Week 2 of Homeschooling Pre-K

This week we finished studying about Creation using My Father's World Kindergarten.  It's funny, after teaching it like this, I finally have it memorized the days in order.  Caden has too.  I think the reading, hands-on, etc. really helps the days stick in order.  Also it's such short phrases to memorize.  So far I'm loving teaching Pre-K/Kindergarten.  This is such a fun age.  I said years ago, if I was going to work after having children, I would teach.  I loved teaching in college and have enjoyed teaching Sunday school.  Here is how our week went.

Our verse of the week was: Hebrews 11:1: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (NIV). Faith: I believe and act on God's promises.

This weeks songs: This Little Light of Mine, The B-i-b-l-e, B-i-n-g-o, and Old MacDonald Had a Farm.

Skills we worked on: Drawing, writing, cutting, pasting, coloring, math, listening, memorization, word building, and character development.
 

Day 1: We started our day off with Sonlight P4/5.  We read several stories and he did his workbook activities.  He really wanted pancakes and since I knew making pumpkin pancakes was an activity for this week, I made him pumpkin pancakes and we read Pumpkin Eater today.  I used to make pumpkin pancakes all the time in Germany but don't remember the last time I made them here.  Then we worked on My Father's World Kindergarten.  We studied Day 6 of Creation.  God created animals and Adam and Eve.  We also ate lunch with Collin, went to Mardel's and laminated several things with their big laminator.  We rarely spend a full day at home.

He ate every last bite

After I drew the picture, I let him stamp some animals on the page

He loved the animal stamps. Those stamps were party favors from his 1st birthday party.

He taped his timeline to the fridge and cut, colored, and pasted 6.

He stamped another page just of animals. 

I gave him a beginning of the year gift.

It was a scissor kit with animals.

He cut the shapes.

He named the monkey George and hung him on the fridge.

 

Day 2: Today my sister came over in the morning to watch Caden while I attended a meeting.  We didn't do school work until the afternoon.  We started with our Sonlight books, then finished Day 7 of Creation of My Father's World.  I think for the first time I actually have the order of creation memorized.  It's amazing what teaching can do for the teacher!  Everyday we do calendar, our 100 chart, and sing songs.  He made up a few songs today.

 

Developing the Early Learner Workbook

Cutting out the number 7

Caden's Creation Illustrations and Timeline are done!

Day 7: God rested, so it just has the description with nothing on the page.

He did some additional handwriting practice by writing his name

Day 3: Today Caden woke up and wanted to play Triominos.  I love this little game and so does he.  Then he went to the table to practice writing letters.  We sure have come far from a year ago.  Last year he had zero interest in really writing or coloring, even though he could write his name.  Now he seems to really love it.  We then read some good stories from Sonlight and our verse of the week.  He really wanted to cut out another animal.  Since our Bible story for the day was Noah's Ark it worked out perfectly.  I read him the story while he cut out the lion.  Then he pasted it on the page.  Then we reviewed his Creation Illustrations and talked about the days of creation.  I then brought out the letter flash cards from My Father's World.  I laminated these the other day and since he already knows the letters and sounds of the alphabet we haven't reviewed them.  I decided I'll review him just to make sure he still knew them.  He did and named all the animals.  Then I played a game with him.  I placed 4 letter cards in front of him.  Had him turn around and tell me which one was missing.  He did great and kept wanting to add cards to the game.  He had trouble after 7 letter cards.  If I told him the animal he'd tell me the letter but that is basically like telling him what is missing.  Then he lined all the cards up and wanted to hop from letter to letter.  We then took a lunch break and met up with Collin.  After lunch we went to the dollar store so I could gather some supplies to make a beginning subtraction game.  Caden helped me assemble it when we got home and I showed him how it worked.  We also got out the globe and I showed him where land and water were.  He pointed to countries and oceans and we talked about where he was born and where he lives now.  What countries he's been to and what bodies of water he's swam in.  Later we just hung out and then went and saw some close friends of ours who just had their second baby.  She was is cute!

Triominos

He loves Triominos

Letter practice

Cutting practice

Lion face

His lion

Alphabet game

Walking on the letters as he says them

Helping me make our subtraction game

He counted all of the stones perfectly

Can we play this now?

Being my sweet and silly cute boy!

Day 4: Today was a pretty laid back day.  We got to go on an adventure.  We started the day by reading the Bible and then the stories listed today.  He did his Developing an Early Learner book in which I found out he doesn't seem to understand rhyming words like I thought he did.  One of the activities was coloring the pictures that rhymed with "snow" and putting an "X" on the pictures that don't rhyme.  He ended up putting an "X" on every picture.  I'm pretty sure he understands words that rhyme but we're going to work on that some.  When we talked about it and he said something did rhyme with snow, he said he just wanted to put an "X" on it anyway and not color it.  We also need to work on following directions, which is something we work on constantly.  He did one more page in that book and did really well on it.  Then he wanted to use the stamps from the other day and stamp animals on paper and cut them out.  After that it was time for our adventure.  First we talked about the days of creation again and what God made.  Then we talked about what people make.  I wanted to make sure he understood the difference.  Then it was time to go outside and take pictures of things that God and people made for tomorrow's project.  We had lots of birds in our backyard so we started there.  He went outside with the camera and took pictures of the birds, plants, trampoline, dead strawberry plant, etc.  Then we got in the car and started driving down the road.  We stopped a few times and he took some pictures.  We ended up driving to a new park to us next to a pond.  I was hoping there would be ducks there but there weren't.  By that time his camera had died and he just wanted to play on the playground.  Sadly, the playground was too hot.  So he came back down after burning his hand on the slide, he's gotten to where he'll feel the slide to see if it's hot before sitting down and burning his bum!  Not too long after that, Collin called and we went to meet him for lunch. After lunch he practiced spelling words with his spelling puzzle. I didn't take as many pictures today because we were too busy having fun.  Here are a few that I did take and he took.

