The beginning of a new school year

Summer is over, and we’re back in the school routine.  We had a busy summer filled with lots of fun memories.  In the midst of all of the craziness, I also did a lot of brainstorming ideas of what and how I would teach my girls this school year.  Brooklyn is now 3 (she will not be 4 until the spring), and Madelyn is 19 months.  With Madelyn no longer taking a morning nap, I have had to be creative in coming up with activities to occupy her while I focus on teaching Brooklyn.  This has been one of my greatest challenges!  I’ve decided to do school only 3 days per week this year so that we still have time to get out and visit museums, play at the park, and hang out with our friends without the pressure of doing school every single day.  Below I’m going to share how I’ve decided to structure our school times this year; but first, here are the different components that make up our days.  

First day of school picture

I’m using a curriculum called Before Five In a Row as a part of our school time each day.  Basically, you read a children’s book five days in a row (in our case 6 days in a row as we are spreading each book over a two week period) and then learn and do activities based on that book.  So far, I have loved the simplicity of this curriculum - of course I also love researching and coming up with crafts and other ideas to add to the ideas given in the book.  Before Five In a Row is recommended for 2-4 years olds, but Madelyn loves listening in as I read the book each day.  Occasionally, she will join us on an easy craft or activity, but most days I’ll pull something out of her activity basket for her to play with while I help Brooklyn (more on that below).  

Madelyn wanted to join Brooklyn in the picture

Another area that I knew I wanted to focus on this year is character traits.  I began researching for a good curriculum to help me with this but decided to pull from a few websites (and a little of my own knowledge) and come up with my own. Basically, we focus on one character trait per month.  Each month, Brooklyn will learn a memory verse, definition, song, and several Bible stories that all go along with the character trait for that month.  In order to make this extra fun, I bought these little popsicle stick figures (which I colored) to use as puppets.  I used a shoebox to create a little house.  Every month I introduce my girls to a new little boy or girl who helps teach us about our character trait each day.  I decided to use our character traits to name the puppets.  Brooklyn and Madelyn absolutely love seeing Obedience (our September character trait) every morning!  This definitely has helped keep their attention during our Bible time.  I also made an obedience chart for this month.  Every time I notice Brooklyn being obedient on her own (which means: being a good listener; listening right away and with a happy heart), I give her a sticker on her chart.  I plan to do this each month with each new character trait.  

In addition to the BFIAR (Before Five In a Row) curriculum and character traits, I knew there were some other things I wanted Brooklyn to work on this year.  Some of these things I included in our circle time each morning (such as counting; days of the week; months of the year; yesterday, today, tomorrow; and the weather).  But I also wanted her to work on writing her letters and numbers, getting a better grasp on phonics, practicing basic math skills (simple addition, subtraction, recognizing all of the numbers, measuring, etc.), working on her gross motor skills, and doing art projects.  I have decided to focus on a few letters and one number each month.  I am using a variety of activities to help Brooklyn practice writing (writing letters in salt, painting with water over chalk letters on a chalkboard, tracing letters in a dry erase book, forming letters with playdough, etc.)  Brooklyn’s favorite way to practice letters so far has been to make rainbow letters.  I printed out large block letters.  I then made a dot inside the letter which is the starting point and explained the correct way to form the letter.  Brooklyn then writes the letter correctly with her choice color of marker and repeats over and over with lots of colorful markers until she has a rainbow letter.  All of these skills are practiced during the last 20 minutes of our school day.  We do two different activities, for 10 minutes each, to finish up each day.

Madelyn’s activity basket consists of random toddler activities that I’ve put together.  I usually pull one of these out while I help Brooklyn with her craft/learning activity for BFIAR.  I try to spend at least a few minutes teaching or playing with Madelyn once I get Brooklyn working on her activity.  This gives me a chance to help Madelyn with her colors, shapes, letters, and words as well as her fine motor skills.  Here is a link to my current, but always growing, list of activities.  So far, one of her favorites has been pushing straws through a Parmesan cheese lid!

Now here’s how our day is structured:

10:00 - 10:20  -  Circle Time  

We sing songs and learn basic calendar skills.  I dump out our drum full of musical instruments and let the kids make music as we sing and learn.  Madelyn usually sits still for at least part of this and enjoys playing the instruments with us.  At the end, we practice counting.  In September we are counting to 30 each day; in October we will count to 40 and so on until we reach 100 at the end of the school year.

