Start of preschool

I have been doing off and on preschool stuff with my boys for a while. I've been wanting to get more structured and organized with it. I have found a lot of great resources on Pinterest. Last night (at about midnight) I found an AMAZING resource and have decided to make that my primary curriculum.

Oh wow, this site looks great! She goes all the way from Preschool through High School! Naturally I haven't had time to go through the entire site, but I skimmed through the Getting Ready 1 and Getting Ready 2 curriculum (Pre-K and K). So far I LOVE what I see.
Not wanting to dither, we got started right away this morning. The first part of Getting Ready 1 focuses on learning each letter of the alphabet. Dino already knows all of his letters and their sounds, but Jet Pack only knows a couple of them. So I figured I'd start Dino on Day 172 to start with (that is when they start learning some sight words and early reading). However, when I was doing the first lesson with Jet Pack this morning, Dino wanted to join in. So I figured it would be a good review and let them each go through the lesson. They loved it, and it was fun for me doing it with them. Then of course when I started Dino on his lesson, Jet Pack wanted to do it with him, so I let him join us. I'm not concerned with expecting him to remember it all, but if he likes doing it, and gets anything from it then GREAT.

Part of the lesson was just to look at some Google image search results for the letter A. We noticed one of the pictures was of an A made with 3 chili peppers. So I asked the boys if they wanted to build some letter A's as well. I let them choose what to make them out of. Dino immediately chose pencils and got to work. Jet Pack chose cars, but was having some difficulty with it. So I made one for him to look at and asked him to copy it. He still struggled a bit, but then saw his train tracks and decided to do that, and didn't need any further help with it. I decided to print out a letter A outline for him to fill up with his cars to make it easier for him and he liked it.

 My car A, Dino's pencil A, and Jet Pack's train track A.

Jet Pack filling up his letter A

All done!

 Coloring Abraham Alligator

 Looking at their first sight words.

I am not going to stick to this curriculum solely. That is one of the great things about homeschooling, you can do pretty much whatever works for you and your kid. This site focuses mostly on the alphabet and learning to read to begin with. I am going to be adding various other activities along the way. My kids love science experiments and we'll do plenty of those, and various other math and social studies activities as well. Dino already likes doing addition and subtraction.

If you are interested, I made a document with all of the letter outlines. I am laminating mine so they can be used for various things and reused. Click here for the free printable.

Easter

On Thursdays we have a learning group with some other friends. I was hosting this week and I decided to do an Easter theme. We've also been trying to focus on a different letter each week, but we've already done E. I was already planning on teaching the real Easter story, so it didn't take long to realize that R would be the perfect letter to focus on this week. R is for Resurrection!

Here are the activities I did and the order they fit together in to lead to one another.

Review-Letter E
E is for Easter
Easter Egg Hunt with Puzzle-
March 2013 Friend Magazine Print out the Picturing Easter picture on page 24 and cut into puzzle pieces. If you do not want to use the lines they provide in the magazine, if you download the pdf, and then copy the picture into word or something it doesn't copy the lines. Put the pieces in the eggs. After the hunt have the children put together the picture and discuss what it is depicting. You can either do one puzzle per child, or have them solve the puzzle together. If you opt to do one puzzle/kid make sure that you separate the puzzles according to each color of eggs. So cut one picture and put all the pieces into green eggs, cut another one and put them all into pink eggs, etc.
Make Resurrection Rolls- I actually chickened out of doing this with all the kids (because my kitchen is a MESS!!) but I had done it with my boys earlier in the week anyways so I'll include it now. Here is a link to the instructions.
Play Easter Bingo-

Click for Free Printable featuring 6 different bingo cards and complete key of pictures used! Cut out each image in the key, fold and place in a hat/bowl/container. Give each child a bingo card and some jelly beans or other markers. As each picture is chosen, explain what it represents and let the children cover their spot a bean. When a child fills the whole board, they yell BINGO and eat all of their jelly beans.




Resurrection starts with R

Find the Letter R worksheet-

Click for Free Printable







Build a Rabbit Game

Click for Free Printable of instructions. You will need a die (aka-singular dice), pom poms (for tail), pipe cleaner or string (for whiskers), googly-eyes, glue, and construction paper or foam. The children take turns rolling the die, counting the dots and then adding to their rabbit according to the instructions. If they roll a duplicate you can choose to make mutant rabbits, skip a turn, or roll again.





(Dino informed me the pom poms were not tails, but rather knees and his rabbit needed two.)