Letter A, day 3

Well, today is hump day-half way through the busy week and should be a happy day as the weekend was in sight! For me it started great, Friday is almost here!!!! But for Joshua, ugh, it was anything but a great morning :/ We survived the school day, that is all I have to say! Today was filled with LOTS of tears, temper, tantrums, time outs...you would have thought we were studying letter T :/ But we got through the school day (the worst part of Joshua's attitude) and pressed on. Here is a look at our day:

We started the day off as we have every other day, with a prayer and a review of letter Aa. We reviewed what A looked like in ASL, what is sounds like, what it looks like drawn on paper and what it it looks like with our bodies.

Then we worked on a 6piece Aa is for apple puzzle that Joshua got VERY frustrated with, since the pieces didnt stay in place and were sliding around the table.

We quickly finished that project and moved onto something I knew the kids would love-making an Aa collage!! I gave Joshua a bottle of glue and a piece of paper with a lowercase a on it and instructed Joshua to trace the letter a with glue

and that we would be using applejacks cereal on top of the glue, also tracing the letter.

Here is Joshua's finished A :)

Both kids got very into this and did a great job.

Here's Moo working on her letter a

Later the apple jacks became our morning snack.

After our collage we worked on shadow matching. I had a capital letter a on 3 pictures that were in color and 3 lower case letters, on pictures, that were printed in black and white. Joshua had to match the color picture to it's shadow.

Then we worked on patterns/sequence activity. Joshua also got VERY frustrated with this one. We worked on finishing patterns. Joshua did this very well, but he did not want to do it. But we pushed through it and finished.

So once the frustration started up again, and lasted a while, we decided to work on some Do-A-Dot work. Joshua LOVES painting so this was a good mood booster!

Madelynn also loves to paint, but she didnt last long enough for good pictures )

Letter A, day 2

Well, we did it, survived day 2 of homeschooling!! We had a play-date yesterday morning and so we ended up pushing school until after nap and before dinner. I was really worried how this school day might start, because this was Joshua's attitude about starting school while he had snack.

But as soon as our prayer was done (we pray together before I start teaching every day) he had a much better attitude and was ready to move onto the day's activities.

We started off the day with talking, again, about the letter Aa and the sounds that it makes (aa and ah) and then sang our ABC's and worked on signing (ASL) the alphabet too-he's getting really good!!

Then we moved on to tracing the letter Aa. I laminated all of my sheets and we have some dry erase crayons that work GREAT for the laminated worksheets and not getting the markers all over his hands.

Madelynn also got into this activity.

Then we moved onto some cutting practice. I was worried how this would go as Joshua has just, over the past week, started using only one hand with his scissors instead of 2.

So cutting on a dotted line, in shapes, I thought would be a struggle, but he really surprised me. We had a few meltdowns of "I can't know how", but no tears were shed and he was SO happy with the outcome.

After cutting practice we worked with some magnets.

Joshua had to put magnets on specific places on the worksheet and he LOVED it.

Then came our letter hunt :) Joshua LOVED this and he totally amazed me on this worksheet. I asked him to make little circles around the capital and lowercase letter a's that he could see on the work sheet. He concentrated SO hard and pulled it off flawlessly the first time without any help.

I had him repeat this worksheet about 3 times, laminated so it was easily wiped clean for more practice, and each time he completed it faster and faster.

Then finally after his 4th time he told me he knew how to do it and it was boring now-ouch!!

So...we moved on to some movement activities. First we used our bodies to make a capital A with our bodies, but Joshua wouldn't allow me to take a picture. So, we pulled out the number cards from the day before and marched, walked, skipped, and ran across the numbers 1-10 and again from 10-1...even the littlest one joined in.

And that was all I really had planned for today, but Joshua wanted more. So we pulled out our big letters again, along with the cubes, and worked on tracing/building the letters with the cubes.

This time though, I asked Joshua to stick them together, a few at a time, to outline the letters. It's kind of hard to explain so just take a look.

After this activity (he spent 15mins on this) our school day had nearly hit the 2hr mark and Joshua had decided he was done. So that was it! Letter A, day 2 was a success!! Now to start day 3...

Homeschooling

So here we are, at the start of another school year and this year Joshua gets to participate in on all the school fun!! He was SO excited to be starting 'preschool at home' this morning that he woke me up 4 times last night asking if it was morning and if he could do school. It was so sweet, cute and annoying as all get out-lol. I know he's excited but I wanted to sleep! Though I have to say, I hope this excitements continues for the next 30 weeks :)

Joshua is starting preschool this year and my main focus is going to be the alphabet. Joshua already knows them all, both capital and lowercase, by sight but I want to help him learn and understand each sound they make and how to write them. Most of my activities come from Confessions of a Homeschooler and 1+1+1=1, both are homeschooling mama's who I have been following for some time now. I love them both though most of my stuff came from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

So today we started our Letter Of the Week program. If you remember, I started this a few months ago before Joshua got really sick. We decided to take a break over the summer, get the kids healthy and figure things out, and try it again. So here we are.

