More Alphabet and Sorting Coins

We started today's lesson by reviewing the letter "I".

Sophie's lower case and upper case "I"
Zoe's lower case "I"
After that we did a short worksheet practicing the letter "J" followed by some stamping fun. Then we did this dot-to-dot page that I made. I learned this trick at the AFHE annual homeschool convention. I attended a seminar called "Occupying Preschoolers While Teaching Older Children." Since my older children are preschoolers, I've been using some of those tips and tricks now with them, and will get to try them again in a year or so on Chloe. To make the dot-to-do, you just need a lacing card, a piece of paper and a pen. Push your pen through the holes on the lacing card, and then assign each dot a letter or number.
Our math lesson today was about coins. My husband and I save all of our change in a jar and it's full, so I put the girls to work and made a lesson out of it! I explained to them that the bank won't take the coins if they're all mixed up so we have to sort them by putting the coins that are the same together in their own separate pile. Sophie sorted her pile of coins by finding all of the quarters first and putting them in a separate pile. Then she continued with the pennies and nickels, and she was left with a pile of just dimes.
Zoe sorted hers by picking any coin out of her pile and placing it in the correct "column." She had fun trying to predict which type of coin was going to win.

Sophie finished sorting much faster than Zoe, so I decided to extend the lesson with her. First we counted all of the quarters (there were 40). This made for great one-to-one correspondence practice. Sophie can easily count to 80 or higher, but that is just memorization and not nearly as challenging as counting 80 or more objects correctly without losing track. She did a great job of counting her quarters, so then I showed her that four quarters make a dollar. We discussed ideas about what you could buy with one dollar (a pack of gum, a small toy, four of those big gumballs in the machine at Toys R Us) and then sorted all of the quarters into dollar-sized piles. Then we counted to see how many piles there were, and hence how many dollars we had in quarters (10). We then discussed ideas about what you could buy with ten dollars (a small stuffed animal, a shirt, a game like Candyland).

This lesson was a lot of fun, and one that we will do again I'm sure. Maybe next time we'll sort the money in their piggy banks and then go out and spend some of it!