Preschool in Review - Post 3

It is funny. . . I knew we were learning a lot and having lots of fun at the time, but I don't think it really sank in until now, having to sit down and type it all up so quickly!

I realize I am not explaining the crafts of the various lessons that we did, but I am trying to cover the highlights and at least get my book list in here. We have read some amazing books the past few years and not only would I like to remember them, but would recommend almost all of the ones I list in these posts (I say almost because it is possible that I forgot to scratch a stinker or two off my lesson plan!)

So, onward we go:

The week of St. Patrick's day brought lots of fun! We began the week with a visit to Katelyn and Ashley's house (friends from co-op) to learn about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Marlene did a wonderful job with this lesson! She had the girls make sock puppet caterpillars, then cut out sequencing cards for the story, and all were stored in decorated old coffee cans. Now whenever the girls want to act out or retell the story, all the materials are together! We ALL made Fruit Loop caterpillars, and play dough caterpillars. Marlene also had HUGE cut outs of all of the items the caterpillar ate in the story that she used to retell the story for the children, and finally, we looked at a poster of the life cycle of a caterpillar. On St. Patrick's Day we watched the video from Veggie Tales and read a paragraph about him in our History book. We talked about shamrocks and how he used them to tell about God. We then colored pictures of them and leprechauns, and looked at pictures of Ireland.

It was around this time that we got our catepillars in the mail to raise our own butterflies. This was so much fun -- for the entire family! It was amazing to watch the caterpillars form the crysalis, to attach to the top and then sit and watch as they emerged as butterflies! We kept them for about a week and then put them out on the milkweed plant we have potted outside (it is their host plant). Since then, we have had several caterpillars feeding on the plant and forming crysalises! The girls get so excited about the whole process and brings learning to life! I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING!!!

The rest of the week focused on the letter "I" bringing us ice cream, India, Italy, the DVD Bilingual Baby - Italian (SUPER CUTE!!), Tigers at Twilight (Magic Tree House), Italy A to Z, My "I" Sound Box, The Sundae Scoop, Maya Angelou's World - Angelina of Italy, There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal, Opera Cat, Ice cream: The full Scoop, Madeline and the Cats of Rome, Stregna Nona (girls LOVED this!!), Big Anthony, Elephant Dance: Memories of India, Baya Baya Lulla-by-a, The Story of Little Babaji, writing our names in icing, and watching Bollywood dance videos and cardio tapes (total workout!). We also began History lessons with History for Little Pilgrims this week. I had planned on waiting till we started Kindergarten, but while I was looking at it for planning purposes, the girls kept picking it up to look at and asking me to read it, so I figured I would go with their interest! We did a simple poster board Timeline with this and they really enjoyed it.

We spent a second week (for those curious, we are now at the week of 3/23 - 3/27) on the letter I as there had been so many geographic locations that were fun to expose them to, I wanted a second week to focus on the animal and career. We learned about inchworms this week and had so much fun! This week we read Papa Piccolo from FIAR which was very cute and did LOTS of inchworm crafts (Dot-to-Dots, play dough, connect the dots, etc), measured things, crawled like inchworms and sang songs. Our occupation was Investigator and we used the Detective unit study/lapbook on HSS -- it was awesome! In all, this was just a week full of experiments, crafts, and lots of glue!

"J" focused on Jellyfish, Japan, judges, jello, the lapbook for Grandfather's Journey, a tour of Bluebell Ice Cream Factory with our Co-op and a family trip to the zoo. Having spent a week learning about jellyfish, it was so much fun for Gregg and I to watch the girls be so excited to see jellyfish up close! They kept coming back to the display and just sat, staring, for a very long time :-) We did a variety of jellyfish crafts and read several nonfiction books. We did read lots of other books this week -- I know lots of Allan Say books -- but I did not write any of them down this week. I will say that while the information about Japan was interesting to the girls, they did not enjoy the Allan Say books very much. . . their highlight was jellyfish!

"K" focused on kangaroos, zoo Keepers, acts of kindness, kittens, karate, karaoke, ketchup, Katy No Pocket, If I Ran the Zoo, Animal Strike at the Zoo, the zoo lapbook on HSS, Mrs. Katz and Tush, and Katy and the Big Snow and the lapbook on HSS. Our Co-op this month was on your own but it was on Bunnies and Easter so this week we also read The Bunny Who Found Easter, Rechenka's Eggs, Over in the Meadow, Clifford's Easter, and of course, Peter Rabbit. We had a blast learning about kangaroos this week -- we learned that they can jump 40 feet, so we measured that length in our backyard and recorded how many "Mommy" "Jordan" and "Cali" jumps it would take to equal one kangaroo jump!

Focusing on kindness was great -- we instituted "The Blue Plate of Kindness" this week, where someone gets to eat off of a special blue plate if they are noticed doing something kind for someone else. We also made lots of paper hearts with the word "Kind" on them -- the idea was to look for random acts of kindness that can be done in secret and then, again without being seen, to take a heart and leave it where the act was done. One example from the week -- Mama's shoes were left out in the living room and Jordan grabbed them, put them in my room and left a heart where the shoes had been. Jordan LOVED this game! I also had a poster board up in the kitchen where we would write down acts of kindness that were noticed.

They also loved the zoo keeper lapbook we made from HSS. Jordan wants to be a Vet when she grows up and both girls love learning about animals -- one of the reasons it was such a focus point this year. This was a great project to show off what they have already learned and be exposed to new things.

April 13-17th: "L" brought us lizards, love, lions, The Little House (and the lapbook), lifeguard, London, Shakespeare (London tie in!), Stage Fright on a Summer Night (Magic Tree House book about Shakespeare), the library, and lollipops. This week doesn't have lots of notes, but I know the girls loved the lapbook for The Little House, and we had fun role playing being lifeguards and learning about water safety.


One more post will definitely finish up our preschool adventures! We went into super fast mode at this point -- I was getting a bit burned out on what we were doing, was ready for a change, and we decided to sell our curriculum in May and take a few weeks off before starting K in June -- so we started combining letters.

I will try to sneak back on in the morning to finish up the preschool series, but if not, I'll finish on Monday. I can't wait to begin journaling our Kindergarten adventures! It has been a total change, but I am loving it!