Conclusion of Pp continued

Well, seeing as it wouldn't let me save anymore (my post must have gotten too long, too many pictures, or something), I will now share some more of the activities we did this week, including the Montessori activities.

For another activity we made Purple Playdough. We used the recipe found in the book, "Slow and Steady Get Me Ready" by June R. Oberlander. It calls for 1 cup of flour, 1 tbs oil, 1 cup water, 1/2 cup salt (we ran a little short and it came out fine), 2 tsp cream of tartar and food coloring. You need to cook it over medium heat until it forms a ball,

(no the fire was not on yet)

then knead it until smooth.

(here they are blowing on it to cool it down)

It can be kept in a plastic bag indefinitely.

(she loves to make wormies)

Well, it has taken a while, but we finally had a chance to introduce the sandpaper letters. I decided I will introduce them in the same order recommended in "Mommy, Teach Me to Read" by Barbara Curtis. Tabitha knows the sounds already from working on the Starfall website. She was easily able to find the correct sound for me and trace them.

I feel the tracing is really going to help her. We say the sound as we trace the letters with our index finger and middle finger.

I also have a movable alphabet that I printed from the Montessori Materials website. The link for this website is found at Barbara Curtis's website Mommy Teach Me. I printed them, cut them out and "laminated" them (okay, I use contact paper). I was glad to find these to print out. I had actually started a game with Tabitha a couple of months ago. We used the word cards I regularly use for our lessons and the new Scrabble Slam game cards we got for Christmas. I pulled out the cards needed for each word and showed Tabitha one word at a time with the letters randomly laid out above the word card. She was to place them in order. I would have her tell me what the first sound was and have her find it and place it below the word. We did this in order until the word was complete. I made a couple of mistakes with this first attempt. In using the word cards (we were on Nn at the time) I ended up trying to have Tabitha do words that were too long and difficult to sound out. In addition, the Scrabble Slam cards were too big to fit under each letter neatly. So the game was put on hold until I could rectify the problems. I had just recently started rereading the "Mommy, Teach Me to Read" book and happened to find the movable alphabet. And I started making word cards with only 3 letter phonetic words. Once again I made a mistake by choosing words alphabetically, thus starting with Aa and Bb. She had trouble with the words, I believe, because I didn't start with words starting with continuous sounds. Such as words starting with Mm and Ss. And once again she didn't seem too interested. So I will try again this week. Here are pictures of us playing the game, same as described above with the Scrabble Slam cards.

It didn't help that I was already frustrated because I had to separate all the letters before we could play because I stored them in a plastic bag. And they got messy as we changed from one word to another. So, because I couldn't find anything to store them in, I made my own storage container from egg cartons, cutting a slit in the side of each compartment so the letters would fit without bending.

This week I also let Amelia use the toothpick activity. She loved putting the toothpicks through the holes of the shaker, over and over and over.

I also noticed something that wasn't quite an "activity" but helped with Amelia's fine motor skills. We were cleaning up and I decided that letting Amelia put the letter blocks away would be good for her:

If you can't tell, each block needs to go into a square compartment and she had to turn it just right to fit it in.

I also made a Pattern File Folder Game for Tabitha.

Another activity I put together this week and has been a huge hit was found at The Activity Mom blog. She had found it at Tired, Need Sleep where you can go to print out the templates. It was so simple, just print them out, cut out the required shapes in craft foam and you're ready to go. When I first let Tabitha do this activity I just had it in a file folder and she turned the pages over onto the table when she was ready for the next letter. Since then I was able to make it to the store and this activity is now stored in sheet protectors in a binder, as suggested by The Activity Mom.

While doing the C, she reached over for the other curved shape and proceeded to make an O:

To see what others are doing with their preschoolers go on over to Homeschool Creations and check out Preschool Corner.

And for the tots, head on over to Tot School

The Conclusion of Our Pp lessons

Well, we worked on our lapbooks as I planned. I used a similar format to the one I used for our monkey lapbook months ago:

Unfortunately, our monkey lapbook never was completed. It is the first one I ever attempted and I ran out of ideas. I used two ideas from Carisa's blog (1+1+1=1): Monkey Parts and the Story Retelling Pocket for "5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed."

Then I made a tabbed counting book, "Monkeys Like Bananas" where Tabitha glued on little bananas I cut out on each page (once again working on the one to one counting by using white glue).

And I also made a minibook called, "How Do Monkeys Move?". I just googled pictures of monkeys swinging, jumping, climbing, walking and hanging.

Anyhow, for the Penguin lapbook I attempted my own version of "Penguin Parts."

