♥ School ♥ – week 2, part 1

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”

– Henry Ward Beecher

So, I’m playing around with what to title my school posts.  I’m looking for something catchy, and I’d like to make reference to the quote above, since I love it and it’s what I try to keep in mind while we are “doing school”: listening with my heart, following my maternal instincts, etc.  However, Mama’s School of Love doesn’t quite sound right, hee hee. ;) Any suggestions?

Wondering why this is just “part 1” of week 2?  Well, we started week 1 out with colds, and ended week 2 with an out-of-town funeral.  My husband’s very sweet uncle, Bud, passed away on Wednesday.  So, between recovering from being sick and then packing and heading out of town on the spur-of-the-moment, only a tiny bit of school was actually done.  I’m going to carry my plans for the week over into another week.  Honestly, I’ve been running behind on everything since my grandmother’s funeral at the beginning of the summer.  Another funeral and all the stuff attached to such an event just makes it harder.  I hope to get back on track next week!

For now, I thought I’d give a quick explanation of how I have M’s shelf activities set up each week.  I bought these last spring, but have not gotten around to posting about them until now.  Here’s how they looked over the summer, for the most part (this was right before M’s birthday, so I had cleaned off a couple of shelves to make room for new toys):

I have been playing a trial and error game with rotating M’s toys on these shelves; I’m not sure it’s working like I envisioned, but I plod on anyway.  Now that we are doing more preschool-ish activities again I’m using the shelves on the right for school activities and the ones on the left continue to hold toys.  

Some things are out permanently (more or less): the music instruments and songbook (shown on the top left in the photo above, but have been relegated to the corner on the floor at this point); M’s ABC collage and trace book; his phonics box (mentioned in this post); and whatever math work we are doing, which is currently bead bars and number cards.  I also have his flannel board tucked in beside the shelf, and all our flannel board sets in the folders on the bottom shelf. The remainder of the shelves hold rotated activities.

I’m trying to rotate a total of 6 to 8 activities every week.  I put out 3 or 4 activities each Monday and 3 or 4 every Thursday.  Each activity stays out for one week, unless it’s something he’s really loved and shows an interest in continuing to do.  Or, if it’s a one time thing – a craft or just a little something fun – then obviously once it’s done, it’s off the shelf.  If I have something to replace it with I will, but if not I just move everything around so the shelf looks full again. :)  Initially I planned to only use the top two shelves for school activities, but I can not put out enough activities for M, as he absolutely loves them, so I decided to use the entire 4 shelves of the one unit.

Recent activities on our shelves

I’m trying to use more attractive baskets and trays for his activities and I do think it helps grab his attention when things are presented in a pleasing way.  I made this cute little “work mat” for him too, for when he’s doing something potentially messy (using markers, etc.).

Most of the activities I set out are related to language or math work we’ve done, or are fine motor skill practice of some sort, for which I get most of my ideas from Montessori practical life activities.  I also try to include one sensory bin or sensory activity per week, although this doesn’t always happen.

The activities on M’s shelves are meant to be semi-independent work.  This means it’s something he knows how to do and can do completely on his own, or it’s something he will bring to me for instruction on how to do it, then complete it on his own.  I have to say I am usually in the room with him doing something and we keep up a running conversation regarding what he’s doing and how he’s doing, with a lot of me jumping in and out of any particular activity as needed.  There are a few activities that totally engross him and it’s then that I say a prayer of thanks and try to think in something more than 20 second intervals. ;)  We also have “together” activities, not on the shelves, which are things that we, well, do together.

I think this all sounds like more work than it actually is.  I actually have fun planning and preparing M’s “work” for him, both shelf activities and our “together” activities.  And I love, love, love spending time with him actually doing them.  I just wish I didn’t need to sleep so that I could have everything perfect, all the time.  But I can’t.  I’m already tired enough. ;)

I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner, and Weekly Wrap-Up.  Go check them out to see what other moms are up to with their kiddos!

Have a beautiful day! :)
 

“Doing School” - week one

Matthew has been itching to “do” school for weeks now.  I’ve caught him making up his own flannel board activities, trying to draw letters, and even teaching scissor skills to some stuffed animals. :)  He’s taught himself how to spell “on” and “off”.  As in the remote control jeep is “on” and it should be “off” so the batteries don’t run down. ;)  I bet the people that put the little “off” and “on” on toys don’t realize what a teaching tool they are creating!

