Activity Stations and Raising Rock Stars Preschool

Since Keely was in school all last year every day, she is not accustomed to our cleaning and getting things done routines. I think Keely thinks when she is home it is Mom and Sister's job to entertain. And I do love playing with her and do have fun things planned the next 2 1/2 weeks or so before the hurried packing begins and then we gather ourselves onto a plan to a new place of residence! However, I do need to clean the bathroom, sweep the floor, clean out 10 drawers and 3 closets, and start the process of packing 50 boxes! I know there are people that say it is good for children to get bored, and I agree. However, I don't need whining while I'm trying to get something done in the middle of our harried days! The other day on the train to the dentist and as I was waiting, I prepared a list of activities to put in stations for the girls to do while I spent a mere hour or so doing something that needs to get done. Most of the activities need little preparation besides having all of the materials in each box. I have 6 little boxes, so I came up with 6 activities for each day. They are also things that I can give a 3 second explanation as to what they are. We did so much running around this week that we only used these twice this week, and I only got pictures once. (I don't know about you but if I show my face during independent play it is no longer independent play!)

Both girls working on matching the lettered bottle caps to the names. (The idea came from here at 1+1+1=1)

You can see in the background the other boxes/stations

We also continued to do Raising Rock Stars Preschool as well. Below are the highlights of our Letter H week.

Gluing number family numbers (found here.)

Erasing the dry erase markers after tracing.

Cutting Letter H vocabulary cards

Doing letter H activities (found here)

More letter H activities

Cutting out a train from the Kumon Cutting Book

Taping the train together
(Jacob was excited about the train because it looked a lot like the one we took at Chinese New Year)

Practicing writing H's from the Kumon Uppercase Book

Gluing the Mother and Father craft together

Keely is 46 months old
Jordan is 25 months old

Raising Rock Stars Preschool

Letter T

Last week we did the Letter T in Carisa's Raising Rock Stars Preschool at 1+1+1=1. (In case you are wondering, I'm posting a full week after we do things because that's the rate I get things done!) We focused on Exodus 20:15, the letter T, the number 2, the color green, squares and the site word "the." Keely LOVES the site word books. We started working on site words a few weeks before we started Raising Rock Stars Preschool, and she was really getting into them. She already knew the but it was a good review. We read at nap time and bed time she makes me point to the words and she reads the words that she knows. We realized that Jordan is memorizing the verses in her own way too. We first realized it when Keely said "Let your," and Jordan finished with, "light." She gets a little over zealous though on Exodus 20:15!

This is how the conversation goes about Exodus 20:15:
Us: Thou
Jordan: Thou
Us: Shall
Jordan: Shall
Us: Not
Jordan: STEAL!

Other things that went on during our school time included:

Jordan gluing green squares and Keely gluing numbers down in the twenties family (printout found here from Home Grown Hearts).

Keely tracing the letter T on a memory verse review sheet and Jordan scribbling on T is for Turtle page from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter T printables.

On this week Jordan got bored pretty easily and on this day decided to cut some food.

And play some Old Maid.

Keely practicing writing her L's and T's. (Found here from Home Grown Hearts) She also practiced L's and T's in the Kumon My First Uppercase Letters Book .

Jordan cutting some paper strips while Keely was cutting her numbers for the Ten Commandment craft.

Jordan gluing the Ten Commandment craft (and her fingers).

As you can see, we have continued to modify things so Jordan can participate with us. Again I didn't get very many pictures of us actually doing the Raising Rock Stars part of school, but we really are doing it! I just keep forgetting to grab my camera and I'm usually pretty involved in that part as well! I also didn't get any pictures of our Letter of the Week activities that we did, but they were all from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter T printables. You can also see more of the "extra" things we are doing on our post last week.

