N Week

We started something new this week.  Madelyn (who just turned 1) is starting to go down a little later for her morning nap some days.  A couple of mornings this week, I let Madelyn participate in the beginning of our school time. She got a drum filled with instruments for Christmas which she loves banging on, exploring, and using to make music.  While we did our circle time routine (songs, poems, Bible verse, counting, weather, spelling our names, etc.), Madelyn listened and played instruments with us.  A lot of the time, she just seemed to be doing her own thing (which was sometimes distracting for Brooklyn), but I’m sure she’s hearing us and learning.  Over time, I’m sure I’ll notice that just by being in the room for this circle time will help jump start her learning.  This is also good practice for when Madelyn drops her morning nap and joins us every day for school time.  I still enjoy my one-on-one time with Brooklyn to focus on playing, teaching, crafting, baking, and just spending time together, but Madelyn can’t take a morning nap forever. Besides that, I love spending time with my littlest girl too!  

Monday we kicked off the letter N.  We talked about it’s sound which Brooklyn confused with the M sound at first.  Brooklyn glued her letter N then added tiny strips of paper onto it to form a nest.  She then added a few eggs.  She also did her dot N picture and spent some time practicing writing N’s on the chalkboard.  

Tuesday was number day.  We started by singing the “Number’s Man” song.  Next, we played our number mix-up game.  I scattered our number flashcards on the floor (I only used numbers 1-8).  I set up a play mailbox on Brooklyn’s table and told her to find a number, place it in the mailbox, put the flag up, and then I would check to see if she collected the correct number.  I sang a little song each time which went: "the next number is the number 'five,' can you find the number five?"  She would search for the number, run to put it into the mailbox, and each time after she placed the flag up on the mailbox, she would say “you’ve got mail mommy.”  This helped Brooklyn practice her number recognition in a fun way.  After our game, Brooklyn worked on her worksheet.  I had written numbers 0-5 all over a piece of paper (several of each number) and labeled them at the bottom of the page, each with a corresponding color star sticker.  I gave Brooklyn a sheet of star stickers and explained that she needed to look at the key at the bottom of the page to see what color sticker to put on each number.  She had so much fun doing this activity and was very good at it!  

 

Wednesday we read The Nose Book by Dr. Suess and then talked about the purpose of noses.  When I asked Brooklyn “what do noses do?”  she responded “they are for blowing.” :) We talked about how noses can smell, and then we put our noses to work.  I gathered lots of random things from the kitchen for us to smell - vanilla extract, vinegar, garlic, lemon juice, peanut butter, honey, and coffee.  Brooklyn was able to identify the honey and peanut butter without looking.  We had fun talking about the different smells and how our nose can even help us recognize what something is sometimes.  Brooklyn made a noodle necklace for craft by stringing pasta onto a piece of yarn using a big craft needle.  She loves her new necklace!  

We had skipped over nest day at the beginning of the week because I had forgotten to pick up the mini Cadbury eggs for our snack.  We started off by painting the back of a paper plate brown so that it could have time to dry.  We said our “Nice Nest Poem” a few times and talked about how mommy birds build nests so they have a safe home to lay their eggs and for their babies to live in once they hatch.  We talked about how they are usually up in trees so animals can’t get the eggs.  Unfortunately it was a cold, rainy day so we couldn’t go outside to look for nests or build them like I had planned.  Instead, we looked out the window at our trees to look for good spots for mommy birds to build their nests.  Next, we made our snack.  I melted ½ cup peanut butter, ⅓ cup chocolate chips, and ⅓ cup butterscotch chips and mixed them together (I didn’t go by the exact recipe because I only wanted to make a few).  I then poured in chow mein noodles, a little at a time (I probably added about 1 ½ cups - you want to make sure all of the noodles can get coated with the chocolate mixture).  I cut squares out of wax paper to line six slots in a muffin pan.  We poured our mixture into each muffin slot, patted down the middle to form a nest, then put them in the refrigerator to harden.  By this time our plates had dried, so we finished up our craft.  I cut the paper plate in half and stapled the edge together to form a nest.  Brooklyn glued pom poms to the end of popsicle sticks, added googly eyes, and glued on beaks.  Once the glue was dry, we placed them into the nest.  By this time we were finally able to enjoy our yummy nest snack.  I gave Brooklyn some mini Cadbury eggs to place in each nest to finish them up before we indulged.  

