We are done with School!!! But the kids aren't so thrilled, what?!

We finished school up about a month ago now and my kids have not been thrilled.  I don't think my oldest understands the meaning "summer break" or maybe it is just a homeschool thing?! Not sure.  Either way, since they have been driving me batty and crazy and squabbling so much, I ended up planning out some fun stuff for today.

This was primarily for Cadence to introduce tot school just to see how it would work with him, but big brother got into it too. :)

I pulled out one of our old boards and decided to begin with the letter A with Cadence.  I chose this because I know it is the one sound he can imitate.  By the time big brother and myself had finished singing the Leap Frog tune of "The A says /a/" he finished it with "/a/, /a/, /a/".  And we very intrigued with the apples, which lead to our next activity...

I found all of our plastic balls that are green, red, yellow and orange and put them in our dump truck.  I set it out just to see what the little monkey would do.  He looked inside the truck and immediately said "ball" and went to grab them and throw them.  As he picked them up I called out each color and then told them they were apples.  He looked at me like I was crazy and said "ball, mama". LOL  Smart little monkey! Then big brother showed him how to work the scoop on the truck, that was a little difficult, so he settled for dumping them instead!

Then came nap time and big brother chose his activity for the day...

He chose to paint his Mario Reward Chart, since he just finished "world 3 - ice world" and wanted to change it to "water world for world 4".  So, he painted bloopers and cheep cheeps and piranha plants all over water world.  And then he had reading time, we are doing a summer reading challenge with our local library, so he read his first book today, "What do you do with a grumpy kangaroo?".  Then he watched his new Veggie Tales movie that grandma and grandpa brought over this morning, Veggies in Space The Fennel Frontier.

After nap time, I set up some activities for the little Monkey to explore.  This one is a muffin tin with geometric shapes that I got from Oriental Trading (see it here).  The first thing he did was point to it and say "uh" and "what is that?" Then he found all the spheres and said "ball" and threw them, of course.  So, I showed him how to sort them by color.  He did pretty good, then decided building towers and knocking them down would be more fun.

His last activity, I think was his favorite one of all.  I cut out tree shape from construction paper and put that on the wall.  Then I covered the tree with contact paper, but the sticky side is out.  I cut off some strips of crepe paper in red, yellow and green, so that he could tear them and stick "apples" on the tree.  He LOVED the tearing part, but wanted me to put the apples on the tree and then he had fun harvesting them!!!  Then he tried to stick stuff on the tree.  He thought this was a great activity and continued it for about 30 minutes!!!

What do you do in your homeschool for little tots?

Have Fun & Be a Blessing!
~Bekah

Welcome Back!!!

This has been our first attempt at starting school back since the baby brother has been born.  I wasn't sure how things were going to go, but in a way having a baby brother has been a blessing in disguise.  Jordan is exerting himself more and trying to do things more on his own (especially when I have to feed the baby and he knows mom can't help).  This should really help when we officially start kindergarten in the fall, especially since I was hoping to institute more learning centers for independent time, so I'm very excited it's falling into place! :)

What we are learning...

Letter: Aa

Colors: Red, Yellow, Green

Shape: Rectangle

Number: 4

Bible Story: Adam and Eve

Vocabulary Word: apple

Sight Word: away

Verse: "A soft answer turns away wrath." Proverbs 15:1

Practicing numbers 1-20.

He can count it forwards and backwards now.

Working on the correct formation of writing the letter A.

This was an activity that required you to follow directions.

He colored the triangle yellow.

Put blue stripes on the square.

Colored the star green and orange.

Put black dots on the circle.

Reading to mommy and his brother.

Practice finding the word "away" in a book.

Worship Time!!!

Learning the song "All in All"

We have more to cover, but for just a day back into school, I think we did awesome!!! The baby even had fun watching his brother.

Have Fun and Be a Blessing!

~Bekah