The Days of the Week, Letter A

A is for apple!  We had a great week packed with lots of crafts and learning.  Lucy participated in many activities this week and is starting to show more patience for school time...this week.

Letter A watercolor paintings - a very cool idea I found on Pinterest that the girls met with huge Approval!

Sound Off...the A says "aahh" and "A"

Though she was once a breastfed baby, Lucy is a sucker for the glue bottle.  She is working hard on our A is for Apple craft.  Moms all know that pom poms require a lot of glue...so squeeze baby squeeze!

 

Playdough mats and glass beads...Lena gave the mat to Lucy and made her capital and lowercase A freeform (with a wee bit of help).

  

Our work wall!
   

 Lena loved working on this cut & paste page.  It was one of those show Daddy the second he steps in the door items - Look at my toy soldiers DAD!

Finally added our pocket pages to Lena's binder so she can slip her vocab cards into the pockets when we are done reviewing them.

I downloaded a new Letter of the Week program  to add some variety to our routine.  This is a case matching set from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Another set from the new download, a counting activity with number cards.  Lena really liked this and starting to pick up more and more numbers.

Lucy loved peeling apart our  set of color cards and identifying each object.

Another new activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week program...a simple pattern activity.

Lena and I loved completing this RRSP activity together - it was quite simply a list of the ways to act like Jesus contrasting with actions that are nice. We spent a lot of time talking about each word as she figured out which side of her chart to glue it.

RRSP - handwriting practice - Lena has mastered tracing the strokes of most letters but she is still developing the fine motor control to write her name independently.  She does attempt to write it but she likes to get a little goofy with the letters as soon as she loses control without the guidance of letters to trace.

The Days of the Week, Letter N

We had a shortened school week - fall cold season has crept into our house already.  But, once healthy we started back to some simple oldies but goodies.

Our Leapfrog letter sounds - Lucy introduces the letter of the week for us!

Tracing big letters on our letter mat.

Lucy's shapes

One of our new additions this week and definitely a favorite.  N is for nest size sorting - Lena cut, arranged and glued the cards all by herself and boy, was she proud! 

Review workbook - letter L (for Lena, of course).  We have two alphabet workbooks that we have been utilizing and she is really enjoying them this year.  Whenever I pull them out and give her a choice of activities, these seem to take the cake.  

COUNTING!

Fall Kids Crafts

In addition to our letter of the week activities, we have been busy trying out a lot of fall crafts and cooking.  Check out my Autumn Pinterest Board for lots of little kid crafts and treats.

Autumn Pin Board

Happy Harvest!

The Days of the Week, Letter E

School time continued this week with lots of fun new ideas and plenty of old ones!  They even had a new teacher for one day - Daddy.  Some mornings, we just don't get to school time for one reason or another but this afternoon, I was headed out and got daddy prepared with some simple activities.  He helped the girls with magnetic pom-pom letters and dot marker pages.  Even though this is way out of his comfort zone, he jumped right in and accomplished a lot while getting to share in the joy of the girls having fun with their school time activities.

 Lucy works with the pom-poms for letter E.

Lena chose to use stamps for her E worksheet instead of  dot markers - what a cute idea!

E is for elephant!

Coloring the eggs - Lena really loves these pages from 1+1+1=1 TSP.

At the easel, just having some fun this time.

H is for Hop On One Foot!  When Lena asks Daddy to play Exercise ABC's..."NO" is not in his vocabulary!

 

 Teach Mama's Exercise ABC Cards are a huge hit with both girls.   Lena can get through the entire set in one go but Lucianna only has the attention for about half of the letters, then she typically wanders away and comes back for another letter when it's a really fun one:)

Both girls working together to put their vocab cards into our pocket chart.

Numbers are still eluding Lena - she has developed the skill of one to one correspondence and does a near perfect job of counting to 20 but she is struggling to identify numbers, so we contine to work on numbers.  This was a fun activity with number cards from 1+1+1=1.  She arranged the numbers in order then I gave her the counter cards in random order so she could count and match them.

The star pointer always draws her back in when she is starting to stray - it's like handing over control and she loves that:)

Building letter E with mini foam blocks

Lucy is so proud that she did it!!!

Lena loves the Starfall website and we have been working on honing her mouse skills with both the laptop touch pad and a traditional mouse.

Playdough mats & fingerprints for letter E.

Tracing letter E from RRSP from 1+1+1=1.  I have noticed an improvement in Lena's ability to form the correct strokes and she has been more interested in writing/tracing letters lately.

A new learning toy arrived this week - spelling puzzle from Melissa & Doug - both girls are into this one!