Preschool - Week 23 - Letter V

This week was brought to you by the Letter V and the Number 40. :-)

Books:
Visiting the Vet: Learning the V Sound by Carson, Janet.
Vicky the Vet by Brooks, Felicity.
Vacation Under the Volcano by Osborne, Mary Pope
Earthquakes (Natural Disasters) by Michele Ingber Drohan
Volcanoes by Leslie Dinaberg

Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft: (a vase, with flowers cut out of magazine pages)

- Worksheets (Initial Sound V, KidsLearningStation, Kidzone, HandwritingForKids)

Math:
- Number 40 worksheet
- Larger/Smaller Numbers Worksheet

Science:
- Volcanoes - yes, the long awaited volcano week has arrived! The girls have been looking forward to this for so long. We read books, watched videos, and of course, did some volcano experiments!
- Experiments:
First, we broke out the kit that Aunt Sharon got the girls for Christmas:

It has materials for two volcanic eruptions - one is to be a mock "underwater" volcano, using a test tube, and the other one involves creating your own volcanic island and using a dropper to make it erupt. These were very colorful and exciting!
We also made a traditional volcano, using a dixie cup, alum foil and paper plate.





- Videos:


- Science Journal page:

Social Studies:
- Veterinarians (read books about vets and talked about their job)

Sight Words:
- vase, volcano, very, violin

Snack:
- Vanilla wafers

Music:
- Vivaldi (violin music to boot!)

Sun Bather

We've all enjoyed the wonderful weather to count us down to spring - even Sadie.

Preschool - Week 22 - Letter U

This week was brought to you by the Letter U and the Number 30. :-)

Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft: Umbrella
C learned to draw a raindrop (make a "J" and a line to close it up)


- Handwriting worksheets (KidsLearningStation, Kidzone, Handwriting for Kids
- FunFonix Build-a-word Worksheet - Short U sound

Math:
Since we've made it through numbers 1 - 20, we are going to cover the remaining numbers by 10s.

- Number 30 worksheet
- Intro to counting by ten's (I made our own "ten sticks" by having C put together three sticks of ten Trio blocks each. She counted them by ones and then I showed her how to add them together to make 20 and then 30.)

Science:
- Urial (couldn't find any books on urials, so we turned to the internet and looked at pictures of urials and read some basic facts about them. Google images shows a lot of "trophy urials" so that led to a discussion about hunters. We measured how tall an urial is with the tape measure and looked up their habitat on our globe.)
- Science Journal page:

Social Studies:
- United States (read book, talked about the 50 states, found USA on globe, worked on a new USA puzzle)

- Watched a cute video from the library:

Sight Words:
- umbrella, up, until, under

Snack:
- Meant to make Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, but didn't get a chance! :(

Music:
- Sir Victor Uwaifo


Bible Stories:
* Parable of the Lost Sheep

Preschool - Week 21 - Letter T

Once more, things got busy around here and I decided to spend two weeks covering letter T. Hopefully this weekend I'll get Letter U figured out so we can get back on track!

So, these past two weeks are brought to you by the Letter T and the Number 20. :-)

Here's what we covered:

Language Arts:
- Letter of the week craft (train tracks):

- Handwriting worksheets (Initial Sound T, Kidzone, Handwriting for Kids)

Math:
- Number 20 worksheet
- Counting worksheet
- Played with the Tangrams some more

Science:
- Tigers (read tiger books, watched a tiger clip on the web)
* We made the cutest craft ever! Here are K and C painting their paper bags:

The finished tiger puppet:

C decided it needed a tail (and so did she):

and she (completely on her own) added these adorable legs and whiskers!

- Science Journal page:

Social Studies:
- Thailand
* Couldn't get any age-appropriate books this week, so we read some parts of books on Thailand and looked at the pictures
* Learned about how the children there are taught respect for their elders. Even younger children have to say "big sister" instead of their older siblings name.
* Practiced the wai, which is a bow of respect.
* The best part was when C received a postcard from Tori - FROM THAILAND! What a super-fun coincidence. She LOVED it.
* Made a Thailand flag (C's idea!):

Sight Words:
- tree, this, that, to, turtle

Snack:
- Turtles (the candy kind...)

Music:
- Tchaikovski

Bible Stories:
- Esau and Jacob

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...):