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Preschool Corner: Summer Challenge


A quick note about Summer Preschool Corner: Summer will be a little more laid back, so feel free to share a fun craft or other fun idea that you are doing at home ~ you don’t have to have an elaborate week’s worth of plans to participate. I won’t! :)

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With summer in full swing around our house we’ve had very little “school time” as it generally is. What we have had a lot of is playing outside, sprinkler running, pool time and craziness. Somehow I have a feeling the majority of our summer is going to be like this! :) {and really…that’s ok!}.

So while I don’t have a day-by-day account of what we’ve done, I will share something with you that we have implemented for the summer called “School’s Out Reading Challenge!” We’re doing this with our oldest three, but made it a little easier for Zachary. I am not the one who came up with the idea ~ I based ours from Carissa’s Summer Plans at 1+1+1=1. Be sure to head over and see what she’s doing too!


Each day Zachary can earn points based on a list that I pulled together of school-type things or helping out around the house. When he earns a certain level of points he can cash them in for a prize or hold out for a big prize. At the rate we’re going right now, I might have to offer several prizes throughout the summer, but you might notice my prize list is a little {ahem} cheap. :) Here are the prizes he can earn {and little does he know I have some of the things already stashed away in my closet!}:

15 points: Trip to Target dollar section; trip to Dollar Tree; book from the Thrift Store

30 points: Frosty from Wendy’s or a Hot Wheels car

45 points: Ice cream for dinner or a new dinosaur


The points page is hanging nearby to remind me of how many points Zachary earns for different things:

~ Reading/Listening: Audio books {in the van} or reading a book to Mommy

~ Writing – completing a writing worksheet

~ Bible – Mommy sits to read a Bible story from our ‘special Bible’

~ Spanish – Using a cd-rom we have and knowing the words Mommy asks

~ Lapbook review – going over the lapbooks we’ve done this past year

~ Letter writing – {Mommy will help with this}

~ Chores & Extra: Cleaning up without being asked, going all day without tv, etc….

If you are interested in doing something similar with your kids, I uploaded a blank set of Summer Challenge sheets for boys and girls to my site. Just follow the link and you can download your own set to print off. If it doesn’t work for you, let me know and I can email you the pdf file.

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Preschool Corner Questions

I’ve had quite a few of you email me asking if I will continue hosting the Preschool Corner over the summer.

YES!! :)

It might not be the all~out version that the school year entails, but I would like to keep up with everyone over the summer and see the fun ideas that you are doing too. My goal is to post at least a few things we did during the week {theme related or not} ~ just FUN learning ideas to share with you all.

If you would like to participate, let it be as unstructured or structured as you’d like. Just have fun and show us what neat things are happening in your house!

My question to you is – what day works best for you all to have the Preschool Corner hosted? Are Fridays still good for you? {grins} I’d love to hear from you!

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Preschool Corner: Alphabet Picnic Table Talk

ABC & 123 is hosting “Picnic Table Talk” and this week the focus is all about the alphabet. Since this year I’ve been working through the alphabet with Zachary, I thought that it would be fun to share some of my favorite resources from this past year {and yes, I know we still have a few letters to finish up!}.

You can still link up and share what you’ve been doing in your preschool corner this week at the end of this post, but here’s a little summary of some of my favorite resources.

Alphabet Art includes some fun ways to teach the alphabet through the use of poems, fingerplays, crafts and more. There are ideas for every letter of the alphabet and the majority of the activities are easy to pull together ~ and simple for the kids to create/do.

My ABC Bible Verses has a verse for each letter of the alphabet along with a short little story/devotional. The verses are simple and include reminders to review the verses that have already been learned.



Leap Frog: Letter Factory
~ We have the older version of this dvd and all of our kids have had so much fun and learned so quickly with this dvd!! I promise you, it’s worth it to buy the whole set of them! The new dvd is releasing a little later this month and will also include the lowercase letters. LOVE them!

And while we’re on the topic of Leap Frog, the Fridge Phonics are wonderful too. We have the upper and lowercase letters for it, but the songs are catchy and we use the magnets to spell words, etc…It’s worked it’s way through all of our kids so far!

If you’d like to see some of the things that we’ve done in our alphabet studies this year, be sure to check out all of the Alphabet Time posts. I also have some great Preschool Printables too {of course I’m partial to them since I made them!}.

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Preschool Corner: Robin Lapbook

We had a little robin who decided to build a nest right in front of our house and we were able to watch the entire process. The kids were thrilled to discover that she had laid three eggs.

Zachary was the one who alerted us to the fact there were eggs in the nest ~ after he reached up, stuck his hand in the next one morning and felt the eggs.

We had a little discussion about leaving bird’s nests alone. Yes, we did.