*I bought this really cool Melissa and Doug calendar which we update each school day as we go through our circle time routine.  

*(Click the link to see the songs/lyrics that we use during our circle time)

10:20 - 10:30  -  Character Trait Puppets/Bible Story

At the end of circle time, we put away all of the instruments and get out our character trait puppets.  The girls love knocking on the window to help wake up Obedience so she will come out and talk to them.  We always review the character traits definition, our theme Bible verse (several times), and previous Bible stories.  We usually end our time by singing our song and reviewing our verse one more time.  

*I am planning to blog about each character trait each month as we go along.  

10:30 - 10:45  -  Snack Time

10:45 - 10:55  -  Storytime - Read the BFIAR Book

10:55 - 11:15  -  BFIAR Discussion/Activity/Craft

*This is the time I get out one of Madelyn’s activities.

11:15 - 11:25  -  Activity 1 (see schedule below)

Day 1 - Writing Letters

Day 2 - Writing Numbers

Day 3 - Phonics

*I change up the writing activity each day to add variety.  Sometimes the Phonics activity will go along with our BFIAR book.

11:25 - 11:35  -  Activity 2 (see schedule below)

Day 1 - Math Skills

Day 2 - Gross Motor Skills

Day 3 - Art Project

*Sometimes the math skill will go along with our BFIAR book.  The gross motor skill activity can be anything from skipping, jumping, hopping on one foot, tossing and catching a ball, running, pretending to be an animal, etc.  The art projects are often times either a seasonal craft or a type of process art.  

Wow, that was a lot of typing!  I hope this helps someone who is trying to teach their children at home like me.  I really enjoy planning all of this and teaching my children.  I think for now I am planning to just write a blog entry each month on the character trait for that month.  I will be happy to share my BFIAR lesson plans and art projects too if anyone is interested (and if I can find some extra time in my life! :) )

Summer Bucket List

So I wanted to share our Summer Bucket List.  I’m hoping to accomplish most, if not all, of the things on this list by the end of the Summer.  Hopefully this will give others some fun ideas of things to do with their children too.  We have already done several of these (since it’s already July!) and are looking forward to having lots more fun in the coming months.

Summer Bucket List

On the go:

• Beach
• Pool
• Library
• Museum
• Pet Store
• Park
• Farmer's Market
• Go get ice cream
• Pick Strawberries
• Go on a train ride
• Feed ducks
• Go out for snow cones
• Go on a nature walk
• Visit a garden
• Watch fireworks
• Visit out-of-town family

Rainy day:

• Bake cookies
• Play instruments
• Make an obstacle course
• Have a dance party
• Make ice cream
• Build a sheet fort
• Play dress-up
• Build a book tower
• Race cars
• Make a paper boat to float in the bathtub
• Play hide-and-seek
• Make lemonade
• Practice sewing with lacing cards
• Play with play dough
• Make Popsicles
• Balloon ping-pong

Outside:

• Have a picnic
• Draw with sidewalk chalk
• Play in the baby pool
• Have a water balloon fight
• Play in the sprinklers
• Go for a walk in the wagon
• Play soccer
• Bean bag toss
• Fly a kite
• Race around the yard
• Plant flowers
• Catch lightening bugs
• Play horseshoes
• Go for a bike ride
• Watch birds
• Make S'mores

Crafts:

• Watercolor
• Flower bottle stamping
• Write a short story with illustrations
• Paint a butterfly
• Finger paint
• Keep a journal
• Make a summer tree
• Create a summer mosaic with scrap paper
• Make a craft using things found in nature
• Fireworks painting
• Sticker books
• Color with markers
• Flower pressing
• Tin can wind chimes
• Fish sun catcher
• Citrus stamping

          Here a  few pictures of our adventures so far this Summer.

