teaching ideas for this week

teaching ideas: Spanish colors taught using finger puppets of various colors one for each finger sing to the tune or "thumbkin" replacing finger word with color word in Spanish read Spanish board books re-read Curious George with an emphasis on "Monkey energy" and talk about appropriate places for it and talk about ways George gets in trouble because of his monkey energy. Re-read some of the earlier Laura Ingalls Wilder books with an emphasis of Laura's helpfulness with chores and quick obedience. Wear mouse ears to inspire us to be like Mrs. Tiddlemouse. Read the story too. Choose chores which one do you want to do first? Re-read poems in our poetry binder and work on memorizing "Shadows" For learning narration and art appreciation... Try brainstorming words about a work of art and then writing a poem or prose narration based on what we come up with.

shared writing

We have started shared writing this week and are loving it. SO far we've been picking a topic that interests us and talking about it or looking it up on the internet for more information in the case of jellyfish then writing something together then the kids illustrate it and re-reading it each day or every other day.
This is what we've come up with so far.
Claire made up this first one on her own:

Ladybugs
Ladybugs are small and cute.
They are so sweet to find.

Jellyfish
They sometimes stay in groups
and wiggle and wiggle and wiggle.
She lives in the sea
a circle like an umbrella
with lots and lots and lots
of legs.

A Riddle Tiddle
A circle with a little hole in it
small and tasty to eat
yum! Salty crunch, crunch, crunch
You can have them with milk
or without.
What are they?

songs for a rainy day

WEATHER SONGS
THE RAINBOW
Tune: “Jingle Bells”

The sun is shinning’
The sun is shinning,
Shinning all around.
Can you see the shadows
It makes upon the ground?
Rain is falling,
Rain is falling,
From the clouds up high.
Can you see the rainbow,
It makes up in the sky?
Jean Warren

PITTER-PATTER
Pitter-patter falls the rain,
On the roof and windowpane.
Softly, softly it comes down,
Pitter-patter all around.
Adapted Traditional

COLD WINDS
When cold winds blow
And bring us snow,
At night what I like most,
Is to crawl in bed
And hide my head,
And sleep as warm as toast.
Adapted Traditional

MY UMBRELLA
Here is my umbrella,
It will keep me dry.
When I’m walking in the rain,
I hold it up so high.
Adapted Traditional

from:http://www.preschoolexpress.com/music_station01/music_station_sept01.shtml

Busy Morning

Some one asked me recently how much time we spend each day doing homeschooling with my 3 and 5 year-olds. I guess it varies from day to day and most of what we do in our regular daily activities I think qualifies as preschool/ kindergarten work.
These are some of the things we did this morning
1. Sorting picture cards into three categories: animal, plant, or other object
2. Rhyming puzzle
3. coloring with color wonder markers
4. making pictures with shapes
5. ordering graduated shapes
6. reading aloud
7. phonics
8. Claire read little books to me

Physical Education

We've been doing a lot of P.E. this week. We did hanging and climbing and running at the park Tues. Emily did bicycling/triking Monday and Wednesday. She is getting good at steering so that I think she will be able to navigate on the sidewalk for a trip to the pocket park soon. The girls have both been practicing their gymnastics skills on a bar we put up in the door jamb with a crib mattress underneath. They are both getting brave and strong. I'm going to try to keep up the practice on a regular basis.
Scattered throughout each day are bouts of jumping on the trampoline and riding the exercise bike. We also took a walk to the pocket park yesterday and did sprints. I was the troll under the bridge and I would chase them across the sand and they would run away from me. Good exercise for all.

Other subjects

In addition to academics we have been working very hard on 1. managing frustration and disappointment and anger 2. being kind to one another including using our words to explain what we want and how we feel, and 3. working hard to complete a task.
I am very pleased with Claire's progress on the latter as evidenced by her hard work taking many loads of trash out to the bin yesterday when I was getting rid of a bunch of stuff and today when she filled her entire paper with ink using her ink-a-dot markers.

Right now the girls are having an impromptu pretend tea party with the brass tea set from Nonna Beth. Very sweet.

Button math

You can use a lot of math concepts in a short amount of time using buttons and a jar. Claire filled a spice jar with buttons. Then estimated that there were 50 in the jar. Next we counted them into piles of ten, counted by tens and discovered there were 65 buttons in the jar. Next we sorted them by color. Then Emily sorted by size taking out the tiny ones. Next Claire strung the golden/brass buttons onto a pipe cleaner. Next we are going to make patterns using two or three colors of buttons.

Thanks to Nanna and Mrs. Jenney for the butons.