Preschool - Week 21 - Goodnight Moon

Goodnight Moon is a classic children's storybook. Should I be embarrassed to say that this is the first time E  as heard it? We did enjoy this book a lot. The illustrations are colorful, as there are a lot of fun details in the pictures if you take the time to notice them.


We added a new sight word to our box, "moon."  She also did a math worksheet from our book.

We also did a lapbook this week, from homeschoolshare.com, of course. :)

To start off with, I found an online coloring page for Goodnight Moon, which E "colored" and I printed for our lapbook cover:

Of course we had to talk about the moon and it's different phases. She already knew about the crescent moon and full moon, but we also learned about a half moon and gibbous moon. This link has a neat little animation showing the moon and how the shadow makes the different phases.

E made a moon phase spinner for her lapbook. She had to be very careful to cut out all those small circles!

Next we colored in a little book of colored balloons. So far she's only learned "red", "blue" and "green" for sight words, but she sounded out and correctly figured out what each mitten should be colored all on her own:

 To play off the "mittens" theme, we traced her right and left hands in a little flap book to help her remember which is which.  She had to add some pink nail polish for fun:

We made a "clock" spinner this week. Not so much to tell time, but for number recognition. I'd ask, "Where is the eleven?" and she would point the arrow at it.

One of the elements of the lapbook is a ton of little cards. (I helped her cut these out - way too many!) I glued an envelope into the lapbook to contain them. The cards have different images representing things in the book and can be used in a variety of ways.  When I read the book, each thing that was pointed out in the room E had to find and put in a separate pile. Then, as the little bunny said "goodnight" to each thing, we put that card back in the envelope.  Also, we used the cards for "look and find" and flipped the pages to find each item on the cards, putting them in the envelope until they were all found.

Our completed lapbook:

Preschool - Week 20 - We're Going on a Bear Hunt

This week we rowed "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen.  This story has a motions that go with it and we had fun beating the rhythm on on laps and acting out the bear hunt all week.  After several weeks of slacking low-key preschool, we made another lapbook, which made E very excited.

E colored in the title page for our lapbook, making sure to copy the book cover as closely as possible:

 Our lapbook activities came from homeschoolshare.com - where else?  E drew a family portrait, which includes all of our family celebrating "mommy's purple party":

Another fun element asked the question "What would you like to hunt for?"  E decided she wanted to go on an ostrich hunt:

We printed out the sequence cards for E to cut out and then put in the order that they appeared in the story:

Following the story we made these sight word cards which self-store in the little cave:

We continued our math workbook, doing a page each day. The novelty has worn off for her, but it is still so good for her to do.  She writes some of the numbers herself and some I draw dotted lines for her to trace:

Our finished lapbook (with a lift-the-flap book of bears and their habitats):

We also watched a YouTube video of Michael Rosen doing a reading of his book:

Preschool - Week 19 - I Am An Artist

This week we read "I am an Artist."  It is a story about seeing beauty in nature that is often overlooked. How to look at our world through an artist's eyes.  The illustrations are lovely and we enjoyed noting the details in each page.  This book lends itself well to discussing the five senses.  We also talked about how God is creative - the ultimate artist.  By observing the beauty in our world, we can learn more about that aspect of God and thank Him for creating such an amazing world for us to live in!

This was a low-key week, activity-wise. We continued with a page from our math workbook each day.  One day we made a nature-hunt wheel from homeschoolshare.com:

The idea was to take an actual nature walk and look for the things on the wheel. However, mud, cold and wind prevented us from doing this. :( She had fun making the wheel, anywho! And we can use it next time we have a nice day and get out.

The girls took a class from our local Parks and Rec called, "Come to Your Senses."  Very timely to go along with our BFIAR book...  They did a fun activity for each of the five senses:

1. Touch - the kids each got a "touchy board" to take home, which has many different textures for feeling.

2. Sound - they played an animal sounds game, where the kids had to listen to sounds and guess which animal made them.
3. Sight - a look-and-find hunt for items around the room.
4. Smell - the kids took turns smelling different containers and guessing what was inside (i.e. onion, cinnamon).
5. Taste - snack time! The kids tried tart (lemon), salty (pretzels), bitter (bitter chocolate) and sweet (gummy bears).

They each came home with a Five Senses puzzle as well! LOVE these classes - so well done and it's a drop-off! Woo-hoo! :) All these activities would be easily replicated at home, of course, but it's so nice to have a kid-free hour and a half to go to Meijer.

Preschool - Week 18 - Play with Me

This is a short, sweet story about a little girl who wants to play with the animals by the pond. However, she inadvertently scares each one away. She discovers that by sitting very still and quiet, the animals each come back.  We used an activity guide to help our discussions, found at LiveOakMedia.com.



This week we were low-key and did not lapbook. We continued to do a page from her math workbook each day, which is working out well. E needs things in brief intervals, unlike C who could sit for 30 minutes working on a single worksheet.

We did a little drawing lesson one day. I pointed out the artist's style of illustrating the story using only a black pencil and then lightly coloring the main characters of each page. We each made a simple drawing of a tree, rocks and turtle using the same technique. Here is E with her cute little picture:

I also printed out an insect box activity, which I found online at Kizclub.com. E enjoyed cutting out and coloring the bugs while I assembled the box. We made the labels into stickers to attach to the box, but left the bugs loose so she could play with them.

Preschool - Week 17 - The Runaway Bunny

This week we read The Runaway Bunny, a classic Margaret Wise Brown story. It's about a little bunny who dreams up ways to run away from his Mother Bunny, only to have her tell him how she would find him/get him back in each instance.

