Ice Cream and Bingo

Ice cream and bingo sounds like a fun night out, but not as much fun as our lesson today! We started by reviewing the letter "H", which we had practiced yesterday. I had the girls write several upper and lower case "H's", and then they chose their very best and favorite one to show me. I think it's important to touch on the previous lesson before delving into the current one. It didn't take us but a minute or two to review, but it showed me quickly what the girls could do. Sophie (4 years old) had no problem making her letters, but Zoe (3 years old) needed a reminder about her lowercase "H".

Today we practiced writing the letter "I". This is an easy letter so we were done with that very quickly. After that, we made "ice cream cones." I had cut out three different sized "scoops" for ice cream cones that I had drawn on paper. We talked about which was the biggest, which was the smallest and which was in between the two sizes. I told the girls to make their ice cream cones so that the biggest scoop was on the bottom and the smallest on the top. Then we discussed why that way would be best for making an ice cream cone. In hindsight, I think it would have been more fun to let them build their cones however they wanted and then explain their reasoning for how they put it together. Maybe we'll do that another time!

Sophie's ice cream cone

After making ice cream cones we played Bingo. This is a great game for practicing anything. I realized not too long ago that the girls could count forever, but they didn't recognize written numbers past 10. These bingo boards have the numbers 0-15 on them. When we played, I said a number, waited a little to give them time to find the number, and if they seemed lost I said the number again and held up an index card with the number on it. By the way, I have yet to purchase any sort of homeschooling materials. I made these bingo boards with construction paper, I used buttons that I got from my grandmother-in-law, and I wrote the numbers for calling on index cards that I have stockpiled in a drawer.

Our school time ended with snack (carrots and ranch, cheddar cheese sticks, crackers and hard boiled egg slices - I guess I was feeling orangey today!) and then Zoe got computer time to play Math Blaster and Sophie practiced piano.