Homeschool for the end of the year

Since I started working my blogging has been put on hold.  I have found that I have only had the time to do the homeschooling activities and blogging went on the back burner for awhile.  I am hoping that this week I will be able to get planning all caught up and I will be able to do it all starting the first of the year.

I am hoping to plan 3 months of curriculum this week, but in the meantime we are going to be working on:

Winter Theme Unit from The Preschool Toolbox.


Literature activities for the books The Snowy Day and Good Night Moon by Homeschool Creations

We are also going to be reading our Bob Books and playing with all of the new toys Madison received for Christmas. 

More blog posts to come soon!

By the way I am planning all of Madison's homeschooling curriculum using The Weekly Homeschool Planner I am very excited to use it to organize!

Week of August 29th

Madison had a very busy week, this week.  She had fun playing with her velcro blocks.

She played Boogle Jr and timed herself with her sand timer to make it a challenge.

She reset the calendar by herself for the month of September:

We worked on her "I am special book"

We made a visit to the library.  Madison loves to play the computer games while I look for books. :)

She had fun painting on her easel!

We reviewed her CVC Boxes-Build a word to match the picture for Ready2Read Unit 1

Madison also was on a worksheet roll this week.  She completed at least 30 of them by her request!

She also completed her puzzles for her sight words in her I Can Read Unit 2 using her pocket chart.

She attended preschool Mon, Wed, and Friday.  She had gymnastics class on Tuesday and swimming on Wednesday.  She would normally have it on Thursday too, but due to the holiday weekend she will make it up next week.  Next week is going to be quite a short busy week!  We are looking forward to the cooler weather to be able to get out on her bike, scooter and to the park!  This weekend and next week I am looking forward to working on The activities and printables to go with 'Going on a Bear Hunt'

Week of August 21st Learning Update

My mother recently had major 5 hour abdominal surgery, so during that time everything went on the back burner. Her surgery was much more successful than predicted and she is home after being in the hospital for  two weeks.  She still has a long recovery, but she is cancer free thank goodness!!!!

Also I have become a huge fan of Pinterest. Pinterest is an easy way to organize all of the information/ideas you find on the web.  I LOVE it! You need to request an invite, but it only takes a day or two to arrive.   If you would like to follow me please click the button below:




So we are back on track now.  Madison transitioned to a 2 hour gymnastics class at Best Gymnastics and had a great first class.  She is so excited and has a super fun time while learning.  She starts Preschool next week and is really looking forward to it.  She absolutely adores her teacher!  Her teacher is one of those people who are very special and make such a difference in kid's lives.  I couldn't ask for more!  She will now go 3 days a week!  Madison also started round 3 of swimming lessons.  She swam the length of a backyard pool last night by herself.  I need to make a point to get to the pool this weekend so she can go off of the diving board.  I've been preoccupied and didn't want to miss this first so we've been putting it off.  She also has expressed interest in soccer.  I am still debating if we should do it or not...it might be too much, but I guess we can always try it and drop it if it is.  I remember my older daughter playing soccer at age 4, it was just heard ball and picking flowers, but Madison is a totally different child so I guess I should give it a go.  She really like the soccer skills class she took last year.

Tomorrow should be very interesting since Madison has her 4 year well child check up.  AKA, lots of shots.  I am currently trying to convince daddy that he should take time off of work so that when she does get the shots she is looking at him and not me. ;)  He's only seen her get one shot and that was over 3 years ago, so I think its time again.  We'll see. 

This week we've been focusing on learning her numbers.  She can tell me all of the numbers from 1-10 and 20-100, but for some reason we are having major issues with the teens.  I am trying to be patient and just go over them 5 times a day.  I am waiting for it to 'click'.

I am still working on the 'at' and 'an' phonics family, because I don't want to push her too hard.  I want to make sure we have it down before moving on.  She still tried to 'guess' and says that 'can' is 'cat' instead of actually sounding them out, so until she has it down 100%, we are not moving on to the next set.

She can read the first 4 BOB books very well.  So we are going to move on to book 5.

I decided last weekend that it might be a good idea to get Madison an American Girl Doll.  She has several imaginary friends (yes I looked it up and its normal) and that is fine except when she wants to play with older kids, which is all the time.  I've noticed they've started looking at her funny (I would too).  So I thought, maybe if we got her a doll that was her new best friend she could talk to it and then it would look normal.  She loves her new doll that she named Natalie and so far we have left our imaginary friends at home.  :)

This week Madison started out by making a collage.  Except she doesn't really know what that means, so she drew a picture and glued some beans and jewels to it.  Open ended art work is a "learning in progress" for her. :)

Then we did a couple of more read it, trace it, paste it from the Ready2Read Unit 1.

Madison enjoyed creating her masterpiece.  First she painted half of a Styrofoam ball.  She chose orange.

Then she stuck pipe cleaners that she had molded into it.

And here's a picture of her final masterpiece:

Target has a bunch of learning school items in their dollar section and so I picked up some of these soft blocks.  Madison sorted them by color and then shape.  She counted the amount of different shapes, per color and then added the two together.

Madison enjoyed spending some time playing dress up

And completing workbook pages

We also focused on building with blocks.

I think we will all of a lot more energy once this heat wave breaks, but it doesn't look like there's an end in sight for that yet.  :)  I will also have the chance to become a lot more organized once she starts preschool again and I have some free time. :)

Monday 8/8

I am enjoying this week and playing 'catch up' since Madison is out of preschool until the end of August.

This morning Madison really liked using her new pointer stick to point out sight words on her caterpillar that we hung on the wall.

Then she used the pointer stick to point out sight words on her word wall.  I discovered the concept of a word wall on the 1+1+1=1 blog.  It was very easy to make!

