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.

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 3

Memory Work: Continued with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star vs 1 and 2 with the pictures.
Story: Yellow (a board book I got in a set about colors)
Activity: Yellow Hunt, finding items around the house that were yellow.
Letter Work: Coloring sheet.

Circle Time Day 2

Memory Work: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star I made little puppets of parts of the song for Angel Girl to hold as she sang. I also introduced the 2nd verse using the puppets. HERE is a copy of all the verses of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Story: Goldilocks and The Three Bears by Jan Brett
Activity: We retold the story using finger puppets. I mostly did the retell and had her hold up the different parts.
Letter Work: We did letter A in her letter book (which she was able to do immediately she loves that it is her name).

Circle Time Day 1

Yesterday was my first day of doing circle time with my Angel Girl. This is what we did.

Memory Work: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (this is a known song but I would like to do more with this this week...did you know there was more than 1 verse.)
Story: The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall (this book is for introducing the letter A)
Letter Work: Using sandpaper letter introduced (ok so A is known but this will be how I introduce the other letters) letter A and had her attempt tracing...she does not have to be able to trace it correctly merely adding a tactile component to the learning of letters.
Religious: Sing I Am a Child of God

Week of June 21st - 25th

There are some changes in our life so for this summer I am planning on doing activities for Sweet Boy based on the week. Then for Angel Girl I plan to just focus on developing a "circle time" which I will post about daily (I hope). So for this week:

Sweet Boy
Story: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Game: Peek-a-boo (yes the game where you cover your eyes and say peek-a-boo, I like to do it with blankets)
Nursery Rhyme: There was a Crooked Man

Angel Girl
Letter Aa
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Goldilocks and the 3 Bears
Color Yellow

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

I found this great lapbook based on the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. It helps children with shapes, letters, numbers and colors. Very fun, and perfect for my Letter of the Week program!
Totally Tots link
The Activity Mom Link

Activity Mom blog

The Activity Mom is a great blog that has a lot of great ideas for Alphabet learning.

Excersize A-Z

We did this today as a PE activity and the boys LOVED it. Found on The Home Teacher

Letter A

Letter Recognition - A

All week we will be singing the alphabet song, and reading alphabet books, watching alphabet movies and going on a continuous Letter A Hunt

Monday:
Sing Alphabet song
Alphabet Song on You Tube
Introduce Letter A using Starfall.com (we also talked about how the letter A was red, and had the boys find the other red letters).
A Letter Hunt in Baby Girls room (her name plaque has an A in it, her room has all the books etc). I used a letter A to help them make a match (they LOVE making matches!).

Tuesday:
Letter A Scrapbook Page: Ant thumbprints, both lower and upper case Aa (I am using the terma mommy and baby Aa, because it is easier. I realize I am setting myself up to having to work on fixing this, but for now I think it will be fine.)

Ants on a Log Snack (celery, with peanut butter and raisins), and making them. (I have to make 70 of them for church for that evening, so I figured why not kill two birds with one stone!)

Wednesday:
Story Time
Letter A coloring pages for scrapbook (ant, airplane, astronaut, apple etc)
Apple Shack up snack found on totally tots

Thursday:
Ant Size Sort
Ant Upper and Lower Case Sorting
Sing "The Ants Go Marching" using ant cutouts to count the ants and actting out the scenes.

Friday:
Sing 'Alice the Camel' and show on fingers how many humps
Playdoh alphabet cookie cutter play
Eat Alphabet Soup