Preschool Corner/Week in Review

We are now into the 4’s, though Selena doesn’t officially turn 4 until December, she has definitely taken on the temperament of a 4 year old. She has suddenly even switched up her sleep needs and now goes to bed by 7:30 p.m. and just falls off to sleep. Some days she will take a nap, while there are still days when she just reads quietly. Evenings have been more of a challenge, as it is like she gets this great burst of energy after dinner and she seems nonstop. We are working on this and it is slowly beginning to fade.

Reading:

We continue to work on our reading, Selena reads so many words now it is not uncommon to find her trying to read my blog posts as I type them. She reads every word I type that she knows and it is interesting how more and more of the sentences are becoming close to being fully read by her. I feel that I have to watch very closely what I type or write these days.

Math:

We continued this week playing a lot of Phase 10 Dice. Now I have made Selena a number line and she is taking more time to match up the numbers and then building her number line from the numbers she has left to find. This has proven to be a very fun game to her, and it has been fun to watch her slow down and really think, instead of thinking that she has to find the number from 1 – 10. She also changed the rules on me that W or the Wild dice is no longer usable. I would like to start introducing some of the true concepts of the game and see how that goes. Her world is continuing to open up to math, and she embraces any chance she can find to add and subtract simple math facts.

 Geography:

Selena still has a great passion for maps. She is always thrilled when we just sit down and read the map together. She loves to point out the places we’ve been, as well as to map our routes that we take daily to the routes we have taken on our trips.

Other:

Dance went very well this week. I was actually able to slip away and go do some shopping without her complaining that I was gone. She listened very well to the instructor and learned many new dance steps.

She enjoyed making a FishDog this week, and even packed it to the library to show the librarians her fun creation, making sure they knew exactly what it was and why she made it.

 

Over all we had a good week. It is so fun to hear all of Selena’s questions, even those continuous why, what for, how come and are we there yet questions. It is so fun to watch her world expand more and more with each passing day.

I am linking this up at Homeschool Creations.

Preschool Corner/Week in Review

Though I sit here and for some reason think we didn’t do much this week, I realize when I look back on my blog that we did do quite a bit. Everyday always seems to hold new learning adventures. While I haven’t been up to par this week, Selena has enjoyed a lot of one on one play, reading, and learning with me and with Papa in the evenings.

Reading:

Selena is becoming more and more confident with her reading skills. Even many of the books that are above her reading level, she is more willing to try to read on her own with our assistance. She has really been telling how to spell words as we write and play together.

Math:

Selena’s favorite book for math continues to be The Penny Pot. She is really working very hard at helping us to count the coins pictured on the pages, and can tell us the amount over the .50 that will go in the pot. She still doesn’t quite understand the quarters, but she enjoys counting the dimes, nickels and pennies. I am thinking we might have to buy this book, as I know she is going to be upset when we have to return it to the library.

She is also doing a lot more adding and subtracting off the top of her head. She is forever telling me something like 4 + 3 = 7 or some subtraction problem.

Science:

We had a lot of science the beginning of the week. We looked at friction and inertia. Then we also talked about balance, and yes Selena is still playing with her plastic bottles. She is continuously coming up with ideas for us to investigate, and is really asking about camouflage here lately.

We missed a field trip with the homeschool group here to the cranberry bogs. I was really bummed about that but I suppose there is always another time.

Other:

A week ago we had some problems with Selena in dance class, while she is learning to dance, she was not wanting to follow directions very well. I refused the instructor to give her a sticker at the end of class. Through the week, Selena played this scenario out in her imaginary play, first having her teddy bear be herself and disrupting the class, then having her teddy bear as herself, cooperating. When it came time for class this week, Selena tried very hard to do what was asked of her without being told more then once. This was quite difficult when one little girl came in with ribbons throughout her hair, fairy wings on, and her little brother was watching a cartoon on mom’s phone. All the girls were having problems focusing with all that going on. That is one reason they have a dress code, and do not like parents to stay during class. I have talked with Michael about switching her to another school in Aberdeen next year, though it will cost a little more, I have heard the instructor is very good.

