Bubble Painting

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:

Hunter's finished product:

Porcupines and Arabic

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...

Anxious Paint

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...

Teacher's Eye View

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.

After L.A. we move on to math, again using the Brainquest Pre-K workbook. In addition, we use the spectrum math kindergarten workbook.

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)

An adorable, enthusiastic, eager preschooler

Week One - A Retrospective

In a nutshell: so far, so good! Hunter woke up every day asking when 'school at home' was going to start (even though we are only doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday). In the first two days, he ripped through all of the math concepts I had planned out for the first two weeks. So I will be speeding up the math a little bit, and moving into patterns next week. On the flipside, printing seems to be a bit of a challenge for Hunter, so we will definitely be taking our time with that (ahhh, the beauty of homeschool...)

This week, we worked on printing the letters A, a, B, b, C, and c, Hunter is already good to go on knowing his letters and the sounds they make (thank you amazing leapfrog dvd!), so that provides a good foundation for learning how to write the letters himself. We are also working through a sight words book collection, and Hunter is able to read these great little books all by himself (I have to cover up the pictures though, because he likes to cheat and say what's in the picture, rather than go to the trouble of sounding out words :o)

I was trying to get Hunter to look at me and smile for this picture, but he kept working and said "I'm really busy!"

In math, we did a few worksheets and hands-on activities related to the concept of same/different. I am really loving our Brain Quest PreK workbook, as well as our Spectrum Math workbook. The spectrum book is illustrated by Mercer Mayer - Hunter has a book called 'Daddy and Me' that is a Mercer Mayer book, so he calls his spectrum math book his 'Daddy and Me Workbook' :o). I find both of these books to be really colorful and simple, and so far, Hunter really looks forward to using them.

I ran out of math for Hunter this morning, so he did this worksheet on shapes and colors...

In science, our topic for the week was 'Animals have different kinds of bodies' (by the way, I've taken all of our science and social studies topics from this book) We read a little bit about some general animal classifications - insects/spiders, birds, fish, reptiles/amphibians, and mammals. Hunter finished putting together the chart that we had started on Monday - his favorite part was seeing pictures of himself, and our dog, Charley, in the mammals category :o)

After completing the chart, we relaxed on the couch for awhile and watched two episodes of 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' (the insects and amphibians episodes, of course!)

Next week, we will be working on letter D-F, and moving on to patterns in math. In addition, we will be learning about the different ways that animals move.

Pre K - Day 1

Today was our first day of the 'trial-run' school year. I decided to use Hunter's pre-k year as an opportunity to prepare/experiment for home school kindergarten which will happen next year. I definitely think it is safe to call this day a total success! Hunter woke up this morning and ran into our room saying "is it time to do school at home????"

We started our day at 8:45 with calendar and a Bible verse. At 9:00, we started on Language Arts. First, Hunter did a few worksheets that had him identifying objects that start with a short 'A' (think A as in apple). After that, he spent a little bit of time practicing printing upper and lowercase A. In addition to light phonics, we are working through a sight words book - today's words were 'A' and 'And'.

After all that, Hunter was eager to discover what was next. We moved on to math - today's work involved finding objects that were the same. This ended up being way to easy of a concept for Hunter, but he enjoyed the workbooks, so it worked out just fine.

Note Hunter's name at the top of the page - all him!






This worksheet was supposed to be a bit more challenging. Each row had 3 abstract objects, and Hunter had to circle the two that were the same - he ripped through the whole thing in about two minutes - we won't be spending too much extra time on 'same' and 'different'!!

After the worksheets Hunter took this big pile of bear manipulatives and separated them into the correct color cups. I found it fascinating to watch him do this, because where I would have picked up the bears in no particular order and sorted them, he chose to sort each color individually - he picked out all of the green bears first, then the yellow bears, etc. ...

After math we took a 30 minute break so that I could take care of some chores, and Hunter could stretch his legs for a while. After about 10 minutes, Hunter was begging to get back to school!

Science came next. Today's topic was 'Animals have different kinds of bodies'. We read about insects, spiders, and birds, (fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals to come...) After reading, Hunter glued some pictures of these animals to card stock and I cut them out. He then placed each picture in a hanging pocket chart that we will add on to as the week continues.

So that was day 1! We were done with all of this in about 2 hours (including the half-hour break) leaving plenty of time to play outside before lunch. After his nap, Hunter woke up and said 'can we do school again???'. All in all, I was thrilled with the way things went - I am looking forward to learning more and more about what works and what doesn't in the weeks ahead!