What We're Doing Wednesday

Another Wednesday. It seems this past week and a half Annabelle has lost some interest in schooling, because of this I have been taking it slow and trying to only do activities that are of interest at the moment. I do not want to force school on her this year (for preK). I want it to be fun and full of good memories. So yes, I do let her determine a lot of what we do. However, I do make her finish the things that she has started, and I do stick to an order. If she doesn't want to do what is next in her box order than she is done until she feels like completing it. Some may not agree with this method, but I think that it will help her when we get into more formal schooling next year (when she won't get the option of doing school whenever she feels like it). Alright, onto the pictures....

Annabelle and Asa both seem to love hanging things on the windows, and we just happened to be doing it on Wednesday again. Here they are hanging frogs on the fence.



The highlight of the day was learning that red and yellow make orange. Annabelle thought it was really neat to see this.

Both my kids dislike getting their hands too dirty....so the dainty one finger painting was all I got. lol Not to mention they both asked for something to wipe on!

We did our dot painting. They both love this (however, Asa was throwing a tantrum at this particular moment in time....yes, we have tons of those right now). These are just bingo markers. I'm really excited because I ordered these for their stockings. They are going to love having more than 3 colors to choose from! For Annabelle: http://www.amazon.com/Do---Dot-Art-Brilliant-set/dp/B00004W3Y5/ref=sr_1_2?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1288200948&sr=1-2

For Asa: http://www.amazon.com/Do---Dot-Rainbow-Art-Set/dp/B00004W3Y4/ref=sr_1_7?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1288200948&sr=1-7

This is Silas' new favorite activity. He loves to color! This is the first time that he was in his booster seat to do it. He didn't like that and was confused and suddenly thought that he should be eating the crayons (and the fingerpaint). lol :) So I removed him from the chair and placed him back on the floor. He was much happier with that.

Asa really wanted to color this fish worksheet. I didn't plan on doing this until tomorrow, but he wanted to do it so badly and his whole morning seemed to be so rough for him I just wanted to see him smile....and this did it for him. If only it was always that easy!

So just so you don't think that my days run smoothly or that we are perfect here is what Asa did the most this morning.....and it was loud and irritating! Still haven't figured out what his issue is today. Needless to say I put him down for a nap early. Plus, I don't have to watch him tonight...he is going to a good friend's house while I go and teach at church. He always appreciates his one on one time with these great people!

And just because I can't leave off on that sad picture he did manage a few good smiles this morning....this is when I told him he could color the fish picture.

So that was our day. Didn't get everything that I wanted to done, but just going with the flow. Praying tomorrow will go better as today was truly frustrating. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Sneak Peek Week 13: Pumpkins, Fish/Frogs, Jesus Loves Me

This is the perfect week to be able to make up for last week. Although we have a great week planned it is basically reviewing a lot of what was already done through the month. I'm also hoping to be able to do more organizing in my 'school storage' area in the basement. Right now it just looks like someone threw a whole bunch of random preschool items, arts and crafts paraphernalia, baskets and papers in a big pile (mostly that's because someone did throw all of those things in a big pile). lol

I'm excited this week to present the Jesus Loves Me lesson. This phrase is said in our house almost daily (Jesus loves you very much). So we will be talking about that, and also how to pray. We've been talking a lot during discipline lately how we can pray and ask God to help us be good even before we do something naughty and how He can change our attitudes if we ask Him too. I think that these lessons will help her put that into practice. This last week I have really seen an improvement in her behavior and that is truly exciting!

Ok. So pumpkins and fall are the theme of our week. Lots of great things to do with this theme. I hope to do a couple nature walks and collect some leaves. We will also be painting pumpkins, and doing a fun color mixing activity with red and yellow fingerpaint. The picture below is full of fun games that I still need to cut and laminate today/tonight. From the top left going clockwise: Leaf patterning activity, Roll a Fall Tree (just like last week's roll a barn game....which was a big hit, especially since they got to play with the big dice), and measuring pumpkin vines. These printables can be found here: http://www.2teachingmommies.com/p/unit-studies.html
underneath the unit studies of Pumpkins and Fall.

I saw these Candy Corn games on a blog and knew that I had to print them out and do them. We've already done a couple (there is a graphing one too not pictured) and they were a huge hit with Annabelle and Asa. Silas really enjoyed the candy as well. :) There is a Candy Corn sort, Grid game, Patterning, and Graphing activity. They can all be printed from here: http://prncsstefy.blogspot.com/p/my-printables.html Scroll down the page until you see the Misc. heading and it is the link called Candy Corn Math Games. Also explore her blog. Tons of fun things on there!

