Preschool - Week 20 - Letter S

This week was brought to you by the Letter S and the Number 19. :-)

Books:

How Spider Tricked Snake by Benitez, Mirna.
Sea Stars by Herriges, Ann.

Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft:

- Handwriting worksheets (spider, Kidzone S, KidsLearningStation)
- S Sound worksheet (homemade)
- I've been printing out some simple coloring pages for E to do while C works on letters. She's really improving on her coloring skills:


Math:
- Number 19 worksheet
- Made "Stamp Books" where the girls each put the correct number of stamps on each page of their book. E got 1-6 and C had 7-12.

- Subtraction (C LOVES subtraction! She caught on the the concept very quickly and enjoyed each activity that we did. I try to tell her often that she is good at math to build her confidence and enjoyment of math.)
     * Watched subtraction video
     * Talked about "number sentences" (x - y = ?)
     * Used little toys to do simple subtraction problems
     * Did a subtraction worksheet
     * Subtraction puzzles




Science:
- Sea Stars (read a couple great books on sea stars)
- Made a sea star craft: (click HERE and scroll to very bottom of page)


- Science Journal page:

Social Studies:
- Spain (didn't have any great books at the library, so I got one that we just looked at the pictures and talked about Spain. Talked about some Spanish words that we know, and watched some flamenco dancers on YouTube).

Sight Words:
- she, see, some, soon, star

Snack:
- Skittles

Music:
- Schubert

Bible Stories:
- Saul's conversion, Adam and Eve's Bad Choice
- This was very interesting to talk to the girls about Satan and his involvement in the fall. It's a topic that is not talked about in Sunday school...
- Did a craft to make the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:

Preschool - Week 19 - Letter R

This week was brought to you by the Letter R and the Number 18. :-)

Additional books:
Russia by Streissguth, Thomas
Raccoons (Rookie Read-About Science), Allan Fowler
Welcome to Russia by Schemenauer, Elma.

Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft:

- Handwriting worksheets (rainbow, letter R, printing R)
- R Sound worksheet

Math:
- Number 18 worksheet
- R Counting worksheet
- Brought back the grid game for the girls to play (with Roses in the grid):

- Rectangles (C used our kiddie camera to do a photo-hunt in the house and take pictures of rectangle shapes she found)

Science:
- Raccoons (read books about raccoons, used a measuring tape to see how big they are, weighed a fork in our hand to feel how light a newborn raccoon is, made a raccoon heart craft)

- Science Journal page:

Social Studies:
- Russia (read books on Russia, found Russia on the globe, practiced saying "DAH" and "NYET" for "yes" and "no")

Sight Words:
- red, run, rain
- Only three words this week. C is still struggling with the "Q" words - especially confusing the lower case "q" with lower case "p."
- We are up to 88 words! I've decided to break up her words into two stacks, and only go through one half at a time. I'll include the new words each time, but going through them all is taking quite a long time...

Snack:
- Raisins

Music:
- Maurice Ravel (when the second song came on, E said it sounded like someone had died. Oddly enough, the title was "Pavane for Dead Princess.")



Bible Stories:
- Joseph Forgives his Brothers, Jesus wants us to be thankful
- Made a magazine collage of things C is thankful for (hair, friends, dogs and celebrations):

Game/Activity:
- Rhyming
   * I had C match up these rhyming word puzzles, from a set she got for Christmas. This was good reading practice, too. Her first guess for some words wasn't correct, so I asked her to sound out the words to help her make the match ("plate" vs. "dish")

Oodles of Artwork

Someone asked me the other day what I do with all the artwork that the girls (particularly C) generate. To be honest - I throw it away! (or recycle if possible.) But first I take a digital picture of it so I still have the memory and record of the art.

Here are some of C's latest pieces:

Our Neighborhood

Giraffe by Waves and Rainbow

Cat Sitting on Back of Couch (inspired by Allie, our friends' cat)

Aunt Michelle and Uncle Greg's Family (from left to right: Styles, Michelle, House, Shasta, Em [riding Shasta], and Greg [wearing his headphones])

Animals riding in wagons and E riding a duck overhead

Our House (I love the detail she put into this. Notice Sadie on the upper left hand side with her kennel as black squares. Also, the John Deere looking vehicle is actually our green Sienna minivan.)

Family Portrait (left to right: Sadie, Daddy, Mommy, C and E)

The Three Wise Men on their Camels visiting the Stable

And one from E (she's in a multi-medium, abstract phase right now...):

Preschool - Week 18 - Letter Q

This week was brought to you by the Letter Q and the Number 17. :-)

Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft:

- Handwriting worksheets (Queen, Printing practice)
- Q Sound worksheet

Math:
- Number 17 worksheet (found a DLTK site that lets you generate your own worksheets, and I used this to help me make my own).
- Letter Q Counting worksheet
- (Had great plans to talk about quarters, as in fractions, using this great post by Ikatbag)

Science:
- Quail (could not find any books specifically on quail, so we looked up some information online: Shepphard Software, Wiki)
- Science Journal page:


Social Studies:
- Quilts (read many quilt books and saw some quilts on display at the museum)

Sight Words:
- quick, quack, quiet, queen, question

Snack:
* We skipped this one! :(

Music:
- (Barbershop) Quartet music

Bible Stories:
* Jesus is tempted and the Parable of the sower (made a craft to glue seeds on each type of soil):

Preschool - Week 17 - Letter P

I actually took two weeks to cover letter P due to being out of town and just general busyness. So, the past two weeks were brought to you by the Letter P and the Number 16. :-)




Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft: (done with our friend KP!)