Madelyn enjoying our sprinkler pool

Brooklyn running through the sprinklers

Enjoying a breezy day at the beach

Playing in the sand

Reading books together

Having so much fun on the boat ride at the park

Climbing at the playground

Watching fireworks with a friend

Happy 4th of July

Sunset at the beach

Family picture - look at those two cute little faces peeking out :)

Enjoying a beautiful summer night outside

End of the Year Recap

After a long, fun-filled year of crafts, songs, books, poems, verses, activities, Bible stories, games, and learning through all of the letters, we finally made our way to the end of the alphabet.  As I reflect back over this past school year, I am so proud of my little Brooklyn.  While we had tons of fun, and Brooklyn learned so much, it wasn’t always easy to stay on course.  We had good weeks where we got all of our planned activities done and learned a lot, and we had weeks where we hardly accomplished anything.  Through all of this, I’ve really learned to let my girls be kids who have fun during this time of their lives when play should be the way they spend the majority of their time.  (There is a lot you can teach a child through playing!)  Although I put a lot of time and effort into planning these lessons each week, I’ve had to get over the fact that every week isn't going to go like I planned.  There were many beautiful days, especially in the Spring, that we rushed through our school time so we could go play outside.  There were other days when I could tell Brooklyn just needed some extra attention, so we skipped school time altogether and just snuggled up on the couch to read books.  I value the moments that I get to spend with each of my girls and try to do the best I can to teach them while also playing and doing fun things.  I’ve always been careful not to push learning on my girls.  While Brooklyn really enjoys school time and doing crafts, there are occasional days when she really doesn’t want to participate.  I’ve learned that trying to force her to do these activities is pointless.  Finding the right balance between structured school time and free play time has been one of my biggest challenges.  My advice to someone who is just starting to teach their toddler is to start off slowly.  It was difficult to get in all five days of school every single week (even though a lot of the activities only lasted 10-15 minutes).  I think my expectations were too high going into this school year.  It was extremely difficult for me to squeeze a structured school time in if we wanted to get out of the house or have friends over to play.  Once I let myself off the hook and realized it was ok if I didn’t accomplish every single planned activity within the allotted week, Brooklyn and I both enjoyed this learning time much better.  There were several letters that I spread out over a two week period rather than trying to squeeze everything into one week - these were our favorite letters!  In conclusion, Brooklyn and I really enjoyed learning this past year.  We also enjoyed spending time cooking together, reading books, going on walks, trying out different parks, going to MOPS, having playdates with friends, exploring, playing with playdough, playing dolls, going to storytime, and just doing kid things.  Now we are going to enjoy a fun, laid back summer!  I’m still deciding what/how I will teach her next school year and looking forward to all of the possibilities.  

August 2013 - Brooklyn was still a little toddler!

June 2014 - She's grown up so much!

To help myself remember, here are some things Brooklyn learned this year.  When we started school time in August, Brooklyn (who was 28 months) could recognize pretty much every letter (but she only knew some lowercase letters).  She knew a lot of her shapes and all of the colors.  She could count to 10 and was able to sing several songs for memory.  She was learning how to hold a pencil and scribbled whenever she colored or drew anything.  She was able to spell her name.  

Here are some of the things that Brooklyn could do at the end of our school year (at just over 3 years old):

• She can recognize all of the letters in the alphabet - uppercase and lowercase.  
• She knows all of the letter sounds (there are a couple that she mixes up occasionally).
• She can write a lot of the letters by herself.
• She can sometimes even write words on her on (she loves writing O’s and M’s so she likes to write “moo” and “mom”).   
• She can count to twenty (sometimes she’ll get stuck in the teens and repeat them a few times though.  She also still says “twenty-teen” occasionally which is so cute it’s hard to correct sometimes).  
• She can recognize numbers 1-9.
• She can easily count things.  Example - she is really good at counting how many yellow butterflies are on a page of lots of various colored butterflies.  She can also count how many grapes are in her bowl, how many people are sitting at the table, or how many people are missing from the table.
• She can hold up the number of fingers that you tell her or count out the correct number of an object.  Example - she can correctly give me 13 goldfish out of a box of goldfish.    
• She can understand simple addition and subtraction.
• She knows all of her shapes and can recognize the shape of most objects.
• She can tell me the opposite of pretty much anything.
• She knows TONS of songs for memory. (Including almost every Mary Poppins song).
• She still remembers several of the Bible verses that we learned.
• She holds her pencil the right way and has started drawing real pictures - she’s been really into drawing people lately.
• She has started trying to stay in the lines when she colors (sometimes).
• She has learned to use a glue stick by herself.
• She is an expert at lacing string through holes.
• She is an excellent painter.
• She can use scissors by herself.
• She remembers stories very well and can read them back to me after I’ve read them to her.  (She did this almost every Friday after I read her Bible story).  
• She loves to help and is very good at following directions.  
• She is very creative and given some scrap paper, scissors, and glue she can work for hours on creating a masterpiece.  
• She has an amazing imagination and loves to teach her little sister and her dolls all of the new things that she learns.  

