Taking a Break

We've decided to take a short break or "vacation" from school. We just bought a house and are moving in next month! So we are packing/planning for our daughters 1st birthday party which is also next month. So much to do!

So when we get settled into the new house we'll continue with Letter of the Week. :)

Letter D: Dinosaurs

We kind of slacked off this week. Josh had the week off for both of our birthdays (they're just 2 days apart) so I wanted the kids to enjoy having him home. So, we didn't do much school but we made up for that with a super cool trip to a Museum in Norman! :)

So, the fun pics first.
Braxton had a BLAST. Almost the entire museum was about Dinosaurs or prehistoric animals/creatures. FUN! We didn't think Braxton would love it as much as he did but we were sooo wrong! He has been talking about it the past week and of course telling anyone he comes in contact with that he "got to see Dinosaurs, but they aren't real. They're dead." lol

Now, onto school. Below is the dinosaur lapbook I made for him (I can't wait til he starts making these himself!) ;)
2 sequencing game, a counting game, a puzzle, 2 places to practice writing "D" and "Dinosaur" and then he drew some dinosaurs on there. (Betcha thought that was just scribbling, eh?) (Games are from here)

Puzzle time!

He wrote DAD! (with some help, the top one was the example I wrote for him, he decided to do it all in uppercase though, not so great at the lowercase yet. That's okay though, we're really just focusing on uppercase anyways!)

Coloring a dinosaur for the front of his dinosaur lapbook. Also, no pictures of this but he did his first color by number! (Let's just say we still need practice with that!)

Letter D/d tracing


Cute little Dinosaur



Tracing the letter D, he get's so frustrated when he goes off the lines. :(

Letter D craft from Homeschool Creations (This was such a cute & fun Dino to make!)

Completed :)

I wanted him to practice writing the letter D (without tracing), as you can see he writes it backwards...and then he decided letter A sounded like MUCH more fun!

We also read 'How do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food" (There is actually a bunch of books like this about Dinosaurs but this was the only one our library had available.) We read a few more books about Dinosaurs but I can't recall the names of the books now.

And finally, we had a DINO DIG! I made some homemade playdough, used plastic dinosaur toys to make impressions in the dough and then baked until hard. Josh hid them outside in the dirt and we had Braxton go looking for "fossils." It was a big hit!

Letter C

This week we learned about the letter C and our theme was CATERPILLARS! I didn't get to take as many pictures as usual, my camera was MIA for a bit.

Everything we did can be found at Confessions of a Homeschooler and Homeschool Creations. ♥ these blogs!!

Here is Braxton making the letter C with his mosaic peg board.


His Caterpillar minibook :)


I loved this craft. I cut out all the pieces for him and he constructed the milkweed plant & caterpillars. I tried getting him to follow a pattern (white, black, yellow, white, black, yellow) but he had no interest. Oh well! Still very cute!

Every week we do an alphabet craft from Homeschool Creations. This week it was a crab. Again, I cut out all the pieces and he put them together. (We're working on scissor skills...we've got LOTS of work to do there...) I tried getting him to use smaller googly eyes but he insisted on the big ones. :)

Caterpillar lacing card

Hungry Caterpillar

Coloring his hungry caterpillar

He also practiced tracing the letter C and we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We've also got a little caterpillar grandma caught for us (honestly I think it is a silk worm since it's in a cocoon not a chrysalis) so we're waiting for the butterfly (ahem, moth) to come out.

Braxton really seems to be learning the letters this time and I am so glad! Anywhere we go he wants to point out the letters he sees. He writes the letter A (by memory) all the time (he says that is his favorite letter) and he really wants to learn how to write his name. Everyone seems to be noticing how much he is learning and it really makes me happy since I've had SO much negative comments about my decision to homeschool.

Next theme: DINOSAURS (he's going to LOVE it!)

Letter B

Agh! I'm a week late with our Letter B stuff! It's been a crazy week with cranky kids and I've had pretty much zero computer time. I'm having to stay up late to get this posted since we just finished letter C and are about to start letter D.

(to save time, I will not be linking to everything individually, but I can tell you pretty much everything we did can be found at Homeschool Creations, Confessions of a Homeschooler and Sermons4kids. If you have trouble finding something in particular, just shoot me an email & I'll help you out!) :)





Using his Melissa & Doug pattern boards & blocks to make a butterfly.



B making a tissue paper butterfly. He really enjoyed this. He gets frustrated easily so I cut the tissue paper ahead of time and helped him with it. He gets overwhelmed when he see's there's so much left to do, so I do what I can to keep him happy and focused.

Braxton & Daddy have a day of school all by themselves. He teaches Braxton his bible lessons, he knows sooo much more than I do and I think it's important for him to be involved.

Nothing to do with butterflies, but we just got this Melissa & Doug puzzle game & he loves it!

B/b matching game/puzzle. He thought this was a lot of fun.

