First week of October...

Hello... glad you stopped by!  We had another very busy, yet very fun week full of many different activities.  Hope you enjoy what you see and if you work with small children are able to use some of the ideas we've shared.

I'm glad to say that this week we had a rainy Monday but the rest of the week has been sunny and much warmer... getting up into the lower 70 degree range.  I'll take that!  So yes, we spent time outdoors... a lot of time!

This week we did not do a letter as I wanted to finish up on our state study... so below is part two of our state study of Delaware.  Part one can be viewed on the "Last week of September" page.

We started off by talking about the Horseshoe crab.  Then we waterpainted and made a horseshoe crab.  They turned out great but I had to cut, fold and glue the horseshoe crabs together.  The children were very excited at the final product.  You can get the printable for the horseshoe crab here.  Below are pictures of the page in our state study book and the horseshoe crabs we made.

 After discussing and looking at pictures of the horseshoe crab we colored one in our books.

 These are the finished horseshoe crabs we waterpainted.  Of course, they are rainbow in color...

that is our favorite way to do everything!

We then talked about how the first log cabins were built in Delaware by the people of Finland and Sweden who settled in Wilmington, Delaware.  We found out that the log cabins stayed warmer during the winter than the lumber houses that were being built.  Below you will find our page about log cabins in our state study.

On this page we talked about log cabins and hypothesized why we though they might

be warmer than a lumber house.  We looked at several different kinds of houses made by

logs.  We then used brown paper strips to make our own log houses.  The best part

was decorating them!

We talked about the legend that Betsy Ross' first US flag was flown in Delaware during the Revolutionary War at Cooch's Bridge. It is still a debate today as to whether it was or wasn't... but we talked about that first flag and colored one on our next page of our state study.

We then talked about the state insect... the ladybug.  We did our page and used the ladybug builder from Confessions of a Homeschooler in our state book and continued with a few fun art projects on ladybugs.  You can view everything below.

 Our state study book with the ladybug builder.

 We painted paper plates red, used a round sponge to paint spots, and then glued

legs, head, and eyes to make a fun ladybug.

 We then made twirling ladybugs in which you can find the directions here.  Of course,

we had to display our ladybug projects... so they are hanging from the ceiling.

We talked about the state fruit being the strawberry and how they grow them for taste... not size or quantity.  We then did a strawberry counting activity on our state page.

And our last page was on the state tree.  We talked about the American Holly and colored some leaves and berries.  We also looked at some holly bushes... as I have some in my flower beds and they even had the red berries.

So we finished Delaware and learned a great deal about the state.  I even had one child tell me they finally figured out what they saw at the beach this summer doing this state study... a horseshoe crab!  You can download the printables I can share with you here. 

We will be traveling on to Florida at the end of October... hope you come along for the trip!

We also talked about fire fighters and fire safety this week.  Below is what we did.

 We made firefighter puppets.

 We used our puppets for a lot of dramatic play... the daycare room was catching fire everywhere

so our fire fighters were busy putting out the fire.

 We made fire fighter hats.

And we talked about what is hot and cold.

We also talked a lot about how to get out of my house if there was a fire and did one of there

monthly favorite activities... a fire drill... and are they efficient at it.  They know exactly what to do

and where to go without any direction.  We also talked about calling 911 in an emergency

and why we only call when it is an emergency... brings back horrible memories of when my own

called and the police officer ended up at my door.  Embarrassing!!! 

We will be doing more fire safety activities this coming month... so stay tuned!

Lastly, we talked about owls. We learned a lot and they knew a lot.  It was a fun conversation.  Below is what we did.

 We sequenced owls in order from 1 to 9.

 We sequenced owls from smallest to biggest.

 We made owl mosaics using cut up brown construction paper and an owl outline.  We added

eyes, beaks, and feet.

And we painted two paper plates brown that we will make something special out of next week...

we also painted an empty paper towel tube while we had the brown out and working.  So check

back next week to see what we made.

Glad you stopped by to see what we have been up to this week.  Be sure to see what we are doing next week.  We'd love to hear what you thought about our week!

Best,

Rose

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.