Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Preschool at Home: The Letter "I"





Here you can see our attempt at making an igloo out of marshmellows and toothpicks.  It didn't go too well as Kylie just wanted to eat the marshmellows, and I couldn't quite figure out how to do the roof-- it was fun nonetheless, and now the girls can at least identify a picture of an igloo. :)

For the first time today, Kate attempted to write out her name on a coloring page-- its hard to believe she'll be four next month.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Preschool at Home: The Board

One of my projects this week was to create a board that would help guide my time with the girls when we do some preschool at home.  Using some great ideas from blogs (1+1+1=1 & Confessions of a Homeschooler) I put together my own version.  Since we live in a cozy house and don't have a designated room for school, I wanted to create something that wouldn't be an eyesore and would fit in with our girls' rooms.

On the top line I used some metal rings so you can flip to the correct date.

Then, we have the daily weather, which the girls love because they run to the front door together and then spend a few seconds deciding together which card to choose.  I used velcro on the backs of each of the weather options so its easy to switch each day.

Then I used some adhesive hooks to hang flashcards: this week is the letter "G", our shape is the heart and our color is green.  I really like our shape and color flashcards (made by Mead) because they have both the english and spanish words on the back.  Maybe I will take & post a short video of Kate emphatically practicing "orange" which is "anaranjado" for you sometime-- it's priceless!

To the right of the flashcards is a space for our Bible verse-- we try to memorize one with each letter of the week & review our old ones. 

Above the Bible verse, I created a space for the girls to place a card to represent the different things we are doing during the day.  I lay the different options on the table, and the girls "stick" them (again there's velcro on the back) as we do them.  This morning, Dave read the Bible with them, so they stuck that one up.  We went for a walk, they are now napping, etc.  Sometimes, they get to choose which activity they want to do (they played with their kitchen this morning and chose that one to stick)...