Units 1-3

We made it!  The first 3 units are under our belt and I have to say that so far this year is a success.  Challenging, yes, but overall successful.  I've learned that I have to be 100% organized before the day even begins or things fall apart.  I've also learned that Adeline does best in the morning, but early afternoon is do-able, too.  If preschool occurs much after 3:00, I've lost her and might as well save the lessons for the next day.  Braxton comes and goes during preschool time.  He'll visit our preschool room (a spare room) and participate for a little bit, then wander into the living room to play.  It works out pretty well that way.  I know that he's absorbing a little bit, as I heard him counting 1, 2, 3 and 7, 8, 9, 10 the other day.  A month ago he would only count 1, 1, 3.  :)  Sadie enjoys listening to school from the bed or Mama's arms.  I think she'll become a bigger challenge when she's mobile.

So what have we been doing?  Our day begins with calendar time and recitation of the days of the week and months of the year.  We also keep a weather tracking chart.  We say the pledges for the American flag and the Christian flag.  I want Adeline to learn those b/c she will eventually be in a school.  Afterwards we recite the AWANA verse of the week.  We then turn over a number on our 100-day counting line.  We count all the numbers by 1's and then by 10's.  We are also using popsicle sticks to count to 100 one day at a time.  We bundle the sticks in groups of ten and Adeline counts them into a cup.  We're up to 44.

The rest of the schedule varies a little each day.  There are always Pre-reading and Math lessons, with Science, Social Studies, Art, Music and Bible lessons worked in throughout the week.  We've recently added Phonics and Handwriting to the daily lessons, as well.  

Unit 1 was called "The Sidewalk to My House."  It included an introduction to preschool, all about me lessons, the five senses, and my family and pets.  We covered letters A-L, numbers 1-3, three shapes, position words, and nonstandard measurement.  It was a pretty easy unit for Adeline, but I liked that it gave her confidence.

Unit 2 was "Neighborhood Streets."  It discussed people in our community and various modes of transportation.  We spent a lot of time on the "firefighter" section, talking about fire safety and how to call 911.  I also started teaching Adeline her phone number, address, and Mommy and Daddy's full names.  I rented Elmo Visits the Firehouse to watch with her.  It's an excellent video that I highly recommend!  One of the neatest things about that lesson was watching Adeline play "fire safety" with Braxton.  I overheard her telling him, "Stay low and go!" as they crawled through the equipment at the playground.  I couldn't help but grin ear to ear.  She understood the message.   

The transportation section of unit 2 gave me the "great" idea to take the kids on a bus ride.  Oh my!  I won't go into the details, but this mama caught the wrong bus and ended up spending 2 1/2 hours on a city bus with 3 children ages 4, 2, and 3 months.  Had I gotten the right bus, it would have been just a 30 minute ride.  We all learned a thing or two that day!  But I must say, the kids behaved remarkably well and even asked to ride again when our feet finally hit pavement.

Unit 2 covered letters M-S, number 4, sorting by category, left and right and several colors.

Unit 3 was "Going Places in Books."  So far this has been my favorite unit, although it has taken up the most time in terms of preparation.  The first section was Fables, Tales, and Rhymes.  For the life of me, I could not get Adeline to understand the concept of rhyme.  Then finally today (2 weeks later), she got it!  It was so neat to see that lightbulb click.  The second section was Favorite Books.  We got to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (and the other books by that author), several Dr. Seuss books, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, and a classic Winnie the Pooh book.  It was so much fun!  The last section was At the Library.  We looked a several different kinds of books - history, science, cookbooks, informational books, etc.  The science and cookbook days were the most fun.  On the science day we did some experiments with dissolving things and mixing vinegar and baking soda to blow up a balloon.  On the cooking day, we made chocolate pudding with bananas and graham cracker crumbs.  Unit 3 also covered the rest of the alphabet and introduced phonics for /a/ and /b/, as well as handwriting.  Numbers through 10, ordinals, one-to-one correspondence, and patterns were included.