Ok, about me. Just as I think I am getting over this and going to be on the mend, it seems there is yet another stone to pass. We are still just in this wait and hold pattern. I am very tired, and spoke with my Dr. today on the phone. He said if this continues to head to ER. As of tonight I am not hurting, but we have decided if the pain comes back we will head on to the hospital. Sorry there wasn’t any pictures with this, but I didn’t want to go through my files to find them all.

I am linking this at Homeschool Creations.

Preschool Corner Week 7 2010

As I stated last week that I am determined to do more hands on activities with Selena. We have had so much fun this week doing just that. Several mornings this week Selena has woke up just begging for her newest favorite game, Yahtzee. I enjoy pulling the game out and watch how quickly Selena is learning and becoming more confident in her choices of what dice to keep and which ones to roll again.

Reading:

Selena is continuing to read in her first grade reader. She loves the story and looks forward to sitting down and read it to me every day. She asks for her school work, which is her reading or math throughout the day.

She also has accumulated many books in her bedroom where she is found during quiet time or many other times where she reads to herself and her stuffed animals. Wednesday we put Selena to bed, she quietly got up and turned her bedroom light back on, retreated back to her bed where we found her reading. We just let her read to her heart’s content, on which she got up turned off her light and crawled back in bed and fell asleep. I guess I will be shopping for a bed side lamp for her her here real soon.

Math:

We had fun this week talking more about Estimation. Along with working on our addition facts. It is fun to watch as Selena observes every little detail and while at first she might not understand, she quickly figures it out. I really enjoyed doing the water estimation experiment we did. I was surprised at how well Selena was able to observe the different shape and sizes of the glasses to determine where the water level would land. I loved the fact that she was able to tell me that while the fluked glass was taller then the other’s because of it’s skinny shape it would not hold all the water the other glasses had held.

Science:

In a way Science just seemed to be a theme this week. Everything we did seemed to be around some sort of a science experiment, from Math, Geography, Art, and then our science experiment introducing the concept of a chemical reaction. While Selena did not understand the entire chemical reaction, she did have fun watching the colors fizz and blend when we worked with baking soda and vinegar.

 

Geography:

We had fun learning all about what an Island is. I got the idea from her Science book, which posed the question of how God created the Earth. This was one experiment I had hoped to be able to go outside and do on a larger scale with dirt and water, but with the rains we have been having I had to resort to materials here inside the house. I still love the fact that Selena refuses to think of taking a boat to get off the Island, and tells me that if that was the only means of transportation off, she would just be stuck, unless we let her ride a whale.

Other:

We had fun making our own spider web after observing the spider in our window. We also read Charlotte's Web to go with this. Selena loves this book, and could hear the story over and over again.

There was so much more that we did this week. We had so much fun playing imaginary play, games, making up stories, songs, and just laughing. It was a much better week, then we have been seeing, so I am sure we are going to be continuing what we are doing.

Selena has been on me all week to look up different things on the Internet. Spiders, grasshoppers, crickets, the list goes on and on. It’s been so fun doing quick little pieces of research with her.

Preschool Corner/Week 3 2010

I realized that one year ago this month, my blog finally took on the theme that I have become so passionate about. I had been playing around with my blog not really knowing what to write about. Then Natalie at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns, really gave me the idea of blogging about our adventures in homeschooling and raising Selena. Natalie and I had met on the IVillage parenting boards. She invited me to visit her blog, and the rest was history. So a huge Thank you to Natalie for the inspiration! Also thank you to all of you my followers, and blogging friends for making this year so wonderful. Your comments, encouragement, ideas, and support has truly been the BEST part of my blogging adventure!

To think we went from this:

To this:

In one year! I look forward to sharing this year with all of you!

Ok now for our week in school:

Reading:

While we continue to review the vowel sounds, we are jumping a head in our phonics and reading to start looking at consonants and vowel sounds, along with our word flash cards that go with our first reader. Selena already knows a good number of the words in her reader, and is jumping right in to learn this new form of phonics that I am presenting to her.

We took a look at color words this week. I made a card for each of the colors, red, blue, black, brown, orange, yellow, purple and green. I had a game all ready to go using different things we had, that Selena would have to match the color with the word. I knew she knew how to read some of the colors from her reading books, but wasn’t sure about all of them. She surprised me and cut our game short, as she whipped out every word on the cards before we even got started.