I’m planning 3 weeks of work at a time, then one week off to do things we didn’t get to, or to just review what we have done.  Or, you know, so when we get sick on day 2, Mommy knows we’ll have time to catch up and doesn’t stress (much).

M learned to recognize all the upper case “mama” letters before he was one year old, and he knew the sounds many of them made (he was an early talker, and hasn’t stopped since).  I thought I had a genius on my hands, let me tell you.  Turns out it was just the fascination of bath tub letters, and somehow the knowledge didn’t stick (unlike the letters, which do.  Hee hee.).  So we will be going through the alphabet, learning the shape and sound of each letter, and matching mama letters to baby letters.  I expect M will fly through this, but at first we’ll cover one letter per week, starting with A, which was this week!  Of course I have to add (because I am a mama) that my bright boy already does know many of these, so it will be a lot of reviewing too, which is always good!

Shelf Activities (semi-independent work):

Watercolor painting pictures for big A and little A (from Making Learning Fun):He only did the little A page, so the big A page went into his art box for a later time.

Poking push pins into big and little As and pictures of things that begin with A:

I found the templates for the above activity at Preschool Express in the patterns section.

Our new Autumn Sensory Bin:There’s a lot of goodies in there… pinecones, acorns, a little wooden acorn-shaped bowl, cinnamon sticks, pom poms, silk leaves, paper mache gourds and pumpkins,  sparkly orange flowers, berries (not real), and some autumn-colored lacing beads.  M thoroughly enjoyed this sensory bin.  He especially loved the cinnamon sticks.  Thank you to Mari-Ann at Counting Coconuts for many great ideas in this post!

M explored all the various items: 

Created some pinecone sculptures: 

Made a little “garden”:And we played an I spy game.  I’d say something like, “I’m looking at something very small and round and soft and fuzzy, and it’s orange.”  And he’d look everything over and guess which item I was describing (pom-pom).  We took turns describing and guessing; it was a lot of fun!

Next was a rice-pouring activity which he absolutely loved.  He poured rainbow rice (colored with a bit of rubbing alcohol and food coloring – easy peasy) from a lightweight measuring cup into these silicone cupcake liners.  The addition of candles was his idea.  We even had to light them and sing happy birthday. :)  This will be staying on the shelf till he tires of it.  He’s been doing it every day, and is really perfecting his dry pouring skills.

singing happy birthday to no one in particular

 blowing out the candles

This next activity was hands-down the favorite of the week.  The first day he spent almost 2 hours on it and he continued to get it out and work on it a bit every day.  I gave him a piece of styrofoam, some pipecleaners, wooden beads, and pony beads.  He loved the wooden beads and only used the pony beads once the wooden ones were gone.  He pushed a pipe cleaner into the foam, then strung beads onto it and pushed the other end in to make arches.  I could not believe how much he enjoyed this activity – he just loved it.  It was enough of a challenge too, because once all those beads are on, it’s not easy to push the other end of the pipe cleaner in! What a great fine motor activity:

 

I also put out some fall-themed lacing cards.  He enjoyed these much more this time than in the past.  And he concentrated on “sewing” back to front, front to back, and going to the next hole instead of across the card.  Silly Mommy forgot to take pictures , but here’s the cards:   

My husband had a lot of odd board games when he was a kid, things I have never heard of, which are now ours because his mother didn’t want to keep them.  One of them (don’t know it’s name) had this hourglass-shaped game board with wells in it, perfectly sized for pom-poms or marbles.  I set this out with the pom-poms in the bowl at first, expecting him to use the tweezers to put the pom-poms in the wells.  However, it didn’t appeal to him until I switched it around and had the pom-poms already in the wells.  He tweezed them out one by one and dropped them into the bowl.Jill, at The Shafer Family Blog has something similar to this, in her post here, that you might be able to find somewhere.  Hers is a Jello mold for little eggs or jelly-bean shapes.

 

Now for activities we did together during “school time”…

Literacy:

This is M’s new phonics box.  I found these little wooden shadow boxes at Dollar Tree, and bought 3 of them, painted them white, and wrote the letters on them.  M sorted through the basket of big and small letters and put them into the appropriate square.  Then I gave him a few small objects to put in the “Aa” square – an apple, an acorn, an anchor, and an angel:This will stay on his shelves now and each week I’ll give him new objects to put in.