Learning more about the letter Ff this week. We've been having a lot of fun with all of the farm things. Time to move on to some other Ff words. These are the fish games that I still have to cut out and laminate. The top one is a fish shadow match game, then the fish builders game (you have to use fish to make the same design as the fish in the picture), and fish measuring (we will be measuring them with goldfish crackers). These printables can be found here: http://lovemylifex4.blogspot.com/p/printables.html

and here: http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2009/11/prek-letter-f.html

Lastly something that I created using posterboard, glue sticks, a sharpie, and graphics from Microsoft Word (and apparently an ink cartridge that was running low...). Just a little movement game where the kids pretend to hop like frogs from lilypad to lilypad. We played this last night and they really had a blast, especially when mommy and daddy joined in! It's amazing how much more my kids enjoy an activity when parental participation

happens. So don't be afraid to look silly and play with your kids! I guarantee that I was the coolest frog on the block. Well, I will be back tomorrow with the What We're Doing Wednesday post. If your in the Michigan region like I am enjoy the gloomy fall rain we're having. Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Week 12 in Review

So I was looking back at the pictures taken this week and realized that the most of the ones that I had I already posted on Wednesday! Then I thought, "Why is this?" -- Yes, I do talk to myself quite often... :) Then I remembered that Wednesday was the only day this week that I had 3 healthy children and a healthy mommy! One of us was sick on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week!! Crazy little bug going around must be. Well, all that aside today we are healthy and ready to seize this next week and accomplish everything that we weren't able to this last week.

We didn't do much of the planned activities because of the previously mentioned sickness. So we improvised most of the week with whoever was feeling good at the time.

This is the same Melissa and Doug farm magnet that Silas is pictured playing with on Wednesday. This was by far the favorite activity of his for the week. Then he figured out that you can stick them on the fridge too....oh man, he had a ball with them! Here he is with Annabelle showing him where the animals should go.

Annabelle had a good time building 'pony houses'. This house had a kitchen, living room, and bedroom....I really hope they're all housebroken. lol Daddy had a good time helping too. He was supposed to build exactly what Annabelle was building. She ended up having to build both sides because he wasn't meeting her standards. However, he did come up with a couple good ideas (at least that's what she let him believe). :)
Enjoying the fruits of their labor. All the ponies are nestled into their house. I'm sure they will be completely comfortable.

Sadly, that is all I have! I will be posting either tomorrow or Tuesday. I hope to catch up on a few things that we missed this last week tomorrow before we dive into this weeks theme. My hubby is making me a wonderful grilled club sandwich....so I'm off to enjoy that and a wonderful glass of diet Pepsi and relaxing this wonderful Sunday afternoon before heading back to church tonight. Enjoy the rest of your hopefully relaxing day as well! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

What We're Doing Wednesday

Another Wednesday is here. These posts are easy for me to get up in time. Here is what we did today.....

Decorated our window. I really can't remember if I found these farm window clings at Target or the Dollar Tree, but they're cute and the kids had fun hanging them. Silas keeps pointing at them and asking, "What's that one?"....well, not that clearly, but I'm his mommy, I'm supposed to know what he is saying.

Sorry for the darkness...there was too much light outside to get the flash to come on....
I'm really surprised at how much they like to stick things on the window. I try to do it a couple times a month. Asa was making the animal noises in this picture.

First they colored the pigs (Asa's is multicolored), then we painted brown mud on them. I really wanted to let them fingerpaint on them with chocolate pudding, but it must have slipped my mind while grocery shopping. There was no chocolate pudding to be found in the pantry. Oh well they still had fun. There is no finished picture. The finished product looks like the whole paper had been dipped in a mud puddle.

Fisher Price farm floor puzzle that I found at a Goodwill. Can't beat that!

Working on the vegetable gardens. Asa really liked this. He said, "This is really fun! I like making veggiebals!" Too bad you don't like to eat veggiebals Asa. They both did separate versions of this game. Asa just matched the vegetables in the right rows. I had Annabelle put hers into numerical order within the appropriate rows.

Sad, this is the only shot of Silas I was able to get this morning. He really likes these Melissa and Doug farm magnets (this came in a package with ocean and jungle magnets/scenes too). I have to take his pictures stealthily because the second he sees a camera he stands up and tries to grab it. So I didn't get any pictures of his cute little face today.

That was our Wednesday. Right now everyone is napping....Hallelujah! So I'm going to go enjoy some food and an episode or two of Clean House season 7 (new to Netflix)....I am a sucker for silly shows like this. Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Sneak Peek Week 12: Parable of the Sower, Farm

Ok. So officially for the next few weeks I will be doing school from Tuesday until Saturday. I have obviously found it to be difficult to post on Saturday and Sunday. So I'm going to experiment. I will continue to do Wednesday. That has been fun. I will also continue the Week in Review on Saturday. I am going to try doing the Sneak Peek on Monday, but it will definitely be up by Tuesday. I think that Sunday is so busy that in the afternoon between church services all I want to do is relax with Zak. Monday is difficult as well because I use that day to recover my house from the weekend. So we will see how this works!