Keely is 45 months old

Jordan 24 months old

Raising Rock Stars Preschool

Throughout the school year Keely and I have been doing various educational activities together. It hasn't been super consistent, and we have had a hard time finding the best time to do them. A couple months ago Keely said she wanted to practice writing her name. I came up with an activity for her to practice writing her name along with all of our family members' names. Also on a whim we started teaching her sight words and she really ate it up. She looks all over for the words she knows. When Carisa at 1+1+1=1 revealed her new Raising Rock Stars Preschool curriculum that she was developing for her son, I was really interested. It includes learning and practicing to write starting with the easiest to the hardest letters (like Kumon books do). As well as sight words, cutting practice and learning memory verses. At first I thought that I would start in the Fall since we wouldn't be able to be consistent the next couple months. Then I realized that it didn't really matter and we could be flexible. So, we started last week with the letter L. We modify the activities for Jordan. Last week she enjoyed it, but this week she doesn't seem to care so much but that is ok. I'm not sure if I'll post every week about what we do because it's pretty much the same besides some of the extra and supplementary things we do. However, I did want to share what we are doing just in case it would be something that would work for someone else. You'll be able to see more about the program on Carisa's site, because I don't seem to remember to take pictures of the main things. I remember during the extra things!

A letter, number, sight word, color and shape are focused on each week. This first week was L, 1, see, yellow and circle. While Keely glued numbers down working on number recognition (numbers higher than 30) and number families, Jordan glued yellow circles. I thought this focus for Jordan might help her with her colors and shapes.

These number family printouts are from Home Grown Hearts and can be found here. We are using them in two different ways. One is working on number recognition. So on the week we work on 1, I cut out the numbers with 1 like 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, etc. to work on recognizing the different numbers (mainly anything higher than 30). She then glues them on to the blank sheets in order across. On another day she works on the number family that correlates with the number we are working for (i.e. #1 = teen family 10, 11, 12..., #2 = twenties family 20, 21, 22...). She glues those numbers vertically into that number family spot.

Included in Carisa's printables are vocabulary cards for each letter. She had her son cut the cards out himself, so we decided to give that a try too. Keely loves it and is doing well with it. I cut the cards out for Jordan and she practices cutting paper strips.

Carisa puts the cut out cards in page protectors made for baseball cards. We have been gluing them into little booklets I make with construction paper (because Keely and Jordan love gluing practice too).

We also do some other letter activites to go along with the letter we are working from. Many of them are from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week printables. Other activities are from Making Learning Fun.

Before Carisa "revealed" her new preschool program, I bought several Kumon books for the girls to work on. We are really enjoying them. This worksheet is from My First Book of Cutting. We are also doing pages from My First Book of Tracing and My First Book of Uppercase Letters. We also have My Book of Numbers 1-30 and we'll start working on it when we finish the tracing book. We are going through it pretty quickly. I have torn the binding off of all of the books and with the tracing, letters and numbers books we are putting the pages in page protectors and using dry erase markers so we can use them again either for more practice or for Jordan when she is ready. It's just easier to tear the pages out in the cutting book with the binding torn off! Even though Carisa's printables are based on the Kumon method, I don't regret buying the books because they are good practice. The cutting book will also eventually help Keely work on cutting curves and circles and things like that too. Kumon also has a series of books for 2-year-olds but we haven't pulled those out yet. I also bought a couple other titles that we will probably work on this summer that both girls can work on and I'll share that with you when we do!

We used our new stamp set to stamp things that started with L in yellow.

Keely practicing writing the letter L.

Keely working on her numbers.

Carisa also has a member only section that includes power point downloads. The power points review what has been learned through the week and previous weeks a bit as well. I really wanted to support Carisa and her family's ministry, so we joined. This day Keely went through the power point while Jordan decided she was going to play a game on the Ipod.

For "L" week, the memory verse was Matthew 5:16. Even though it was a bit long, Keely did memorize it. She enjoyed pointing at each word when she would say it each day and also did this on the power point.

Well, this is what we have been up to most weekday afternoons after nap time at our house!