We also went through this little wipe-off mat and found everything that begins with A:

Do you like the little work mat I made for M? :)

And he practiced “drawing” a mama A and a baby a on his whiteboard, which will also be staying out on his shelves indefinitely: 

 

Math:

We started working with the bead bars I made (described in this post).  M found the “one bead”, the “two bead”, etc. for me and placed them on his work mat beginning at the top and going down, so when we got to the last one, which is the “nine bead”, he could see it formed a triangle or stairs.  We’ve done similar things before, so this was mainly to get him familiar with the bead bars and their various colors. 

Then he looked at his bead triangle and colored in this “short bead stair” worksheet to match it:

What do you think of that coloring?  I’m convinced it’s never entered his mind to even try coloring within the lines.  He’s a free-thinking artist. :)

M enjoyed this activity so much, and later I found his finished worksheet hanging on the wall:This is evidence of how proud he felt. :)    

 

Science:

We planned to do a plant experiment with a carrot this week, but M was sick the 2nd day and I was sick by the 4th day, so we took it pretty easy most of the week.  We will get to it eventually, but for now we just did these tree nomenclature cards:

Although this was all vocabulary that M already knows, he enjoyed this activity, and really enjoyed “reading” the words. :)  In fact, he just looked at the letters and matched them up, but that’s good enough for now!

 

Music:

We played “music”, although I use that term loosely, since it’s mostly just making noise with instruments, and sang songs.  This is something I hope to keep up as the year goes on.  Then I showed M how he could make music with water.  He was really intrigued by this… below is a little video.  My voice sounds old and tired, but remember - I had a cold!  Also, sorry about the blurriness!

I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up.  Check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up – July 9, 2010

This is the last preschool post for a while…  M is not excited about much that’s been out for him lately and I need to take a break and rethink some things.  And, well, it is summer. :)  So this wrap-up is for a few things we’ve done that he’s actually enjoyed over the past several weeks.

Math Skills:
I made some quick number cards and we used them with these little number rods I found at a thrift store:We did them in a very Montessori-ish way, going slowly and making sure to count each section of each rod, then naming the number of both the rod and the card.  M seemed to respond well to having “rules” for doing this.


Then we made a triangle with them:Unfortunately I didn’t get a full set of the number rods.  I plan on making some Montessori bead bars so we can continue this kind of activity with 10’s and 100’s. 

M worked on his fine motor skills, lining up flat glass marbles on craft sticks numbered 1 to 6 (then he lost interest):

Literacy Skills:
At Michael’s they have small painted wooden pieces for 25 cents each.  I picked up a handful and we’ve been using them to make up stories (this fabulous idea came from Jill at The Shafer Family): We use them in a variety of ways – sometimes one person begins with a piece and then the next person adds a piece and a bit of the story and so on.  Sometimes M just wants me to make up a story with all the pieces (or Daddy, who is a master storyteller!).  Sometimes we close our eyes and pick one piece out of a container and have to make up a story as we go along.  We’ll also be using these for phonics sorting.

I put our pipe cleaner letters out with a pan of flour for M one morning.  He spent a good 20 minutes running his fingers over the pipe cleaners and then drawing the letters in the flour.  The flour is so soft and cool – I think he really enjoyed this!

Fine Motor Skills:
M sorted seashells in a tray with tongs (idea from No Time for Flashcards):

He practiced some folding skills with his new Kumon First Book of Folding:

Then we worked on more folding and taping skills to make these cute little puppets from a recent issue of High Five:
And M used a small spoon to put marbles into this tray:   He LOVED this, which was a bit of a surprise to me (not sure why).  The tray is from some old board game of my husband’s.  I love how the clear blue marbles shine when the light hits them just right.

Sensory:
This sensory bin was another morning activity (planned to give me a few minutes of peace in the mornings).  M had a blast with it.  I put some water in a tub, and added a few drops of dish soap.  I added in a whisk, a baster, a strainer, and some small scoops:
It didn’t take long for the whisk to whip up some bubbles:
Finally, I gave him a straw and he had a lot of fun blowing into the water to make very big bubbles:  

Science:
One day I found M in his room with my set of small screwdrivers, taking apart flashlights and anything else he could think of. :)  He is definitely a budding scientist or engineer.

Creative Play:
For your amusement, here’s some self-portraits taken by M with my camera (I didn’t know about these until I uploaded the pics):   
I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out for some great school posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)