Travel Learning

Right now we're on a trip to visit some family for the holidays. The travelling has been a wonderful experience for Reagan as she has been able to see some different places, and learn about some fun new things. At Grandma Marjie's house she got to see how lemons and oranges grow, and picked her own orange to eat for breakfast. It was such a special treat! Then as we drove north through California's centeral valley, she had a chance to see oil pumps, and many different crops growing. All of which she found very interested. She also thought it was lots of fun to get to see the windmills again (she remembered these from our last trip.) The fun things, and her interest in the things we were passing made the long trip go a little easier.

Now visiting in San Francisco, she's been learning some more about city living. She's also been working on shape manipulation doing some fun puzzles, and of course we had to bring along some of her regular schoolwork workbooks. lol

I will post pictures after we get back, but don't have my own computer to work with for now, so that will have to wait. :-)

Today's Work

Today we did some more clean up in our classroom.. stacking the desks to give us more space to play... since we don't need those for awhile yet. lol If I could I think I would just put them in the attic to make more space for the kids in there right now. Then again we still have Adam's bed in there also and he shows no signs of leaving his crib any time soon. lol We also did several pages of a Carebears Preschool Workbook. Reagan wanted to do more, and I had to explain to here that we couldn't because she prefers to scribble than try to follow lines and the rest of the pages require her to trace numbers and then to write them herself.. which she simply can't do. She also enjoy a raisin and Cheerio snack with her pattern books for each. Those sure are a lot of fun! We still have some problems with putting the real raisins on top of the pictures or raisins, instead of mimicking those patters at first... but it all works out! I'm hoping to do some more Thanksgiving projects and such over the next week and a half. Guess I better get started on that! Check back to see what we've done!

Busy Little Beaver

Goodness does Reagan ever love her school work! Today we did schoolwork during BOTH of Adam's naps. During his first nap she did the rest of the beading projects for Adam's family birthday favors. Then we did a page of practicing writing letters... the letter "A" today. After that Reagan completed 9 pages of her Barney workbook, practicing counting, colors, and shapes! Adam woke up and we all had lunch. Then this afternoon when he took his second nap Reagan played her Dragon Tales computer game, working on matching, memory, counting, color recognition, comparing and contrasting, and more! Hopefully we'll get the countdown calendar she wants to make done this afternoon. We're counting down to Adam's birthday at her request!

Just Like School

Just like going to school!
(She did NOT want her picture taken, but she looked so cute with her backpack and lunch box!)

As I am trying to get a job, the reality of our kids possibly ending up in public school after all is setting in. There is a local Montessori school that I really like, but Reagan wouldn't be able to start going to school for kindergarten for another 3 years (Fall 2011) because of when her birthday falls. Sadly I think she'd get really bored of preschool after 3 years.

Penguin Parade

One of our recent projects that I hadn't yet managed to get posted. We learned about penguins!! We read Your Big Back Yard, which had a section about penguins, then did a craft project and a cooking project that were listed in the back of the issue. Reagan made a penguin, and then helped make iceberg cookies (meringues.) The recipe only had them flavored with vanilla, but since I have so many different extracts, I let her choose which flavor she might like to add. She chose root beer! So we had root beer float meringues. Yum!

Reagan made favors for her brother's family birthday party on Thanksgiving. We got wooden beaded necklace kits, and she strung most of the beads herself. She's very excited about Adam's coming birthday, and we've been doing a lot of fun learning projects related to it. We were at the dollar store yesterday getting some party supplies for Adam's friends party, and I have her enough money to pick out one thing to give Adam as a gift for his birthday. She decided on the type of item first, and then was choosing the specific design. She told me which she liked, ut picked a different one telling me that Adam would like that one best. She was very specific that we had to put it away when we got home, because Adam had to wait until his birthday for her to give it to him.

Of Mice and Barney

This week Reagan started playing her Dragon Tales computer game. At first she was just doing the work, but mommy was working the mouse. As she showed some interest we worked on one of the activities that gave her good mouse practice without failing at an activity for lack of mouse control. She picked it up very quickly, and can now navigate her way around the game and do most of the activities on her own until she gets fatigued. She's doing so well with it! The game is actually rated for ages 4-6, and there are a couple things that are challenging for her, but nothing she can't do! We probably should have started out with one of her other games that are more targeted to her age group, but this is the one she really wanted to do!

Yesterday we did school work, and did 6 pages form her Barney workbook by special request. We covered shapes and colors... all things that she knows, but she had a great time practicing. And worked on a new skill of actually drawing some shapes other than circles.

Learning Out on the Town

Yesterday we wet to Kids Club at the mall and learned about the desert where we live and some of the animals who live here. After Kids Club, we headed over to the book store to story time where we learned about apples. Reagan had a good time listening to a story, playing ring-around-the-rosie with other kids and making an apple tree with sponge painted apples!

Update on the last week!

