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.

Tops and Bottoms - Book Giveaway

Want to join us for the fun Spring activities we'll be doing in the coming weeks?  Part of that is the exploration of the parts of plants, and what better way to explore that than through the power of a good book?  This book, "Tops and Bottoms" is a great story about a Hare who demonstrates that hard work pays off.  He tricks the lazy bear into letting him have certain parts of the crops and after doing all the work he gains the reward - food for his family.  Follow the Rafflecopter intructions below for you chance to win this fantastic book.  There is only one winner, and it will be mailed out on Monday April 16th (upon recipt via email of the winners mailing address).  Join us for the fun and complete your entries between Saturday 12:01AM Eastern Time the 7th-14th!  Good Luck!

"As usual, Stevens' animal characters, bold and colorful, are delightful. . . . It's all wonderful fun, and the book opens, fittingly, from top to bottom instead of from side to side, making it perfect for story-time sharing."-- Booklist

Y Week, Picnics and Plants

Well, it took 3 still cameras and a video camera, but I was successful documenting our experiences from the last two weeks :)  This week we had fun with the introduction of the letter Y.  I know it's hard to tell, but here we are playing with yo-yo's!

 We also learned about exclamation marks, which was completely adorable to hear the kids pronounce :).  We worked on the word "Yes" and of course - yelling anything that had an exclamation mark at the end.

 We made Y creatures to join us for our picnic for the day.  I believe that the twins made a princess and a fairy Y, "R" made a "Mario Y" and there were dinosaur Y's and Spiderman Y's of course.  I took a Y stamp and let them add arms, legs, etc. as well as words about their Y drawing.

 We were to have a picnic snack on Monday, but wouldn't you know it that it just had to be crummy weather - snow.  Yep.  80* Sunday, snow on Monday.  Silly Colorado.  Never fear, though.  Picnics are okay on my living room floor.

 We also sorted beans this week.  I gave each person a small container of mixed beans and some tweezers.  They shared ice-cube trays and were challenged with sorting their beans into the trays.  They loved this activity right when they walked in the door so much that I left it out for them to play in the couple of minutes it takes to have everyone wash their hands before snack.

 We did a lot of reading about plants on Wednesday.  We wanted to learn more specifically about the seeds involved in plants.

 Oh yea, the excitement for the day you ask?  We had a beetle join us for preschool.  I guess that the snow outside wasn't very exciting for him, so he joined us in the classroom.

 We spent Wednesday's art period cutting and gluing like crazy!  We made pictures of flowers and then labeled all the parts of the plant.  It was a good beginning/ending sound figure out what the word could be and glue it in the right spot type of experience.

 I think one of the things I miss the most about school aged kids is that they can clean up after themselves more efficiently.  I never wonder why my house is a complete mess because I know that running a preschool is just a perpetual mess making experience, but it's nice to be able to send most of them home after a few hours so I can do damage control and get ready for our next messy adventure.

 Speaking of messy adventures, I just didn't have any clean hands to get any pictures of this activity in the process.  We planted wheat grass and drew faces for our cups.  They are currently living on my window sill and I hope they sprout enough (3 inches or more) by Monday so we can give our little people "haircuts."  If they don't sprout enough by then we'll just do it Wednesday, but then they get to go home to their families.  I love doing this spring activity every year!

Look for a book giveaway coming soon!  We'll be learning about the parts of plants and would love to have you join us for the fun!

Out in the Country

Do you have dreams of child-led learning? So do I. I have experience teaching in the public school system and I honestly loved it. When I had my oldest son "C" now 3 years old I felt completely torn. I knew leaving teaching would be difficult and sometimes pull at my heart strings, but there was no way in the world that I would leave my son with someone else to raise him. I live for the education of and mentoring of young children. I have a belief in education that if you can teach them how to access knowledge though such skills as basic reading, writing, and math - they can, and will, learn more through their natural curiosity. I dream of starting a very small school of students who are interested in a little "off the path" education. Part of that dream sits in a project we are currently developing. Some friends of ours are actively looking for acreage to build their dream self-sufficient life. We'd love to get property right next to them to do the same, and start our school.

Right now I have one preschool class (Preschool A). We are learning the basics of education in a traditional school atmosphere of teacher directed themes and activities. Next year, most of this years students will return to attend Preschool B, a more "unschooling" approach to schooling before starting Kindergarten the following year. Preschool B will prepare students for any type of education (traditional, homeschooling, etc) but only after mastering Preschool A - the building blocks of education. There are a few more spots available for preschool starting in the fall, so if you live nearby and would like a high quality experience for your 3-5 year old please contact me. I look forward to enlightening your child's life. Prospective students and their families will have a full tour of our facility and the option of a free trial day for the child (before the end of May) to see if we're a good fit. Since I took so many photos when we were out looking at property last week, I made a little video of them. Can't you just imagine creating an intensive yet FUN and Child-Led Learning environment here?

