So we have been doing this preschool/ tot school thing for a “semester” now. It started as a very casual experiment since MK had only just turned 3. But it has evolved into a pretty consistent routine of preschool/ tot school with RJ participating in almost everything with us. I have grown to love this time. The girls have grown to love this time. I feel so blessed to be their mommy AND their teacher. So I decided to set up a blog to follow our journey through this experience. Daddy may be the only one that reads it and gets a peek at our days. If so, I”m totally fine with that. But if others come along the journey with us and gain some bit of inspiration, then I know God is using us in bigger ways and I’m grateful.
We had our first week back at school after a couple week break for the holidays and sickies. The sickies are still holding on but the girls kept asking for school so we dove in with our snotty noses and learned about the letter “S” and all about snowmen, snow, snowflakes, ect..
I used tons of great resources from http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.netas we are going through her Raising Rock Stars Preschool program. I also used printables from her site and from www.homeschoolcreations.net Both of these sites have greatly aided in my being able to effectively do school with the girls and I am soooo grateful for them! I mostly used the snowmen printables pack from www.2teachingmommies.com for this unit.
We worked through our letter “S” curriculum from Raising Rock Stars preschool. The board behind MK is our schoolboard that holds a good portion of this. Her verse for the week was. Isaiah 55:6 Seek the Lord while He may be found. We played hide and seek, danced around while we sang “step by step”, and discussed what it means to seek. We did lots of worksheets about snowflakes and practiced writing our letter S.
We talked about the idea that no two snowflakes are alike and then we really dug into the concept of “different”. MK has grasped “same” for quite a while but working on the reverse of “different” is proving to be a little bit of a challenge.
We sorted letters and pictures from our Alphabet Soup set to find things that started with “S”. Like that tongue? She has developed a bad habit with that.
We worked on some reasoning skills with our layeled puzzles.
And we did tons of arts and crafts. I can go both ways on this. I am an artistic, creative spirit so I tend to gravitate towards art projects. On the other side of that equation I have killed hours preparing for activities that only take a few minutes to go through. Since one of my words this year is “Simple”, I was blessed to hit a good after Christmas sale at Michael’s so I snagged some ready made craft activities for us to do! Foam snowmen and foam snowflakes. We’ve been making a ton of both.
I am trying to work with MK on learning the letters to her name so we are practicing with lots of little games. We made a snowman with the letters of their names and then painted snowflakes on. Paint is their FAVORITE thing to do…my LEAST favorite b/c of the stress of the mess. But alas, I have to give in at times.
We also made watercolor snowflakes by drawing with white crayons on circles and then painting over them to reveal the designs.
Using 8 cups of flour and 1 1/2 cup baby oil we made “snow”. We hid items it it, practiced scooping it with a spoon into a dish, molded it to make a snowman and then dumped a good majority on the floor.
We read several books about snowmen, Frosty- of course, and snow, winter and snowflakes. I am all snowed out and ready for a new theme!
pinksneakerzhomeschool 