 

God made Caden!

God made the birds on the fence

God made trees

People made the playground

God made water

Working on spelling words

 



Day 5: Today was a fun day.  We started our day off with our memory verse and read our Sonlight read-alouds.  Then we did our 100 chart and Caden got to put together his first group of 10 sticks since he's now completed 10 days of school.  After that we got to do our big project.  I printed off some pictures that he took yesterday and gave him some pages from some magazines that I tore out.  We took a poster board (actually I cut it in half) and on one side I wrote "Created by God" and on the other side I wrote, "Made by People."  Caden cut out different things he thought was interesting and then he pasted them on the side that it went with.  He did a good job.

 

We ate some lunch at home and I needed to run to Target to get a few things.  After the store we got snow cones as a special Friday treat.  His favorite right now is blue coconut.  My favorite is banana and blue coconut.  We don't get these very often but when it's 100+ degrees outside they make a nice treat.  The snow cone place is outside of Lowes which worked out great because I needed to get a filter for my fridge.  Then we came home and he wanted to do dot paint, finger paint, and color with the silky crayons.  So this afternoon he made some nice art work.  Overall we had a wonderful second week of Pre-K.

 

Counted the sticks for each day of school

Put a rubber band around the 10 sticks for his first group of 10

Cutting out pictures for his poster

He loves cutting things

Pasting the pictures on his poster

My poster!

My poster!

Yummy snow cone!

Dot paint

Cute artist

Finger painting

 



Beginning Subtraction Activity

I went to Montessori schools from preschool through 3rd grade.  I love how Montessori incorporates a lot of hands-on activities while allowing children to learn a lot through "play."  Earlier this week I told Collin that I'm going to reintroduce the tray system that I used to use in Germany.  In addition to our homeschool curriculums, I'm going to have a few additional educational activities for Caden to work on each day.  Some of them will be new and I'll have to teach him how to use them.  Others he will already know how to work them.  He finishes his work so quickly and sometimes needs a little direction with choices.  He's so smart and busy that if I leave things too unstructured my house will literally be taken apart as he creates his own fun.  Or he'd want to watch cartoons all day, which if you know me, I really try and limit TV time.

This beginning subtraction activity is a great way to introduce subtraction once your child knows their numbers, at least 0-10.  Being able to add is a plus but necessarily necessary for this activity.  This is a Montessori activity that I got from a YouTube channel I subscribe to.

I bought the materials from the $1 store.  I bought 10 salt/pepper jars, they came 2 for $1.  I bought a bag of stones, and a pack of plastic bowls.  I created a sheet with all of the equations I want him to learn, 1-10.  I printed it on card stock and laminated it.  I also bought a $1 container to store this activity in.  I'm realizing it's best to have a storage plan for anything you're going to teach your child so it doesn't end up all over the house.  The total project cost me less than $8.  You could do this much cheaper, even free, by using cups to store the equations in and materials you already have on hand.



My supplies

First I cut out and pasted the negative numbers 1-10 on each spice jar. I let Caden fill them with the number of stones needed. This was great counting practice and he had fun helping.

Counting and filling the jars with stones.

Then I cut all of the equations out and filled each jar with the matching equations. I also checked Caden's work to make sure he had the correct number of stones in each container.  He scored a 100!



Here's how I filled each jar

I let him choose one jar because we only do one jar at a time

You lay out the equations on one side and the answers on the other.  For example, you are working on 2s.  You'll have him count the stones, two stones.  Put them in the left bowl.  Then read an equation.  2-1= he'll take one away from the left bowl and put it in the middle bowl.  Then what is left he puts in the right bowl after the equals sign.  He'll count how many stones are in the last bowl and he'll see there is 1.  So he'll find numeral 1.  Then he'll put it together, 2-1=1.  He'll go through all of these problems and eventually be able to do this himself and have me come check his work.

I realized later I didn't get a picture of him doing his work but only this goofy one once he was done



If your child is older, you can have them write the problems and answers down on a piece of paper.  I hope your child enjoys this fun Montessori Beginning Subtraction Activity.

Birthday Parties

This past weekend Caden had two birthday parties to attend.  We were pretty busy.  His 3rd cousin, Cullom, who now lives in Boston, was in town and we celebrated his 1st birthday.  It was at his grandparents house.  It was cute and fun.  We love Cullom and his parents and wish they hadn't moved so far away.  Thankfully they come in town quite a bit so we get to see them several times a year.  Happy birthday Cullom!!

 

 

 

His friend, Alexa, turned 3.  Her party was at a trampoline park.  Caden LOVED it!  Alexa and her sister are both so cute.  I've gotten to know her mom through Mom's Club and we actually graduated from the same high school.  Happy birthday Alexa!!