We have a very fun week planned with lots of fun crafts. We will be introducing the letter Ff and talking about farms a lot. Our Bible lesson for the week also fits the farm theme. We will be talking about the parable of the sower. I hope to have some good conversation with Annabelle on this. It will most likely be spur of the moment because I don't have a whole lot planned specifically to enhance the lesson. I was going to be checking out Hubbards Cupboard today to see if there were any supplemental activities on that site. So onto the rest of the activities. So many things you can do with this theme, it's had to choose!

This is a picture of our farm activities for the week. Starting at the top left and going around clockwise. Roll a barn is a fun game that we are going to do with our big dice that we got in the Target dollar bins. It is played just like the game Cooties....only you're trying to build a barn instead of a cootie. Then there are farm animal coloring books. Next is a game called How Many Spots. I plan on using black or brown pom poms for the spots. You play by drawing a number card and placing that many spots on the cow. Simple enough right? Then we have a farm animal matching game. I am also going to see how Annabelle does at playing memory with them. Also we have a heads and tails matching game. This is fun because Annabelle and Asa can be silly with these too and make funny animals. Last but not least is a barn puzzle. I actually printed out two of these pages, cut one into squares and I'm going to have Annabelle paste them onto the picture. Thought that would be more interesting for her than a paper puzzle....plus she loves to use glue sticks. :) All of these printouts can be found here: http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/FarmTotBook.html

and here:

http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2010/09/farm.html

A vegetable garden that reinforces counting to five. I made this activity myself using clipart. It took a lot of time, but I really like how it turned out. The veggies are all numbered, as well as the spot they are to be planted in. They are also all have velcro on them so they don't slide around on the posterboard. I hope that this helps Annabelle with her counting skills.

We don't want to forget about the letter Ee during farm week so I made this cute egg counting activity. This also took some time to create, but again I like how it turned out. Annabelle just needs to stick the corresponding amount of eggs on the hens.

To help introduce the letter Ff we will be using frogs as well. This game I got off of this website: http://folderfun.ning.com/ It is technically a file folder game, but will be just fine without the folder I think. It is slightly more challenging in that there are two colors to match, not just one. Sorry about the dark picture. It really is more cute than what it looks like in this picture.

Here is another game that I made. Although it is not an original idea. I plan to spruce it up a little more too eventually. I would like to get more fry cartons and more 'fries' either roll the dice to find out how many fries to put into a carton, or write numbers on the cartons and put the corresponding amount of fries in it. I really love the dice I've found....can you tell. I think that it is because it reinforces counting by making Annabelle count the dots and then count again the corresponding amount of 'things' (in this instance fries) that she is supposed to put somewhere. I guess that I just like that it makes her count twice and she doesn't even know that it isn't all that fun. lol Wow, that was kind of rambling, and made little to no sense. Welcome to my mind. :)

That is it for pictures. In addition to all of these things I got out our Little People farm, our farm animal beanie babies, farm themed books and puzzles, and even fun Melissa and Doug farm scene magnets. Should be a great week! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Week 11 in Review

The Eric Carle/Tower of Babel week was a success! The kids really enjoyed playing with the blocks, and there are so many fun things to do with the Eric Carle books. This post is picture heavy, so I will just get to it.

On Tuesday we read the Little Cloud. What more fun could we have than playing with clouds (shaving cream). We've done this before just on the bare table, but it is kind of a pain to clean up. Being older and wiser this time we contained it to cookie sheets. They still had a blast even with the boundaries in place. lol Here are Annabelle and Asa getting as messy as possible.

We also had a new activity in our workboxes this week. They had to put stickers around the outlines of the shapes on the paper. They both enjoy stickers, but there were too many shapes. Annabelle only had the gumption to complete two. I will definitely do this again, but will use a sheet with fewer shapes on it. This idea I got from the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog.

Asa had a good time matching the Big Es and the little es (he calls them the mommy Es and the baby es)

Annabelle is improving in her counting skills. I've been focusing on this a lot the past week and a half. In this picture she is playing on of the elephant counting games. She is giving the correct amount of peanuts to the elephants (the numbers are on the elephants). To top it all off she is making an incredibly goofy face. I wanted to start posting pictures of them looking at the camera and smiling, but this is as good as it gets folks. :)

The really funny thing about this goofy, smile face is that her daddy has several pictures of when he was a little guy smiling just like this. Teeth are a beautiful thing....wish she would show them off! :D The kiddos made spiders with their play-doh this week. We read The Busy Spider to go with this and the next activity. Annabelle's spider turned out really cute.....

