Game Day

Today the girls were feeling a little under the weather, so after doing a quick "L" worksheet, we just played a couple of games.

For the first game, you just need index cards with all of the letters on them, both upper case and lower case. I spread out the upper case cards on the floor. I made sure all of the cards were facing the same way so there would be no confusion about the "M" and "W" or the "N" and "Z", and then I showed the cards to the girls. Next, we went to the other side of the room (it helps if you have a long space) and the girls stood side by side. I gave each girl a card with a lower case letter on it. I instructed them to look at the letter and picture in their minds what the matching upper case letter looks like. Then I said, "Ready, set, go!" The girls had to run, find the matching letter, and get back to me. This is where having more than one child is helpful because a little healthy competition is a good thing! Once they got back to me, they had to say the name of the letter and tell me a word that starts with that letter. This was a fun game, and also gave me some good information. Sophie mixed up her "J" and "F", and Zoe got stumped when she thought her "d" was a "p", which Sophie had already picked up. She stood saying, "Mommy, you forgot to put the "D" out!" My girls can easily sit at our table where we do school for an hour or longer, but games like this are great for kids who need to get up and move around, who are bodily/kinesthetic learners, or in between lessons when kids are getting a little glazed in the eyes.

After the alphabet game, we played a number order game. I took index cards numbered 0-15 and put them in a path in order. The girls had to follow the cards (kind of like a live connect-the-dots), and only if they followed them in order would they find the surprise (a special message from me).
Today's snack included whole grain crackers, cheddar cheese sticks, apple smiles and ham roll-ups. The girls had fun making different sandwiches (ham, cheese, cracker; apple, cheese; etc.) and commenting on how it tasted. We read some stories and then had some quiet rest time. Hopefully the girls are feeling better tomorrow - it's our busiest day of the week: dance/gymnastics, TOTS and yoga!

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.