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Tot School ::29::

~ Kaleb is 32 months ~

We’re more into the ‘swing’ of using our workboxes now with Kaleb. Want to have a little peek at how his are set up?

There are actually 12 boxes on the shelving unit, but the four big ones on the bottom are for the other kids if they have bulkier items. Besides, filling 12 boxes for him would be a LOT to do in one day. :) Depending on what is in the boxes, I might only put four out at a time and then pull the other four out after snack time.

Here’s a close up of one of the boxes. I posted the little Nemo number tags in my Preschool Workbox tag post last week.

Kaleb had fun lacing the beads..and Mommy likes them since they keep him busy for a little while. :) For those of you who have asked, you can find the beads on Amazon.

Every time I upload pictures I notice that binky in the boy’s mouth. Funny how we’re so used to it being around all.the.time at home, and I only really notice it when we take pictures.

I took all of our shapes off the wall to reorganize our ‘school area’ and wanted to find out what shapes Kaleb knew. He could name several {circle, star, square} but had trouble with the other names, so we played a game together. I put all the shapes on the floor and called out a shape name and he stood on that shape – and yeah for Kaleb! He knew them all {receptively}!! :) Now we’ll just work on the naming {expressively}.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures from the week. Kaleb has watched the Letter Factory dvd this last week and when I opened up the freezer I found the letter ‘C’ sitting on the shelf. When I asked him what was in my freezer, he pointed to the ‘C’ and said, “C-c-c-Cold!”

At the end of the week we took a ‘field trip’ to a local park that the kids love. This is the picture that just makes me smile!

Although I didn’t post pictures of everything we did, here were a few of the other things in Kaleb’s boxes this week: stacking buckets {and knocking them down}, bike riding {he’s pedaling on his own now!!}, coloring, alphabet matching, color sorting, leap pad, and his leap frog dvd.

Hope you all had a great week! Can’t wait to see what you are doing in your Tot School time! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

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Preschool Corner: Mommy is Planning edition

This past week was more of a game week and outdoor time for us as a family since:

a) Mommy was sick part of the week
b) Mommy is gearing up and planning, planning, planning

That said, I wanted to share a few free printables I found {other than mine} that you all might enjoy. I know I’ll be printing a few of them off and laminating them to use this year!

These printables are available through CurrClick {you do have to register for a free account to download them}, but you can save them to your computer. I started digging around after I received an email about the first free printable below:

~ Preschool Printable Alphabet Worksheets – this one won’t be free for long!
` A Taste of Australia – this one will be handy for us this year!
~ Teacher Calendars – colorful monthly calendars for the 2009-2010 year
~ Bossie’s Alphabet – capital letters that are flowery
~ Whatever the Weather – I can’t wait to print off these weather cards to use in the morning with the boys!
~ Old McDonald Had a Farm
~ Clothespin Counting Cards
~ Phonics Games
~ Simple Scissor Practice
~ Chocolate Fractions – is there a better way to learn about fractions?

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: Workbox Number Cards

I had every intention of posting a different printable this week, but I’ve been so wrapped up in getting our workboxes pulled together that my focus was a little swayed.

Some of you may be wondering what workboxes are {I’ll soon be posting about the system and how we’re using it this year} and some of you have already been sucked into the workbox realm. Making the workboxes fun and appealing to both me and the kids is important, so I asked both boys what they wanted on their number cards. The answers were ‘Chicken Little’ and ‘Nemo’. And then Zachary saw the Chicken Little ones and decided he wanted Monsters, Inc. instead. Since I can fit two sets on a page, I had to throw in a Bug’s Life too.

Click on the graphic to download and print the document.

The printable has two pages of number cards with the four different character sets above. I’ll be printing off two copies – one for the boxes and one for their number strips. Stay tuned to see how we’re all piecing it together!

If you are wondering about the different colors, we color code our kids. Yes, I’m serious. Each one has their own color – makes it a whole lot easier to figure out what belongs to who. Blue is for Zachary and green is for Kaleb.

While I’m in the midst of planning and re-organizing our upcoming school year, the world around me hasn’t stopped. So share, share, share!! What all have you been doing this last week?

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 ::28::

~ Kaleb is 32 months ~

There were a lot of other things that we did this week for school, but I didn’t have my camera out this week.

Monday: Kaleb pulled out a huge box of stuff to play with. Apparently he doesn’t feel that he is doing enough, so he put together his own “Tot Time”. He and Zachary sat on the floor together and stacked beads, used the color matching clothespins and also the sort by shape blocks. I was SO excited to hear Kaleb name all the colors!!

Tuesday: Trip to the Children’s Museum as a family. One of Kaleb’s favorite parts is the riding lawnmower. And Mommy forgot her camera. Again.

Wednesday: The weather has been beautiful early morning, so the kids were sent outside for a bit to play. This is how I found Kaleb. Fully dressed. Soaking wet from head to toe. Needless to say, the pool has been drained and put away.

Thursday: Much more time spent outside.

Reading with Daddy.

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

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Preschool Corner: Spelling Fun

For weeks Zachary has been asking to do spelling with me. Really, I was hesitant to start with him. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because I envisioned pure mayhem with the letter tiles.

I was so wrong!

Zachary loved the time that we worked on spelling and he did so much more than I even expected him to do. Like his sisters, I started him with All About Spelling Level 1 {review here}. We worked through the first three lessons together and I was thrilled to see how much he is learning. He knows his letter sounds and picked up how to ‘alphabetize’ the letters so quickly. He also loved slowly sounding out words into their individual sounds {segmenting}.


I asked him if he knew the vowels and he quickly listed them out for me {insert my surprised look here}. When I wanted to know what a consonant was, he gave me this look and said, “It’s a letter, Mom.” Not exactly what I was looking for, but it was so cute!

We now have a little something more to add to our week with him {he feels like such a big boy!}. I’m excited about it, because the tactile part of the spelling program really appeals to his learning style, which will make it so much easier to motivate him and have him involved in the process.

That’s a quick peek at our week – but now it’s your turn to share what’s been going on in your house!

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.

It’s your turn to share!

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Preschool Corner: A Little Late


Sorry that this is a little late in getting up. Blogger was giving me some issues and decided not to save all I had been working on…so I had to start all over again.

Next week I will be posting some more printables that I’m working on but meanwhile this week was spent traveling to visit Rick’s family and also having company here with us.

Which is to say…not much in the tangible “Hey, look what we did for school this week!”

I’ve been meaning to share some links that I enjoy searching, so here are some fun resources for you:

  • No Time for Flashcards ~ Allie is a full-time mom who worked with preschoolers prior to her mommy days. She posts some fun and great ideas on her blog.
  • First School ~ craft ideas, lesson plans and so much to sort through
  • PreKinders ~ lessons are sorted by theme, topic, etc…cute site!
  • Preschool Express ~ Jean Warren’s site has some great and amazing resources!
  • Little Giraffes ~ math, alphabet, center ideas and more…
  • It’s Storytime ~ the site is broken down by theme and has book suggestions and lesson plans to help you out.
  • Everything Preschool ~ one of my favorite sites. :) Themes, lesson plans, craft pages, coloring pages…and so much more!
  • ABC and 123 ~ a newer site but it is chocked full of information and they love your input too! Katie and Katie have some great giveaways going on this summer too!

If you have any sites that you really enjoy, leave a comment with the link or link to it in your Preschool Corner post! We can all use more resources!

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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