How Not to Rush a Toddler

I'm slowly learning the importance of allowing toddlers to explore materials and learning activities at their own pace.  As a highly Type-A personality, this is highly difficult for me!  As I type, Sweet Pea is supposed to be sorting the Teddy Bear Counters by colour.  Some of them are going in the correct bowl, however, a lot of time is spent making the Teddy Bears dance in their boxes and having them visit the bear families of other colours.  However, as I am consistent about praising the ones that go into the correct bowl, she is showing me that she understands colours and the concept of sorting!  I think we can move on to patterning now, but I still need to remember that we'll need to take a long time to play along the way.  I read somewhere that the surest way to kill a toddler's interest in school is to force them to do it like a drill seargeant.  If I allow these children to "work" (and it is work, at this age!) at their own pace, they will continue to amaze me with what they understand, and how much they can teach themselves (and me!).  Have a blessed day!

Jennifer

Star Theme!!

Last week, we completed our Star Theme!  I really enjoyed this unit, it was a fun one!!  Here are some of the highlights!

Our Learning Poster:

Our vocabulary word for the week was "Twinkle", we learned / reviewed the Star Shape, worked on the letter T, the number 20 (or recognizing the number 2 and the number 0) and the poem Star Light, Star Bright.  We sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star every day!

Our Read Alouds:

Our Stars and the Big Dipper (Let's Read and Find Out Science) were especially good!  Goodnight Moon is always a classic, and Berenstain Bears On the Moon seemed to hold their attention really well!!  The Magic School Bus books have so much information in them, I feel like I only skim the surface with them!! 

Amazon Links for the Read Alouds:



Our Craft Projects:

Create your own Star Picture

Glitter Stars (I especially liked Sweet Pea's glitter stars in the above picture!)

We also hauled out a bunch of gems, buttons, stick on jewels, and more and decorated star templates cut out of light blue card stock.  Princess is doing a great job developing her scissors skills!! 

Another "craft" project that we did this week was creating a picture of the Big Dipper by printing out the template at this site and sticking on a star sticker on every dot.  This was a great activity for Honey Bee and she did a pretty good job following directions, once she understood what she needed to do!

Letter T Activities

We created pages for their letter books that have Large Outline Letter Ts glued on construction paper stamped with a Teddy Bear stamp.  We stuck teddy bear stickers on the letter T to remember that T says /t/ /t/ /t/ like Teddy Bear! 

Princess is starting to grasp the concept that words are made up of sounds.  When I first asked her, what sound do we hear at the beginning of the word Tree, she would say "Tree" "Tree" "Tree"!  Now 2 out of 5 times, she gets the right sound, without saying the entire word!! I count this as a major victory!!  Hopefully, the letter activities we're doing should expose the others to the idea that words are made up of sounds pretty early so  it shouldn't be a problem!!

Fun (& Funny) Moments of the Week

Sweet Pea decided one day that we would play library!  She set out all of the Board Books on the floor, and we "signed some books out" and read 1 or 2 of them, but she wouldn't let me read all of them because the needed to go right back to the library!!

Another Sweet Pea moment: we were working on sorting some stickers by shape and when she started to get bored, she told me that she couldn't do anymore because, "Her elbows were tired!"... Ahh... excuses, excuses!!  Needless to say, we moved on to another activity (however excuse didn't hold water when it was time for clean up!!)

A final Sweet Pea memory:  at one time during the day, I caught her singing to herself, "This is the day that the Lord has made for me because I'm special!"  Too right you are, Sweet Pea!!

That was a brief look at our week! Princess, Sweet Pea and I spent some time reviewing circles, squares, and triangles using Lick and Stick shape seals from Roylco (but I just found a great recipe at I Can Teach My Child for make your own lick and stick stickers!)  Hope you enjoyed hearing about our week!!  

Jennifer 

Amazing!! It Worked!!

Well, I'm feeling quite technologically adept!! I got the Amazon Associates book link to post, and it only took me 2 attempts!!  (I didn't read the instructions carefully enough to realize that I needed to post the Amazon link into the HTML code, instead of just onto the blog!)  Following instructions has never been my strong suit!! Here are the links to the rest of the L.M. Montgomery journals!

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume II (1910 - 1921)



The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume III (1921 - 1929)



The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume IV (1929- 1935)



The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume V (1935 - 1942)


There, I must say, I'm quite proud of myself!!  Now that I've figured this out, I'm sure you'll see A LOT more book recommendations on this blog!!    I should be posting a bit later today, after we wrap up our Star Theme week... wow, 3 posts in 1 day!  I'm turning into a blogaholic!! Have a wonderful day!

Jennifer

An Experiment

So, I signed up a long time ago for Amazon Associates, a program where I get a percentage of every item purchased through my link.  I've never actually posted anything anywhere, but I wanted to start, so I figured that I'd use this blog (and my website... coming soon) to start trying to generate some Amazon.ca sales... Anyway, here a a couple of links to the L.M. Montgomery Journals I was talking about in a previous post.

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume I (1889 - 1910)



Okay, as this is just a test, I'll only do one for now... the rest will come in the next post (if this works!!)

