Vegetables

Vegetables!  Vegetables are a favorite in our house, most likely due to the large backyard garden. So, it was fun to put together the lesson plans for learning the letter V.  We did a few printables that you'll find here: Homeschool Creations Gardening Pack.  We started by cutting/sorting/gluing flowers and vegetables into the right columns.

 I love little "I's" face here :).  "C" was writing his name since he was finished with the gluing portion.

 We pulled out our flip charts of the alphabet from The Amazing Action Alphabet to learn the letter V.  I've been very impressed with this alphabet learning curriculum.  We only have 3 letters of the alphabet left to learn and everyone is retaining the information.  We're using their mini books to read and everyone is being successful!  "C", now 39 months, can sound out any short vowel word and does so with great enthusiasm.  The twins were super funny when we were reading the "V Book" today and they were ready to sound out a word - I teach them to finger tap the sounds - and I didn't have my hand up and "ready" so they were waiting on me..."Come on Miss Amanda!".  It cracks me up :).  Finger tapping involves touching your pointer finger to your thumb for the first sound, your middle finger to your thumb for the second sound, and so on down the line.  We tap it faster and faster until we can slide our thumb along all of the sounds to read the word.

 "R" practices drawing a "V" with the pointy part on the bottom of the letter.  It was tricky at first, but he got the hang of it!

 What should be for snack on a vegetable themed day?  Vegetables of course.  We had corn, beans, spinach, green pepper, and cucumber. Yum!

 In the Amazing Action Alphabet, V the Vulture vacuums.  After snack it was fitting to pull out the two kid sized vacuums (Bissle 3-in-1 vacuums for $15, just cut the handle shorter with a hacksaw).  I love these little vacuums. They have been "in hiding" for a couple of months because, just like any good toy, kids grow tired of things and if they disappear and then reappear the excitement is reignited!  At the end of preschool I had a nice vacuumed carpet.  Bonus for me :)

 We played a little matching game with some cards from Homeschool Creations.  I turned the vegetable picture cards upside down in the middle and the vegetable word cards right side up around the outside.  We took turns picking a vegetable picture card and then finding the correct word card according to beginning, middle, and ending sounds in the word.

 I believe that the kids may have had a little extra energy today, so we put music before math.  Music consisted to my favorite jumping and running song and complete free movement exploration followed by a song or two with the rhythm sticks.

 We continue to work on graphing in our TouchMath curriculum.  I am also very impressed with this pre-k curriculum focusing on the introduction of math concepts.  I look forward to finishing the pre-k curriculum next fall in Preschool B and possibly moving on to the Kindergarten curriculum.  I didn't start this curriculum until December of this year so we won't get to finish, but Preschool A in the fall will start at the beginning and be able to complete the whole curriculum within the year.

I'm greatly impressed with everything the kids have learned over our (almost) year together.  It is so much fun to be able to identify words by beginning letter now that we know most of them.  It is a delight to see them intentionally play with a math game in a learning focused way instead of exploring the pieces sort of way.  Their art work and their handwriting have much improved and it's a lot of fun looking through their binders to see what they "wrote" on the first day of school compared to now.