For our Friday Bible lesson we learned about Noah.  After reading the story, Brooklyn was excited to make her own ark for her craft.  I printed out a picture of an ark which she colored, and then I cut out.  Next, she glued it onto a piece of blue paper and then added lots of animals, in sets of two, with her animal stamps.  Once she had filled her ark with animals, she insisted that we add Noah and his “mommy and daddy” into the boat.  I found a smiley face stamp that she used to add them into the ark.  Finally, she added a rainbow to the sky with markers.  Later in the day we reviewed the story by playing with the Little People Noah’s ark set that Madelyn got for Christmas.  I let Brooklyn tell me the story this time, and she did a very good job!  

For details and instructions of these crafts and activities, please click to see my lesson plans.  If you have more ideas for the letter N, please comment and share - I would love to hear them!!

M Week

I had planned to start back school time on January 6 and kick off the new year with the letter M.  I’m not sure what I was thinking with all of the stuff that we had going on throughout the month of January.  We finally started M week two weeks later but ended up spreading it over the last two weeks of January.  I do have to say, it was so nice getting back into this routine (even if it was a slow start).  During these two weeks, we were blessed with snow twice and Madelyn’s 1st birthday!  We spent Madelyn’s birthday talking about how M is for Madelyn and enjoying a special family day together.  I also added in some extra M activities on the days we didn’t have an official school time.  Brooklyn loves Mickey and Minnie Mouse so we played with her new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and she played with her Mickey sticker book.  She spent lots of hours taking stickers out of her sticker book and putting them on pictures for mommy, daddy, and Madelyn.  How thoughtful of her to share her favorite stickers!  We also enjoyed some of her Mickey Mouse chocolates that she got for Christmas.  Then there was the snow.  We discovered that Brooklyn absolutely loves snow.  Although it has snowed many times since she was born, this is the first time she was old enough to actually enjoy it.  We made snow angels, did lots of sledding, built a snowman, ate snow cream, and best of all had tons of fun building and sliding down a big snow slide.  I would say we took full advantage of the snow!  Now back to the letter M….

On the first day of M week, Brooklyn glued together her M mountains and did her M dot picture.  It worked out nicely that we glued snow caps on the tops of the mountains since it snowed this day!  I also taught her our letter M poem, song, and Bible verse.  She loves “Where is Thumbkin” so when I taught her “Where is Mousekin” she really enjoyed saying it while pretending to be a mouse.  “The Itsy Bitsy Monkey” was also really fun!

The second day, we talked about monkeys.  In addition to “The Itsy Bitsy Monkey” song, we also sang “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.”  While we sang, we made music with our instruments.  For our craft, I had cut out some shapes: a few circles in various sizes, a big oval, and a big heart.  Brooklyn enjoyed gluing them together to made a monkey.  When it was all glued together, she drew on eyes, a nose, and a big smile for the mouth.  

Making music

Day three was all about mouths.  I drew and cut out lips on a piece of red paper and also a red oval and lots of white rectangles.  I gave Brooklyn a piece of pink paper and let her glue on the lips, then the tongue, then the teeth.  As she glued on each piece, we talked about the purpose of that part of the mouth.  Brooklyn said she uses her mouth “to bite, to eat...to eat M’s, for talking, to drink milk.”  She said she uses her lips “for chapstick and to kiss.”  After her craft, it was time for snack.  I gave Brooklyn a graph and a fun sized pack of M&M’s.  She dumped out the M&M’s, and then she had a lesson in graphing.  I had printed off a graph that had the colors listed across the bottom and numbers down the side.  (I changed the numbers on the side to numbers 1-5).  I then used markers to color each word at the bottom of the graph in the coordinating color to help Brooklyn.  I instructed Brooklyn to place one M&M in each square above the correct color.  When all of the M&M’s were on the graph, we discovered that there were the most orange and blue M&M's (4 each) and the least amount of red (1).  Finally, Brooklyn colored in the squares that had M&M's in them as she removed them from the graph. Then we used our mouths to eat the M&Ms.  What a fun way to learn about graphs!  