Asa's spider.....well lets just say that this little guys gene pool must be pretty screwed up. That's a lot of legs!

This is the second activity that went with The Busy Spider book (which, by the way, is a really cute book if you haven't read it). Zak and I made this giant spider web out of yarn after the kids went to bed (didn't take long....maybe 20 min.), and they woke up to it this morning. Asa said, "Mommy....the living room is all tangled up!" What a funny little man that one is. Annabelle and Asa really enjoyed exploring in this and were pretending that a spider was chasing them. Silas hated it. He really doesn't have the mobility skills to move through it yet. lol

Running from the spider.

Getting something tangled up in the web.

Just a funny picture of Silas and me. This is his indecisive face. He can't decide whether he's happy or ready to freak out.

That is it for this week in review. We have a pretty fun theme lined up for next week. Make sure to stop back sometime tomorrow and get the sneak peek. Happy blogging!

jess_hak

What We're Doing Wednesday

Wednesday.....Wednesday.....that's all I have to say. lol

Today our Eric Carle story is the classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Here Annabelle is graphing the foods in the story as I read them. This cute printable and other caterpillar printables can be found here:
http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2009/10/prek-letter-c.html
Then we did a couple of art projects with our hands. This one is for the handprint caterpillar.
Here are the finished caterpillars. The top is Asa's the bottom is Annabelle's. Annabelle also made a butterfly with her hands for the wings. Then she blinged it out...so funny.

Asa did some color sorting today. He is trying not to smile in this picture....stinker. When I took this he was picking out a red square that he stuck in with the green ones. He noticed! Which is encouraging.

Silas had fun playing with the foam circles. He likes to dump them out and then put them back into the boxes/baskets.

That was our Wednesday. Right now the Hungry Caterpillar movie is playing and they are munching on popcorn. Good day...good times. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Sneak Peek Week 11: Tower of Babel, Elephants, Eric Carle

I know. I know it's Tuesday. We didn't get a good start to the week due to my printer being out of ink and I had to wait until I could go get some to prepare the rest of the things that I needed to do this week. I have a real hard time skipping things and doing next week's lessons this week and this week's lessons next week. Call me crazy...or anal. :) We actually really enjoyed doing school on Saturday with daddy home last week, so that is what the plan is again this week. I will return to the normal blog schedule after this post.

Before I go to the regular program I just want to share some exciting news with you. After 7 lllloooonnnnngggg months of searching, praying, and trusting God, Zak has finally found a job closer to home! We are very thankful for God's faithfulness and are excited to finally get things back to normal around here! Ok, onto the sneak peek.

This week our Bible lessons are going to be focusing on the Tower of Babel. There probably aren't too many lessons that a preschooler can glean from this, but it brings so many different building activities to the table I couldn't resist it. The obvious lesson for adults is that God wants us to worship Him and trust Him. The only way to the Father is through Christ (or in the OT through sacrifice) not by anything that man can do or build. People at this time stopped relying on God and started relying on themselves. That is pretty intangible for a preschooler, but Annabelle might surprise me. Either way it is always good for knowledge of the Bible to be given. She will be familiar with the passage and we can build on that in future years.

So in this picture you can see some of our building items....which are at this moment being played with (and scattered all over the living room...what a mess! lol) I also bought some frosting along with some giant and big marshmallows. We should have a good time trying to build an edible tower. There are also some great printouts at Henny Penny to go along with this lesson.
Our reading this week is going to be focusing on books illustrated by Eric Carle. Sidenote: Did you know that these weren't written by him, just illustrated. The poor authors that really wrote these books are totally overlooked! End side note. I hadn't had a chance to run to the library at the time of these pictures so not all the books are in here. We are doing a different book everyday with a fun craft to go with it. These books are a lot of fun and the ideas are endless with them. Plus, kids love these books!

Lo and behold what took me until 2am to finish last night in order to be prepared for today.....the elephant activities. We have large floor numbers. I plan on using our big dice for this to find what number that Annabelle is supposed to find and stand on. It will also help with her counting that she is having so much difficulty with. Poor girl.

Here are the rest of the E/elephant activities. Clockwise starting on top left: Elephant size sorting, Counting (placing the correct amount of peanuts on the elephants), Big E, Little e matching, and Big E, Little e color match. All of these can be found here: http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2010/04/prek-letter-e.html

and here:

http://lovemylifex4.blogspot.com/2009/08/alphabet-fun-letter-e.html

There is the sneak peek. I just realized that I do have another activity not pictured here, but we might not get to it this week anyway....we have a ton of stuff to do. I will make sure to post it next week. Have a great day. Happy blogging.

jess_hak