Homeschool Preschool - Week 8

L and E are 38 months old.  Homeschool Preschool this week went fairly smoothly.  It seems that we were able to fit in a good number of learning activities every day.  I set up a routine for myself where I wake up early in the morning and get 2 hours of computer time in for myself before the kids get up, and then get another 2 hours during 'quiet time' in the afternoon.  The rest of the time, I made an effort to close my laptop and focus on working with the kids (or playing alongside them), which was fun for all of us.  Here's a summary of some of the things we did this week..

Dominoes was a popular game this week.  I was able to convince the girls to try playing by the rules (they usually just use them as building blocks), and they really enjoyed the game.  When I showed them that the game box said "ages 8+", they thought it was hilarious.

Math activities were a big focus for us this week.  I made up this little worksheet where the girls have to place the correct number of stickers in each row.  We played together, so for each number I asked the kids to show me that number on their fingers and we put the stickers on their fingers first.  When we got to six, the girls discovered that it was hard to remove stickers from both hands, so we did five stickers first, and then figured out how many were remaining.  This is an awesome way to demonstrate the mental math methods we're learning in Rightstart Math. 

This week I also tried a lot of role reversal, where I get a turn at their activities, which they loved.

The Paper Cups Math Game was also a favorite (click on the link for more details).

There was a lot of time spent this week playing with math manipulatives.  Unifix blocks were a huge hit:

 

E impressed me the most this week.  On a number of occassions she came up to me and asked for activities.  When her sister was distrated with other things or playing with Dad, she really shined and completed a variety of Preschool activities on her own:

 

I think I've said this before, but I need to find a way to schedule time when each child can work with me independently.  This is especially valuable for E.

For reading/phonics, we spent time every day working with the CVC Word Flip Pad I made (click on the link for 10 game ideas using this reading tool). 

We went to a concert on Monday, where the kids heard a live orchestra play for the first time.  I read them a lot of picture books about the instruments of the orchestra, and we reviewed instrument sounds and listened to music almost every day this week.

In case you missed it, here's a link to the What's in the Castle Sound Recognition Game that we've been playing to identify sounds of different animals, objects, and instruments.

 

The kids wanted to make 'poisonous snakes' when we played with playdough.  Our current read-aloud chapter-book is The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (abridged version), so they've been inspired to act out a lot of scenes lately about the ways of the jungle.

Mom was much less creative...

Last weekend we went to a harvest festival, and the whole family has been trying to spend as much time as possible outside enjoying the autumn:

There are a bunch more Preschool activities that we did this week, but I'm saving them for separate blog posts, so stay tuned (the best way to keep up to date is through my Facebook Page)

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Check out Tot School at 1+1+1=1  and Weekly Wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers