Rabbit Week!

We're wrapping up Rabbit Week!  Sweet Pea was here 4 days this week, and Princess (who's 4) was here 2 days.  I also had some other little munchkins wander in during the week, but the primary teaching time was done with these girls. 
Here are some of the read-alouds we did this week:

We also read about rabbits and hares in the Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia. 

For Rabbit Week, we learned the word "Whisker" and made rabbit noses by sewing elastic cord onto felt (I did the sewing, but Sweet Pea picked the thread and learned about needles... thankfully not through experience!!)  When they were done, she only wanted to wear hers as a necklace, not as on her nose, so this was the only picture I captured. 

I also hot glued whiskers on the one for me, and that really helped her get a visual for the vocabulary word.  Here's mine... picture courtesy of Sweet Pea!

We also made rabbit ear headbands, a cut paper rabbit, and really cute rabbit in the grass puppets with a toilet paper tube and a smaller tube made of cardstock for the rabbit. 

We were learning the shape "Parallelogram", but Sweet Pea just started at Precepts Academy so we did a lot of reviewing circles and triangles.  During all of our free time crafts she would ask me to cut her out circles of various sizes.  So we did learn a shape!!  I printed these amazing Pattern Block Picture Cards from Kelly's Kindergarten, and Sweet Pea had a good time matching the right block to the shapes in the picture.  So now I have six cards with pictures on both sides to use with the pattern blocks as a Tot Tray in the future! 

(sorry about the picture quality... my camera does a bad job of focussing!)

Our letter for the week was the letter R, and Princess did a great job coloring in an outline of the Letter R and creating a Letter R mini-book from First-School.  I asked her to tell me what letter it was on each page of the book and that provided just the right amount of review for her.  She also enjoyed cutting out the pictures and gluing them in the book herself.  Sweet Pea and I talked about the letter R and she traced it with her finger a few times, but quickly lost interest.  No problem!!  My goal at her age is exposure only!! 

Our number for the week was 18, but Sweet Pea and I focused on recognizing the number 1.  She does a great job counting and 1:1 matching, so now it's time to start putting the symbol with the number!  I may add some number cards to our tot trays for next week... we'll see! 

Finally, as I already mentioned, we learned the nursery rhyme "Jack be Nimble" and the kids practiced jumping over a candlestick!  That was a really fun way for them to memorize the nursery rhyme!!

Other fun moments of the week...

My funniest moment:
I'm in the kitchen getting snack ready and Sweet Pea is playing (albeit somewhat unsupervised) literally 4 feet away in my line of sight with the Rice Pouring Tot Tray.  Do you remember that in a previous post I mentioned that this tray required a LOT of supervision!! All of a sudden I hear rice scattering everywhere (not on the tray!!) and Sweet Pea pipes up, "Oh no!  Somebody made a big ME-ESS!!" (Read in a sing-song voice and you'll come close to her tone!)  Then we learned about vacuum cleaners!! So Funny!

Other fun moments:
- Playing store with pennies and items from the play food and dishes drawer
- Playing cowboy by tying a string around the stuffed puppy and buffalo's necks and dragging them around
- Playing dominoes and matching the next colour to make the train
- Playing with the Disney Checker Game... not sure why she loved this one so much, but we got it out every day!!  She would line up the blue checkers on the faces on one side and the red checkers on the faces on the other side.  We eould also stack them up to make a patterned tower (blue, red, blue, red) and then she'd flip the board over and set them all up on the squares for the tic-tac-toe board! 
- Having tea parties - everytime I turned around I was handed a cup of tea!!
- Having puppet shows with our rabbit in the grass puppets. 

That's a pretty good overview of our Rabbit Week!  Tune in next week to hear what we're learning about Snow and the letter S!

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer

Tot Trays!

I read about Tot Trays over at Carisa's 1+1+1=1 Blog and have been following rabbit trails all over the internet trying to garner more amazing ideas!!  (I also really enjoyed the Spinner's End Nursery School posts.)  Anyways, here are some of the tot trays we've been using this week. 