That seemed like a great time to avoid those last few pesky letters of the alphabet that are hanging over my head and use the time to learn as much as we could about robins. It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good learning opportunity, don’t you think?

Drawing a picture of a robin

I posted about the robin lapbooks that the girls put together along with some great links, but wanted to do a separate post for Zachary’s lapbook, since it was a little different and more ‘directed’ by him. He was so excited to have school time along with the girls and feels like he is really doing school right now. It’s so funny to watch him.

Zachary’s lapbook only used one file folder ~ I opened it flat and then re-folded it so that there were two smaller flaps on the sides. The above picture shows the front and the back of his lapbook {cover pic is linked below} For the back cover, Zachary drew a picture of some worms and dictated a few sentences to me:

“Robins can see the ground moving. That means worms are going underground. They eat them.”

There are only a few minit books inside: Who’s Who {difference between male and female birds}, bird food, predators, a coloring sheet with a robin’s anatomy, clip art and a drawing Zachary made of a robin’s nest. I didn’t get a very good picture of his completed drawing, but it’s hysterical! The robins all have their heads straight up, mouths open and waiting for food. He was so proud because he did it all by himself and wrote “This iz a robin” along the top.

Here are a some shots inside the lapbook and with the minit books fully opened:

During the week we also worked on memorizing a little poem about “Little Robin Redbreast”. Zachary did great memorizing the first stanza of it:

Little Robin Redbreast

Little Robin Redbreast sat upon a tree,
Up went pussy cat and down went he;
Down came pussy, and away Robin ran;
Says little Robin Redbreast, “Catch me if you can.”

Little Robin Redbreast jumped upon a wall,
Pussy cat jumped after him and almost got a fall;
Little Robin chirped and sang, and what did pussy say?
Pussy cat said, “Meeow!” and Robin jumped away.


Links for the Lapbook
:

Be sure to check out my post about the girl’s robin lapbooks. I’m covering a lot more information about the things that we talked about during the week and will have more resources and links in that post!

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Tot School ::24::

Tot School

~ Kaleb is 30 months ~

The last two weeks I’ve been using a little planning form I made up to hang on my fridge so that I would:

a) plan intentional activities with Kaleb
b) have them staring me in the face to ensure Kaleb doesn’t just get ‘Mommy leftovers’

That said, here’s how I broke up our week:

Monday: water pouring, Nemo book; watercolor painting
Tuesday: 2 pc puzzles; hair scrunchis, Wii
Wednesday: tp ramps & cars; veggie/fruit cards; nature walk
Thursday: alpha puzzles; foam shapes; sandbox time
Friday….well, umm….I was getting ready for my own birthday party and baking a cake. {grins}

And here’s the FUN stuff ~ the pictures of how it played out.

Kaleb LOVED pouring water from the mini-pitcher and into the cups. We have a kid’s Tupperware set that is now one of his favorite things to do. Next time, I will be a little wiser and let him do it on the deck where the water mess isn’t an issue {for me, not him ~ he could care less!}.

I pulled out the letters of Kaleb’s name with our alphabet puzzles and we had fun playing with those together and {trying to} name the letters.

Kaleb matched shapes {and named circles and triangles) with our foam shapes and cards.

On one of trips to the dollar store, I bought a pack of hair scrunchies and we used a peg from our ring toss game. Kaleb had to stretch the scrunchies over the edge of the peg and slide them down. We also used them to work on naming colors ~ we’ve got green and blue down pat {and I’m sure it’s no small cooincidence that his favorite binkies are green and blue…}

Everyone wanted to be a part of the toilet paper tube ramps with little cars. Once we were done making ramps, the cars moved on up to the big slide and went flying down the BIG ramp!

And this is a little man intent on playing football…for all of 4 seconds or so. Covered in sand from the freshly cleaned sandbox.

Before I forget, I posted my ‘Tot School’ planning form if you want to use it {graphics are courtesy of Carissa at 1+1+1=1). Click on the thumbnail graphic to print it off.

Thanks for stopping by! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

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Fruit and Vegetable Matching Cards {Preschool Printables}

Before I have a mutiny on my hands, I AM going to be posting number cards soon!! I did pay attention to the poll results…but since I already had these partially completed {and they were so pretty}, I’m going to post them first.

Will you forgive me? {grins}

Here’s a little thumbnail glimpse at what they look like.

The cards can be used as a memory game, for matching to like objects, grouping by colors, etc…It’s up to you! You can also use the picture cards to practice identifying fruits and vegetables with your child {or sort by what they like and dislike…you never know!}.

Word cards are also provided for each of the fruits and vegetables pictured. Let your child sound out the words and find the word card that matches the picture card. But have fun!! Click on the thumbnail to print off the cards ~ it’s that easy!

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