Simple...But Busy Times!

Well, I wondered about whether I'd get to post very often here.  :-)  Obviously the answer is no, since the last post was a month ago.  I find that I don't get very many pictures of Mr. T. either but he surely seems to be enjoying our busy mornings.

 

Number Rings 

Have I shared the bead "bracelets"?  I know I did last year with the preschoolers but not sure if I did with T.  He loves these!  We've done them a few times.  I placed beads on pipe cleaners 0-10. He can move the beads to help him count correctly and then he places the corresponding number in the center.  He recognizes all the number 0-10.  However, he does place the numerals 01 for ten.  He doesn't count to 10 in the correct order consistently yet...but he's getting there!

 

Family Name Snowmen

Learning to cut circles.  I did try the glitter glue around shapes to help him with his cutting but he has enough strength in his hand that he cuts right through the glitter glue.  Oops!  He was so disgusted with himself.   Anyway, decided to just go back to plain paper with thicker lines and encourage him to turn the paper not his scissors.  Teaching him how to cut is trickier than it was for the other children. He's a left-y...I'm a right-y.  Same for writing.  Been quite interesting!  He really did enjoy this activity.  We did a name every day. 
 

 

Go Fishing

T. is actually picking up letters and their sounds just by listening to the other children (mainly me with the first grader).  Heaven help us but he even is starting to grasp finger stretching words to hear the different sounds.  So, I decided it's probably time to start doing a little more "formal" activities.  I first thought I'd do the order of learning how to read but then switched to the order of writing them because he's interested in writing letters also.  Rather have him learn letter formation correctly.  So, we went to F this week.  HWT's order.  Though we did a bit with building the letter...we focused a lot of the sound it makes.  One of the very simple activities he loved (we actually did it multiple times) is to "go fishing".  Yarn with a magnet at the end and fish shapes with a paper clip on them.  An oldie but goodie activity.  I've done this activity for years and every child loves it.  Anyway, I found these lovely F fish at Ms. Carlie's Little Learners.  Each fish has a picture that begins with /f/.  And since another thing T. is picking up on his own is patterns (notice the snowman hats in the above activity) I encouraged him to set the fish in an abab pattern on the table in front of him.  He doesn't know what I mean when I say "well, what would come next?" but that's okay.  I got a laugh out of it.  He looks at me with his nose wrinkled and then down at the tray on the floor and tells me, "none-zero-I don't have any left."  !!!!  Love it! 
 

If T. could do numbers and letters only for "school" he'd be quite happy.  :-)  Actually, it's probably because that is what he witnesses the most...especially with the 1st grader.  Language Arts and Math take up most of the day.  He's usually sleeping when we work on the 1st graders other subjects.  The tactile numbers he placed on top of a number line that I created in PrintShop using animals in the form of numbers.  Mini erasers are great counters!  Check Oriental trading for a large selection.

Another very simple but pleasing activity for T.  Taking a deck of cards and sorting.  What I liked was I was able to reinforce the difference between a letter and a number.  He'll tell you to "count" with any numbers he sees and he'll tell you to "read" with letters but he still interchanges the words when he's talking about them.  Definitely normal for a 3 year old.  No concerns...but I'm always looking for ways to slip that concept in.  :-)
 

What a kid!  He's quite the loud mouth which causes some problems during the morning but he surely makes us all smile.  I hear my 7 year old say a lot "He's got a big vocabulary!"  (C.'s all into vocabulary right now because he does "vocabulary" every day.  I was just thinking...the other day my husband was trying to figure out why we can do online vocabulary on a particular computer so he was going through a lesson.  He said...these words don't have anything to do with each other...they seem random."  At the time I thought "Whatever, he's learning because I hear the new vocab in his talk."  But now that I'm thinking about it...even though Vocabulary seems random...it's not...because it's pulling in words from all the subjects that he's working on at the time.  Interesting.  Ha!  This is the preschool blog.  Well, guess that should have went over on the Schooling At Home blog. Oh well, that's the way it goes...everything is intermingled in my brain.  :-P)  Back to "big vocabulary".  T. does.  It is so neat to listen to him.  One benefit with being with older kids day in and day out. :-) 

Had a few more pictures to share but my card reader decided not to work, once again.  Odd how it randomly decides not to read the card.  Anyhow...all for now. Hoping that you are having lovely days.