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... ;)

Recent Scrapbook Layouts

Here are some of my recent digital scrapbooking layouts I've created. I am a serial scrap-lifter, so most of these layouts are copied from magazines and online.  If I find an element I like (the metal snowflakes and bingo card, for example) it's been a fun challenge to find a way to make them myself in Photoshop Elements, rather than buy them.

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:

Preschool - Week 13 - The Quiet Way Home

We actually spent about 3 weeks doing this book! With Thanksgiving and all the busyness of December, homeschool has not been a priority.  We'll get back into the swing of things in January. :)  This book, The Quiet Way Home, is a story about a girl and her grandpa who decide to take quieter routes home in order to hear things they would otherwise miss.

I decided to use this story to focus on the "sound" sense. We talked about what loud sounds the pair were missing out on and what quiet sounds they did hear.  We took the opportunity throughout the day to stop and listen and identify sounds.  There are also some "look and finds" that we did in the book. E loves a good "look and find!"

I made another sight word card for "home:"

and also a magnet, coloring page:

and we did a "same/different" worksheet:

One really fun activity was a listening game that we played on the computer.  The FindSounds website had a ton of different little sound bytes recorded.  I would pick one to play and E would guess what the sound was.  I was seriously impressed with how well she did!

Finally, E and I went to the Nature Center and spent some time in the bird watching room. They have little switches that you can turn on and off to hear sounds from around the exterior of the building. We saw quite a few birds and heard a waterfall and other bird sounds.

Preschool - Week 12 - ABC Bunny

This book had very little words. It progresses through the alphabet with a vague storyline of a bunny who gets lost. There is actually a song that goes along with it, too.

We managed a few activities, but not many as this was the week that we had my niece, Em. :)

The ABC Bunny Activity Card was fun, though incomplete. If I had spent more time looking into it, I would have added a picture for C and Y. But it was excellent cutting practice and E was able to look through the book to make sure she got the right picture for each box.

Since the "topic" was ABC's, I let E practice writing her letters in some shaving cream. I have often seen this activity mentioned in homeschooling blogs, but have never tried it with the girls. I know C has done it at school, too. But E did NOT enjoy it. I pretty much forced her to write her name and that was it. Too messy for her! Who woulda thought?

(the caption for this photo should be, "Now, the sooner you smile nice for Mommy, the sooner I'll wash your hands and let you be done.")

On a more fun note, E wanted to sort buttons, so I gladly let her have some fun with that:

We also did some pages from a preschool workbook.  Later, I found the ABC Bunny song on YouTube and we watched that together on the computer.