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?

Week of May 31 - June 4

Angel Girl (toddler)

Monday

Read "Spring is Here" (theme, pre-reading)

Have Angel Girl glue green leaves onto a brown tree (theme, art)

Tuesday

Read a yellow book. Sort out yellow items from a bag of toys. (color)

Sing "Spring is Here" (theme, music)

Wednesday

Kumon tracing book (pre-writing)

Talk about Spring, baby animals, flowers, bugs, trees (theme)

Thursday

Glue alumninum foil over star outline to make a shiny star (shape)

Use tissue paper to make a tulip (theme, art)

Friday

Matching game using bird outline, variation 1 with dots, variation 2 with shapes, variation 3 with colors, variation 4 with letters (theme, math, color, pre-reading, shapes)

Shaving Cream Art (J4F)

Sweet Boy (baby)

Book: Good night moon (read before naps and bed)

Game: Different Textures - touch and feel different textures of material

Nursery Rhyme: Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

May Week 3

Angel Girl (Toddler)

(So I kinda skipped week 2...daddy was away on a business trip and it was enough just to be together).

Monday

Thumprint Ants (activity from week 1 left over) (theme, art)

Letter A trace and letter book (theme, prereading)

Tuesday

Isty Bitsy Spider (music, movement)

Sort out blue items from a basket (color)

Wednesday

Sing the Ants Go Marching with different movements like jumping, skipping, hopping (theme, movement)

Talk about ants. Write down one of the sentences that Angel Girl says, add this to a nature journal. (theme, prewriting, science)

Thursday

Counting raisins for ants on a log up to 5 (theme, math)

Use body to make different types of circles (shape, movement)

Friday

Moving like and ant to music (theme, movement, music)

Make magnetic maze for "ant" to get to a cookie. (theme, just 4 fun)

Sweet Boy (Baby)

Reading I Love You Forever by Robert Musch

Playing Pop Goes the Weasel.

Hearing I Had a Little Nut.

May Week 1

Monday

Read book about ants (I read The Life and Times of an Ant, but there are many many good fiction and nonfiction books). (reading, theme)

Sing song about Ant/insect parts. Here are some cute ones. (music, theme)

Tuesday

We went to a local museum that has a collection of leaf cutter ants and just observed and talked about it. If you don't have a local museum like this you can always just go outside and find an ant hill and sit and watch it for a while. (science, theme)

Read a blue book, then hand over some different types of blue paper and tissue squares and let Angel Girl cut and glue them on a paper to make a blue collage. (color of the month, art, reading)

Wednesday

Crawl like an ant around the room, so extentensions of this are to have a piece of food (real or play) that they can pick up and move like an ant. (movement, theme)

Kumon tracing book. (pre-writing)

Thursday

Thumbprint Ants. (theme, art)

Read a circle book. Tape a circle on the floor and do different movements around it like running, tip toeing, marching, jumping, hopping. (shape of the month, movement, reading)

Friday

Counting to 5 on finger. (math)

Mothers Day - we read a book about moms (What Mom's Can't Do), and then she got to color a card for me. (Just 4 Fun, holiday)

Weekly Plan: Colors and Counting

Everyday we will focus on counting anything and everything, as well as identifying the colors all around us to introduce the topics of colors and counting. Both boys are excited about counting and colors. They have been trying to count many things over the last week this is why we are beginning a study of counting. We will begin by learning the primary colors and counting to 5.

Prior knowledge for Thing 1: Can count to 5, starting with 2. Doesn't verbally identify colors, or respond when asked to find a certain color.

Prior knowledge for Thing 2: Can count to 3. Can identify the color blue.

Monday:
- Colors Movie (Baby Einstein: World of Colors)
- Read Counting Book (Spot Can Count by Eric Hill)
- Shapes Game

Tuesday:
- Read 'Brown Bear' (my homemade version, which has shapes and colors to identify)
- Color Sorting Found at Home Grown Hearts
- Barney Counting Movie "It's Time for Counting"

Wednesday:
- Gymnastics 9:30 - 11:30
- Basic Color Book (found in the dollar section at Target)

Thursday:
- Library Story Time (10:30 am)
- Basic Color Book
- Counting Caterpillar (similar to this one except the one we have comes apart at the segments, found at the local library for check out)

Friday:
- Counting Book "City 1,2,3" by Zoran Milich
- Color Matching File Folder Game
- Building color matching towers with Lego's

Next week we will learn about the primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. And go on color hunts.

Wednesday: 10 Little Fingers

1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Fingers
4 Little, 5 Little, 6 Little Fingers
7 Little, 8 Little, 9 Little Fingers
10 Little Fingers on Your Hands

You can substitute with pretty much anything such as hearts for Valentine's Day or different animals.

Wednesday: 10 stars

Angel Girl LOVES stickers and putting them on paper. So I had her put 10 star stickers on a piece of paper and we counted them. She is able to verbally count to 10 so I am trying to introduce the concept of 1 to 1 in counting. So we practiced touching and counting to 10. She was not very strong at touching 1 at a time or even touching all of them but she was counting to 10 and she was watching me touch and say.

Wednesday: Counting to 5 with balls

We continue to work on counting to 5. Today we did it with 5 balls. We rolled them, threw them, kicked them and bounced them. We counted as we did it. We put 5 in a large bucket all together and took them out. We put one each in 5 containers and counted. The most important thing was repeating the order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Wednesday: Counting to 5

Wednesday we worked on counting to 5 on objects. In particular these really cool nesting bowls that we got Sweet Boy for Christmas. They can stack on top of each other and within each other. They also have numbers written on them. I modeled putting out the nesting bowls and counting to 5. Then I showed her how to stack them counting to 5. Angel Girl then took over the task. She really enjoyed it and by the end of the lesson she was able to count to five while she placed them.