S lessons

Well this week was far from spectacular. Another week of next to nothing.

Lots of plans+no energy+appointments= nothing done.

We were going to start the letter Ss. I printed out pictures. I had some ideas for projects. Guess next week will be here soon enough.

Here is what we did get accomplished, minus pictures because the camera has not yet been found :(

I took 4 books out of the library and we did read them quite a bit. We even took one to playgroup, along with The Rainbow Fish, this week. It is called "The Biggest Snowball of All" by Jane Belk Moncure. This book focuses on sizes: big, bigger, biggest and wide, narrow to give a couple of examples. They start out with a teeny tiny snowball and it becomes big enough to turn into a house, but returns to teeny after the sun comes out. We also read "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats. Little Peter wakes up to find it had snowed during the night. We followed him on his snowy adventures and grieved with him as he discovered his snowball he had wanted to keep had melted. Seemed appropriate that we had too books that brought up melting snow, as that is what the snow has done around here the last few days. We were even able to take walks a couple of times this week. We discovered melted snowmen in one yard. Also very convenient as I had found a great idea at someone's blog for Melted Snowman Soup. You take:

Cream of Potato soup (prepared as directed)

Mini carrots (I had already cooked them to soften them a couple of days earlier)

and Peas

When these ingredients are combined it really does look like a snowman has melted right there in your bowl. I made sure to position the girls' veges so there were 2 peas above a carrot and some below to make it look like the face. Unfortunately, the girls weren't too fond of the soup. I did get Tabitha to eat some of her veges. I don't think the carrots were soft enough for Amelia though because I found the one I thought she had eaten chewed up on the plate. (Sorry if tmi).

(Please if you see this post and you have posted about Melted Snowman Soup let me know. I have searched and searched and can't for the life of me figure out where I saw this recipe)

We also made suns. I traced a 3" circle onto white paper and 2" high isosceles triangles (8) around the circle. I wrote the word "sun" in dots under the sun. Then I photocopied it onto light blue paper to represent the sky. Then I cut the same shapes out of yellow paper and the girls glued them on to the pattern. Wow, was Tabitha ever so precise. Amelia struggled with the triangles but did well with the circle. And Tabitha did a great job tracing the letters.

I almost forgot. We also read 2 other books (and will continue to read for the next week). "Sam: the sound of 's'" by Alice K. Flanagan (a simple phonics book about a sand crab and, once again, the hot sun) and "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle (a book about the spider spinning a web in the barnyard surrounded by friendly animals and a pesky fly. It's fun to see the spider's web take shape and be able to say the animal sounds). I'm sure most of the people reading this post know this book, but I thought I would share what I like about it. I think this is one of my favorite Eric Carle books. I like that you can actually feel the web too.

Anyway, the girls wanted something else to do after finishing their sun, and Tabitha specifically asked for more dots to connect, so I made a dotted spider for them to trace. An oval body and 8 legs made out of dots with a dotted line to represent the spider's silk. Then we sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" a couple of times.

The Montessori activities remained untouched this week. I hope to change up a few and start some new activities this week. Hopefully I will find my camera, because it will be easier to explain things with pictures.

Speaking of pictures, our word cards for this week are: sun, sled, snake, snail, stop and squirrel. All of which I was able to find sign language signs for.

To see what others are doing with their preschoolers and toddlers head on over to Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1.