Parker Prep: Back to School

I wanted our first week back to preschool to be mostly review, just so Parker felt confident in what he already knew and was excited about what he might learn. I chose to go with an Apple Theme, because that's the best unit ever. What's not to love about apples? Here's what we did.

Day 1

We started by having a little pep-talk about how preschool was starting and that I was really excited. We were going to have a lot of fun, I expected him to be a good listener and always try his best. Then we sang one of his favorite songs from last year, "I'm In The Lord's Army."

Then we went through the letter flashcards. I intended to review these a few times over the summer. Never once did it happen. I remember wondering why it was so hard for parents to review things with their kids over the summer, and now I'm one of them. I understand!! haha. Lucky for me, he remembered all of them, so we didn't have to spend any extra time going back and re-learning them. We reviewed the verses from last year, too. (He didn't remember all of those, but we'll keep reviewing). Then he matched up the lowercase magnets to the uppercase letters.

We reviewed number flashcards 1-10.

I started three different patterns with the cubes and he finished them.

Then we read

We were supposed to go to the Apple Orchard, but it was cold and rainy, so we postponed it.

First day in the books. Not too shabby.

Day 2

We started with "Walk, Walk, Walk," and "5 Little Ducks."

Then he put his name in order on the board,

and read over the letters.

We started learning the sounds for letters A-F. When I was teaching Kindergarten, we would have the students say the picture and then say the sound of the letter. I'm doing it that way with Parker, too. He caught on really quickly! Just as I suspected. When you don't have to think about what the actual letter is, the sounds come rather easily.

Then we read

I made the different parts of the apple out of felt, and he put them all together to look like an apple.

We learned the three main parts of an apple - Peel, Flesh, and Core.

I gave him two dice to roll. He counted the dots and put that many seeds in the apple core.

I just love this picture for some reason. I feel so blessed to be able to do this with him!

After he did this five or six times, we read,

I cannot say enough great things about this book! It describes the parts of the apple and the parts of God in such a simple, yet tangible and real way. I totally love it =) I told my parents about the book...they said we had the same one growing up. How funny!

We cut open an apple and he examined the three parts with his magnifying glass.
He thought that was the coolest thing ever!

We finished by reading

Tomorrow we finally go to the apple orchard!!

Day 3

We went to the orchard between days two and three of preschool.

We had a great time playing,

picking as many colors of apples as we could,

and eating doughnuts and drinking cider.

The next day, we reviewed letter sounds and verses and we read through this apples poem.

Then we picked out the rhyming words, and I read it while he filled in the last word of each line.
We sang it to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle."

Next, we did a fine-motor, finger-strenghthening exercise to get him ready to hold a pencil correctly. I set up the cork board like so...

He grabbed a large push-pin and punched around the lines of the apple. He seemed to enjoy doing it, and he stayed on the line really well. He completed the apple and we moved on.