It has been too long since my last blog post! We have been keeping up with 'school at home' as Hunter calls it, but during the month of October, we scaled down the big projects. So for now, Hunter is still working on printing - he did 'T t', 'U u', 'V v', and 'W w' this week, with 'X x', 'Y y', and 'Z z' coming next week.
Hunter is also working on spelling. We have been working with this magnet set from Lakeshore at the beginning of the year -
Hunter was doing so well using the magnet letters, I decided to increase the challenge...
"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."
~ John Adams
Last week, Hunter had his first American history lesson. We talked about the colonists and why they wanted their own country. We started talking about freedom, and what that means. Hunter has been familiar with the American flag for a long time, but we went a little deeper this time and talked about the symbolism, Betsy Ross, and George Washington's request. For an art/social studies project, Hunter constructed his own flag that now hangs in his playroom.
We started off with a piece of white foam board. I drew out the lines, and then taped them off with painters tape.
Hunter's first step was to paint the exposed stripes red.
He then painted the small square blue.
We let it dry for a little while, and then removed the painters tape - this step was really fun for Hunter, as he really enjoyed seeing his flag come to life!
The next day, Hunter applied thirteen stars (cut from craft foam) to the blue square. (I decided that Hunter can make a modern flag when he is old enough to cut out 50 stars :o)
Here is a video of Hunter talking about his project:
This week Hunter learned all about the life cycle of frogs. He was fascinated and soaked up quite a lot of information! For a fun froggy themed project we made an interactive display to use during the "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" song....
Hunter started out by painting his hand green and making five hand prints:
I rigged a drying rack and let the sun do the work while we did some other tasks:
Hunter is all the way up to "L,l" in his printing. Here he is saying each letter and getting ready to place his completed "L" strip in the pocket chart. As he was doing this he said "hey mom, take my picture":
Hunter also spent some time reviewing the printing of the numbers 1-5 (take a close look at the printing!!):
After the hand prints had dried, I cut them out (I also cut the thumbs off, leaving four froggy legs) and Hunter drew smiles and speckles on each one: (oh, and Hunter chose to give this frog glasses as well :o)
Next came google eyes and popsicle sticks glued to the back:
After the glue had dried, it was finally time to place the five speckled frogs at home on their speckled log:
Ready to sing!
"Five green and speckled frogs, sat on a speckled log,
eating the most delicious bugs; YUM! YUM! One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool,
We are incredibly fortunate to be blessed with amazing neighbors with whom we have become very good friends. As if that isn't awesome enough, their family also homeschools! So on Wednesday we got the kids together to do some painting with bubbles. The paintings didn't turn out exactly how we thought they would, but it was a fun project none the less!
Here is our neighbor Kaitlyn mixing up bubbles and food coloring:
I made a make-shift easel so that all three kids could paint next to each other. On the left is Kaitlyn, then Hunter, then Kaitlyn's brother Brandon on the right:
Here is Hunter looking on as Kaitlyn mixed colors:
As we continue our exploration of animals, this week Hunter learned about the different ways animals protect themselves from predators. We read a small passage from what your preschooler needs to know, and then hopped on youtube to watch videos of porcupines, puffer fish, skunks, and rattlesnakes. After that we did a little artwork - here is Hunter with his porcupine, who he named, surprise surprise, Urlacher :o)
Lately, Hunter and I have become more and more interested in having Justin teach us a little Arabic. We can now say 'hello', 'my name is...', 'God willing', and 'I love you'.... I have been working very hard on writing the alphabet, and yesterday, Hunter wanted in on the Arabic action...
As someone who is constantly worried about the state of her military base housing carpeting, kid art is always a stressful situation for me... Hunter did get quite a bit of painting in today, including a short lesson on color mixing.
We started out using crayola no-drip finger paint, which really stunk. It has an opaque quality to it, not like beautiful, bold poster paint:
Also, it turns out that red and blue crayola no-drip finger paint does NOT make purple!
So I broke out the Melissa and Doug poster paint, ahhhh that's better!
Here is the final product hanging in the playroom:
A tip: Mix a little dish soap in with your paint to ease the process of cleaning your cups, brushes, and kitchen floor :o)
After the color mixing discussion, Hunter was given free reign over his art station - this particular piece involved a trampoline and a water slide :o)
All in all, it was a success - we managed to keep the paints on washable surfaces, which is all I was hoping for :o) Thanks to our Melissa and Doug no-spill paint cups with lids, the paints are now easily accessible, so I'm sure we will be painting much more frequently from now on...
For my fellow homeschoolers reading the blog, I thought I'd give you a quick tour of how I am operating thus far...
First, the school bell in this house does not ring until I have coffee in hand - this morning things got a little fancy :o)
We start off the morning with the calendar. Hunter counts the days that are already turned over, and then figures out which number comes next. After turning over today's date, he sings the 'days of the week' song. Then, we move over to the red pocket chart and Hunter figures out 'yesterday was', 'today is', and 'tomorrow will be'.
After Calendar, we sit down at Hunter's table and read a short story out of our Devotions for Preschoolers book. This book is really cute, and offers quick stories pertaining to prayer, kindess, family, etc.
From there we move to Language Arts - Right now I use our Brainquest Pre-K workbook to introduce the printing of whatever letter we are working on that day. After that, Hunter just practices the letter on printing paper 6 or 7 times. If time allows, Hunter reads from his sight words book.
Those two subjects take us about 0ne hour, so by then we are ready for a break. We break for about 30 minutes, giving me a little bit of time to straighten up, do some laundry, or check facebook :o) Hunter is usually begging me to get back to school after just a few minutes.
We come back from break to do science (and starting in September, social studies). I am taking my science and social studies topics from What Your Preschooler Needs to Know.
Depending on how much time is left, I fill in with either a file folder game, or a phonics game (I have acquired several good ones from Lakeshore Learning Materials)
Some supplies I recommend and have found extrememly useful/benicifial thus far include:
A shelf designated for your school supplies
Art Supplies
Math Manipulatives
A Planbook - or if you are a little bit crazy, two planbooks (I use the brown one for longterm, theme planning, and the blue one for short term planning - this allows me to adjust plans according to Hunter's progress)
An Interactive Calendar (this one is from Lakeshore)
A Cool Pointer for interacting with above calendar (dollar spot @ target!)
An adorable, chunky pencil
A Space Designated for school time, and Pocket Charts (these have an infinite number of uses, and I found my small ones in the dollar spot at target!)
And Finally:
A loving, encouraging, and super supportive husband! (seen here eating mushrooms at the Gilroy Garlic Festival)