1) Sorting Pom Poms - I included a pair of tweezers with this activity, but they are a tad too small for Sweet Pea to grip... I'm looking for a plastic pair of tongs, I just havent' found a good set yet.  We tried this activity with a spoon yesterday for transferring, and she seemed to enjoy that way a lot more!

2) Lacing Cards - She has figured out how to put the string in one hole and up the next one, but after that, it basically gets whipped around her head like a sling shot!  She really likes it though, so ... almost a success!!

3) Rice - This is an amazing activity for pouring skills.  You should see the number of play dishes that were added to this tray!!  The challenge with this one is to keep the rice on the tray.  It requires pretty close supervision (but it's fun for me to play with too!).  Sweet Pea and I dyed the rice ourselves with food colouring.  I measured out the rice and food coloring into a tupperware container, and she shook it like crazy!!

4) Pom Poms - we used this one for sorting and patterning.  This was (surprisingly, for me!) Sweet Pea's favourite tray!  She requested it a couple of times during the week.  She loved lining them up in rows and was actually quite amazing at creating the pattern (for a not yet three year old!)...  I'm sure we'll use this one lots in the future, which is great because I can coordinate the pom pom colours to fit the theme!!  Next week we're doing snow... blue and white, perhaps!!

Tomorrow, I'll give you a rundown on our Rabbit Theme week and the books and activities we did!

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer

Up and Running!!

Well, the Precepts Academy Preschool is up and running!!  I have my first almost full-time little person!  Sweet Pea is not quite 3 and she loves imaginative play and "paperwork"!  We have had so much fun this week learning about rabbits!  Here is our learning poster for the week:

We haven't done a lot of talking about Parallelograms yet... hmm... maybe I need to get the pattern blocks out tomorrow!!  You can see our calendar beside the learning poster.  We put a shamrock sticker on every day in March and we sing the Days of the Week song every day.  Sweet Pea loves to sing and almost has this one down in less than a week!! We also usually sing This is the Day that the Lord has Made during calendar time.  For Jack be Nimble, I set out a Votive candle on the floor (unlit... duh...) and the kids jumped over it as we recited Jack be Nimble.  They loved saying "Jack jumped over the candlestick!" as they jumped over the candle.  

Here are some photos of our school room set up:

 On the shelves are Stuffed Animals, Mr. Potato Head, Barbies, and My Little Ponies.  In the clear plastic drawer are play food and dishes, dolls and doll clothes, and puppets.

 Behind the chairs is the 100s chart.  Behind the table is the ABC poster.  On the shelves are Lincoln logs, Bus, Lock & Key toy, Animals bin, K'nex, and People bin.  On the white shelves are puzzles, lego, buttons, and misc. games that wouldn't fit in the game cupboard! 

I adore these book shelves!! The first one is all Kids' fiction arranged alphabetically by author.  The 2nd and 3rd shelf are non-fiction loosely arranged according to the Dewey Decimal system.  The bottom middle shelf is coloring books.  The top shelf on the right is CDs.  On the other side of the white shelf are Preschool teaching resource books and arts and crafts books... as well as a miscellaneous sampling of homeschool books that I reference frequently!!

These shelves are the best thing about the whole room!!  They were built to hide the back of the wall oven (which takes up the entire middle shelf on the right hand side), but they hold basically all the craft supplies etc. that we use everyday!  Such as:



Math and Language Manipulatives and Games

Dishes, Preschool Towels, and Tot Tray Supplies

Paints, Perler Beads, Nature Box (Shells, Pinecones, etc.)

Playdough, Pipecleaners, Stickers, Tissue Paper, Fabric & Felt, Yarn, Paint Cups, Foamies, Wood Pieces (Popsicle sticks, skewers, clothes pins), Googly eyes & styrofoam, and Pom Poms!  Whew!

So that is the preschool... next time I'll show you the quiet room and kids bathroom, as well as some of the tot tray ideas we've been using this week!!  I'm having a blast, and I love that I'm able to do what I love out of my own home!  If I can't homeschool my own kids, this is the next best thing!!

Thanks for reading!!

Jennifer