uppercase letter. She loved it and did so much better than I thought she would. She knows her lowercase letters better than I give her credit for.

Then, we moved on to our book work. She did two worksheets about the letter i, then one about the sight word "it."

Then I had her write "Ii, 1, it, and, the" on her manuscript paper. We've got a ways to go with handwriting. Haha.

Sorry. Bad photography

At this point, I offered her a break, but she wanted to keep going! So we read our Bible story - the Birth of Jesus - from the Jesus Bible Storybook. While I was reading to Lucy, Lena was playing in the living room. Or so I thought. I decided to go check on her and found her in my brother's room pouring water all over his table. Oops! 

After reading the Bible story, we did our Superhero Lesson and moved on to our craft. Lucy didn't like the craft and ended up throwing a big fit. But we powered through and finished the "Jesus is my superhero" cape:

Wednesday

We're usually going to take Wednesdays off, but since this was already a short week thanks to Labor Day, we just did one small lesson. We did a worksheet about the sight word "the" and repeated the number, letter, sight word writing. Then we learned about senses. We did a blindfolded "test" to see if she could identify common objects by smell, taste, touch, and sound. Here's my list:

Taste: lemon (sour), pickle (salty), cocoa powder (bitter), sugar (sweet)

Sound: keys jingling, me brushing my teeth, me cutting a piece of paper, shaking a box of macaroni

Smell: peanut butter, shampoo, toothpaste, ranch dressing (this was the only one she didn't get)

Touch: tape, marshmallows, ice, a balloon

Thursday

On Thursday we did math. I gave Lucy a ruler and helped her measure a bunch of different stuff. I pointed out that "inches" starts with "i", and had her write the number each time. It amazes me that she can write "5" correctly, but not "7" (the last one). Haha.

Lucy did a number one worksheet, and wrote her letter, number, and sight words again. When I offered her a break this day, she took it. I had just gotten a busy box out for Lena, and Lucy was much more interested in it than Lena was. Haha.

She did not, however, want her picture taken.

Later in the day, we did literature. I read "Curious George Builds an Igloo" to Lucy, then she built an igloo out of a plastic bowl, cup, frosting, and marshmallows.

Lena enjoyed this project, too.

Finished product! I was impressed that Lucy stuck with it and finished the whole thing!

Friday

Today we played Alphabet Bingo, with our sight words thrown in for good measure. She's having a harder time with the sight words than I expected her to, so we're practicing them whenever we can. She did an "and" sight word page, her usual manuscript work, then some more senses work. 

We did a sucker taste/smell test inspired by this. 

My marker stopped working after the first line. Lucy was a decent guesser!

Then Lucy made a senses book with pictures I had cut out from a magazine earlier.

This picture is a pot of boiling water. Haha. Interesting.

And that concludes the ridiculously long recap! I have some questions and concerns to share, but I'll save that for another post. :-) I'll also have an entry up soon about our busy boxes - which have been a huge hit with Lucy!! Thanks for reading this far!