U is for Umbrella

Wasn't planning on blogging today because of time constraints but was made proud today by the writing of the oldest student and so "just had to" share.  ;-P

 

The scissors activity today was from The Letter of the Week Curriculum from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com.  Cut and paste umbrella.  Gluing it on a larger paper allows for room for drawing.  Typically I take dictation after they are drawing but today, on a whim, I pulled out a piece of "kindergarten" paper for K. and handed her a black pencil and said, "Here you go, write me your story."  In the past, she would just look at me blankly and we didn't have much success.  Today, she looked at me blankly for only a moment until she started out, "Once upon a time."  /w/ /w/ /w/ W!  Okay...big smiles here!  I did help out by emphasizing the sounds in the word she was at but did not correct her or tell her about any typical spelling rules/conventions.  She automatically put her finger after the word when she started into the next word.  This is something we've worked on with many other activities.  Cool!  Here's a little closer up...kind of hard to see since she used pencil.

"WUNS UPON A TiM Kenzie WUS WalKe.  ThAN IT STRTD rANe.

Translation:  Once upon a time, Kenzie was walking.  Then it started raining.

Isn't that exciting?!  Phonetic spelling, spaces between words, some lower case letters being written.  Definitely not as long of a story as what I'd get if she was dictating and I was writing but such a leap in the right direction!  We will definitely be spending more time on this path!

And a smile for the younger student also because he wanted the same paper and wrote IT down and told me, "See, I wrote I because I was walking to the store and it started raining."  So definitely in the right direction there for him as well!  One benefit of a mixed age group.  They learn from observing the other.

And while I'm here I'll remind you all of an activity I've posted about before here-phonological awareness.  ALWAYS a favorite. Typically we use a real umbrella with the rain drops inside and we sing "Rain Rain Go Away" and at the end the child flips the umbrella up and they all "rain" down.  Then we work with the raindrops and repeat as interest holds.

Today I had forgotten to grab an umbrella (actually not sure where one is at the moment) so we did it with a blanket parachute.  Not enough kids to use the regular parachute.   They worked together to put the numbers on the raindrops in order.  We did by 1s as an intro because they well know how to do that.  Then we also did by 10s, well K. started it out and H. got the pattern really quick!  Then I introduced counting by 5s.  I did pull our coins back out and talked about pennies, nickles, dimes and showed them briefly quarters (25, 50, 75, 100) but didn't spend too much time on that quarter.

We got quite a bit done today...a very profitable morning.  Wish I had time to share more.  Perhaps another day.  Have a good week!

April Showers Theme

It's never too early to explore with any type of concept.  It will definitely set the foundation for future learning if they are too young to grasp the concept.  One benefit for having a mixed age group is that children listen in and explore with concepts long before they are "ready" too and if they are older but still don't grasp it...then they'll get it the next go around.  The problem comes in when we, as adults, expect the children to grasp and show understanding of a concept before they are ready.  I see that often with well-meaning parents trying to teach their children academics at two years old.  Just like we develop physically from trunk to extremities...we also learn things in an order, cognitively, and it all must build upon each other.  So, if a parent is thinking their child is "smart" and wants them to write their letters of the alphabet "because their know their abc's" that parent is actually pushing the child in a way that is going to cause frustration which can cause issues with attitude toward "school" later.  More likely than not, the 2 year old can sing the abc song.  Yes, that has it's place...but that is not the same as knowing the letters and sounds out of place.  Also, at two, they are not physically ready to write.  There needs to be so much more fine motor work done prior to expecting a child to pick up a pencil and write their name.  But it just come from the lack of knowledge of child development coupled with wanting "what's best for their child". 

Okay...not sure why I felt I needed to mention that...but maybe because one of our activities today would have been seemingly "too advanced" for my students.  We actually worked with word families today.  But that's Kindergarten work!  Well, perhaps, in a traditional school setting.  But I'm not all that traditional.  :-)  My goal is to help each student, individually, take a step forward from where they are at.  Actually, I would say that both the 4 and 5 year old are probably more advanced then what they expect of the K students upon enrollment, at least in our area.  But so be it.  Why hold them back?  Go with the flow of their development.   Anyway, after a child can hear and make their own rhymes and are also showing letter recognition, I like to take it a step further and introduce word families.  They noticed right away that the words we were working with rhyme.  Yeah!  And the oldest student noticed that the word had the same letters at the end of the word.  Yeah, again!  There in lies the key difference between word families and rhyming words.  Rhyming words use the sound at the end of the word and word families have the same sound and the same letters at the end.  For example:  bear and chair rhyme but they are not in the same word family because they have the different ending letters.  All four older children did this activity today.  Definitely exploration for the 3 and 4 year old but it's stretched the brains of the two 5 year olds, especially the one that has been with me since a baby. 

You can't really see it well but some of the raindrops have -ot word family pictures, dot, spot, cot, hot, tot, pot.  I wrote the word so that the ending sound was in a different color then the remainder of the word.  For the younger ones, they'll use the activity for rhyming reinforcement but the older ones will begin to build on what it means to have the same letters at the end of the word.  Each child did a different ending and we'll keep them all posted for a bit.  Extras:  half of a circle is a semi-circle; crayon-water color resist as an art technique; counting raindrops; noting that sometimes a handle on an umbrella is the same shape as the letter J. 

