Learning by Heart – week 2 (part 2, where we actually do school stuff)

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
-Henry Ward Beecher

Thank you so much to everyone who had title suggestions for me last week.  You are all so creative and brilliant. :)  I’m going with the above for now (not sold on it 100%, but it’s definitely growing on me).

We’ve had another not-normal week, because Daddy has a lot of vacation time to use up and was home quite a bit (we celebrated both of our birthdays too).  It is wonderful to have him home, don’t get me wrong, but part of me would like to have a chance to settle into a normal routine for a week or two – to help figure out housework, outings, and “doing school”, as M says.  Since we are just doing preschool, it’s not that big of a deal, just something I have to be patient about (and obviously I need to work on just enjoying having our whole family together).  That said, I have a question for those of you homeschool mamas who are more experienced and have older children.  If your husband works odd hours or is home quite a bit, does it affect your homeschool routine?  And if so, is it affected in a good way, or is it something you struggle with?  What have you done to ensure school work gets done, as well as other responsibilities?  Maybe not everyone is a routine-and-schedule-lover like me, and I do need to learn some flexibility, but it’s something I can see becoming a stress factor for me if I were to homeschool M in the future.  Any thoughts about this are very much appreciated!

On to what we accomplished…

SHELF ACTIVITIES:

Tweezing felt autumn-themed stickers (Target, dollar spot!) into the slot of a little treasure box.

 

Our homemade build-a-letter set, lowercase version:

I used glitter foam for the pieces, which made it a bit more inviting for M, who does like him a little bling:

Uppercase version too, in gold glitter foam ;) :

Hit of the week – rubbing plates for B and b, and objects that begin with ‘b’:

He did this over and over.  He loved using the double stick tape to stick the card to the mini clipboard.  Then he used a brown or blue crayon to rub over the picture:

Here’s a sampling.  They really turned out great, and we had many of these little guys by the end of the week:Clockwise, from upper left – B, b, bumblebee, bus, bird with a balloon.  I made the ‘B’ and ‘b’ and bus from rough sandpaper, and the others were pictures found online; I simply went over the lines with hot glue.  I’m sure regular glue would work too.

Button board, to work those fine motor skills:

Stick puppets for the poems 5 Little Squirrels and 5 Little Owls:

Our puppet theater is simply a tension rod in a doorway with a blanket thrown over it:

Autumn-themed play dough number mats with autumn colored play dough, made with cinnamon, mmm:

These were a pretty big hit too!

Letter leaves to clip and spell M’s name* (with a “cheat sheet” for him to look at):*I know just about everyone knows M’s name is Matthew.  It’s not something I’ve tried to hide… I only use his initial because I am just too darn lazy to spell his name out all the time.  I’m wordy (in case you haven’t noticed!) and there’s enough typing going on here as it is…

 

M’s first weaving lesson, which was also a big hit now that I think of it.  I used a foam bowl that once held mushrooms, and threaded yarn through it to make the warp.  I looked for more “manly” ribbons, but what you see is all I had.  M didn’t seem to mind. ;)

M played with his KID K'NEX , making creations while actually looking at the “constructions” and figuring out how to make each one.  This is not an easy task because the pictures show the finished product, which means M had to use reasoning skills to figure out what to do first, second, and so on.  And sometimes he had to guess at what kind of connector was used.  He did great and was SO proud of himself!

 

Together Activities:

New ‘B’ objects for the phonics box – blue bird, brown button, bead, blue bear button, bear, bumblebee, boat, boy, bunny, bird:

We took out all the ‘A’ and ‘B’ objects and M sorted them into two groups by beginning sound:

 

More work with the bead bars.  This time we added in the number cards and introduced the golden bead bar for #10.  M is itching to really learn how the whole teen and twenties (and so on) thing works, I’m just waiting for him to become more familiar with the color of the beads for each number, since that plays such a big role in this method.  He’s playing around a lot with “twenty-teen” and “eighty-teen” and that kind of thing when he counts, so I know he’s curious and trying to figure it all out. :)

 

I’ve had these sand art color by number kits around for ages.  M doesn’t have the fine motor control to really do color or paint by number activities, but this was perfect!  I used old peanut butter lids to hold the sand and he peeled off the pieces for each number, then pinched a little sand in the correct color and sprinkled it on.  He LOVED this activity!  I got this at Michael’s for $1.00, I think.  I’ve linked the text above to some similar kits on Amazon.

Close up of him working.  If you haven’t seen these before, you peel off each section and the sand sticks to the sticky surface underneath.

In the end, you have these pretties, though not so blurry as my bad photo-taking skills make them out to be:It was a great activity for numeral review and fine motor skills.

 

And then one day when Mommy was awfully busy, he came up with his own little activity.  A car wash with soapy water and an old toothbrush.  He spent over an hour washing all of his little cars!                               

Just having fun…

The newest member of our family is this super cute scarecrow, who is supposed to keep the deer away from our garden, but isn’t quite living up to our expectations.  Ah well, he’s cute, and very loved by someone in particular:

 

AND LASTLY…

We’ve been having gorgeous weather here, exactly like October should be!  We are loving it.  I thought I’d share pics from our favorite walking trail along the creek near our home.

Sunlight hitting the tips of prairie grass.

my boys :)
  There’s a lot of yellow, red, and brown this time of year, but somehow my camera was attracted to the pretty greens that still remain. ;)

Playing “Pooh Sticks”

I love the cool blue of the autumn sky next
to the yellow tips of the tall trees.     

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

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! :)