This week was extremely low key. We've read this story many times in the past. It's a great "snuggle story." It presents a good picture of how much God loves us and that we can never run away from Him.  E and I talked about this and related it to the story of Jonah trying to run away from God.  There's such a peace in knowing that He won't ever let us go. :)

But, we did not lapbook or do any "ack-tib-i-dees" (activities) this week.  I had recently found a math workbook that I wanted to start with E, so we pretty much read the story and did one math page from the book each day.  

I Can Add (Grades K - 1) (Step Ahead Golden Books Workbook) by Patricia A. Reynolds - Powell's Books

Math workbooks are a dime a dozen. However, there were a couple things that drew me to this particular workbook. One is that it teaches addition by gradually introducing the concept of a number sentence.  Two is that it comes with a lot of stickers. Some that go with specific worksheets and some that can be used as reward stickers on the other pages.  (E loves stickers!)  Three is that the pictures on the pages are in black and white so E can color them in after completing the page. For her, that is a reward in itself!

This was a good way for her to practice writing her numbers. For some of the harder ones, I let her figure out the answer and then draw a dotted outline of the number for her to trace.

As with C, I try to give her lots of encouragement and tell her often how good she is at math.  I really don't want my girls to grow up thinking math is hard or something just for boys.  So ask me in 5 years how that worked out... ;)

Preschool - Week 16 - The Carrot Seed

After another couple weeks off (I'm taking a "laid back approach" to homeschool this year, can you tell?), we picked back up with The Carrot Seed and another lapbook.

This story is short and simple. A little boy plants a carrot seed, and despite his family's claim that "it won't come up," he persists to water and weed it. His efforts are rewarded with the biggest carrot I've ever seen!  While the story was short, it lent itself well to talking about character trait of perseverance.  Obviously, it also is a good topic for learning about seeds and how plants grow.

I introduced a new sight word, water, which we reinforced with a clothespin card:

We cut out a carrot for the front of our lapbook. Her scissor skills have really improved since the beginning of the "year."  The lapbook activities have really helped her practice that well:

I also made up a worksheet for her, based on beginning sounds of vegetables.  I would like to proudly point out that she did this whole worksheet correctly, without difficulty. And it is the SAME kind of worksheet that C brings home in her homework from public school Kindergarten... (which C also does with ease):

While reading the book, E asked a great question. Why don't we eat the tops of carrots? This led to talking about how we eat the roots of some plants and the tops of others! Here is a lapbook element I made up myself. She had to glue the vegetables above or below the soil:

I found these sequence cards on Enchanted Learning and had E put them in order of how a plant grows. Of course she wanted to color them in and turn them into a little book. :)

We added a large flap to our lapbook to accommodate this vegetable pattern folder game from homeschoolshare.com:

I finally bought some Con-tact paper, which we used to cover this little carrot book so E can practice tracing the words for "What Plants Need:"

Here is the completed lapbook. You can see one other fun element, which is just a carrot that you can pull out of a pocket: 

We planted some seeds of our own in a little $1 pot from Michaels.  We plan to water it for a while and find out - "Will it come up?"

And last, but not least, we made some delicious carrot cupcakes to celebrate the end of the week!

Preschool - Week 15 - The Red Carpet

This week was another fun, vintage children's story about a hotel that rolls out the red carpet for a special guest - except the carpet takes off and leads the police on a chase all around town.  We did another lapbook from homeschool share this week, throwing in a few worksheets from a workbook for variety.

We made a title page by only coloring the carpet red, like many pages in the book:

We talked about traffic signals and what each color meant.

 The police officers spent a lot of energy chasing the red carpet in the book. We talked about what police officers do in their jobs and made stickers to put together this little book:

We also added another sight word, "red":

E has been amazing me with her handwriting these days. We haven't been working on it together, but she will just copy words on her own. So I decided to add a little handwriting to our homeschool week:

The homeschoolshare lapbook kit had a map you could print out that includes the stores and path of the red carpet from the book.  I taped it inside a plastic page cover and added it to the lapbook so E can draw and "erase" her own paths through town:

Finally, I printed out a t-book template for E to make her own "red" book. She wrote the word "red" on the front and then cut out magazine pictures of red things to glue inside.

Preschool - Week 14 - The Snowy Day

After all the excitement of December, I was ready to jump back into homeschooling E with another fun week of "rowing" The Snowy Day.

While reading the story, we talked about how the artist didn't need a lot of detail to make his illustrations. We made another lapbook this week. E really enjoys this and so do I. I was thrilled to have a couple snowy days here, which we took advantage of by playing outside and doing a snow experiment.

First, we reviewed our previous sight words and added a new one: snow. 

We added a "What is White?" element to our lapbook from homeschoolshare.com:

and E colored in the title page:

We went outside to try to catch some snowflakes on our snowy day.  We talked a lot about how each one is unique and related that to how big God is to have created them all!

We went out to the deck to make tracks in the snow like the boy in the book.  (She cannot walk with her toes in or out, however! Strange...) She even found a stick to drag!

The stick worked well for writing her name in the snow:

Next for an experiment. We made two snowballs and put them into containers.  One we left on the counter and one we put into the freezer.  E predicted that the snowball on the counter would melt, but the freezer one would not.  After her rest time, she discovered that she was correct!

We also made a snowman for our lapbook, with a craft kit leftover from C's Winter Party:

We also made a paper snowflake. We had to use grown-up scissors for this, so it was a heavily "mom-supervised activity":

Lastly, I printed out a worksheet with eight animal tracks.  I also printed out the matchbook template from homeschoolshare and glued the tracks on the front. Then I printed out the eight animals' photos from Google Images and had E cut them out.  Together, we researched the animal tracks and matched the (hopefully!) correct animal to it's track:

Finished Lapbook, with felt scrapbook snowflakes glued on for decoration:

Lastly, we used the snowflake technique to make cinnamon snowflakes as a snack: