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Stuff to Scrap is closing at the end of this month.

We are so sad to loose this great site in the digi-scrapbooking community.

Arizona Girl's STS store will be 65% off until the end of the month when the site closes down.

There are exclusive items at STS that may or may not be put into Arizona Girl's other stores, but either way you will not see prices like these again.

Park Days

Now that Angel Girl is in Preschool in the mornings, we are finding that we need to fill up our afternoons. 

So we have been park hopping!

Each afternoon that it is not raining we are checking out another park in the area.

We have found a couple of favorites....and a couple that are outside mom's comfort zone.

Sept 12 - 16

Sweet Boy
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Naming Farm Animals (we used the book Barnyard Dance from last week).
Washing Face
Throwing Bean Bags

Angel Girl
This week our book was Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  We did a bunch of activities from Homeschoolshare.com.  It was an interesting week because Angel Girl knows this book well and so by the end she was "reading" it to me.
I also set up a Montessori work that had her using tweezers to sort 2 colors of pom poms. 
We played with pattern blocks (and made a birthday cake for Auntie with them).
We tried to make homemade Kazoo's from toilet paper rolls, that was a bit of a fail.
We put together a junk box for her to keep her "special" things that she finds outside and around the house.

Sept 5 - 9

Sweet Boy
Pat-a-cake
Painting with paint brush
Kumon Tracing with our finger
Brushing our teeth (Montessori Practical Life)
Clapping to music
Read Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boyton and named the animals in the pictures.

Angel Girl
Our Before Five in a Row book was Goodnight Moon.  We did art, animal classification game, memory practice using the pictures, learned Hey Diddle Diddle, and read Goldielocks and the Three Bears by Jan Brett.
Montessori work this week was opening and closing doors, especially the front door because Angel Girl told me she didn't know how to close it the other day.
We did free play with our C-rods.
We made popsicles and talked about liquids and solids.
We also made some shape cutouts that we traced to practice our shapes with.

Pre Pre-School

We have been on vacation and now we only have 2 weeks before school starts.  So for this 2 weeks I will be doing Before Five in a Row activities with Blueberries for Sal and otherwise just getting everyone on a schedule for waking, eating, napping and going to bed so that we will all be ready to wake up early for Angel Girl's Pre-k.  I am hoping to do a weekly post about our mommy school experiences but we shall see how it goes.

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.

Blue

We learned about the color blue this week (she gets it mixed up with green and purple).  It think the painting was a success!

We also did a "treasure" hunt for items that were blue and we read Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey. 

Montessori At Home

Chasing Cheerios posted about this book on their website...so I checked it out.  I LOVE it.  It is truly an easy way to start Montessori in the home.  So check it out.  It is available as an instant download!
http://www.montessoriathomebook.com/Welcome.html

New and Different

I am now mommy schooling a child with special needs...we kind of knew that from the beginning but now it is official.  She is on meds and getting services to help her and now I am finding we are able to learn more effectively.  So we are kind of starting over...or rather reviewing what we have done to see what stuck and what did not.  We are using the help of a great website called abcmouse.com.  They are an interactive site that lets kids play while learning. 
So I use what they are doing as the jumping off point for the rest of our week...so this week we did:
Memory Work: Little Boy Blue
Letter Work: Letter A (and she totally got it which surprised me)
Religious Work: Reverence
Read Alouds: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear using ideas from Homeschoolshares and Before Five in a Row
Jesse Bear is going to be our book for a couple of weeks while we do the homeschool share lapbook and other fun activities with it.

What We Did Last Week

We learned about the letter N.  We read The Napping House and felt the sandpaper N.
Then we read Your Ears Can Hear and Polar Bear Polar Bear What do you Hear and talked about ears and their uses.

What We Have Been Reading

The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse by Beatrix Potter
The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes by Beatrix Potter
The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse by Beatrix Potter
The Tale of Mr. Tod by Beatrix Potter
(we are trying to read all of Beatrix Potter's books)

K is for Kissing a Cool Kangaroo by Giles Andreae - we looked at each page and tried to find things that started with the letter on the page

The Red Hen by Judith Bauer Stamper
The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizz) by Philemon Sturges - we talked about helping and being happy when we helped, then we made some muffins

Christmas Day 1

I am trying to do a Christmas and an activity. 

Today we read Mooseltoe.

Then we made our Christmas cards using stickers, crayons, markers, and construction paper.  Basically I let Angel Girl do what ever she wanted for each card.

What We Read This Last Couple Weeks

Old Hat New Hat by Stan and Jan Berenstain - letter H
Inch by Inch by Leo Lionni - letter I

Yummy by Lucy Cousins - yes this book again lol we read The 3 Billy Goats Gruff and did activities like acting it out, and making goat puppets.

Halloween books just for fun
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson
Spooky Hour by Tony Mitton
Who Said Boo? by Nancy White Carlstrom
Fright Night Flight by Laura Krauss Melmed
Zoom Broom by Margie Palatinin
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams - personal fav!!! Read it to a group of Angel Girls friends and had them do the motions.  Totally fun.

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

Math Fun

So I got a copy of Miquion Math which I think is AWESOME.  Angel Girl is not quite ready to do any of the activities but I am starting to do some things to someday prepare her for it.  So this week we did Free Play with Cuisanaire Rods.

Basically she was given the rods to do what ever she wanted to.

So she made a house.  It was fun to watch how carefully she added rods.

When she was done I suggested making a train and modeled how to do it.

She created a train and had people riding it (the upright rods).
The goal of Free Play is to let her experience the rods and make casual observations.  Some of the things she did today was name the colors of the rods..."Mama I need the orange one" and compare orientation, in her train some are laying down and others are standing up. 
The goal is to do things with the C-rods every week and observe what she is noticing.

What We Read This Week

The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper - to teach letter E

Yummy by Lucy Cousins - this is one of my new favorite books!
The Three Little Pigs by Margot Zemach - We read it and then did activities such as making a house of foam. We then huffed and puffed and tried to blow our house down.

1,2,3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle - We are making a number book so we read this book and then entered the number 1 to our book.  We counted out 1 bear and 1 sticker.

Yellow Ball by Molly Bang - to use with Before Five In A Row

What We Read This Week

Its been a slow reading week....or maybe just a busy life week...so here is what we have read.
Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman -Used to intro letter d


Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See by Bill Martin - we are doing some of the activities from Homeschool Shares
Baby Bear, Baby Bear What Do You See by Bill Martin

What We Read This Week

C is for Clown by Stan and Jan Berenstain - used this to intro letter C
Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina

Alphabet Adventure by Audrey Wood - after we read it we found objects that started with the letters in the alphabet just like Charley's alphabet did

The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle - while reading we made the sounds of the animals in the book and followed the spider's web around.
Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids by David Kirk (extra credit book has transracial adoption in it)
We did Spider stuff like making a web with glue on paper (when it dries you can feel the glue is raised up). Walking a spider web and pretending to be a spider.

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.