The Days of the Week, Letter S

What a great week, Halloween frenzy hasn't quite taken over our lives (YET!) and school time was super fun for the girls!  

Magetic Pom Poms...these are a gem, I think I need to break them out more often, but then again...maybe they fun would wear off?!?!

Free-form S!  Lena decided to make her own S...S spells Success!

Spider Maze...Lena just recently got "it" and know she loves to figure mazes...she has fun bumping into dead ends and trying a new route...just like a man driving a car!

Number Practice...Connect the Dots...S is for Scarecrow!

Yes....more numbers...we're getting there!

Writing her name...we really need to work on this more:)   I always intend to have her practice on every page we do, but I always forget and ask her to do it after she completes a page...but really, who wants to do it after it's done.  I think she has a "I'm finished with that" attitude once we complete a page, so I can't blame her.  Mama needs to remember to make it a habit at the beginning.

Lots of watercolor painting recently, the only difference is that Lena is starting to want to paint it within the lines instead of spreading as many colors on the page.  So, while she enjoys making the end result still look like what the original intent was...I know there is value in letting her have free self-expression in her art.   She still does lots of blank page painting to enjoy, too!

Beginning letter sounds - this is fun and she getting much better at figuring them out the first time.

S workbook page, Lena's tracing skills are pretty darn good, but writing letters on her own is a struggle.

This princess loves the scissors - cutting out her vocab page for letter S.

Another workbook that she enjoys...

S vocab cards to put in our pockets for the binder.

Revisiting numbers...EUREKA!  She got them all correct by herself:)

Starfall.com

Reading her an words from Starfall!!  What fun!!

The Days of the Week, Letter C

Good Morning!  It's school time in the Virga house...

Shape Cards and Tracers...Lucy's does not have enough control over a marker to do the tracing cards but she loves identifying the shapes and colors with these cards!

Lena is working on her case matching cards, she can do the whole set with very little help now.  She needs more assistance getting the clip on than matching the letters:)

C is for coloring cats!

Case ID!

Starfall.com

The Days of the Week, Letter W

Blog-slacking...I am a bit behind on posting our weekly school time and that makes it even harder for me to post because I start to get overwhelmed with the amount that I want to add to this school journal!  But, alas...I am here - trying to catch up:)

Once October hit, we strayed a bit from our letter of the week focus and got more involved in fall crafts and activities, so you will see less alphabet work until after Christmas...when I plan to begin a pre-reading and sight word program with Lena.   Until then, we are lightening the school load while still continuing to focus on letter sounds and introducing some blends via starfall.com and our magnet board.  This works well right now because Lena is keen on figuring out the first letter of a word and is into rhyming words...which makes for fun car trips.

So, we start the week with Montessori at home...

Pouring salt from large pitcher to a small one

Lucianna's turn

Giving it a go with water!

Transferring, we used jelly dinosaurs (a huge hit) and egg tongs.

Who's this?  Lucy loves to name the color and type of dino (when this girl mamma knows it:)

Never fail BEAN TRAY FUN!  I picked up these trays in Target's dollar section and wish I had a few more.

W dotting!

Candy Corn Puzzles (see link to original idea) - both Lena & Lucianna enjoyed this, it's the closest we had to candy corn in our house this year:)   But, it was a great activity for putting the pieces in size order and had minimal prep.  I just cut the strips as we went!

Leaf Hunt = Leaf Book!  We took a walk with a big basket and collected tons of leaves; we didn't get very far because the girls picked up every leaf.  But, they had fun!  After letting the leaves dry a little bit (a day or two), we pressed them in contact paper and put together a leaf book.

W is for watermelon, Lucy loves using the pocket chart, it is one of the few school activities that holds her attention, probably we aren't sitting!  This time we were doing a coloring matching "game."

She did the whole set of colors...AND...

stayed to completed a set of shape matching, too!  Mommy was super excited.

Lena is really coming along with her numbers...she worked on her Watermelon seed counting and loved it.

W workbook page -  Lena can complete this with a fair amount of independence and shows pride when she's done, it always make me happy when she enjoys an activity & has a sense of accomplishment.

Cooking with Mom!

Making cards and spelling out family member's names....we have five family birthdays in the first two weeks of October!