In her workbook her assignment was to look at 5 words, 4 of which were spelled correctly while one was incorrect, this was using the color words. She had to identify the word that was incorrectly spelled. She realized that this is not as easy as it appears, and takes a little more concentration on her part. Once she figured that out, she did great with the assignment.

Math:

Selena enjoyed watching the baseball game with Papa. He was doing a great job of teaching her about the score, how to count balls, strikes and even how many pitches were pitched per player. Too bad the game had a rain delay, so they didn’t get to finish this lesson.

I made word cards for one through ten. I again knew that Selena would know some of the number words, just didn’t expect her to know most of them. The one that stumped her the most was the number eight. Again she wanted to hurry through this, and just assume that the card I would give her after six was seven or five, so that it made some sense of order to her. Once she figured out that I indeed had them all scrambled and there was no pattern to how I presented them, she put her little mind to work to actually read the words. She did great!

Geography:

We took a look at the State of Pennsylvania, this week. Selena was so happy to get her scrapbook out and work on that again after our little break.  I have had a few comments about Selena’s coloring, I thought I would share, that while Selena is very obsessed with coloring within the lines, she is so slow, it takes her about 5 to 10 minutes to color one of the small states on her US map. One day as we colored together, she informed me, that I needed to slow down and be careful to stay in the lines. Maybe this is why she doesn’t like arts and crafts very well, she is too much of a perfectionist about her coloring anymore.

Science:

We lacked again in Science this week. I did have Selena come in and help me make french toast and we discussed how the heat of the pan changes the appearance of the food as it cooks. We also added cinnamon to the egg and talked about how this made our french toast taste different. We also talked about how the cinnamon smelled, it’s texture, and overall appearance.

Other:

Selena is now enrolled in dance for the upcoming year. She begins September 13th. We are staying with the same dance school we tried last year, since it is so close to home. I really like the sound of the other dance school in Aberdeen, but they don’t usually start them out until they are 4, so there is no guarantees that Selena would make the cut for the class. While that instructor offers a month trial for 3 year olds, I don’t want to take a chance that she won’t make the cut, then we would still end up starting here in Montesano, and be behind again like last year.

Selena discovered the world of legos. She has had so much fun building, and has been very good about making sure she puts them all away before starting something else. We have decided to take her bins that we got for her toys and set them up in our little classroom area. In the top bins I have placed her pattern blocks in one, a puzzle in another one, then she has her legos. She can choose which activity she wants to do, take the bin to the table, then before she can pull another bin out, or toy, she has to make sure her bin is put away. So far we have only had to remind her of the rule a couple of times.

While Selena is discovering that this year there will be a little more work required on her part, I am also getting a good feel for how to present the materials to best fit Selena’s learning style. I am sure that this year will really give us both a great foundation and understanding of each other, Selena and her learning style, and my teaching style.

Preschool Corner Week in Review

As our little so called summer break is coming to an end with a much needed vacation to make it official, we wanted to use this week to tie up some of the loose ends from Selena’s preschool workbook but since we had nice weather on Wednesday we took advantage of that. While I would like for her to finish the last two sections of her workbook, I am not going to fret it if we don’t as it is a repeat of what we have been doing all year, except it is the letter Y and Z which I do believe she knows quite well.

Reading:

We have been reading so many books in the last couple of weeks, not that we don’t normally read a lot but the last couple of weeks seem like they were almost double the amount of books that we normally read.

We also did a little reading test, so that I could determine which way we would go for our reading curriculum for this up coming year. I handed Selena the first reader from a first grade curriculum from Rod & Staff that we had stored in our garage. I told Selena to just start reading and to keep reading until she couldn’t read the words any more. She read close to half the book and surprised me that she was able to read some words that we haven’t even worked on in phonics, such as light. We made the decision that we will use this reading program for her, no since ordering another one, when this one appears right now to be right for her.

Math:

Selena has had fun learning to play Yahtzee this week. She is proud of her new game. To me this is just the next step towards her Kindergarten Math. She had no problem identifying the numbers on the dice from the dots, at a glance, she didn’t even need to count the dots to tell me what the number was that the dots represented. We first started by making straights 1-5 and then from 6-2. The next day I pulled out some actual Yahtzee score sheets and introduced the concept of only getting three rolls, and having to get as many of the same number as we can, then it was the next person’s turn. Selena did very well with the sharing concept of the game, counting her rolls and informing me when it was my turn. She also did very well at counting the dots on the dice to tell me what her score was. As we move along we will start introducing the bottom half of the game to her. Eventually I know that the strategic thinking will begin to kick in. I look forward to sharing my favorite game with Selena.

Geography/History:

In preparation for our vacation travels, I mapped out our travel plans for Selena. Without giving my plans totally away, by the time we come home from vacation Selena will have a great scrapbook of our vacation to add to her Geography/History postcard book. Check back for the updates to this project. There might be a surprise in our route home, as I was reminded of a different route we could take that is even more spectacular. You will just have to wait and see what route we come home in.

Science:

Science has seemed a little sparse here of late in our home. I had great hopes this summer to get outside and really explore for science, but the weather did not cooperate. We did however get out for a bit one evening to discover that some of the trees in our neighborhood are already changing color and loosing their leaves. We will be back on track with Science when we return from vacation, and we look forward to discovering all the cool stuff in our new Science book!

Other:

Selena’s imaginary play has become something else, it is so funny as she lays down for quiet time to listen to her. One day, it was all I could do to keep from laughing as I heard her from her bedroom, her little conversation went like this:

• Selena, “Hi all my wonderful friends!”
• Selena pretending to be her friends, “Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi!”
• Selena, “Friends we really need to take a nap!”
• Selena pretending to be her friends, “Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok!”
• Selena, “Well, then shall we roll over and close our eyes? Does that sound like a good idea to you?”
• Selena pretending to be her friends, “Sure thing, Sure thing, Sure thing!”

I think that was probably the cutest but funniest conversation that I have heard her have with her self and imaginary friends. Only children surely do very well!

I am linking this up at Homeschool Creations.

Preschool Corner Week in Review

While sometimes I wonder if these cleanses we have Selena on is doing anything at all, I do know she is feeling much better and is back to her normal self. This week she just begged to go back to school. So that is just what we did. She still had three sections left in her preschool curriculum which I did want her to complete before we started the new curriculum.

We worked on one of the sections, the letter X. Now Selena is no longer happy with stretching these sections out over an entire week, she wants to do them all in one day. This is because we are down now to more of a review of everything she has learned this year, just under a new letter of the alphabet. She works the pages totally independent now, all I have to do is read the instructions to her, and even then some of the pages this is not necessary, she sees the work and knows exactly what to do. Now there is a full review section after we finish Z but I doubt very much that I will do anything more with that then maybe place it in Selena’s work drawer and she can do it or not do it depending on her own desire. I am not huge on reviews when I know that my child definitely understands and knows the material.

Reading:

Selena cracks me up. She is reading more then she wants people to know. She forgets herself often and we catch her reading all sorts of books, that she claims is too hard. She is becoming more confident in herself now though, and instead of the usual question of “What is this word?” she is breaking the word down and sounding it out. She doesn’t always get the word perfect, but you would be surprised how many times she does, for instance she figured out all by herself how to pronounce the word beautiful the other day.

Math:

Again we have fallen short in the math area. Selena loves to just sit and build her own patterns, and is so into counting, she counts all the time. The other evening she counted backwards from 20 to 0 very successfully. That surprised me, as she did this with out much effort, nor having the printed letters laid before her.

Science:

I had planned on doing so much more science, but when Selena got feeling poorly, science was put more on the back burner. We might not do much more science now until we start our new curriculum.

Geography/History

Selena enjoys sitting for hours and looking back through her scrapbook. She shares it with Papa all the time especially when she has added a new State. This week we looked at Utah. She can actually now tell us on the US map she is coloring where exactly the States of Washington, California, Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina are without any assistance.

As you can see this is quite an accomplishment since we do not label the States on this map.

Other:

We have been busy planning our vacation. I think we now have things pretty well figured out, just had to wait to hear from my oldest brother to know when they would be around so we could finalize the end of our trip. I am so excited to see my son, and he is insisting on taking his step dad fishing, I guess you know Papa is beaming about this!