Over the summer, I plan to relax and have lots of fun with my sweet girls.  I also want to have a little structured time occasionally to keep them in the habit.  While we were going through the alphabet, I would write our verse of the week on a card for us to review each day.  I plan to let Brooklyn pick one of these cards every morning during breakfast so we can review it together.  Hopefully, this will keep the Scriptures on her mind.  I may also do our circle time some mornings when we have nothing planned to do.  I have also created a summer bucket list of some fun activities.  I will try to post that list next week.  I hope everyone has a fun summer with their little ones!!

Z Week

I can’t believe we have gone through the entire alphabet!  This year has flown by, and we have had so much fun exploring all of the letters of the alphabet!!  Life has started to get busier as summer is near; so once again, I spread the letter Z out over two weeks so we could take time to really enjoy our last letter.   

We started Monday by learning the songs, poem, and Bible verse that go along with the letter Z.  We talked about the z sound, came up with words that start with the letter z, and then Brooklyn practiced writing z’s on her chalkboard.  Next, Brooklyn made her Zebra Z.  I had cut a large z out of white paper and then cut strips of black paper for her to glue on her z for the zebra stripes.  The easiest way to do this is to leave the black strips long, let the child glue them on the z, then trim the stips of paper to match up to the shape of the z.  After her zebra’s stripes were trimmed up, Brooklyn glued the z to her paper and then used the black paper scraps to glue around her zebra to make his mane.  She also glued on an ear and drew on an eye and nose.  

The strips of black paper on her Z before she glued them on

Tuesday was all about the zoo.  We started by singing The Zookeeper Song then we read Goodnight Gorilla.  We talked about the different animals that live in the zoo.  We have the Melissa and Doug zoo animal stamp set which Brooklyn loves!  I gave her a piece of paper (she chose to use yellow) and a strip of green paper.  I let her start by cutting slits in the green paper to make grass to glue on the bottom of her paper.  She loves to use scissors so this was a good way to let her practice!  She then used her stamps to fill her “zoo” with animals.  She decided to put four of each animal - a mommy, daddy, Brooklyn, and Madelyn.  To finish off our zoo, Brooklyn helped me punch holes in the top and bottom of the paper (I helped her line up the top and bottom holes).  She then laced yarn through the holes to make a gate around her zoo animals.  Lastly, she glued on a “zoo” sign to the top.

Stamping the animals in the zoo.

Lacing the yarn to make the gate of the zoo.

The back of the zoo picture to show how she laced it. 

On day 3, we talked about zebras.  We looked at pictures of zebras on google and said the Three Little Zebras poem.  I gave Brooklyn a print-out of what looked like a horse.  I told her it was a zebra and asked her what was missing.  She quickly told me that her zebra needed black stripes.  Before adding stripes to her zebra, she used a sparkly pen (which always makes things fun) to trace the letters in the word “zebra” at the top of her paper.  I then gave her some water color paint which she used to add black stripes to make the horse a zebra.  We then said the poem again and used our fingers to act it out.  As each zebra galloped away, we would put down a finger.  Once all of the zebras were gone, I asked her how many we had left.  She said “none,” and I realized I have never really taught her the number zero.  She quickly caught on and soon, we were counting from 0-10 and then back down from 10-0.  We also did a few subtraction games that involved the number 0.  For example, I would give Brooklyn 7 (pretend) cookies and takeaway 5.  She would tell me that she had 2 left.  Next, I would take away 2 cookies.  She would then tell me she had 0 left.  The rest of the day, she went around talking about the number 0.  I love her excitement when she learns something new!

