Apples Day 2

Today we got a late start on our lessons because we walked next door to visit Pawpaw (my F-I-L) and pick up some fresh eggs.  E ended up sweet talking him into getting her an ice cream cone and a fun size almond joy BEFORE breakfast!  Good thing she's a good eater, because even after that she ate 3 scrambled eggs!  : )

So by 9:30am we were finally settled down and ready to go!  I'll give you a summary of what we did and then I added some snapshots at the bottom.  Enjoy!

LANGUAGE

• We reviewed our flashcards and she only struggled with 2 so we went ahead and added our 5 new ones using the last mini lesson on the Meet The Sight Words DVDs.  SO from now on I guess we'll have to find new  ways to learn new words!?
• We also played our own version of the Eric Carle ABC Game (the rules are too much for her yet).  We used the cards and she picked one, named the letter and the sound, tried to think of a word that started with that sound, then flipped it over to see what animal was on the back!  She did AMAZING!  Out of all the lowercase letters she only had trouble identifying 4 (p,q,b,& d), understandable!  She also struggled with a few sounds, (x, y, & o).  I'm very proud!
• Then we reviewed our Signs of  Autumn poem from yesterday, and learned a little Poem/Rhyme called Apples, Apples that I saw on Pinterest.

MATH

• To work on counting and number recognition we used my poorly drawn tree (Daddy's the artist, NOT me!).  And she picked a 'monkey' number, then put that many crab apples on the tree.  She got bored with this quickly and tried to say she was 'sick' (hahaha) so we moved on after only a few turns!
• To practice More/Less, Size, and Sorting, we divided the crab apples into 2 piles, big & small, then counted them and decided which pile had more and which pile had less.  Simple I know!  But it works!  (:

ART

• We made a Handprint/Fingerprint Apple Tree.  She had a blast and was so proud of her creation.  We hung it on the wall to show Daddy when he gets home from work!  To save supplies and a mess, I used a sponge brush to soak up the paint.  Then she pressed her hands and fingers onto that then on to the paper.

SOCIAL STUDIES

• We refreshed our address, Mommy's phone number, and our names.  Very important!

I always let her watch a movie while I fix lunch and to wind down for a nap.  The past 3 days in a row (please shoot me!) she has watched the Leapster Talking Word's Factory DVD.  She has since been singing the vowels song nonstop!  "We're A, E, I, O, U we're the vowels, we're the glue, that stick the words together.  We're very sticky letters!"  It's catchy, but annoying after 500 times!  lol

(If I didn't mention we don't  have regular t.v., all we do is DVD's from the library and Redbox, and I download movies online.  This way I don't have to worry about E seeing things that are inappropriate.)

 

Apples Theme!

Well last week ended up being pretty hectic, so we didn't get much accomplished in the way of "school".  Yesterday I spent the day lesson planning for the week and today we got started on our apples theme.  I decided we'll start at 9am and end around 12pm, that way she can have lunch and the rest of the day to free play or whatnot and I can work on the house.  She did great for such a ball of energy!  Here are the things we covered today...

While she eats breakfast I usually let her watch her sight words.  We LOVE the Preschool Prep Company's Meet The Sight Words Series (We're on disc 3 of  3!) and she has learned over 45 words in the past 2 months!  And she remembers them ALL!  These DVDs have great characters and it gives us ideas of sentences to use the word in.  It really helps her recall the words when she gets stuck.  I've included a video clip of Meet The Sight Words 3...

We also refresh with games and flashcards and word hunts in our books.  Today we watched one mini lesson (5 words), and reviewed them with our flashcards after.

We read an Autumn poem and highlight all the "A" words and "a's" in the words.  It read...

Signs of Autumn

Signs of autumn are all around:

Apples, scarecrows, leaves on the ground,

Cozy sweaters, and pumpkin pie.

It feels like autumn-my, oh my!

Then we moved on to phonics.  She knows the majority of the letter sounds but since we're doing Apples this week I wanted to focus on 'A' words, so we made a big apple and cut things that start with A out of some magazines I had hanging around for just such an occasion, and glued them on the apple.  She really enjoys using the glue!  : )  It's not perfect but it's the process not the product we're focused on...

After this little project we moved on to our Math.  We are focusing on counting 1-1, number recognition 0-10, and counting 1-15.  She's doing pretty well but tends to get ahead of herself when counting things out.  Today we went out to our crab apple trees and picked 15 little crabbies, then we came in and counted them out to each other, which is simple enough, but E really enjoyed it so we did this for probably 20 minutes!  I was the one who ended up getting bored!  : )  After this I let her watch her Preschool Prep Meet The Numbers DVD and I sliced the apples and got all the ingredients for her snack together.

For our snack we found a great recipe for Apples in a Bag on Salad-in-a-jar.com .  It turned out pretty good, E really liked it, but I will use different apples next time.  All we had were green Michigan Apples today, and they seemed a little tart for something that was supposed to be so sweet.  Nonetheless, she had 2 whole apples this way and they are only 50 some odd calories a piece so it's a pretty good snack.

   

We didn't get to do our art project today because I ended up having to go to dance practice, so we'll have it on here tomorrow.  If anyone has any good apple ideas, please feel free to share!  See you tomorrow!  

Serious Mental Overload!

Okay so can I just say that I am overwhelmed and ExCiTeD at the amount of genius blogs I've found in the past hour! I have so many new ideas and inspirations for the coming week I may never get my thoughts organised! Just sayin! : D

My First Post Ever!

Well this is my first post and I have nothing interesting to write about..  Which is probably ok since nobody knows about this blog yet anyways.  (:   I guess I will tell you a little about my daughter, since you can read a little about me on my profile.  I'll refer to her as 'E' on here, she just turned 3 in August 2011.  I'm very proud of her, which I'm sure you will surmise from my future posts and pictures!  ( :  But I can't help it, she's my one and only, right now, and I think she's A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Now in reality she really is something special.  She started talking when she was 8 months old, and I mean really saying clear words anyone could understand.  I have videos that I'll post sometime from when she was little.  She memorizes things rediculously fast, such as the Lord's Prayer, which she learned in less than an hour and could recite alone at about 18 months!  She also has an ear for music already, and has been singing Amazing Grace (all the verses) for well over a year, and her timing is spot on, as well as her tone and pitch.  She sings every Sunday at church and LOVES it!  In another year or so we're going to get her piano lessons.

Since she memorizes things so fast, and actually enjoys it, I've been trying to teach her as much as I can while she is still little.  At first I thought it would be great to give her a head start to Kindergarten, but I quickly realized that she is going to surpass that before she is even old enough to start!  So far she knows her ABC's (upper and lower case) by sight, the majority of the letter sounds, her numbers 1-10 by sight, and counting 1-1, she knows 45+ sight words (thanks in large part to the PreSchool Prep Comany!), she also know her shapes, and colors of course, and she is learning so much else that doesn't even have a real pre-K category.

We've done mini science lessons based off of the PBS show Sid the Science Kid.  I preview the experiement they do the night before and then after she watches it in the morning we do it and any other activities I can think of that go along with that lesson.  She has explored the wind, rain, sun, plants/leaves, her teeth, etc.  And she remembers everything she has learned!  Weeks later she will be telling someone about her "K9 teeth and how they are for biting hard things like carrots"!  Hahaha  I love that kid.

Anyway aside from the acedemic stuff she is a sweet, loving, strong willed, short tempered, energetic, spunky child and we have fun every single day!  I hope someone out there enjoys this blog and if not, I do!  So it's all ok!  ❤