H is for Honey

Happy H Week!  Here's what we did.

Day 1

For songs this week, we sang Hymns.  Ryan and I both grew up singing them in church, but Parker probably won't learn them unless we sing them at home.  The first day I just sung them to him since he didn't know the words.  I sang "Seek Ye First," "Amazing Grace," and "Joyful, Joyful."  Then we counted to 30, reviewed flashcards and verses for A-G, and then I introduced letter H and the verse to go with it.

"Honor your Father and Mother." Exodus 20:12

For our Intro to Letter H activity, I cut out some H's and a few other things that he could use to make them into a house and tree's.  I just set them out like this

and let him decide where to put things.  

He made a treehouse =)

We talked about how "house" starts with H, and then I pointed out the pictures on the board.  We went on a hunt to find how many of each thing we had.  After we counted all the doors, we came back to the board and he had to find the number 4 flashcard.  Just another way to reinforce his knowledge of the numbers in text form.  Parker had a lot of fun looking for everything.

  

After we were all done, we read

Rhyming, repetitive, and lots of fun!

Day 2

We went to the store the day before and picked out canned goods for a Children's Hunger Fund box, and toys for an Operation Christmas Child box.  We were learning about helping!  The next morning, we sang our Hymns again and Parker started singing along this time.  Then we packed up the boxes.

We read some passages out of the Bible about helping others. 

Psalm 145: 13-16, 2 Corinthians 8:1-9, and James 1:26-27. 

Then we read

It's all about being a helping hand, and it has a truck, farm animals, and a dump truck in it!  

Parker loved it.  I've read that lacing is a great way to develop fine motor and reasoning skills, and I found some manipulatives in the Target dollar spot.  Plus, they were cowboy-themed shapes, which worked really well with the story.  I took out the ones that started with H.  I helped him with the hat, and he did the others on his own.   

Day 3

Honey Honey Honey!  After Hymns, we learned about hexagons and made a honeycomb out of them.

Then we read

My sister got this cool sequencing game for Parker that comes with all different groups of things to put in order.  One of them happened to work perfectly with the book.  

Now it was time to make the Honey Pumpkin Bread.  

While it was baking, we read

The bread turned out perfect.  I think these lasted maybe 24 hours...

Throughout the week, we also read

I even caught Parker teaching his little sister some Preschool =)

G is for Green

Parker got his first set of stitches the Sunday before G week.  I planned on moving the usual Monday preschool activities to Tuesday, in case he wasn't feeling the best.  Plus, we wouldn't be able to go to his gymnastics class Tuesday.  He asked Monday morning why we weren't doing preschool =)  We made cookies together instead. 

Day 1

We started Tuesday morning with singing "Shake a Friend's Hand," by Carol Peterson.  Then we did "Five Plump Peas."  We counted to 30, I quizzed him on his letters and verses, and then I showed him the letter G card.  He knew that his last name and Grandma started with G.  

Then we learned our verse of the week

"God is love." 1 John 4:8

That one didn't take long to memorize!  We moved to the table for the Intro to Letter G activity.  I wrote the letters on green paper, and then cut them apart and taped them so he could see that lowercase 'g' goes "underground."  Then he put a green puff ball on each of the circles.

We moved the G's aside and started our green experiment.  I put one drop of blue in the bottom left, two drops in the middle and three drops in the top.  Same with the yellow.

We showed him how to use the dropper and guided him through making different shades of green.  

He thought it was pretty neat.

Then he got to experiment himself.

After he was pretty confident that blue and yellow make green, we tried it with water colors, too.

We took one last look at all the tins and talked about how they were all different shades of green.

Previously, I took paint samples from the store, cut them up, glued one piece to a clothespin, and the rest to a piece of cardboard so they'd be easier to hold on to. 

Time to match up the greens!

Parker did SO well with this.  It was fun to watch his thought process.  He would look at the cardboard piece first, and then find a clothespin to match.  (I did the opposite when I was playing with it =)

Then we read

Quite possibly the best day of preschool yet.

Day 2

Today, we started with "Five Plump Peas," and the "Sticky Bubble Gum Song."  Parker always asks to do that one if I let him choose.  We did our usual counting and then reviewed what numbers 6-8 look like.  Then we said our verse and got ready to read

We talked about how the goats' last name was Gruff, and how our last name starts with G, too!  We read the story twice and then re-told it on the board.  He wanted to be the troll.

They ate and ate until they got fat and never saw the troll again!

He didn't love telling this one as much as Goldilocks, but I've heard him telling his pretend friends he's going to "gobble them up."  I'll take it!  We read another version of the same story later that day.  

Day 3

It dawned on me the night before that I hadn't incorporated the guitar into G week yet!  I used to play quite a bit but not so much anymore.  I found the chords to some songs we already knew and we had a great time singing and playing together.  We sang "The ABC's," "5 Little Ducks," and "Old MacDonald."

Then we moved on to measuring giraffes.  FIrst, he ordered them from shortest to tallest, and then measured them using square pattern blocks.  

 We measured them with the yellow hexagons to see if it would take more or less of them.

Then we read

and

This book is repetitive and it rhymes, so we did some rhyming practice when we were done reading it.

He also got a gift in the mail from Grandpa and Grandma.  It was full of things that start with G.  Two books, "Grandpa, Grandma and Me," and "What Makes You Giggle?" A letter written on green paper, and a glow stick!  Thanks guys!

Goodbye, G week!  It was real.