They like to have me recite the cards to them, "Penguin has feet. Do you have feet?" and answer by pointing to their own body parts if they have them. Of course it is amazing how many animal body parts Ms. Imagination Tabitha has.

I used the booklet provided in The Mailbox magazine for "What Do Penguins Do?". They slide, waddle, eat, huddle and swim! I made another tabbed counting book, "Penguins Eat Fish."

A book the girls enjoy reading is "Baby Penguin Learn Shapes With Me."

I made a Flip Flap book based on this book and we went on a shape hunt, seeing as in the book we are supposed to be looking for "hidden shapes." We took pictures of the shapes we found hiding around the house, in decorations, books, toys, etc.

Amelia got really upset with me when I turned her shapes around while she was gluing them in. Yes, I want it to be her work. No, I do not want to be unable to open the book because it is glued together.

Tabitha enjoyed using her very own computer she got with her birthday money. She was so excited to be able to hand the cashier her money! We let her play with it in the car on the way home and take it up to her room during nap time (only that one time), then she played with it when she got up.

A new part of her "curriculum" is the Pre-K Brain Quest Workbook we found while out shopping. We also purchased the Brain Quest deck for 4-5 year olds, though we haven't used it yet.

She has done letters A and B in the workbook so far. Though she loses interest after tracing a couple of letters. I have decided not to push her, lesson learned from dealing with the older children. Though it does frustrate me. I feel she can do it, but she loses interest really fast. This has happened with several activities this week.

Back to our Pp related activities. We also made Pink and Purple collages with paper and pompoms. Amelia enjoyed this as I let them tear the paper and she was able to put the paper wherever she wanted to.

I had Tabitha sort out her own pompoms.

I then asked them where they wanted the glue for the pompoms placed as I am not yet ready to let them try the white liquid glue themselves. As I am typing they are making another collage.

Well, that is some of what we've done this week. More to come as it won't let me save anymore. To see what others are doing with their preschoolers and tots check out:

and

Geography Lesson #1

We finally had a chance to work on our geography lesson in relation to receiving our first postcard. I decided to work on it first so the girls wouldn't get bored. I started by reviewing our town map:

We took a "finger walk" around our town. Unfortunately it was below 30 degrees outside, so I decided not to take a walk. It is a mile around our dinky town. I then tried to explain that if we followed the one road we would have gone up the hill and out of town. Or, if we followed the road on the other side of town we would have found ourselves in the neighboring state and on our way to church.

I showed them the map I printed out that shows part of the county and the roads I had highlighted that would take us to the two nearby towns (one 15 minutes away where we go to play group, the other 30 minutes away). Then I moved on to the state map which showed the counties and showed them we could go down south more to get to grandma's. Just realized I never used the word south (or any other directional words). Next came the map of the USA.

The girls each got a blank map and we have a bigger one for the wall. We colored in our state (Pennsylvania, cool it starts with Pp)

and then the state from which we received our first postcard (Indiana).

Then Tabitha helped me tape it to the wall (I need to find my Velcro actually because it has already fallen down) then we put up the postcard.

For more geography ideas and lessons go on over to Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn

Exciting events

Oh, I just can't wait to share this. Tabitha sounded out her first word today! We hadn't done our word cards for several days, so today we started our lesson time with them. I pull the pictures off the poster and lay them on a chair. Then I slowly sound out each word while running my finger under the letters. Then the girls get to find the picture and add it to the poster. Our Pp words are penguin, pumpkin, puppy, peanut, pig and pan. Today I asked Tabitha to sound out "pan." She got it!! I was so excited. Then she did it later for daddy. :)

The second exciting event was the arrival of our first postcard from the postcard exchange. We got a postcard from Indiana. I have yet to do the map with the girls. We are going to review our town map from early in the summer, then I am going to show the girls a map of our area from mapquest that has a route laid out that we take occasionally, then a map of Pa, before showing them where Pa is on the USA map. That is the plan anyway. We did quite a bit on our penguin lapbooks today, so I decided to let them watch a Baby Einstein video we got out of the library instead of going into the map lesson.

If you would like to join us in the postcard exchange we would love to have you participate. We have sent out 3 postcards so far. Here are the rules again:

Anyway, if you want to join the fun, here's what you need to do:

1. Simply leave me a comment letting me know you're interested and I in turn will be in touch via email to exchange our mailing addresses.
2. Agree to "pay it forward" - i.e. send a postcard back to me. And, if you're interested, post about this on your own blog and get others involved, too. If you do, please include a link to my blog, thank you.
3. When selecting your postcards, choose ones with geographical pictures or images of things specific to where you live.