This has definitely been an adventure, but I'm so glad we chose this route.  I look forward to preschool time as much as Adeline does!  :)

            

Day 2

What a great day!!  Maybe it was the beautiful weather or maybe it was me getting more sleep and not being cranky, but the day just got off to a good start and continued that way.  Well, I didn't manage a shower - sorry to anyone I came into contact with! - but otherwise, it was a great day.  :)  Adeline shocked me this morning by rattling off the days of the week in the correct order.  I had no idea she knew that!  Makes me wonder what else she knows but isn't telling... We did some activities for "front" and "back", listened to a story to recall the details, created a school with hand-drawn pictures of the students (Adeline, Braxton, and Sadie - I helped Sadie out and drew hers), read some books, sang some songs, and started learning the Pledge of Allegiance for the American flag and the Christian flag.  Confession:  I'm having to learn the pledge for the Christian flag myself!  It's an educational experience for all!!  For a craft, Adeline helped decorate butterfly invitations for her upcoming birthday party.  I think that was her favorite part of the day.  :)

Even though we've packed more into today than we have in a long time (we also made a trip to the chiropractor for this mama and did a ridiculous amount of laundry b/c I've been slacking in that area), we've had much better behaviors and attitudes from everyone - me included!! - than I've seen in a long time.  Adeline and Braxton have even been playing together nicer today than in the past couple months.  I think they both needed/wanted/loved all my attention this morning.

This just might be doable...      

We're Off!

After deciding to go on an almost week-long family vacation in September, I realized that we could either have school on Saturday for the next 5 weeks or we could just start a week early and not worry about being behind.  So, even though the official start date was suppose to be Aug 30, it got moved to Aug 23.  Ahh, already I'm enjoying the flexibility of homeschool!

Here is our "classroom"

Bulletin board for art work - Thanks, Jessica, for the first craft!

Birthday Train and 100 Day Counting Line

Flags and Teaching Tree - Letters, colors and numbers get "hidden" in the tree.  We also put the day's weather in the sky.  Today we hung up a big sun.

We had a fun first day, although we didn't do a whole lot.  I showed Adeline around the "classroom," which is actually our spare room.  I've kept it locked so that the room would be a surprise on the first day.  We talked about the calendar - a new concept for her - and did some exercises with "up" and "down."  We also played a ball rolling game.  On your turn, you say "My name is _____ and I'm going to bounce/roll/throw/etc the ball to _______."  Adeline kept calling herself Mr. Adeline.  It was pretty funny.  I wasn't sure if she'd like the game or think it was boring, but we played and played.  Braxton got in on it, too.

We have a field trip to an orchard on Thursday.  We'll be going with friends.  Very excited!  For now, this mama is very tired, so it's off to bed.  I'm excited to really get going tomorrow.  I have lots of fun activities planned!  Stay tuned... :)

And we'll begin again

Take 2  :)

We decided to use curriculum from the Bob Jones University Press.  It arrived today and I LOVE IT!!  I'm so excited for this coming year.  Official start date is August 30th.  Until then, I have my work cut out for me getting prepared!

Suggestions for teaching preschool with a 4 year old, 2 year old, and 2 month old (their ages at start date) would be appreciated!  Or just prayers.  That would be great, too.

I'm back

Did you miss me?  :)  I knew this blogging thing would be short-lived.  Actually, Nathan has been insanely busy at work the past 6 weeks, which makes me insanely busy at home.  So I just haven't taken the time to update our blogs.  We're in survival mode!  I promised him I'd try to stay up until he got home tonight, though, so I'm passing time this way.

Here's where we're at.  I have a couple weeks of homeschool posts that I've started, but haven't finished and therefore haven't published.  I'm not sure whether or not I'll publish them at this point.  We made it to about Week 6 in this homeschool preschool thing when I just plain didn't have the energy to do it anymore.  And the time I use to spend planning (in the evening) was taken up with trying to be both mommy and daddy from sun up to sun down.  I'm still in that boat and very little in this schooling area is being accomplished.  I feel bad about it and somewhat of a failure.  Adeline asks all the time to do preschool.  We make small attempts, but nothing like before.  I think that's what makes me feel the worst - she wants to be doing the work, but I'm not doing my part.

I've started to get more concerned about trying to accomplish preschool at home after the baby arrives.  I'm starting to think I've lost my mind and that Adeline would be better off attending an actual preschool.  I did some calling around last week and came up with few results.  The two preschools in town that I like are both full, the other preschool in town is a joke.  A very nice preschool in a neighboring town has an opening, but only in the afternoon - which I refuse to interrupt nap time for the two little ones three days a week in the name of preschool.  There is one more preschool that finally called me back today, but of course I missed the call.  I'll try them again tomorrow, but I'm not sure how I feel about that school.  My mom assures me Adeline will be fine if absolutely nothing happens in terms of preschool.  I'm sure she would be, but again, she's so eager to learn that I feel we need to do something - whether it ends up being at a center or at home.  So that's where I'm at.  I'll update again when I have time, energy, and something to say.  :)

Week Three

The kitty, Kaetzchen, was a huge hit and really enhanced the cat theme this week.  It was nice to have a visual for the vocabulary word "claws."

