Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. We certainly have much to be thankful for! We took a week off of school to take time to just play and be with family, and I was pleased when both girls kept asking when we would be having school again because they missed it! We've been moving right along with the Pre-K scope and sequence I'm using, and I plan to have Sophie ready to start working towards Kindergarten standards in January. It's so exciting to see their progress. Sophie is reading now, and Zoe and is recognizing more and more sight words.

Of course in prep for the holidays, we did lots of Thanksgiving related activities. I'm not going to post everything that we, but this craft I had to include. We made turkeys by stuffing paper lunch sacks, tracing hands for wings, adding a turkey head and feathers. On each feather the girls wrote something or someone that they are thankful for. They were so thoughtful. Sophie put all people on hers and Zoe included things like toys as well as people. They made great decorations for our table!

The Mailbox

I've been pulling a lot of ideas from The Mailbox website lately. They have a great free resource area, and you can sign up to get daily emails with ideas specifically for your own kid's age/grade level. I still have not spent money on anything except craft supplies (although I do have a wish list going - mostly storage solutions!).
After reviewing the letter "S" and practicing writing our "T's", the girls began working on the above worksheet. Sometimes I think the color by number or letter pages are too easy, but it is really good practice for following directions and working carefully, which Zoe (my "I finished first" child) needs to work on. We did alter this worksheet a little. Instead of having the girls color the leaves, we are crumpling tissue paper and gluing it on. I think they're going to look really pretty. We're also going to write a fall story to go with the picture. I will have them dictate the story and I'll do the actual printing.
We ended our day with the game "What's Your Move". It was fun to see the girls pick movements that we don't usually practice, such as leaping and taking giant steps.

Snack today was pbj triangles (made on those thin sandwich rounds), grapes and bananas.

Overwhelm Sets In

I didn't post any of last week's lessons because I just couldn't seem to find the time or energy to do it. We did do school all three days last week, but it was a challenge. The baby (now 8 months old) has been this little angel from heaven since the day she was born, and last week she decided to try on being a little devil! The fussing and crying and non-sleeping through me for a loop, so one of the things that got dropped (as happens when survival mode sets in) was this blog. I was beginning to think that I would have to start posting the whole week's lessons at the end of the week, because I just didn't see how I would manage to do it after each day's lessons. But now my baby girl is back to herself and I realized it was just one of those glitches and it will probably happen again in the future. I'm just rolling with it!
I didn't want to blow off all of my posting from last week though. On Election Day we did a lesson about voting. It was a fabulous lesson, not just because of the topic, but because both girls had one of those "aah ha!" moments during the phonics portion. I asked the girls why we say "vote" and not "vot", and Zoe said, "Because there's a silent "E" at the end.", and then Sophie said, "And the silent "E" makes the "O" say it's name!!" That right there was enough to keep me going for the next few weeks! For the voting portion of the lesson, I made up a story about a King, a Queen and a Princess that lived in the Kingdom of Colorful. One day the princess decided that everyone should wear the same color clothes. She declared that there would be a vote and that the people could choose either red, purple or blue. I elaborated about how the people talked for days about which color they would choose, and then the voting day came and the people lined up to cast their votes. At this point the girls had their papers ready (see above) with red, purple and blue squares. I had already gotten a bunch of Candyland cards ready, and now I let each girl take turns pulling a card. Whatever color they got, they had to put a tally mark under the correct square. We did talk about tally marks and what they mean, but I did not teach them to strike through the four tallies when they got to five. Once the votes were all tallied, we discussed which color won, which came in second and which came in last. We also talked about why people voted the way they did (they already had a lot of clothes that color so they wouldn't have to go out and buy more, they have shoes that match that color, they think that color is pretty, they think that color looks good on them....) We ended the lesson by talking about the election that was taking place that day. We also checked the news throughout the day and watched as the results came in. It turned out to be a fun lesson for all of us, even if some of our local results of the election were disappointing!