Then she did her word search from You Can Read Unit 1.  We had tried this last week, but she didn't get the concept, so we redid it this week and she did GREAT!

 

She also worked on a firework picture with her lite brite.  She loves the lite brite and it provides excellent fine motor skills practice!

 Then she built her sight words with letters using a pocket chart.

Then we practiced counting and visually recognizing numbers through 29.  I found a great counting to 100 printable at The Moffatt Girls Printable under Math.  They are honey bees. :)

Then Madison traced the letter B and the number 3 with printable sheets I laminated from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  They are listed under K4.

Madison also did a circle the word that matches the picture sheet (not pictured) and a crack the sight word code page.  Both can be found in Ready2Read Unit 1

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Then Madison played a game of Princess Memory with her sister.  We have at least 6 different types of memory games because it is her favorite and we play it every day.

Madison can do 24 piece puzzles rather easily and has for awhile so now to make them fun until she is able to independently do the 48 piece, she plays a game with daddy where they race to see who can get the puzzle done first. :)

We also read some stories out of her High Five Magazine.  I absolutely love that magazine and will keep getting it as well as Highlights when she's older.  And of course we read stories before nap and bedtime as well. 

I quizzed her on her number flashcards (just the teens) and she still doesn't have all of them down yet, so we're still working on it.

Madison definitely keeps us all busy! :)  I am glad I am getting the opportunity to spend more time working with her before preschool starts. :)

Sunday 8/7

Today was a very productive day!  Madison woke up today ready to learn!  We are still working on You can Read Unit1 and Ready2Read Unit 1.  Don't mind her clothing, she decided to stay in jammies today. :)


She colored the apple tree with the -an and -at family words.

Then she did her word shapes sheet

Then she put the numbers in their puzzle slots from our Lauri Math Discovery Kit. and put them in order from 0-9.

She traced her sight words

And worked on a an Independent Early Learning Center bag I made where she matches Uppercase and Lowercase letters.  The Book for these bags can be found here.

Then we did a trace it/stamp it sheet.

I went ahead and let her start coloring her caterpillar for the next unit.  She absolutely loves that caterpillar! 

Then she did a read it, trace it, paste it sheet.

We also reviewed flash cards to visually learn the numbers 1-20.  She already knew 1-10 so we will be focusing on the teens and the double digits as well as counting actual objects.

I found a hand pointer at the Dollar Tree this past week and Madison LOVES it.  It is going to make things so much fun! :)

Tomorrow I will also include pictures of Madison's word wall as well as her caterpillar on the wall. :)

Saturday

Today we worked on the -at and -an word families.  Madison sorted the words on the apples and put them in the right family column.  She also read her -an family mini book. Both of these activities came from Ready2Read from the Moffatt Girls

Madison did the preschool lessons from 1+1+1=1 last year.  I suggest to start with that program before moving on to the Ready2Read and I Can Read programs. Also check out the Tot School as well.

I don't want to move too fast with Madison and overwhelm her since she did just turn 4.  The wonderful thing about homeschooling is that you can move at the pace of the child.  She is picking up the sight words quite well, but I think she is going to need two weeks for the phonics.  We'll play it by ear.  I am going to focus on You Can Read Unit 2 and Ready2Read Unit 2.

We still have a few more things to finish up tomorrow, so I will post about those and provide pictures! :)

The preschool she attends does a progress report at the end of the year to let parents know where they are at.  Last year, Madison knew all of her colors including pink, white, brown, etc, all of her shapes, all of the alphabet and the sounds, and her numbers 1-10.  She could recognize some of the numbers in the teens and couldn't recognize 20 and up.  And she counted to 50.  Her physical and fine motor skills were good as well as Social and Academic. 

So my goal is to keep counting to 100.  She can do it, she just seems to get bored after 50.  lol.  I also need to have her start to recognize double digit numbers.  I think I am going to buy a 1-100 counting chart.  You'd think she'd at least know to 31 from the calendar!  LOL.Tomorrow I am also going to test her on how many counting blocks she can count.  And we need to keep up on our High Five and National Geographic magazines. :)

Preschool is right around the corner!

I realized that preschool starts at the end of August!  We've been slacking because it is summer.  I can tell that when Madison isn't intellectually stimulated her behavior is atrocious so I have been working more on planning her curriculum.  I started this week with reviewing our sight words that we started awhile back. I am basing her curriculum off of two sites.  The first is 1+1+1=1 You can Read  and The Moffatt Girls Ready2Read

We've already started Unit 1 in You can Read, but I felt we needed to review it again to make sure.  Madison completed the Word Shapes, Sentence Search, Word Search and Color by Words Sheets.  The Word Shapes and Word Search were a little tough and she didn't get the concept completely until I showed her most of them, so we're going to try those again tomorrow.  She also did the sight word letter puzzles.

Out of the Ready2Read Unit 1 Madison did the color by number sheets, colored her caterpillar, and painted her 'cheerio mats'.  We went over our 'at' family flower and she read the -at family mini book.  I was impressed!  She also did her color by sight word butterfly!  She did a read it, trace it,  paste it sheet and matched up the CVC words with the pictures.

This morning she went to a summer preschool camp at the local community center.  It is her last week.  She got to go swimming, to the park and drew me a picture of a flower and a princess.  After her nap she worked on patterning with our Lauri Math discovery kit.  We practiced our handwriting sheets, the letter A and the number 2.  I found these at Confessions of a Homeschooler Printables.  I printed them and then laminated them so Madison can do them over and over again with a dry erase marker. 

finishing the pattern with Lauri Math Discovery Kit

Read, trace and cut sheet

tracing sheet

CVC picture/word match

 I will post more this weekend on the rest of the activities for this week and our plans for next week. :)