So here is what we did this week:

Monday - For AWANA, we talked about Jesus feeding thousands with five loaves of bread and two fish.  We were suppose to have a meal of fish and bread, but that didn't happen.  (I put off going to the grocery store for too long.)  I introduced the cat theme and vocab word.  Adeline colored a picture of a kitty and gave it blue eyes to match her own eyes.  We ended the day with a St. Patrick's day craft.  Of course, I can't find the link now.  I gave Adeline a large shamrock, strips of green paper, scissors and glue.  She cut up the green paper and glued it on the shamrock.

Tuesday - We learned about the diamond shape.  That was pretty confusing for Adeline.  She was convinced it was a square, which it does resemble.  Not sure how to help her understand the difference.  We talked about the points on the diamond being at the top and bottom.  Adeline then practiced tracing diagonal lines.  She loved that and did a really good job.  We also read the book Come Along, Kitten.  Very cute story about a kitty who likes to explore.  It was perfect since Kaetzchen likes to explore during the day and Adeline gets very worried about him.

Wednesday - After the Wednesday flop last week, we decided to skip lessons on this day.  I figure by the time Adeline spends 2 hours at Bible study childcare, 1 hour at Story Time, and 1 1/2 hours at AWANA, she's done enough learning for the day!

Thursday -  We skipped lessons this day, too.  My reasons weren't great, but we had a salad and cookies to prepare for the WAIT training in the morning and the weather was so nice in the afternoon we headed outside.  Maybe we got some science in - when it gets warm, snow melts and turns into water.  Water mixes with dirt and becomes mud.  And mud is fun for splashing!  If nothing else, it was a healthy dose of nature and PE.  :)

Friday -  This was make-up day!  We "read" a beautiful book, Four Hungry Kittens.  It's a wordless book, so Adeline and I looked at the pictures together and talked about what was happening in the story. We read a kitten poem and sang a kitten song to the tune of London Bridge.  We then learned about the letter "C" and the number "3."  We also recited the poem "Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat."  For scissors practice, Adeline completed a cutting worksheet.  She thought that was fun and did a great job.  She also did a kitten craft.  That was plenty of time sitting in a chair, so we got up and danced to Three Little Kittens performed by The Wiggles.  Of course, you can't listen to just one Wiggles song, so we had a Wiggles dance party.  :)  We wrapped up the day with the National Geographic Kids video Hot Dogs and Cool Cats.  It was a little over Adeline's head, but she enjoyed watching the animals nonetheless.

I've been working on making file folder games this week in my "spare" time (haha!).  I got the first one from Childcare Land (under Free Printables) and the second one from File Folder Fun.  I have one more I'm in the process of making, but it isn't done yet.

And the week concludes...

We made it through Week 2!  Today was tough.  I was exhausted and Adeline only wanted to participate acting goofy.  Not a good combo.  It was one of those days were I started wondering what on earth I'm thinking.  I was ready to send her to preschool.  Right then.  But I calmed down and decided we'll have good days and bad days, just like with anything else.  So here is the positive that came out of the last couple of days.

On an exciting note, yesterday Adeline wrote her first "A" all by herself!  And it looked just like an "A"!!  We were visiting my grandmother and Adeline asked to write on a piece of paper.  She tried to make a "B" which looked more like a "T", then a few minutes later she said, "Mommy!  I made an A!"  And sure enough, she had!  I was so proud.  :)

I also saw some success when Adeline was watching a cartoon and saw a vine.  She pointed it out and asked if that was a vine like we were learning about this week.  I need those moments to keep chugging down this road.  Sometimes I wonder if she's just playing along to humor me, not really getting anything out of our lessons.  It was nice to see that something is sinking in!

Today we worked on the number 2, our nursery rhyme for the week, identifying living plants, and a lion craft.  Adeline always loves doing crafts.

She painted the paper plate yellow and brown.

Then colored the facial features while the paint dried.

Glued them on...

And Ta-Da!  A happy lion and a proud little girl.  She immediately wanted to show Daddy.

Our completed board for Week 2.  I don't know why it won't show up rotated.  Sorry!

I'm excited for next week.  The theme is kittens and it just happens that we are getting a new kitty tonight.  :)