T is for Transportation

It's finally T week!  I think Parker has been asking since letter B when we're going to learn about tractors and trucks =)  

Day 1

After songs, we reviewed the number cards.  He recognizes 1-10, so I added 11-13.  By the end of the year, I'd like him to recognize numbers 1-20.  

I printed a bunch of things off of this blog.  The first thing I used were these tulip counting strips.  Parker counted the tulips and then put the clothespin on the right number.

Then we reviewed Letters A-S and their verses, and learned Letter T and its verse,

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart. - Prov. 3:5

Then we went to find all of his tractors.  Of course, they are all red ;)  Once we found them all, he put them in order from biggest to smallest.

Then he took the letter T card and made Tt's out of tractors.

Then we read a BUNCH of tractor and truck books.  We have several of our own, and we got these from the library.

 

 

Day 2

For a little bit of alphabet review, I wrote lower-case letters on a tube and upper-case letters on stickers.  He had to match them up.  Great fine-motor and letter recognition practice!

We picked out a bunch of Parker's transportation toys and brought them over to the graph I taped to the floor.  We talked about the different modes of transportation and then he filled in the graph.

Then we did some transportation pattern block pictures.

Then, we read 

 Day 3

We were going to take the train to the city, but it was really cold and windy, so we decided to head out to my parents to ride some tractors, and stop at a train park on the way.  

The park was a narrow strip of land with three tracks on each side.  We pulled up and heard a train coming, so we got Parker out of his seat and set him on top of the Jeep for a perfect view.  

Turns out, trains are more enjoyable from a distance.  They are really loud, and the horns are REALLY loud.  When it got to us, Parker started crying...so did Adley.

After the first one had passed, we got out our lunch and started eating.  Only a few short minutes later, we could hear another one coming.  We warned Parker that it was going to be loud, and I held Adley and plugged her ears.  Sure enough...they both started crying when the horn was sounded.  We gave it a few more tries and circumstances did not improve.  Good try - let's go ride some tractors.

S is for Spring

B fell on his Birthday, C fell when we were harvesting Corn, O fell during the Olympics, and S fell on the first week of Spring.  I love it when thing work out perfectly =)  Here's what we did!

Day 1

We usually sing songs on Day 1, and I know we did...I just can't remember exactly which ones.  We counted to 50, reviewed letters A-R and their verses, and learned letter S and its verse

My salvation comes from the Lord - Psalm 62:1

For our Intro to Letter S activity, I had Parker trace the Ss's on the board with his finger.

Then he erased them with a sponge.

He transferred water from one bowl to another with the sponge.

We reviewed some shapes and sorted them into shapes with straight lines and shapes with curvy lines.

Then, he made the shapes with straight lines out of popsicle sticks.  They have a small piece of velcro on each end to stick them together.

Then we read,

we laid out the book and he created on of the pictures that the mice made in the book.

 

Finally, we read

Day 2

After counting and reviewing, we sorted the letters that we've learned just like we did the shapes yesterday.  He made a few letters out of the popsicle sticks.

Next, he cut these four strips of paper on the lines.  He's pretty good at cutting!

Then, we read

After learning about real sheep, we read about David, a shepherd in the Bible.  We talked about what shepherds do, and then we read about Jesus being the Good Shepherd.  We read the parable of the lost sheep and talked about how much God loves his children!  It brings me so much joy to talk with him about these things.  One of the many blessings of parenthood.

We had our niece and nephew, Alain and Hunter, over night a few days later and we took them Kline Creek Farm.  The farm is restored and operated as in the 1890's.  

It was 30 degrees and cloudy, but we toughed it out anyway.  

First, we learned how to tap a maple tree for sap and turn it in to syrup. 

Then we saw the sheep and the 22 lambs!

They also had cows, calves, horses, and chickens.  We ended our little field trip by going on a tour through the farmhouse.  Parker wanted to hold both Alaina and Hunter's hands the whole time.

The tour guide taught us about how people lived back then, and we figured out that if we all lived together, I would get the first bath, and Parker would get the last ;)  The kids thought that was pretty funny.

Day 3

We started by reading 

We learned that seeds come in different colors, shapes and sizes, and they need water, soil and sunshine to live.  

I had a bowl full of different seeds and had him sort them in the egg carton. 

