GLE Week 8 Q is for Quail

Curriculum found here.  This week we talked more about Moses.  He had a verrrry interesting life!  Lots to talk about.  We also talked about Qq and what sound it makes and what it looks like.  She knows all her capital letters and most of her sounds, so we just focus on the lowecase one most of the time.  Although sometimes for Q she said /k/ and sometimes for G she says /j/ which is especially tricky because sometimes G does make the J sound!



















We had that little pheasant-I mean QUAIL, ahem- on her desk all week.  Pretty cute little guy (I assume it's male since it's tail is super colorful).  Got him at Hobby Lobby.


 

We painted with feathers and went out and tried to make our own bird nest.  I think we made the walls too thick because it took all week to dry out (we used mud) and then it wouldn't even hold together!  Them birds be smart.

Tot School Letter Bb!  He actually started saying /b/ by the end of the week.  Today I started to show him T and asked what sound it made and he said "/k/k/k/.../b/b/b/..." Pretty funny!  However those are the 2 sounds he has learned so far (C and B-we did do an Ii week, but he never even got close to understanding /i/i/i/) so I'm pretty impressed!

Playing in his pasta bin with ABC Find It from 1+1+1=1.  He does really well with that so we do it pretty much every week.  He is pretty limited in what he can do without getting super frustrated so we keep it simple around here for my little man!  A perfect example is the school bus craft from No Time for Flashcards.  DISASTER!  He had a total meltdown when I glued the pictures down.  He didn't want to color the bus and he got mad at me when I sang the wheels on the bus song.  So I did the craft without him and then he happily carried it around all day! :)  

One thing Mr. Man will do happily all day long is read.  Autumn crafts way more than him, but he reads way more than her so go figure!  So far, they both have a healthy dose of appreciation for books for which I am exceedingly happy about.  

Caleb's books focused on the /b/ sound and Autumn's were just bird books I had.  None of them fit the theme very well, but we made do. 

GLE Week 7 I is for Insect

This week for our bible study/preschool at home, we talked about Moses and the plagues.  Curriculum found here.

Only a couple of pictures this week!

Our 10 plagues index cards.  For the 5th plague (sick livestock) we ended up putting pictures of farm animals on it.  The bottom picture is some activities we did.  Both the iguana with the Avery stickers and the big I with the iguana's glued on it came from 1+1+1=1.  The dragonfly is a paint, cut, and glue from learncreatelove. 

Books about INSECTS! (or, bugs!)

  Tot school!  I tried to just go with whatever letter Autumn was working on (in this case, Ii).  I have now decided to work with him on letters he already knows or is somewhat familiar with (the letters of his name for example).

Painting an egg carton inchworm.  Some printables from 1+1+1=1 and The Mommy Teacher. 

We were putting Avery stickers on the igloo, but they ended up all over his legs! :)

Finding I books that feature the /i/ sound was a challenge for us.  We basically had no book focus this week.  He also didn't really get "I".  The whole point in doing things with him is simply for exposure though and now he does see letters and points them out so I know he is absorbing more than meets the eye.  I think in his head he believes he knows all the letters and they are all called "E" :)

GLE Week 6 "c" is for colors

Also, week 6 encompasses the story of Joseph and his beautiful (if problem causing) coat.  Curriculum found here.

Wearing her paper bag coat, retelling the story with her Joseph puppet, and some of the crafts we made. 

This child.  We mixed these one day and now she knows them.  Model student!

I thought I would also teach Caleb his letters along with Autumn (even though they have their learning times separately from each other).  Caleb is 22 months.  We learned all about what sound C makes!  All of the materials I used with him can be found at 1+1+1.  (LOVE that woman!)

Finding C words in a kidney bean sensory bin and some artwork

Even baby sister got in on the action! Yes she puts things in her mouth and yes I was watching her like a hawk. See my hand in the bottom of the picture? 

Literature for both kids!  Autumn's (left) goes mostly with the theme (colors) and Caleb's goes more for the letter sound. 

We decorated pumpkins this week and I thought it was funny there was a pumpkin for what both kids were leaning.  Caleb's has a big C on it and the pumpkin on the end has rainbow crayons melted all over it to emphasize colors!

