First Week of School

It is so nice to be back on a regular school course... however, I am missing the State Studies because I also found them interesting but they were a lot of work and quite time consuming.  I plan to do Deleware the last week of September... so be looking for it if you are following along.

This week we started our regular preschool curriculum.  The children seem to be enjoying it and I am finding it a nice change. 

We started our week with name recognition activities.  Here are a few of the activities we did.

We used this rhyme:
(name), (name), shout their name
shout name
Now very softly say their name
whisper name
Say their name and clap it out
chant and clap each syllable
Zip your lips and clap it out.
just clap name

We used our pocket chart to say and spell names using the following rhyme:

using our puppet friend name here

Give me a  (first letter in child's name) everyone yells letter
Give me a (sencond letter in child's name) everyone yells letter
and so on until the whole name is spelled
Who's name is this?  everyone says the name
What's their first name? everyone says the first name
What's their last name? everyone says the last name
What's their whole name?  everyone says the whole name

And we used the same pocket chart set up to spell our names without the rhyme and without our name plate.

We traced our names using the following name plates (just type child's name in using a dashed font).  Dry erase markers work wonderfully on laminated items and you can reuse it as often as you like.  I use my own children's old socks as erasers and they work just fine. You can download name plates here.  And they are the same one we used on the pocket chart.

We also decorated our names the way we wanted using our crayons and markers.  We love our new supplies!!!!  Coloring is always so much better with a new crayon or marker.

Our community helper puppet is Miss Tammy from the High Reach program for this month.  She will help us at times throughout the month to learn new concepts.  We introduced Miss Tammy and the job of a teacher to the children.  We listened to a poem and song about Miss Tammy the Teacher.  We then made Miss Tammy puppets and danced to the Miss Tammy song.

 Miss Tammy Puppet

our puppets

We talked about top, middle and bottom this week and found out that everything has a top, middle and a bottom.  We found several objects in our classroom and pointed to the top of the object, the middle of the object, and the bottom of the object.  Then we pointed to our own tops, middles, and bottoms.  We did the activity poem "Hands on Shoulders" and we did the song "Hands on Shoulders" to go along with our top, middle and bottom concept and talked about the different parts in the song and recognized whether that part was part of the top, middle or bottom of our body.  Lastly, we did a puzzle and once it was complete we pointed to the top, middle and bottom of the puzzle.  (the puzzle is below).

We started our "All About Me" lapbooks.  I took pictures of the parts we have completed and next week (if they are done) I will take a picture of the whole thing finished.  Below are the parts we have completed.  You can find many of these pages at Homeschool Share.

 This is the cover and we drew a self-portrait.

 A birthday cake representing our birthday by tracing the date and putting

the number of candles old on the top of the cake.

 My signature.

 My family portrait.

 My house with several questions with dictated responses...  where do I live, who

lives in my house, what pets do I have, my room is, I like my room because, and chores I

do for my family.  We will also be adding our address.

 Dictated responses about what you would buy with a certain amount

of money.  It is an acordian book with flip pages.

Lastly, for this week we made a mirror which flips up and a photo

of the child is behind.

Along with our "All About Me" Lapbook we did a few other activities to correlate with what we were doing in our lapbook.

While doing the self portrait we talked about how special and important each person is.  We talked about how there is no one else exactly like us.

To introduce the Birthday activity we began by wishing Miss Tammy a Happy Birthday and sang Happy Birthday to her.  We talked about when everyone's birthday was.  We also did a hidden birthday items page.

We talked about our families and talked about how families can be the same and different.  We read a book called "Families Can Be Different" that someone (I don't know who) made.  We also talked about where families live.  We matched houses and sorted activities done in specific rooms of a house.

 house matching

sorting

We started working on some reading skills.   We are focusing on the sight words a, and, see, and the.  We started our "Reading Book #1" in which I used some of 1+1+1=1, You Can Read program (and will probably be using much more over the next weeks).  The cover is her creation and the next two pages came from her ideas.

I'm not sure how this is going to go and if we will stick with it... it depends on the children.  Some are doing very well with it and others I am debating whether they are ready... so this may become a small group activity I do with just some of my children.  We started by putting all 4 words on flashcards on the pocket chart.  I would call out a sight word and have a child find it on the pocket chart.  We also turned over the flashcards and they would pull one out and read it to everyone.  We also used our letters from our names (luckily I had all the letters I needed) to spell each sight word.  Lastly, we completed both pages in the book... reading and tracing/reading and spelling.

We did a couple of alphabet review activities this week.

 We pieced alphabet trains together by putting them in ABC order.

 We played a game called "Find Miss Tammy".  She was hiding behind

one of the schools.  Each school had an uppercase letter on it.  The child

would first have to call out a letter and then lift it up to see if Miss Tammy

was behind it.  It came down to the last two cards before they found here.

You can download the game here.

The last weekly activity was learning about letter Aa (the short sound).  As I did last year, I am making new letter Aa books.  Here are some pictures of this year's book.  We have not finished it yet... so look for the rest next week.

 We always use our Hooked on Phonics letter movements and the first one

is A is for apple... so it is appropriate to instill that whole concept, even with

the book.  We color in the Aa's and the apple on this page.

 Here we got six pieces and put together the upper and lowercase Aa's (a

puzzle activity.  Below we colored the sections of the apple that have an Aa

in it.

On this page I took the concept from "Before the Code" and made a which one

is different as they didn't have one for letter Aa.  We also traced the word apple

and put a 4 piece apple together.

 One of the favorite activities here is the "spin and graph"... so how could

I not put one in there book.  We spun for upper or lowercase Aa's. We also

traced letter Aa's trying very hard to use the right strokes.

 We circled all of the Aa's in this fun activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 Here we talked about pictures that start with the short /a/ sound.  We talked

about how words can be spelled with a group of letters and then glued the

letter a in front of each word because that was the first sound we heard.  We

also practiced tracing Aa's.

 We circled pictures that the first sound was the short /a/ sound and we glued

apples onto the apple tree that the picture inside the apple started with the short

/a/ sound.

 On this page they had to identify whether a word started with the short /a/ sound

or it didn't.  If it did, they colored the Aa block and if it didn't they colored the "no"

block.

Our last page this week we talked about how the short /a/ sound can

be in the middle of a word.  We listened to the words breaking them up in phonemes

so they could hear the /a/ sound.  We then colored the picture and traced the

word.  When we were done we practiced printing some words.  Many

could read the words they wrote!

Next week when the book is finished I will send a link out for the pages I can share.  :)

Hope you enjoyed our week!  Thanks for stopping by and we hope to see you back soon!

Best,

Rose