This week's letter is letter Aa and here is what we did today:

*We introduced letter Aa and talked about how a makes the sound 'a' and 'ah'. Joshua thought it was really funny to hear our Leap Frog word builder explain the 'ah' sound-it said that A says 'ah' when it gets scared by a monster "ahhhh" and Joshua loves monsters!! Then we worked on writing the letter A.

Joshua did an AMAZING job writing his capital A,

but when asked to attempt to write his lowercase a (we talked about how it is a circle with a tail) he got very frustrated,

and Moo decided to copy his attitude as well.

But soon was able to color happily on her lined paper :)

*Next we worked on tracing capital and lowercase letter A's with colored cubes that we use for counting and sorting. Joshua really got into this one and worked very hard at making sure they were perfect!!

*After our cubes were all cleaned up we pulled out some crayons and markers and colored a sheet with apples on it and a reminder that Aa is for Apples.

*After our sheet was colored we moved onto our floor numbers and all the kids REALLY got into this activity!! They marched across the numbers, they skipped across the numbers, they walked, ran, and tip toed across the numbers. They could have spent HOURS with these number cards I am sure. They loved it!!

Then we took a break for snack and ate yogurt and apples :)

*After snack there was only one more activity for the day and it was to color the cover sheet for Joshua's ABC book. I will be creating a binder with copies of all his work this year so we can look back and see how he has progressed with writing and such and see what a difference can be made in 30 weeks :)

All in all our 'school day' was about 1.5hrs, and I think it was a great amount of time. Joshua was disappointed when the 'day' was done, but he had a great rest of his morning, complete with some Signing Time,

lunch and then down for a nap :)

Caterpillar Dreams

We are in our new place now, been here almost a week (Thursday) and we have already had multiple playdates. So far the most memorable one was this last Sunday when the Brooks family came over from some pizza, movie, cookie decorating, ball play and the 'wooly bear'. On their way into our apartment they came across this awesome fuzzy caterpillar and we brought them up stairs to show daddy.

Joshua had the honors of showing daddy first

Then it was Moo's turn

Madelynn LOVED this little 'wooly bear' and every time someone else took their turn she was screaming 'no no no' at them. It was funny.

I love that she is not afraid of bugs, but rather intrigued by them. She'll handle spiders, ants, centipedes, beetles...you name it she'll probably hold it.

And then Joshua...well he's not as intrigued. He like this caterpillar, he asked to hold it, would let it crawl on him or a moment or 2, but he did NOT care for it to crawl on his face

This is one of those pictures that make me sad and happy at the same time. As his mother I can see the fear in his eyes, the panic starting, but I also love that he allowed it for a moment, something that took him outside his comfort zone-if only for a min.

The kids are still talking about the caterpillar, or as Joshua calls him 'bully bear' and Madelynn just signs BUG or CATERPILLAR, and it is so much fun for me as their mom to sit back and watch them explore, discover and learn about their world, God's world, around them and in doing so, they explore, discover and learn about themselves too.

As many of you know I am an Advanced Signing Time Instructor and I teach classes through the Anoka-Hennepin school district's Adult Learning Program. In these classes I use Signing Time products as I teach parents, children and caregivers ASL vocabulary. One of our favorite ASL songs is "Caterpillar Dreams" and it played over and over in my head as we played with the caterpillar this past Sunday. Here are the lyrics:

Caterpillar Dreams

by Rachel de Azevedo Coleman

Signing Time

Vol. 8 “The Great Outdoors”

I’m a little caterpillar tiny and green

Crawlin’ around head full of dreams

Inch by inch takes all day

I’m dreamin’ of wings and flyin’ away

Just a little caterpillar down on the ground

I climb a tree hang upside down

I don’t know why I build a cocoon

Not sure why I do what I do

But if I were a butterfly

I could leave the ground behind

Would things look different way up high?

I wish I were a butterfly

I’m just a little caterpillar fast asleep

Eyes closed tight lost in a dream

In my dream I break free

Stretch out my legs and check out my wings

I feel just like a butterfly

Watch me leave the ground behind

Things look different way up high

I feel just like a butterfly

Look at me I’m flying!

I’m really flying!

Somebody pinch me!