Okay...my wall is more than a drying rack (previous blog).  :-P

It's a work space also.  It's beneficial for children to work standing up and it's nice for me not to have to help each child up into the booster seat at the table each time they go to a new "work".  :-)  Activities like this work well at a wall.  There were actually two more clouds off to the left. I spread it across the whole wall to keep it less cluttered.  I taped the clouds on the wall and placed the raindrops on the wall in two columns with sticky tack.  Sticky tack works very well for activities that require moving pictures.   The children looked at the picture on the raindrop and placed it under the cloud with the same beginning sound.  This activity is a printable from www.kidssoup.com

Rainbow Painting

I did encourage stripes because I wanted them to get the effect of the project.  So that put it's down a bit on the art scale.  :-)  The younger ones tend to use every color that you provide.  The older ones tend to come up with their own idea.  That's what we want to strive for.  The craft scissors were difficult for the three year old to use and even the four year old, but she got it.  I wonder if they have child size craft scissors.  Hmmm, will have to look into that! You could do the same idea but with regular scissors.

Tomorrow is Free Friday.  I don't plan specific activities for this day.  Sometimes we finish up projects or doing baking/cooking.  We'll just see how the day goes.  Perhaps it will be really nice outside :-P and we'll spend the majority of it outdoors.  Wishful thinking, I know!  Hope you all have had a great day!

April Showers Bring May Flowers

These next two weeks will be with that thought in mind..."April showers bring may flowers".  We've already done "weather" but we'll focus more on rain and finish up our rainbow projects we didn't get done previously.  And then next week we'll start into flowers.  I love "flowers" theme.  There is SO much that can be done! 

Going through the tubs and here's a few past projects/activities we've done.

Five Umbrellas.  I went ahead and popped them on the fridge since the children love magnets at the fridge.  In the picture, Trent is pointing to the words in the song (posted for my benefit) and saying "e, e, e!"  :-P  Reminder that little fingerplays and songs like these are great for beginning subtraction, counting and, in this case, color recognition and naming.

Five Umbrellas

Five umbrellas stood by the door,

The red one went outside, then there were four.

Four umbrellas, pretty as could be,

The blue one went outside, then there were three.

Three umbrellas with nothing to do,

The green one went outside, then there were two.

Two umbrellas, not having much fun,

The yellow one went outside, then there was one.

Just one umbrella alone in the hall.

The purple one went outside and that was all!

Side note:  It really doesn't matter what order the colors are said in.  And we don't really want to teach it in a specific order, so mix it up when you are saying it with them.  That way they will be much more comfortable "retelling" the story on their own and that is the goal, at least for my older ones! When I see them working with this type of display on their own, I can see exactly what they have learned.  These umbrellas were made out of craft foam and pipe cleaners with self-adhesive magnet strip on the back.

If All The Raindrops...

Remember that song?  If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops...oh what a rain it would be.  I'd stand outside with my mouth opened wide, singing "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah".  The year we did this the kids were so into that 'ah-ah-ah' so I decided to incorporate a little literacy lesson. I only suggest this if you are doing it for your own children or for a small group.  It was simple but a little time consuming on my part.  The children did color mixing in an ice cube tray and the dropped the colored water onto a coffee filter semicircle.  Then they chose their pipe cleaner color for the handle.  The bottom part was a little book and I used each letter of their name with corresponding beginning sound food items.  So Aaron's first page stated,

"If all the raindrops were apples and apricots, oh what a rain it would be..." and instead of "ah-ah-ah..." we changed it to the upper and lower case letter (Aa) we focused on that page and said the sound of that letter.  Caleb's first page was

"If all the raindrops were candy and cantaloupe, oh what a rain it would be..." and then "Cc, Cc, Cc, Cc..."  Then I went through each letter in their name.

Tall Tulips

This was probably a Mailbox idea.  Simple activity, great for fine motor.  The children chose their colors of precut triangles, as many as they wanted, to fold into tulips and glue at the top of the paper.  Then they drew tall stems and wrote Ws at the bottom for leaves. 

Violets in a Vase

Again, most likely an idea from The Mailbox.  The one on the left is obviously an adult made one.  Do I show examples to children? Not usually-especially not with art projects, but in this regard, they needed an idea of what I meant.  So I did and then I put it away.  This is a fine motor/scissors activity.  First they ripped lavender and violet paper, done in a previous session.  Then they cut out the vase and decorated it with Vs.  They showed me where they wanted their violets and how many and I traced a circle for them to help them to keep the paper in one area (in order to actually make a violet).  Then they glued their vase and ripped paper on.  Finally, to complete the project, they took a green crayon and made a stem from the flower to the vase, hard to see that in the right picture.

Here the child sorted the foam circles onto their flower pots.  For a younger child, have only one pot and provide only the colors they need.  For an older child, sort with more colors and then we compare the two pots. 

We talked about

*  similarities/differences

*  how many of each color. 

*  If the colors are in two sections (like the 2 pink centers and 4 pink circles on the flower pot) then we added them together. 

*  They also use prediction.  For example, if the blue flower pot had 5 blue foamies across the top.  How many orange foamies do you think there are on the orange flower pot?  Then, of course, we use the term "equal". 

*  We also talked about odd and even and set the foamies out in a line and counted by twos to see if there was an "odd one out".  There's a lot to do with something that looks so simple! 

Note: I'm not sure where I printed these from.  It's unusual for the website not to be on the pages somewhere!  If anyone knows what site these came from, please let me know so I can provide the link and give it proper ownership.  Thanks!