Friday, September 30, 2011

Last week of September...

Our weekly wrap-up...

Fall has definitely arrived... the leaves are changing colors, the air is brisk and jackets, pants, and long sleeves are back, and we have had a lot of rain and overcast weather.  Oh how I miss the sunshine, the singing birds, no jackets, and getting outdoors more than we are.

This week we worked on letter Dd.  As always we completed a letter Dd book and did some other projects that incorporated letter Dd.  Below is a recap...

Our "Letter Dd Book"
 We introduced the letter doing the "Hooked on Phonics" letter movement... I just love those
letter movements and they really do help greatly teaching letter sounds.  After being introduced to
the letter we put the letter up on our ABC charts, find letter Dd's in our print rich room, and then
color the cover of the book.
 On the left we put together two three-piece puzzles on of the uppercase D and one of the
lowercase d.  Then we used "Get Set for the Code, Book B" and found letter Dd's in the duck.
We continued with "Get Set for the Code" on the right side and found the one that is
different... and are they getting quick at this task... and then we did a prewriting activity as
well.
 On the page to the left we used "Getting Set for the Code" and did a direction following
activity... although I changed up the directions because I wanted to focus on two-step directions
this week.  We also traced letter Dd's.  On the right we used "Confessions of a Homeschoolers"
PreK curriculum and did a letter hunt that you can find here.
 On the left we again used "Getting Set for the Code" and found pictures that started with
the /d/ sound and at the bottom we wrote (or tried) letter d under the pictures that started
with a /d/ sound and colored the picture.  We also traced letter Dd's.  On the right we found
the picture that started with the /d/ sound and colored that picture only... it is great watching them
figuring out the beginning sounds and how they each have a slightly different way of doing it.  At the
bottom of the page we traced and printed our own Dd's.
 On these pages I made my own sheets since we are not going in the order that the books
I am using are. On the left we circled the letter that the picture began with reviewing Aa-Dd and then
we traced/printed letter Dd's.  On the right we drew lines from the picture to the letter it started with.
They found this a bit more challenging and have a hard time distinguishing letter b from letter d. 
Our last two pages we sorted letter Bb's and Dd's and then circled lowercase b's red and d's
purple to try to help them distinguish the two.  On the right we wrote the letter that the picture
began with.

The pages that I made for my "Letter Dd Book" I have put here for you to use.

We did some stamp art with the letter Dd.


 We did a dog marble painting and well it didn't turn out as expected... you can't see the dog... but we
had fun.


And we made some letter art.



We continued our sight words (a, and, the, see) and -at family of words.
We did the following pages from here and here.
 We colored our sight words, matched words to pictures for the -at family of words, and
we traced and read our sight words.

 We put puzzles of our sight words together and traced our sight words.


 We spelled a few of our -at family of words.

We used our pocket chart to play our version of "Rotten Apples" that you can find here.  I
didn't make an apple tree and just turned the cards around on the pocket chart.  The children took
turns and turned a card around, tried to read the word, and kept the card if they could.  If they couldn't
read the word it went back up on the pocket chart.  If they picked the rotten apple (apple with a
worm) they returned all there cards and if they picked a "go again" card they picked another
card to read and were able to keep the "go again" card.  The winner was the one with the most
apples.  This turned out to be a great game to review words!

Our last part of the week was beginning our state study of Delaware.  We were not able to get through the study this week but have high hopes to complete it next week.  At that time I will share the
pages I can with you.  Below is what we did.
 We introduced the state by reviewing the states we already covered placing them on our
state map and then placing Delaware on our state map.  We then colored the cover of our
book.
 We talked about the state flower... the peach blossom.  We colored a peach blossom and made one
by drawing branches, using dot markers to paint leaves, and crumpling tissue paper to make the blossoms.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the completed project.
 We also talked about the state bird... the blue hen chicken.  I found the coloring page here of the blue hen chicken and then we made our own blue hen chickens using the idea of a hen from here.

Next week we will have more Delaware activities.


Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you enjoyed our week.




Sunday, September 25, 2011

Third week in September...

What a week!!!  I had four days of work, a rehearsal dinner, and my oldest child's wedding.  Wow... I am tired... but it was a fantastic week.

Here are a few photo's of the big day.


As for preschool... we accomplished pretty much with everything going on as well.
We learned the letter Cc this week.  I am so happy with the way the children are progressing... they have learned so much since last year at this time.  Below is a copy of our "Letter Cc Book".  I really can't share the book this week because I used "Go For the Code" and one page of Confessions of a Homeschoolers" letter hunt. Below are pictures of the Letter Cc Book we used.





We also made letter Cc crafts.  I got the ideas from here and here.




We talked about the community helper... the police officer.  The children knew quite a bit about police officers and their job.  We made police hats.




A giant police officer that we had fun playing with.




We made a police car and officer prop to play with.


We discussed traffic safety on how to cross a street, how to be safe in a car, and the traffic light.  We made a traffic light.

And we sang some songs and did some fingerplays to help learn about the police officer.

We also talked about the circle shape this week.  We found circles.



We traced circles that made a lollipop and colored it.


And we painted circles using plastic concentrate juice cans.



 Hope you enjoyed our week!