I didn’t realize one of the local churches was doing VBS this week. I thought it would be fun for Selena to go to the last two days, but she kept telling us she was scared to go. At first I thought I would take her and just hang out until I could see how she handled it. After she was up through the middle of the night however, I decided that maybe she is still just too young for this and we didn’t go. She seemed relieved when I told her we would not make her go that morning.

Preschool Corner/Summer is Here

After a long wait, with cloudy cool temperatures we find ourselves in a heat wave. Thankfully it isn’t as hot as some of you are finding yourselves in, but it’s been hot for here. I resolved to the fact that Summer is just that Summer, and our school has slowed way down, as I am sure many of you have noticed. I am fine with this considering Selena’s age, and the fact that there is just way too much to be learned through life school.

This week we celebrated the 4th of July along with everyone else, taking a road trip to Astoria, Oregon. Along the way there and back we had a great opportunity to finish our study on Rivers. Selena got a good look at what a mouth of a river looks like and to see how ships make their way into the mouth of the river to travel on up river to pick up or deliver cargo. It seems that they pick up more cargo now days then they do deliver it however sad that may sound, anyway it sounds pretty sad to me. Why? Well, with all our lumber, timber, and everything else our country produces being shipped out with no huge returns on cargo coming in does not make for a balanced economy nor job security.

Selena got a long time questioned answered as to why we have  a ceiling fan. And yes, she found out it is not up there so that someday I will lift her up there so she can ride around on it. Where she ever came up with that idea I have no idea, but for the last year or two she has off and on begged me to lift her up so she could go around on the plane on our ceiling, the plane request did change to fan as she has become wiser. She also got to experience how the fan actually helps to keep the house cooler on these hot days, considering we have no AC. Why would people put in AC here when the units would hardly pay for themselves, we get so much hot weather you know.

Selena has clung to her library books from a couple of weeks ago, time for them to go back, so we can get onto reading some of the others I brought home. I love the way that she is getting about books, it is not the quantity anymore, but the content and quality of the content that she is finding appealing. Selena is also becoming a great story teller in her own right. She makes up stories through out the day. I would love to write them all down but get real, the way she makes up stories that is all I would be doing, well not really but I think you know what I mean.

We have ordered the books we tend to start working out of for next year. We picked and chose what we would use, and while yes they did come from the same vendor, we did not go with the boxed curriculum set. My work will be cut out for me when we get home from vacation, planning out our year.

There you have it, while we are not all entwined in formal learning the learning still goes on. To see what others are doing hop on over to Homeschool Creations.

Preschool Corner/Week in Review

As I have mentioned before we are so close to completing all of Selena’s preschool curriculum. She is performing the work in her workbook with such independence now and hardly even needs me to tell her the instructions. It is hard to believe that we only have 3 more sections and it will be totally completed. We will work through some of the supplemental work, until our new curriculum comes in. I doubt we will really start that until after our vacation.

Reading: High Five Puzzle Buzz Review

Yesterday Selena received her free Highlights Summer pack. I debated over this for sometime before deciding to go on ahead and get it for her. I know how can you pass up something for free? Is it really free? No, it is an introduction subscription to these fun puzzle magazines from Highlights. I do believe we will keep the subscription at $4.95 per activity book.

 

Selena had fun doing the hidden pictures. They are a little more difficult then those found in the High Five magazines she gets, but she still did them with ease. There is also some that call for stickers to be placed where you find the item. One page is black and white and the child puts the colored sticker over the item they find.

Then there is one that is split into two pages. One picture is the complete picture, the other one is missing items. The child is suppose to find the items pictured on the stickers on the one page then find the correct placement on the other page.

I liked the challenges in these puzzle books. The pictures are busy but they really challenge the child to be observant. They are not too busy that they become frustrating, but they are not as simple as those found in the High Five magazines.

What I didn’t like about these were the mazes. They are geared for an older child. I can live with that though, as now I can put these up for future fun, when Selena is ready for the more complex mazes.

This was the page that Selena had the most fun with. The stickers are in the shape of a jigsaw puzzle. She had to look at the picture and decide what was missing, find the right puzzle piece from the stickers, and then place it in place to finish that section of the picture. This is a little harder then it sounds, and calls for more fine motor skills then a normal jigsaw puzzle, but she did really well. She didn’t get all the pieces neatly in their place, but she gave it a good try and had fun doing it.

