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 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.

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.

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

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 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)

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.

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.

Friday: House Tour

This was an idea I got from a reading conference I recently went to. The teacher (who was trained in montessori education) used a traveling set of words that they used to actively label things around their school. I thought this would be a fun idea to use around the house. I figured it would aid in vocabulary development along with the beginning of text recognition. So I typed up a list of things in our home and cut them out. Then I handed one to Angel Girl and had her put it on the item. It was super cute to watch her try to figure out how to get the word to stick to things like the playpen or fridge. We only did about 7 to 10 of the words but they are going on her "learning" shelf and I plan to pull them out when we have a few minutes.

Monday/Wednesday: Sequencing

Monday and Wednesday we started learning about sequencing. I started with first and last. Then on Wednesday we did first, middle, and last. I used the cards from this activity. They seemed to be the most realistic. Angel Girl did not completely understand but I figure this is a great activity to put on her activity shelf to practice throughout the month.
Learning sequence is important both in story comprehension and also in word learning. Children need to learn how to look from the 1st letter through to the last and so the concept of first middle and last is very important.

Monday Jan. 4th CAP

So Monday's activity is CAP looking L to R. For the reasoning check out this post. The actually activity we will be doing on Monday is merely tracing lines. I bought the Kumon Tracing book that I plan to work on with Angel Girl to help her get use to tracing. This will also help her develop the idea of looking. I will also be using my finger to trace the words in at least one of the books that we read each day. I figure repeating these two activities in a variety of ways over many weeks, months, and years will do the best for helping my daughter learn about looking l to r. A bonus activity (something we will do if there is down time and she is bored one day) is a line of toys that she just quickly points to from left to right. This would be a quick activity that can be done that focuses on left to right processing.

Jan. Lang. Theme CAP Looking L to R

January's Language Theme is Concepts about Print, Looking left to right. This is introducing children to print and our conventions of print. Until a child is asked to read they can look at the world in any way or order. Then we introduce this concept of reading that includes looking at print from left to right. Many children pick up the conventions of reading just by being read to and some very simple quick activities. This month we will be focusing on introducing looking. This does NOT mean that I expect Angel Girl to understand this concept and I am sure that these activities will be repeated many different times and combined with lots of story reading in our home. The activities shared this month are great ways to introduce looking at print although many of them do not even ask the child to look at words but rather to get use to organized looking.