GLE Week 4 & 5

We are still using God's Little Explorers as our bible study every day.  It is wonderful!  We are also learning sight words using Reading the Alphabet.  We are going pretty slowly with this, but so far she has learned to read 3 sight words ;)

I am really no good at taking pictures.  For the last two weeks of our time together I have 5 pictures.  I got tired of documenting everything but then this week I decided it will come in handy when I got through it with Mr. Man so I started trying to take them again.

So, week 4 was z is for zoo (Noah's Ark).

I actually only took ONE picture this week, HAH!  Autumn and I (Autumn and I? No, it was just me.) found this online graphing game that she loved.  We actually found an entire mega pack and did quite a few things out of it.  Cutting and pasting, q-tip painting, and other fun stuff.  The picture on the left was just my big kiddos playing in the rain!  It seemed appropriate!

Week 5 was t is for tent (story of Abraham).

We set up our play tent and made a campfire and played with it all week!  This week was harder for Autumn to grasp for some reason.  I think trying to explain traveling around from place to place living in a tent all for the sake of obedience was just over her head a bit.  She loved the star crafts we did though!  You know that verse about Abraham having more descendants than stars in the sky?  That is the reason for the star crafts.

We are also practicing writing our last name.

 

GLE Week 3 "A is for Apple"

You can find the amazing curriculum we are using here. A is for apples!  Plus the story of sin entering the garden.  Autumn loved reading her bible each day because there is a picture of a big snake.  This girl loves snakes...not in real life, but she loves stuffed ones and pictures of them.  Crazy child! 

Our verse for the week on apples we printed.  I saved these in a plastic bag for review. 

More fun with printed apples!  I labeled them 1-10 and we practiced putting them in order.   I laminated these for future practice.   The bottom picture is a few of the crafts we did throughout the week.

Apple pie playdough :)
We also tried to make stars with paint and an apple core (kind of like a stamp), but it totally did not work at all for us!  Even I couldn't get them to look like stars.  So they just smeared some paint around.   

We had an apple taste test (top right picture) and then we took our apples and made applesauce.  Another day we made mini apple pies.  I tried to review the letters we've learned so far with the pie topping.

Last, we ended our week with an apple tree bath.  This was because my son doesn't know his colors yet and I am trying to teach them in fun ways and also because they both love fun baths!  They absolutely LOVE them!!

This was a super fun week for me.  Maybe my favorite so far!

GLE-Week 2 "G is for Garden"

Ok, week two of God's Little Explorers.  G is for garden!  Highlights were...

Soda pop flowers.  She dipped the end of a 2 liter into paint to make the petals, then painted the insides yellow.  I added the stems and leaves.  We made enough to send some to a few family members.

We printed and laminated these cute flowers and bugs and made some homemade play dough and dyed it green and brown for grass and soil (at the expense of my hand!).  Then we played "flower garden" for a long time. 

 

2 different sensory bins.  The top one was soil, glass gems (pretend seeds), and fake flowers. Then my parents actually sent a nature box from their back yard in Tennessee this week so it was perfect! There were pine cones, acorns, and lots of other seed pods from their yard. 

2 fun snacks: dirt cups, found here. Plus yogurt with orange slices around it to create a flower. 

We also do some tracing pages, puzzles, letter workbooks that I don't take pictures of (kind of boring!).  I normally print off lots of options from Confessions of a Homeschooler Letter of The Week series or Carissa from 1+1+1=1 and then let Autumn choose what she wants to do each day.  She loves to cut right now so we cut A LOT!

I am LOVING this curriculum as it is centered around the bible! Every day we do "bible study" and she doesn't even realize she is learning letters, sounds, and math while we are doing it.  She is getting more familiar with her bible and is starting to take ownership over it.  These times together with her are truly the highlight of my entire day.  

GLE-Week 1 "X Marks The Spot"

This week for preschool we talked about the letter x!  We learned that God's word is treasure and we became explorers/pirate princesses for the week and went on treasure hunts and explored a little bit of God's world.  Preschool curriculum found here: God's Little Explorers.

Here are some pictures from the week:

Some of our x snacks

We went on a treasure hunt to find new school supplies, decorated an explorer's kit (from a Chick-fil-a drink carrier) and made binoculars!