Tracing the letter B. Still his favorite thing to do. He had a hard time wtih B this week though. It took him nearly all week to perfect it!

Prewriting practice

Cute little bumble bee for Braxtons alphabet book.

I wanted him to practice writing the letter B. He said, "But you have to do "A" first!!" :)

Working on the bumble bee shown above.

Thanks to grandpa for getting us a real live butterfly to examine!

Week 1: Letter A

Some of you may know that we tried a "Letter of the Week" program with Braxton last month and he didn't care for it too much. It wasn't hands on enough for him. So, after 2 weeks of researching I've found something BETTER. After browsing the blogs Homeschool Creations and Confessions of a Homeschooler I have come up with a fun, hands on "curriculum" for Braxton.


Week 1: Letter A

Now, I couldn't decide on a theme between all the resources I found so we didn't really have just one theme...we just focused on different things that start with "A." (Ants, Apples & Alligators.)


B playing his Apple Sequencing file folder game.


We tasted 3 kinds/colors of apples (Red Delicious, Granny Smith & Golden Delicious) and voted for our favorite. Granny Smith won.:) I tried asking Braxton how each apple tasted (sweet, tart, bitter, etc) but all he would answer is "Good!!"

We made these adorable "munched on" apples . It took quite a bit of convincing to get Braxton to tear his apple in half. That is why there is one full apple in there. One of them I made, once he saw what it was supposed to look like he wanted to do one. So that is why there are 3 apples in his Alphabet Book.

Here is B tracing the letter A. I printed the A tracing page from here and then laminated it so he could use dry erase markers to trace over and over and over again. (He LOVES this. This is one thing we did every single day. )

So after lots of tracing I tried something else. I just got him a blank sheet of paper and asked if he could write the letter A on the paper. He looked at the trace sheet for reference and he DID IT! I was shocked. He wrote several letter A's and then started coloring. ;)



B playing an Ant Sequencing Game.

Ant lapbook full of games and activities.

Braxton likes to eat around the outside of an apple once and then he's done, so to keep the apple from going to waste we found another way to use it! I cut it in half and let him make apple prints with paint!

Painting the trunk of his apple tree

putting the apples (sequins) on his tree.

Making the letter A with his pegboard.

A is for Alligator. Got this super cute craft from here.

Completed. :)

Simple Ant Puzzle

Ant shape/color match.

You can find all the cute ant print offs I used here.

File Folder Games

File folder games are a fun way for your preschooler to learn! I've made about 10 of them so far and Braxton LOVES them! The websites below are where I got most of them:

File Folder Fun. Most of ours came from here. You have the option of searching by theme or by grade. (I suggest searching by grade so that you will be looking at age appropriate games.) Once you choose a grade you can then choose from different types of games. (Numbers, Science, Matching, etc.)

Check out Christian Preschool Printables if you're interested in Bible based file folder games. We've gotten a couple games from here.

I stumbled upon this site when doing a Google search for Bible file folder games and found an adorable game. It's called "Dress the Bear" I plan on printing if off soon. I'm sure Braxton would love it.

Confessions of a Homeschooler also has some great file folder games. I love the Shades of Color game, it costs pretty much nothing to make. We also have the Fishy Faces & Paintbrush match up games. Both are a big hit around here. If you haven't already, take some time and look around her blog, it's packed with tons of great info and ideas!

Just wanted to share how we store our File Folder games:


I got this red file folder basket at Walmart in the office supplies for $3. (It was half off.) I use hanging folders to sort the games. (Colors, Matching, Bible, Shapes, etc.) We also have some regular pocket folders in there that Braxton picked out (so of course they are Spiderman. ;) They hold his art & drawings. The white binder is our alphabet book. Cover & pages are from Homeschool Creations. For each letter we paste the art & craft projects we did into the book. (Ex. Letter A page we pasted our Apple crafts into it and will be pasting our Alligator crafts in it as well.)

MONEY SAVING TIPS:

•Like I've mentioned before, when printing things off, you can save money by printing them in black and white rather than color. Then color the pictures in! This is what we did with all of our file folder games.

•Laminating. There are several different ways you can laminate. You can use sticky laminate or contact paper or you can use laminating pouches that require a laminate machine to seal them. If you choose sticky laminate you can find $1 rolls at the dollar tree or you can find larger rolls of Contact Paper at Big Lots or Walmart. (Make sure you get CLEAR.) If you choose to use the pouches you can either 1.) Buy the laminate machine and participate in Amazons rebate offer to save $20 or you can do what I did: Seal the pouches with an iron. (Lowest heat setting) It works perfectly and is SO much easier than the sticky laminate. (Faster, too!)

Thats all the FREE file folder games I have so far! Next blog post will be about our favorite educational toys/books so make sure you check it out!

Also, we started our first official week of the new "curriculum" so on Friday or Saturday I will be posting about that and sharing what we did! :)