We combined the zig zag activities and the Zacchaeus lesson on day 4 to complete the letter Z.  First, I gave Brooklyn the zig zag print-out and let her start by tracing the zig zag lines.  After she traced each one, she practiced her scissor skills by cutting along the zig zag lines.  It was a little difficult for her to trace and cut in a zig zag pattern as opposed to a straight line, but she caught on by the third line each time.  Next, we read the story of Zacchaeus from her Bible and sang the Zacchaeus song.  I printed out a small picture of Zacchaeus which she colored, and I cut out.  I traced her hand and arm on piece of paper to make a tree which she colored with markers.  She wanted to add Jesus to her picture so she drew Him at the bottom of the tree.  (She was very careful to add “hair to His face.”  Apparently, that’s a very important part of a portrait of Jesus.) Lastly, we did a simple trick to complete this craft.  I taped the end of a small popsicle stick (horizontally) to the back of Zacchaeus.  Next, I opened up a pair of scissors and cut a vertical slit up Brooklyn’s paper (from the middle of the tree trunk to the middle of the “hand” of the treetop).  We slid the popsicle stick through the slit so that she could make Zacchaeus climb up and down the tree.  She thought this was the coolest thing.  She then told me the story of Zacchaeus while making her Zacchaeus first climb up the tree to see Jesus and then climb down when Jesus told him to come down.  

Tracing the zig zags

Cutting on the zig zag lines

Here's how I taped the popsicle stick on the back of Zacchaeus.

This shows the slit and where to put the popsicle stick.

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

Y Week

We spent a lot of Y week talking about all the things in the world that are yellow.  Brooklyn really enjoyed the Something Yellow song, and we sang it a lot this week - while going on walks around the neighborhood, while playing in our backyard, and while walking around the house.  Our verse was Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world.”  We talked about how God is the light of the world just like the yellow sun lights up our world here on earth.  

On Monday, Brooklyn glued together her Y Yak then added on his eyes with a marker.  She also did her Y dot picture, practiced writing Y’s, and had fun learning our new verse, song, and poem.  

Tuesday was a lot of fun.  We started by saying the Yarn Poem and talking about things that we have that are made of yarn - we found a hat, scarf, blanket, baby booties, and mittens.  Then we used some yarn to make our craft.  I found some wooden triangle blocks, that are part of a game we have, to use for our yarn stamping.  I didn’t want to get paint on them, so I covered them in saran wrap that I secured with tape.  I then gave Brooklyn some yarn and had her wrap it around the blocks to make different patterns.  Once she was finished, I taped the yarn on the back so that it would stay put.  Brooklyn chose to use pink and purple paint for her yarn stamps.  She dipped her first stamp in purple paint and stamped it all over her paper to make a really cool design.  She then did the same thing with the other stamp in the pink paint.  I really liked how this craft turned out!  Next, we headed outside for some yo-yo fun.  I filled up a water balloon and attached a rubber band (which I had cut to make a string rather than a circle). Brooklyn had tons of fun boinging her yo-yo up and down!  It was a warm morning outside so when the water balloons popped, it made things extra fun!  

Brooklyn's yarn block patterns 

 

Wednesday we had a taste testing of some different foods for snack time.  I printed out a yummy vs. yucky chart that we used to keep track of the foods that Brooklyn liked and the ones she did not.  The foods that she had were a prune, a blackberry, dark chocolate, celery, peas, a jellybean, cinnamon pecans, a green bean chip, and sunflower seeds.  After she tasted each food, she would decided if she thought it was yummy or yucky, then she would use her do-a-dot marker to make a dot under the correct column.  In the end, she thought everything was yummy except for the celery and blackberry.  I then had her count up the dots in each column and tell me which column had more and which one had less.  I wrote the total numbers in the bottom row of her chart.  

Thursday was all about yellow.  We, of course, started our school day by singing Something Yellow and hopping around to the yellow things we found.  I then gave Brooklyn a magazine, some scissors, a glue stick, and a piece of paper.  I told her to find things in the magazine that were yellow, cut them out, then glue them to her paper.  I had some yellow pineapple to cut up for snack, so I had Brooklyn work by herself on this activity in the kitchen.  When I went to check on her, I saw that she had done an excellent job without any help at all!!  I was very impressed!  

On Friday, I told Brooklyn the Bible story of the rich, young ruler from Mark 10:17-31.  We talked about loving God with all of our heart.  I cut out a big heart and a small heart and asked Brooklyn to tell me some things that she loves.  I wrote each thing on the small heart.  I told her that all of those things are wonderful things that God has blessed us with - it is ok to love them!  Then I wrote “God” on the big heart and told her how we should love God more than we love all of the things written on the smaller heart. Brooklyn finished up her craft by gluing the two hearts on a piece of paper.  

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