I highly recommend these fun packed Highlight puzzle books for any child. In my opinion these would be appropriate for an older 3 year old on up. Selena loved the carrying bag that came with them too.

Geography/History:

Selena had a great time with the State of Wisconsin. She has now fell in love with the Laura Ingals Wilder books, we just brought home more from the library, which takes us out of the Big Woods, to the Prairie. After a few weeks off, Selena was so excited to get her scrapbook out and do another page.

She now calls the postcards, “State cards”, which I think is cute and really tells me she is making the distinction that while we are studying and living in the US, that there are unique and different States within the one Country.

Other:

Selena went to a birthday party on Saturday, and as usual had a blast. She was the youngest one there, but that didn’t bother her any. She gets along with all children no matter their ages. It seems other children, even those a few years older, are able to accept Selena and enjoy having her around. That is good thing to see, as it tells me that Selena is developing the social skills she is going to need the rest of her life.

Our weather has been back and forth, the forecast will call for clouds and rain, then we get up to a beautiful sunny day. So we have been taking as much advantage of that as we can. Too bad Wednesday when it was one of the nicest summer days we have had we had to waist so much time going to the Occupational Therapist. We did walk to the library when we got home though.

We are not returning to the OT. Selena has formed a perception that the activities done in the office has given her all right to destroy, tear up, squish, literally make a mess out of the food on her plate, so long as she tries a bite of something new. This technique she used might work great for the younger child, or one with Developmental problems but from my perspective when working with a bright child, they see it differently. We will get over this situation just like any other situation we face, but I doubt we will search any more advice from an OT. That is not to say that I do not approve of what OT’s do, as I have worked with many over the years with my daughter. To read more of our experience you can read it here.

I am linking up to Homeschool Creations, hop on over and see what others are doing in their preschools.

Preschool Corner/Our Week in Review

It has been a short week, with Memorial Day then a Doctor’s appointment for Selena but as I look on our week we did get quite a bit accomplished all the same. Selena is going through a stage where everything is, “I got something important for you Mama, let’s talk about something new, or let’s play sign language.” Everything in her world right now is just IMPORTANT!

We are learning sign language here. She just loves it, and though I have used signs with her since she was little, I believe now she is truly ready to get right in and learn. She informs me daily that “sign language is a form of communication.” She knows how to sign please, thank you, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, boy, girl, funny, fine, the days of the week, yes, no, good, bad, eat, breakfast, lunch, dinner, play, people, friend, morning and night. I believe there are more signs, but I just can’t think of them off the top of my head.

Reading:

We are reading continuously around here in our world. Selena is becoming more confident in her independent reading and is forever telling us what things say. One night Papa’s name was wrote on something, Selena informed us what was written on the paper except instead of a long i she used a short i, so his name sounded more like Mickle, I guess it was confusing since Michael really doesn’t follow the long vowel rule now does it.

Math:

I found a watch that we must of gotten out of a Happy Meal sometime, and gave it to Selena. It is a digital watch and while Selena doesn’t totally understand the concept of reading the time she is having so much fun reading the numbers to me. she will say it is 11:23 or sometimes just 56.

Science:

We revisited our science on how plants and flowers grow. It would have been fun if we could have done more hands on with this but our rains made that impossible. I am hoping for some good weather to come our way as we are all itching to get outside and explore. Papa even got Selena a magnifying glass so she should have a lot of fun looking for bugs and things.

Geography/History

Though we did not get a chance to visit our next State on our list with such a short week it was fun to hear Selena using some of her new found knowledge about the world around her into practical use. She talks so much about the things she is learning in Geography, volcanoes, rivers, flags, and is now beginning to realize in our travels, when we leave our town and enter the next town. She is beginning to learn all the names to the towns around us and announces them as we get to them.

Other:

We had fun with our egg surprise, and hey I must report that indeed the other two eggs that I thought were multi yoked were indeed so. That made 5 eggs in that one dozen. I believe the record is 6, so we were close.

We took a look at fire safety here in the home after Selena became so interested in this subject after watching an episode of Calliou. We read a couple of books and searched out our smoke detector then talked about the best plan to get out of the house. Selena had fun crawling along the floor to the exits.