Windy Weather "W" week March 26-28

I have had a number of camera issues in the last two weeks and I apologize that I haven't gotten these posts up yet. Now that most of the camera issues are sorted I hope you enjoy a little over cap of our learning.
W the worm wiggles, "/w/ /w/ /w/"! Painting with condensed milk that was colored brown with food coloring:

After this picture I promptly dropped my camera which can no longer turn on :( Good thing it's my birthday in a few weeks and Steve has offered to let a new camera be on my presents list :) Until I get a new camera though, I'll be using his work camera - which I'm just now figuring out, and my Flip Video camera.

We spend a lot of time in the beginning of the year talking about how there is a "Mommy Letter" and a "Baby Letter" for each of the letters. Just recently we graduated to more formal language of "Capitol" and "Lower Case". While we were doing some wind blown painting "T" has a great realization that his name starts with a capital letter!

It was amazing how all the kids were completely thrilled when I pulled out the big box fan and gave them all a small handful of craft feathers. Instant wind in the kitchen! (and I'm still finding feathers :)

The second day that we were studying wind and weather we started out playing instruments to the "W Song" from the Amazing Action Alphabet.

We also worked on our reading with the "W Book" (also from the Amazing Action Alphabet)

When kids were done with snack they were allowed to go outside and investigate the weather for the day. They ended up investigating the dirt a lot more :)

We really enjoyed playing the "W Catcher" game.  Kids ran from one side to the other making the /w/ sound.  Once they got the hang of that a child was picked to stand in the middle of the lawn with me and catch a "W" as it wiggled by.  Then that "W" was the child to stand by me.  Such a simple game, but they had so much fun!

We've also moved onto module 3 of our Touch Math PreK curriculum which starts with very basic graphing skills. We're working on the basics - like putting all the same shape in the same column or row. And putting them all right next to each other without leaving spaces to be able to properly compare amounts. They seem to like putting the shapes on like a hat or in a row.

As we continue to work on Spring topics we look forward to learning more about parts of a plant - stay tuned for a book giveaway on the topic coming soon!

Spring!

Spring is in the air, can you feel it?  I love this picture, though he had to reassess the control he had over his body and if it is appropriate or not during math time - I just happened to snap it at just the right time :)

We can sure feel it!  Today we continued our review of everything we've learned thus far in preschool and explored the idea of Spring!  We started by reading and coloring our book for the day, "Spring".

 While we were waiting for the rest of our friends to arrive everyone enjoyed talking about all the things we see in Spring and what color they were coloring those things.

 Then we headed downstairs to read a few books about Spring and learn a song called "Popcorn".  I used the opportunity to reread a few of our favorite books from our Fall and Winter themes to review the seasons we had already studied.  We read "Hibernation Station" and when we got to a book about Spring it was fun to watch as the light bulb went on in so many heads that the animals will be waking up and flying to their summers homes now.  Here's our little song:

We all loved this song and sang it over and over! 

 The song even naturally emerged at snack time, and how convenient is it that we were having popcorn for snack!  Such fun!

 Time to get dirty at Little Adventures Preschool!  I have a large garden in our backyard and we've already started some of our vegetable plants from seed.  Today the kids got to first have free explore with the dirt and then plant their own pumpkin seeds to take home.

 I transplanted one of our big tomato plants as we talked about the parts of the plant that will grow from the little seed now that the weather is warm enough and there is water and sunlight for plants to grow.

 We watered our plants with a spray bottle to avoid over watering (which happens with preschoolers a high percentage of the time)

 I continue to love how well positive phrasing works in our classroom.  Comments from me like, "I'm looking for someone who is sitting down with their hand raised that has some thinking to share with the group."  Works like a charm!

 Our review included math today where we were reviewing sorting objects by a single attribute.  The hardest attribute still continues to be size.  (We've worked on color, shape and size.)

 They love playing the game, "What doesn't belong?" with their friends.  They try and be so tricky!  I overheard some fantastic language today during this time.  Not only where kids responding to each other politely and discussing which object from a shape didn't belong, but they were ALSO talking about WHY it didn't belong - completely unprompted (though previously modeled) by me.  When kids can start explaining the WHY you can see into their thoughts and we've certainly done a lot of learning so far this year!

 There are a few activities that we do in preschool that are completely impossible to take a picture of, though perhaps I'll rig the camera some day to do it.  One of those activities is melody maps in music.  Today was the first day I'd introduced our Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star melody map and we built it together.  I had precut stars and the base of the chart.  Then as I glued stars on kids were able to point out which stars were higher or lower than other stars within the line (eventually that will lead to an understanding of the written form of higher and lower notes).  They were also able to identify that the big orange star came at the end of every line of music.  We also mastered the concept of the little yellow stars having one beat and the big orange ones having two beats (eventually that will lead to an understanding of quarter notes and whole notes, etc.)  I didn't get out the rhythm sticks today due to the extra energy in the room - see the first picture in this post for an explanation of all the energy - but we did clap to our melody map.  One clap for yellow, two claps for orange.  We also tried to sing along with the melody map though that makes clapping much harder.  We'll continue to work on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star for a while until we're ready for a new song.

The other thing I didn't get a picture of was playing with the parachute.  We lifted it up high to show all the snow from the winter and then slowly the "snow" melted and then in the Spring it can rain hard or soft and with each descriptor we used the parachute in that manner.  We had a lot of fun today and I am completely impressed with the learning our little group has accomplished.  Awesome!