- Handwriting worksheets (letter P, pig, traceable letter p)
- P Sound worksheet

Math:
- Pasta graphing (made a graph with 3 types of pasta. Put pasta into a cup and had C sort and count each type, then complete the graph. Then she used the graph to answer questions like, which one had the most/least?)

- Pattern worksheet (printed out 2 copies, cut out the individual shapes from one and let C finish the patterns by glueing on the shapes)

Science:
- Planets (read books about planets, watched a planet science movie for kids, talked about how God made Earth special so that we could live on it, talked about orbits and rotation of planets.)
- Planet Craft (I got this idea from Filth Wizardry. Doug helped me cut out circles from cereal boxes and cover them with aluminum foil. Then the girls used pictures from our books to color the planets. We used multi-colored Sharpies which about gave me a heart attack. But no clothes were damaged and our skin only looked a little funky for a day or two. We used pipe cleaners for the rings and taped them onto a black poster board to display in our homeschool area.):



- Science Journal page:

Social Studies:
- Pilgrims (read books about pilgrims, made two pilgrim hat crafts (boy and girl. We especially like The Pilgrims at Plymouth, by Lucille Penner because of all the pictures. It took two days to read through it because it is long, but very informative.)


Sight Words:
- play, please, put, place, purple

Snack:
- Peanuts

Music:
- Pachelbel

Bible Stories:
* God speaks to Samuel

Eat from the Pantry - Week Four

Well, it is February and the challenge is officially over. I am proud of how we did overall. And whether anyone has been reading this or not, it helped me stay accountable knowing that I had committed to blog about it.

Here's a recap of my goals and how I made out:

1. Shop at the grocery store only 4 times in January.

Officially, I had 7 trips to the grocery store, but two of them where in the same day (forgot one crucial item). My fifth trip was due to a caveat that I didn't include in the original post, but I forgot that I would need to buy groceries for E's birthday party on the 31st. Overall, I did stick to shopping once a week and that was HARD for me. I think that it did help me keep the costs down, and it forced me to plan ahead. That is one thing that I want to take away from this experience - shop less & plan more.

2. Only buy dairy (milk, eggs, cheese, etc.) and produce (fruits/vegetables).

I did stick to this rule very well. I had some free after coupon items that I'm not counting (they were FREE after all!) and one box of pasta that I confess I purchased... But that's it. I passed up two $0.19 packages of pudding snacks that were calling my name and was very proud at my self-control. Until Doug said, "isn't pudding considered dairy?" I almost went back to the store, but that would've broken goal #1, so I let them go. This goal helped me use up a number of items that have been in the freezer/pantry for a LOOOOONG time and may have never been used otherwise.

3. Spend a total of $200 or less on groceries and household items (i.e. toiletries and Pull-Ups, etc.)

My total amount spent on groceries/household items came to $187.24 so I definitely met this goal! This includes two meals I made for our small group of 12 and most of the food for E's birthday party (14 adults and 4 kids). I surprised myself on how little I spent, seeing as this category of my budget is usually $440 a month and it is ALWAYS hard to keep it within that amount. Hopefully I don't go out and spend $800 this month to make up for it...

4. Put the extra $220 leftover (or more) that we would usually spend on groceries/household into our savings account.

While we originally planned to put all the excess into savings, Doug and I felt led to give to Haiti instead, through our church. I'm not saying this to brag, but just to be honest and say that God has always provided for us - more than we need. It is a privilege to be able to give to others and recognize that all we have is God's anyway. In the end I know we will only be accountable to Him and I want to make Him proud.

Preschool - Week 16 - Letter O

This week was brought to you by the Letter O and the Number 15. This week was hard to get through. I just got home from a four day visit to my sister and was kinda in a funk. It's been busy here and I still haven't gotten back my full motivation to homeschool - hence the tardiness of this post.

Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft:

- Handwriting worksheets (Short O, owl, printing letter O)
- Short O Sound worksheets (initial sound O)

Math:
- Number 15 worksheet
- Random math worksheet from a workbook
- Octagon (counted number of sides and colored an octagon page, made an octagon out of Q-tips)


Science:
- Owls (read some owl books from the library and did a fun owl craft)
- Science Journal page:

- Owl craft:

Paint the night

Cut the feathers

Glue them on

Masterpieces!


Social Studies:
- The Ocean habitat (read some books about the ocean/oceans from the library, located the different oceans on the globe, talked about ocean waves and colored cut out some beautiful coral reef printouts from Filth Wizardry and dug out my habitat cards to find all the animals that live in the ocean.)



Sight Words:
- orange, on, off, our, one

Snack:
- Homemade Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies!


Music:
- Opera (yes we listened to opera music from pandora.com!)

Bible Stories:
* Learned about prayer - what it is and how/why God wants us to pray to Him

Game/Activity:
- Obstacle Course (I put Doug in charge of this activity. He came up with a very creative course and as you can see, C LOVED it!)