Gluing the teeth in the mouth

Graphing her M&M's

Her final M&M Graph

On day four, we talked about money.  I let Brooklyn play with some pretend money, and we talked a little bit about the value of money.  We then decided to enjoy some time out in the snow.  I plan to teach her more about money while we are playing in the future.  

Sledding fun in the snow

Madelyn loved sledding too!

The last day I told Brooklyn the story of baby Moses.  She loves any story that has a baby in it.  She loved hearing about how Moses’ mother placed him in a basket in the river to protect him and was excited to do the same thing for our craft.  I printed out the picture of the baby Moses and the basket, let Brooklyn color them, then I cut them out.  I found some scraps of green paper that I let her cut strips into (for some cutting practice) to make grass.  She then glued the green grass onto a blue piece of paper followed by the basket.  As soon as I finished cutting out baby Moses, Brooklyn gently grabbed him from me, rocked him to sleep, kissed him, and then placed him in the basket.  She is such a nurturing little girl!  

Rocking the baby Moses to sleep before placing him in the basket

          For details and instructions of these crafts and activities, please click to see my lesson plans.  If you have more ideas for the letter M, please comment and share - I would love to hear them!!

L Week

Learning about the letter L turned out to be quite long and drawn out.  My goal was to accomplish L week just before taking our Christmas break; however, we were so busy that we only did two days worth before we were completely taken over by the holiday craziness.  We finished up the last three days in the beginning of January and are thankfully back on track now!  Sometimes things just don’t go as you plan!  At least we finally did get through all of the planned letter L activities - even if it did take us several weeks!

The first day Brooklyn glued together her lighthouse.  We talked a little about what lighthouses do and used flashlights to shine light around a dark room.  We also talked about the sound that the letter L makes (which has always been tricky for Brooklyn).  

The second day we talked about ladybugs.  Brooklyn had fun making her ladybug craft; she especially enjoyed using a q-tip to make black dots on her ladybug’s back.  We played the ladybug math game from the letter I week (Tuesday) to practice counting and number recognition.  

The third day we talked more about light.  We sang “This Little Light of Mine” lots of times and even used a flashlight to wave around as we sang.  Since we did not do this lesson until after Christmas, we talked about all of the Christmas lights that we had seen and how they made light outside when it was dark.  We also talked about shadows and how they appear when things block the light.  For our craft, we made shadow drawings.  I held up a flashlight and random objects to make shadows on a piece of paper.  Brooklyn used a pencil to trace the outline of the objects.  

The fourth day was focused on leaves.  The Little Leaf Song was fun to sing and a great way to practice subtracting!  Brooklyn really enjoyed our craft.  I cut some leaves from one of our bushes which she used as a paintbrush to paint a picture.  

On the last day we learned about Daniel in the lion’s den.  After reading the story from the Bible, Brooklyn made her craft.  She started by drawing Daniel on a piece of brown construction paper.  (She has recently started drawing people - mostly faces.)  Then she used an orange marker to color three yellow cupcake liners to make lions.  I helped her by drawing lion faces in each cupcake liner.  She then glued each one onto the paper around Daniel.  The story of Daniel really demonstrates the verse for the week.  Although he wasn’t suppose to pray to God, Daniel continued to let his light shine!

For details and instructions of these crafts and activities, please click to see my lesson plans. If you have more ideas for the letter L, please comment and share - I would love to hear them!!