We have a lot nearby that sells pinwheels, Selena is just fascinated with the lot. I thought it would be fun to make our own pinwheel. Our first attempt didn’t turn out super well, and in fact when I asked Selena to decorate it, she made one huge H and said she was done. We tried another one using a piece of scrapbook paper and had better success.

To see what other families are doing in their preschool adventures visit Homeschool Creations.

Preschool Corner/Week in Review

Selena wakes every morning now begging for school and to talk about something new. Next month is the Homeschool Convention so I hope to bring home some new materials to quench her hunger for learning. She definitely keeps me on my toes as I am constantly trying to come up with new things to talk about.

Reading/Writing

Selena had fun this week revisiting these 5 little books that she truly did not care for throughout our preschool setting. She can read these books pretty independently with just a few hints or helps on just a few words. I do like these books as they are set up just like Progressive phonics, but just a shorter version. Anyone not familiar with Progressive phonics, the idea is to introduce the child to the short vowel sounds, the little books are comprised of cute stories that the parent and child read together. The words that represent the short vowel sound are printed in red, that tells the child it is their turn to read.

Selena decided this week to pull out all of her Kumon workbooks. I usually only give her a few pages at a time when she wants to work on them, but she got into the cabinet and got them on her own. She definitely has her favorite letters to work on, and traces and re traces the letters all the time. She is now getting curious about lower case letters, so we now have a scrambled mess of her Kumon pages. That is ok with me, I just want her to explore them as she sees fit at this point, we have plenty of time for a more formal approach. She does not care for the pages though that have fine motor skill exercises as she says “I can already do those in my sleep.” Where she picked up that phrase is beyond us. I am waiting for her to discover the Kumon book of numbers.

Math:

Selena had fun showing Papa how she has learned to put a simple addition equation together, using her doodle pad. She draws smiley faces, and then asks us to help her with the numbers, since she hasn’t learned to write but a few numbers herself. She can however make the plus sign and equal sign, and successfully finish the equation.

Science:

I love Selena’s take on balance this week. Trying to learn to do a head stand. She is still practicing and is coming pretty close.

We will be back to a more formal science lesson this week.

Geography/History:

We had to answer a question that I posed to Selena when a gray whale got stuck in one of our local rivers. When I asked Selena how the whale got in the river her answer was “He jumped in the river.” We then had to pull out the maps and show Selena that the whale did not jump into the river but swam into the river. This brought up some very interesting discussions and questions, and ended with Selena pleading to the whale, “Swim back into the Ocean and find food.”

Other:

Selena has successfully learned to zip her own jacket now. She has been working hard at learning this skill and this week has been able to do it effortlessly. Outside of being able to button those rascally little buttons, she now is able to totally dress herself from head to toe.

She is sheer delight to travel with in the car, she is discovering or at least talking more about what she sees. The other day headed to Olympia, Selena announced, “We are in the mountains!” I asked her how do you know we are in the mountains? She explained, “I see trees, more trees, and more trees, and we are going up hill!”

I am linking up at Homeschool Creations.

Preschool Corner/Week in Review

Papa has been out of town all this week on a business trip, so Selena and I have just enjoyed being together, not that we aren’t always together, but this week just seemed more relaxed. We didn’t have to worry about the housework being done before Papa gets home, or having dinner ready to go on the table. Yes, the housework did get done everyday, but usually not until just before bed.

Reading/Writing:

We have been enjoying our Summer schedule of reading at leisure. We have fun taking turns reading books together. Usually we start reading, and all the words that Selena knows she reads out loud, then I read the ones that she doesn’t know. There has been a lot of the words that I read that she is starting to pick up now. She has grown a fondness to long words, so we have been looking at syllables, she loves to pick a word and have me break it down by syllables, especially if it is a word she stumbles over the pronunciation. Once the word is broke down in this manner she then can pronounce it perfect. This is the same technique I used to teach her how to say her name.

She still practices her letters and numbers everyday. This is still just an area she does on her doodle pad, and in her drawings. We still are not really pushing this skill. She can write her name now.

Math:

Selena is becoming more proficient with simple addition facts. She is beginning to really wrap her mind around the written equation, and is able to figure the answer out with manipulates. She understands subtraction as far as if we have two of something and take one away she can tell me how many is left. The written equation however, throws her for a loop. I throw them in though as you never know when this area will just click as well.