I've noticed this before when he's sorting things - instead of just grabbing a random seed out of the bowl and putting it in the right place, he would rather choose a certain kind and find all of that one.  Then choose another kind and find all of that one. 

Then I laid out the seed packages with a seed taped to the top and he had to match the seeds he just sorted to what kind of seed they were.  

We planted and watered some sunflower seeds and cilantro seeds and put them by the window.

We also read

 and

Later that day, we went on a Spring Scavenger Hunt at the park.  It has a nature path around a pond, so Parker walked while Adley and I followed with the stroller.  We had so much fun!  Parker was running up to all the trees to feel if the bark was smooth or rough.  He found everything in the scavenger hunt and then we got to play at the park a while, too.  And guess what?  It was 45 degrees and sunny!  It felt amazing.  I chose not to bring the camera.  Sometimes it's gets annoying trying to get pictures of everything instead of just enjoying the moment.   

Here's one benefit of being behind on the blog, I can give you an update on the seeds =)  They sprouted within a couple of days.  He used his tractor to haul the dirt and transplanted the sunflowers into the pots.  

Yay for Spring!

R is for Rainbows

Wow, I'm three weeks behind on my blogging!  I started working as a Reading Interventionist a few days a week, and although we've still been able to fit in preschool, I just haven't found the time to blog.  Unfortunately, I'm playing catch-up while my husband is in surgery, but hopefully this will make time pass more quickly.

Ryan was a fabulous substitute teacher on 

Day 1

First, Parker filled in the missing letters of the alphabet with the correct letters.  

Nice silly face, Parker!

Then he counted the number of dots in the rectangles and put the right number card on top.

They counted to 40, reviewed letters A-Q and their verses, and learned letter R and its verse

"Rejoice in the Lord Always" - Phillipians 4:4

For the Intro to Letter R activity, Parker found all of the red puff balls and then traced the Rr's with them.

He needed to find some red buttons to finish it up.

Time for the rectangle puzzle.  We've been reviewing shapes and their properties.  This exercise teaches that rectangles come in all shapes and sizes.  They just need to have two long sides and two short sides =)

Finally, they read

Day 2

I absolutely love rainbows.  If the weather is even close to the right conditions, I am outside waiting for it.  We've seen two really awesome ones within the last year and Parker thinks they're pretty sweet, too.  What a beautiful symbol for God's promise to Noah and to us!

That's why I entitled today's lesson, "5 Way to Make a Rainbow."  We reviewed letter R and its verse, counted to 50 and then we learned a song for the colors of the rainbow.  You just sing the colors in a scale, one color for every note, except indigo gets two notes.  First I said each color's name and had him repeat them.  Then I sang it through a few times and pretty soon he got it, too. 

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Rainbow #1 - Color Sorting

I had a shape cut out for each color.  A red heart, orange pumpkin, yellow star, green leave, blue whale, indigo butterfly and purple flower.  Then I had a bucket full of random objects that he had to sort and match to the right color.

Rainbow #2 - Ordering by Size

Each of the colors is a solid arch - as in, they aren't just thin strips. They are each a full sheet of paper cut to this shape.  Hope that makes sense!  I spread them all out and Parker found the biggest one - red.  Then he sang the rainbow order song to help him figure out what to put on top of the red.  He kept layering the colors until he had a complete rainbow.

Rainbow #3 - Pipe Cleaners

I had the playdoh balls and pipe cleaners laid out.  He sang the song and stuck in the colors.

Rainbow #4 - Rainbow Pattern

Parker thread a pipe cleaner with beads in rainbow order. 

Rainbow #5 - Letters in Raindrops

I used water beads to make a raindrop sensory bin.  Those things are so cool!  I put the letters, 

R-A-I-N-B-O-W, inside and told him to dig around until he found seven letters.

Once he found the seven letters, I told him to put them in rainbow order, and they would spell the word rainbow.  How convenient! He sang the song, and put them in order. 

Then we read these books.

Day 3

After singing the rainbow song and reviewing letters and numbers, Parker spelled his first name with the letter magnets.  Then I showed him that his middle name starts with R, and had him find the magnets to put on top of those letters.  

He did the red color-match.

And we made a rain cloud with shaving cream and blue water.

We were supposed to go the local zoo to see Rabbits and Reptiles, but of course, it was less than 30 degrees.  Come on already, Spring!!  As much as I wanted go for the sake of going during R week, we are tired of freezing.  We'll take a raincheck ;)