Jennifer

Latest Reading List Update

Well, I've been in a bit of a funk in my readings lately.  I had 5 books out of the library for 3 weeks and renewed them for an additional 3 weeks and still only managed to read 3 of them.  The first one I read was called Touchstone by Laurie R. King which was supposed to be a gripping FBI investigation story, but which I could not really get into.  The second book was called Beyond the Blue by Andrea MacPherson.  This is the story of a woman and her 2 daughters living in Scotland during WWI and working in the mills.  It was unimportant, though poignant, fluff.  The last book I read was Return to Harmony by Janette Oke and T. Davis Bunn.  Speaking of fluff... but this was such a delightful 2 hr read about friendship and forgiveness.  I made sure that my best friend got her hands on a copy in our church library, because I thought of her all through this book.  After all this fluffery, I wanted something more meaningful, so I picked up a copy of Volume 2 of L.M. Montgomery's journals that I had on my shelves since the library book sale last year.  These journals cover the period from 1910 - 1921, so tie in nicely to my WWI readings.  During this time of her life Maud got married, had a son, lost her second son during childbirth, had another son, agonized over WWI, recovered from Spanish flu, lost her only dear friend to pneumonia, and suffered through her husband's mental illness.  The strength of this woman!  I like to think that she could have counted me as one of the "race that knows Joseph", but maybe I would have been relegated to the ranks of the uninteresting chuch women her status as minister's wife forced her to visit, much to her annoyance!  I laughed and cried my way through her books and am now off to re-read the Emily series, although these are not my favourite of L.M. Montgomery's works.  I've added Volumes 1, 3, 4, & 5 of her journals to my wish list for future reading.  A remarkable woman writing during a remarkable season of Canada's history.  I just wanted to write and update my own readings, so you'd know that I didn't spend ALL my time reading Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny... which I also love to do!

Jennifer

Snow Theme (from last week)

Well, last week was our Snow theme... but I think for next year, if I'm on the Letter S at the end of March, I'll do a Spring theme.  That would correspond better to the weather, I think!!!  I only had munchkins on Monday, Thursday, and Friday this week and I was supply teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday.  A new little person has started at Precepts Academy.  I'm going to call her Honey Bee.  She is four years old, but because of complications due to an illness when she was born, she's roughly at a two year old development level.  Honey Bee was here by herself for her first day, and I think that was a good thing because it gave her a chance to get used to some of the rules here.  One of her favourite activities was matching up coloured plastic Easter Eggs and opening them to find the foam snowflake I had hidden inside.  Another activity that we did that was great for fine motor skills was Stickers!!  I peeled all the extra paper off the sheet and left just the stickers, then she peeled off the stickers and stuck them to a page.  This took quite a bit of focus. 

I cut out the circles and she helped me to arrange them from biggest to smallest to make the snowman.  

We did some Brain Gym activities to get both brain hemispheres working together.  Later, I did some research on developmental delay, and many articles said that spinning is also good for children in this regard.  Currently, Honey Bee doesn't always recognize that I am asking her a question and want to hear her answer, and she'll just repeat the question.  I'm working on having her say "My name is...." when I ask "What's your name?"  We'll get there!!

Princess came on Thursday and Friday morning, and stayed for Lunch on Thursday.  (I thought this would give us some extra activity time, but I ALWAYS forget how slow children eat!!!  Snack is never finished according to my timeline for the day!!  Ahh well, we just cut a few minutes out of playdough time, and it all evens out!!)  We read "I am Snow" and "The Snowy Day" and we worked on learning the poem Snowflakes by Leroy Jackson.  I'm also trying to teach the kids to say "A Child's Prayer for Morning" each day during our Calendar time.  It goes like this:

Now, before I run to play,
Let me not forget to pray
To God who kept me through the night
And waked me with the morning light.
Help me, Lord, to love Thee more
Than I ever loved before,
In my work and in my play
Please be with me through the day.
Amen.

This will take a couple of weeks because I don't have each child every day! 

For our snow crafts, we did some snowflake stamping, using some foam stamps I have.  Added to this, we also glued some white foam snow flakes to our page to make a snow scene, and added some paper punch out snowflakes from a scrapbook punch I have.  The scrapbook punch snowflakes was a great activity, because Princess had to use a lot of strength to punch it all the way through the paper.  Friday's craft was the traditional cutting paper snowflakes.  I folded the paper across the corner to make a square shape and drew as straight line to show where the bottom needed to be cut off and Princess cut across the line with scissors.  Later that day we did some shape cutting activities.  Princess uses scissors all the time, but she is not often required to cut along a line to make a specific shape.  Her favourite cutting activity was this simple Frog Craft from DLTK. 

Our shape for the Snow theme was the Hexagon because it has 6 sides and a snowflake has 6 points.  We started a shape unit for "Math" and Princess is working on consistently recognizing circle, square, and triangle without hints!!  Recognizing circle and square came up on a 2 year old skill checklist that I was researching, and Princess knows them, but can't (or won't) always remember the word "square".  I made up a booklet for her with worksheets and pictures made up of circles, squares, and triangles and she really enjoyed this (mainly because when she finished each sheet she got to put a smelly apple sticker on her page!)  The sheets I used came from Kids Learning Station and KidZone.  Princess especially enjoyed the pictures on the KidZone pages and got to take 1 worksheet home per day (the others are in her folder).  This week, we'll review circle, square, and triangle and add rectangle (and possibly oval, depending on how she's doing!).  Another shape activity that we did was sorting buttons by shape.  This took a bit of explaining, but once she got it it went very quickly!  I used these great new boxes I found at the dollar store, but it was tricky because I didn't have a triangle shape box, so we were putting triangle buttons in the hexagon box... I think this might have confused her.  Anyway, she did great and I finally got her to start saying which shape each button was as she was putting it in the right box.  We used a bowl for all the other buttons, and we didn't use the heart box, because it would have distracted her too much!!!

Anyways, we did some other snow activities and shape activities- dancing like a snowflake, shape sticker sorting and the like, but I did a really bad job of documenting last week!!  I'll try to get more detail about what we are doing this week for our Star Theme.  Hope you enjoyed the post!

Jennifer