Plans for 2011

First hopefully I can keep up with this blog but I need to spend time with my kids so if my choice is blogging or my darling children...well my children win.  So I have high hopes but we shall see lol.

So on to the school year starting in Sept 2011.
Angel Girl (age 4) will be attending a SpEd. pre-k program in the mornings so I will be afterschooling her.
So we will be using:
Before Five In a Row and Homeschoolshare for reading aloud, basically we will read a book for 5 days and do 1 activity a day.
Montessori at Home I will be introducing 1 activity a week from Montessori at Home which she can then have on her shelf to work on when she wants.
Cuisainare Workbook we will be alternating free play with activities from this little workbook.
The Complete Daily Curriculum for Preschool we will do 1 theme a week from this book as we did last year.
More Mudpies to Magnets I will be introducing these fun science activities 1 a week.
Slow and Steady Get Me Ready we will do the activity that is planned for her age at that time.

Sweet Boy (age 2)
Hands on Homeschool I got this for Angel Girl when she was 2 and am going to adapt some of the activities for Sweet Boy this year doing 2 a week instead of the whole program.
Slow and Steady Get Me Ready we will do an activity each week for his age.
Montessori at Home I want to start getting Sweet Boy ready for doing Montessori officially at 3 so I will be working on some Practical Life activities adding ideas from Montessori Mom.
Story Stretchers for Infants and Toddlers we will be doing 1 activity a week so  most books will take about 3 weeks to get through.

As a family we are working through the Read Alouds listed in the Great Books Academy, right now we are doing the Nursery books.

What We Read This Week and The Week Before

Yellow Ball by Molly Bang - doing more activities from Before Five in a Row

You Touch With Your Fingers by Melvin and Gilda Berger
Touch! Touch! by Riki Levinson
Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Al Perkins - we used these books to learn about the sense of touch.  We talked a lot about touching and then touched a lot different types of textures and tried to describe them.

Tumble Bumble by Felicia Bond - With this book we named the animal on each page, then I had Angel Girl finish the rhyme when it was an animal. 

Anno's Counting Book by Anno - LOVE this book it has so much potential for math activities.  For this reading we just counted the houses on each page and some of the other fun things.  Angel Girl started to show a bit of an understanding of 1 to 1 matching, not consistent but she was starting.  I would have her hop on my finger to practice 1 to 1 and then she would do it independently on the same page.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown - lead in to the letter G activities
The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss - lead in to letter F activities

For fun we have a stack of Halloween books that Angel Girl will pick a book from to read.  Here are the ones we have read so far.
Boo by Robert Munsch
Clifford's First Halloween by Norman Bridwell
The Hallo-wiener by Dav Pilkey
One Spooky Night by Laura Leuck
The Best Halloween Hunt Ever by John Speirs
Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler

Fun Things We Have Done

We read...a lot!
Counted 1 counting bear.
Sang a Goldilocks song.
Practiced writing with our Kumon books.
Colored on large and small pieces of paper.
Made circle shapes with our bodies.
Learned how to put our dirty clothes in the hamper and make our bed.
Practiced putting the silverware away correctly.
We beaded pipe cleaners.

What We Read This Week

The Berenstain's B Book - which was used to introduce the letter b. We traced sandpaper letters, added it to our letter book, colored a b and found it with magnetic letters.

Tickle Monster by Josi Bissett - read and tickled as we went. Its a fun book with body parts...the only problem is it uses cutsie names for body parts
Look, Baby! Listen, Baby! Do, Baby! by True Kelley - great book that shows different babies their body parts, sounds and things they do with their bodies. It was perfect for our learning about body parts.

Red Truck by Kersten Hamilton - Fun book that features a red truck.
Black Dog Red House by Lizi Boyd - Fun book about colors. Used the cover to match items around the house that are red.

Weekly Book List

So my biggest focus for Angel Girl has been reading. Lots and lots of stories being read. Here are the books we have read this week:
Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear by Nancy White Carlstrom
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by James Marshall
Yummy by Lucy Cousins
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Jan Brett
The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall
Along with many board books.

For Goldilocks and the Three Bears we made a puppet that we used to tell the story. By the end of the week Angel Girl was asking to "read" the story and would tell me what was happening on each page. This is a valuable early literacy skill that I love see emerging. She is starting to understand story structure and remember what she heard.

For Sweet Boy we were reading:
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
We read about 10 pages at every nap and bedtime and repeated the book for a week.

It's a New Year!

Ok so a new school year for many school aged children. So I took this opportunity to start a new year with my Angel Girl (also this is my first full time mama time so we are developing our rhythm). So this week we are:

Learning Humpty Dumpty
Refreshing our known letter knowledge (working on A this week).
Reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears (and many of its renditions)
Retelling the story with puppets (and just "reading" the story).

We have also pulled out some of our Kumon books to practice tracing and coloring (just for fun).
Looked for and made circles.
Counting out 1 object.

I look forward to teaching her how to make her bed every morning and add this to her chore chart.

How have you learned this week for the new year?