This was her sensory bin for the week.  It was supposed to be sand, but the bag got left outside and so it ended up being very wet sand!  The mess was more than I anticipated, but she loved it.  We looked for pirate coins, necklaces, and jewels.  We also practiced drawing x's in the wet sand.

We also made treasure boxes out of an egg carton from Red Ted Art's blog but I didn't get a picture!

I thought I might also mention what Mr. Man and I did this week.  We did a blue week inspired by Play Create Explore's color of the week series.  I didn't get very many pictures of him since he is MUCH  more hands on than his sister, but here are a couple.  I painted a box blue and we (read: mommy) filled it up with blue items from our toy bins. 

This is the aftermath.  I wanted to show a real life experience. Caleb looked at his blue stuff for about 15 seconds and then threw it all over the floor.  But, hey, he is still interacting with blue :)

Another one of my "brilliant" ideas to do with him was to read a bible story out of his toddler rhyming bible (which I LOVE) and then color a picture of the story.  He read the story with me and then these crayons and picture sat out literally all day long.  Haha! Actually, when his big sister came home she wanted to color it so I printed off another one and they both colored :)

We also took a blue bath!

This was a lot of fun, but next time I am going to do a bath like this, I am going to make sure my husband is there to help me! They had blue shaving cream, a spray bottle filled with blue water, blue shapes, blue jewels in the bottom, and blue sponges.  Also, blue circles and squares cut out of foam and stuck on the walls.  

We also played with blue rice and had a blue water bead fight in the backyard, but no pics!  I think he might know the color blue, but I haven't "quizzed" him or anything, so I'm not sure.  It's all just for fun!

God's Little Explorers

SO, I guess I might start blogging again.  But, I don't know.  I am starting some preschool curriculum with Autumn on Monday and some other women going through the curriculum are documenting their journey so I'm thinking about it. The curriculum is called "God's Little Explorers" and it is bible based and even though we haven't officially started yet, I'm pretty sure it's going to be fabulous and fun.

And, just in case anyone is wondering, yes, Autumn is still attending preschool.  Funny thing that.  She goes for a couple hours daily.  I don't even know how to explain what has been happening in my heart lately.  I will say that I am now 100% convinced to give home schooling a try and wish I could pull her out of school.  Of course, the option to pull her out is there.  We are contracted to pay every month until December but that doesn't mean she has to go.  However, I really want to give it a fair shot...although, for unknown reasons to me, I pretty much have no good feelings about it.  Nothing bad has happened.  I just don't like it.  She is kind of apathetic about it. She is such a flexible kid that she will go because we tell her to, but it's hard to say how she really feels about it.  She definitely doesn't love it...but nor does she hate it.  Overall, I'm pretty sure she would rather stay home, but I can't tell how much she would rather stay home.  If that makes sense.

Anyway, the hubs is on board to start homeschooling next year (as in 2014) so there ya go.  It will be a trial run.  However, I can't stand to wait that long so we are starting God's Little Explorers (henceforth known as GLE) on Monday.  If it seems like it is too much for Autumn going to school and doing GLE, we will stop.  Or we will pull her out of school ;)  She LOVES doing one on one things with me so I think she'll be fine, but we are playing it by ear.  She is pretty much the ideal student.  Her brother, however...Autumn and I will be doing "school" during his nap because that boy...well, he is a wild man.  A wild, passionate, energetic tornado.  I adore his spirit but do not look forward to trying to teach him anything where he has to sit still.  He's only 21 months so maybe he'll chill out a bit before he turns 3?  We'll figure that out when we get there, right? :)

It's funny how things work out because I was so determined to give private preschool a shot and now thinking about it just makes my stomach ache.  I wonder if that is what it took for God to convince me that this is what he wants for me and my children.  I still have worries about home schooling, but my kids are so young this really is the best time to give it a shot, right?  Start now with one and then just add two and three to the mix later on.  Ah, we'll see.  My heart is all aflutter and I wish God would just use an audible voice to tell me exactly what I should do!

So, onward and upward.  Hopefully, next week I will have my very first GLE post up and documented!