Science:

I had my beam on her!

We looked at how the Earth rotates around the Sun, to answer Selena’s question of why her shadow moved. I still am looking for the perfect sunny day so we can go out and trace her shadow throughout the day so she can see the differences throughout the day. I thought it was so funny after doing this little study that Selena woke up one morning almost in tears, “My dark is gone!”

Geography/History:

She has just been memorized with my mountains or volcanoes!

What would this week have been without joining the rest of the Washingtonians in observing the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt Saint Helens, so that is exactly what we did. I hope to revisit this and make our own volcano, when we can take it outside!

Other:

Selena loves to spend hours playing with many of her toys now. Some days are better for this then others. I suppose since she plays with them in the living room, where we are at, it doesn’t seem to her like she is all alone playing. We love to listen to her made up stories and to see how she interacts with all her little dolls and little people or her stuffies.

Selena discovered the shower this week. She now loves to take a shower and has decided to remove her bath time toys from the bathroom informing me she is never taking a bath again, only showers now. We will see about that, I expect one day here she will run and grab her bath time toys and beg for that long bath and water play time.

Selena is ready for dinner!

The top picture is Selena at play!

This picture is probably my favorite one taken this week. I think it just represents Selena and her desire to take in the entire world around her.

Preschool Corner/Week in Review

What can I say we have had another great week! Our little learning style is sure changing here to a full fledge Selena lead learning environment. I must admit I love it!

Reading/Writing

I have to admit this is probably the first week, we did not do much in this area. Outside of Selena spelling words for me while we were out and about then asking me to help her sound them out. She got confused at one store as there was a sign that said Food Mart, but the way it was made it looked like one word. Once we broke it down together, she realized it was two words, then freely read it the next time she seen it on the front of a convenient store. She reads more and more when we are out and about, from all the signs she sees along the way or in the stores.

Math

Selena’s math is really getting to be very hands on. She enjoyed counting everyone’s eyes, noses, mouths, ears, hands, fingers, feet, and toes, to figure out how many we had all together. She is getting pretty good at figuring out the smaller equations on her own. She did inform us though that Papa’s feet does not count if he is wearing his slippers, the slippers must come off, but my socks are ok. Go figure! She even pointed out that we have a total of 4 blue eyes and two brown eyes. I thought that was pretty observant. While playing Jump Start on the Wii, the game she was in asked her if she wanted to play numbers from 1 to 5, 3 to 6, or 5 to 10. I didn’t even get a chance to read any of this to her when she spoke up and informed me I want to play the 5 to 10 level.

Science

Selena enjoyed her trip to the fish “factory” as she has now began to call it. We look forward to getting her out fishing a bit more this summer.

It was hilarious how they had this sign, you couldn’t get a good picture of it as a fence was only a foot away, so I reached around with the camera and snapped this. It is suppose to tell you what type of fish they raise there, but as you can guess we never were able to really read the sign.

History

We took a tour of the tallest Lighthouse in WA state. It was very fun, and Selena managed to climb all 135 steps both up and down. She really did very well overcoming her fears on the way down. She also learned some interesting facts, maybe not as much as we brought home, but she now knows and has an appreciation of Lighthouses.

Selena informed me that I had to take a picture of her at the sign even though the sign really didn’t say anything about the lighthouse! I guess she gets that as I usually try to get a picture of her next to signs that have information about the place we are at.

Other

Selena enjoyed her day at the beach and I believe filled her car seat with half the sand from the beach. Don’t we always bring home more sand then we would like to after visiting the beach? She insisted she got mosquito bites, though there were no mosquitoes.

As always Selena enjoyed just being with us out in nature. She loves to look around at all the different things she can find. She always asks so many questions, and even  points out things we don’t see. She is learning to love the world around her.

We are coming to a point now with our little school that I believe you will be seeing more science, nature, and some geography/history just around our home. I will be keeping the Geography/History linky going through the summer, and would love to see your vacation, or outdoor travels and learning linked up to it as well as any other geography or  history lessons you learn. I really am seeing us moving more into an unschooled or almost unschooled method, so I am taking this summer to research, read, and get something put together for next year. If any of you have suggestions let me know.

I am linking this post up at Homeschool Creations.