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

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.

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?

Circle Time Day 5

Memory Work: Had Angel Girl sing the first 2 vs of Twinkle Twinkle. We will need to continue to practice this song at other times but I am impressed with how quickly she has picked it up.
Story: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear
Activity: From Before Five In A Row
Letter Work: Starfall!

Circle Time Day 4

Memory Work: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star vs. 1 and 2
Story: Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Activity: Make paper bag puppets and retell the story.
Letter Work: Trace the letter in a salt tray.

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)

Tuesday: Squares

We started this activity by reading about squares in one of our shape books. Then we had an exemplar and sang a square song
This is a square, this is a square.
How can you tell? How can you tell?
It has four sides, All the same size.
It’s a square, It’s a square.
(found HERE).
Then we went on a square hunt using the exemplar.

Thursday: Playdough

I made some scented playdough for Angel Girl on Thursday. Here is the recipe or you could try this recipe made with kool aid. Angel Girl enjoyed being able to smell the playdough and then we played with it cutting out different shapes with cookie cutters including the star shape. As long as it is in a air tight container it can last for a couple of weeks which Angel Girl enjoys (and at writing she has already chosen to play with it again from her choice shelf).

Wednesday: Letter Book

The letter book is a creation of an ABC book. The important part is to use picture of things that Angel Girl knows. This includes pictures of toys she plays with and other items from around her environment. The letter will be written in big letters on the left page and 1 picture on the right. Each week we will add a letter and a picture. Again this is not mastery. This is the creation of a resource that Angel Girl can use through out our Mommy Schooling years.

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.

Tuesday: Intro star

So it turns out star is one shape that Angel Girl knows well. So we just colored a star and glued it onto some construction paper. The original idea was to count the points and find it in our shape book (a board book I found cheap).

Monday: Intro A letter and sound

Picking the first letter to introduce was easy. A because that is the first letter in Angel Girl's name. To introduce the letter I cute it out of sandpaper and glued it to an index card. I plan to use these index cards over the next couple of years. Remember this is an introduction there is no expectation of mastery or even really acknowledgement. This is merely to start the process of recognition. So I helped her trace the letter and said the letter name. I also linked it to her name. This is going to be the process for all of the letter introductions.
1) Letter will be cut out of sandpaper and mounted on an index card.
2) Help trace the letter and say letter name.
3) Link to a known word or object (object is always better they can see and touch it)
Remember at 2-3 years of age there is no expectation of mastery. This is merely and introduction.

Thursday: Taste Testing

For this activity I gave Angel Girl a whole bunch of different things that can be spread on crackers. This was to help her with spreading with a knife that she is very fond of doing. So she had honey, tuna, non-dairy butter spread, jelly, and peanut butter and a stack of crackers. It was fun to watch her try the different toppings on the cracker. The first time she had tried the honey a few months ago she said yuck and today she loved it. It was also fun to tell her the different names of the toppings. She keep repeating them as she spread/or ate straight the toppings.

Wednesday: Cooking Circles

The idea of this activity is to make something that is circular. My first thought was sugar cookies but Angel Girl is dairy allergic so butter and milk are not options for us in anything. Then I realized we could make dairy free biscuits as long as I use the dairy free vegan butter we have. So I found this recipe. We made it together and used a cup to cut out the circles. Angel Girl loved rolling out the dough and then cutting out the circles. Then we ate them for lunch which made it more fun I think.

Monday: Matching

For this I just grabbed different sock since Angel Girl loves to help "fold" sock during laundry time. I put them in a pile and had her match them. She had a great time and loved to say daddy sock, mommy sock, baby sock. Easy and quick and something she can now "help" with during laundry.

Friday: Valentine's Art

For Valentine's Day Angel Girl did this. For us it was hard to get her little hands to make such perfect hearts so I just drew a heart around the prints. Either way it turned out super cute...and daddy loved his card.