We have had a much more productive week this week than we have in a while. I decided to review the letters we have learned so far: n, a, p, m, s, t, and o. I had started the school year hoping to do one letter per week, but found out it just works better to spend two weeks on each letter. Granted we still should have been further along, but mommy had a bit of a lack of get up and go for a while.
Anyhow, on to this week, the reminicing post will be coming up later today or tomorrow, so stay tuned. I plan on doing a "Year in Review" post and I plan on including a linky so others can share their Year in Review posts as well.
Update: The Year in Review post and linky can be found here.
Now, on to the week in review. We started out on Monday with a
letter/sound review muffin tin.
On Monday we also had a Scavenger Hunt. I gave the girls mini post it notes with the letters we have learned, one letter at a time. They had to each find one object that began with the specified sound. Then we laid them out on the couch:
N is for nose and note
A is for apple and apple memory card
P is popcorn and puppy
M is for mouth and monkey
S is for very unamused brother Steven and spatula
T is for telephone and tractor
O is for olives and orange
Yes, Amelia needed quite a bit of help. Tabitha needed some too.
I walked into the living room one day to find the girls sitting like this with Tabitha reading The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats to Amelia. She has that one almost perfectly memorized! It was fun to watch (and record, unfortunately it takes way to long for my computer to upload videos to YouTube so I will not be sharing this time, sorry)
Our next activity/craft was a letter/sound review book. I laid out foam letter stickers in a tray, two for each girl. Then I told them to find the letters one at a time as I said them. After they had each found one and stuck it on to their paper, I then had them find the sound...
...so each paper had two letters on it.
Then the girls took turns giving me a word that started with each sound and I wrote it
Or had help writing it!
Today we finished them up by the girls gluing on a picture for each word.
Oh, did I mention this was a spur of the moment activity.
I created a picture find worksheet for each letter. They were to cross out each picture that didn't start with the sound and color in the pictures that did. I printed out three of each because I have plans to stick them in report covers so the girls can have an activity where they draw lines from the letter to the pictures. I would love to share these worksheets, however, I have no idea how to share my printables. If anyone could give me any hints it would be greatly appreciated. That is one reason I have this blog, to share my ideas.
And finally, after a long break, I am pulling out "new" Montessori materials again.
I brought the spooning back out.
And introduced this activity with the dustpan and brush (as the girls each got a dust pan and brush set, plus a their-size broom for Christmas. I found them at
Montessori Services.
The girls helped rip paper for the activity:
My goals for the girls this year are:
- Work through more of the letters/sounds following the order at readinglesson.com. We will continue to take two weeks for each letter.
- Continue to add more Montessori work and actually have time set aside for the girls to pick activities from our Montessori tables.
- Do more math
- Add some science
- Continue to read chapter books
- Start the Blogging to Bible Study family edition study from over at Butterfly Wishes and Wonderland Dreams (I am also participating in the adult version but that will be posted on my other blog, Turn My Life Around, where I am posting my journey to...well...turn my life around, both spiritually and physically. I am also participating in a weight loss challenge. If you are interested in either of those topics please head on over to my other blog)
I'm am linking up to