We finished off last week with doing some more fun Halloween activities, including coloring paper pumpkins, drawing pumpkins, practicing letters etc. Reagan also did several journals.. a favorite of hers. We've watched several different episodes of Super Why and Sid, and did a magnifying glass investigation one day after an episode of Sid.

On Friday we made Witch cake for cousin Maddie's birthday. Cousin Maddie lives in Virginia, but Reagan insisted that since she was turning 3, we needed to make a cake for her. So we did... but made it kind of Halloween themed. Reagan mixed it all up herself, and picked which special pan we would use. Then I decorated it while she was napping.On Saturday Daddy was home! Reagan helped make home-made trail mix for going camping this week! It was also Yukon's graduation from puppy class. To celebrate we took her for a groom before class. Since that takes a while, we headed over to the mall where we got dinner and took the kids to the soft play. It was Adam's first time there since learning to walk, and he had a great time! Reagan had a really good time as well except that little girl bit her on the arm. The girl then bit an older girl and Reagan started lecturing her about how she shouldn't bite people because it's not nice. We got smoothies, and then all went to Yukon's class and got to see her graduate!

On Monday, daddy's vacation started, and we packed up and headed to the lake for some camping!!! It was the first time for both of the kids! Vacation for daddy didn't mean vacation from school though! Reagan made a camp journal while we were there and we learned a little bit about our senses; doing bark rubs and talking about touch and the way different things feel, and their textures, what things we heard, saw and tasted! We took a great nature hike, and also simply had a good time! Thursday and Friday were relaxation days and we really didn't do too much as far as school work. We did watch some Super Why and Sid of course, especially Sids about our senses! We'll be learning more about that this next week hopefully! (For more on camping check my regular blog, and keep an eye out here for photos of Reagan's camp jounrnal!)

Today, by request, we watched Reagn's favorite Sid; The Perfect Pancake! She loves if because the experiment they do is making apple sauce, and she likes doing that. So we made apple sauce today too! We also watched one about science tools and she's asked to get a ruler for her pencil box so that she cna measure things. :-) One of the great things about doing things over and over is that they really start to understand the concept better with the reptition. Reagan can now tell you that to change the apples from hard and difficult to mash, to softer we should heat them up because heat will change them. She also understands that they can not go back from being applesauce to being just apples, and will tell you that this is called irreversible change! So wonderful to see her learning all these great basic scinece concepts. Thanks Sid!

Pumpkin Patch Diorama

Well we did get around to that craft project after all! We made a fun pumpkin patch diorama. First we colored the background with crayons, and then Reagan decorated with sticky back foam Halloween cutouts. We've used it to decorate our mantle for the holiday!

We also had the chance to check out the Sid the Science Kid website and played a bunch of their learning games! Reagan loved it, and was begging to play more!

Sid Sauce

Today we watched the review Sid the Science Kid about how and why things change. They reviewed change in general, growth, and decay. We then did the project from the change episode... making apple sauce!! First we tried mashing the apples right after they were cut. It was really hard to do, and we couldn't mash them up much at all! (Sorry no pic of that.) Then we put them in a steamer bag in the microwave to heat them up. The heat change the apples and made them all mushy.
We decided to make ours into baked apple sauce, so besdies the cinnamon Sid added, we also added raisins to ours!The finished product sure looked yummy!
And apparently it was!
Yesterday we did some Halloween studies and put up some decorations. Yay! Today we still might do some more... possibly an art project. If we do I will add an update about that later. :-)

Decay Tuesday

Tuesday we watch Sid the Science Kid about decay again. (It's great to review these concepts a lot when first doing them!) During the show they learn about why things decay and that it's a natural process. At the end Sid helps his grandma make banana bread with his old overripe banana. So we made some delicious banana mini muffins. Yum!

Overwhelmed

We've been working on cleaning up the classroom the last couple of days, and I must say that I'm a little overwhelmed. Not the daunting task of homeschooling two kids though. The thing I'm having difficulty with is the massive amount of material we have. I've been trying to organize things so that we can find them when we need them and such... and we just have so much! I think I had less things that were so far ahead it would be easier. We have high school and college level texts! I don't have anywhere else to store them... so they are weighing things down and making ti hard to make the preschool and grammar school materials organized and easily accessible. I don't think I want to get rid of the materials as we may need them at some point... but I just don't know how to make the room function for us. It doesn't help that Adam's eventual twin size bed is stored in there right now either. There's no other place to store that really either though. I think part of why I haven't been as good about getting lesson plans and such done is simply because it's so hard to see what we have, and get things organized. It ends up being so much more work than it should be! Anyway.. I need to to get back to that and see if I can't get it a little more organized. Any thoughts or comments on this problem would be much appreciated!

Caterpillars and Dinosaurs!

Last night we found some caterpillars in our back yard, so Reagan is keeping one in a bug box in the classroom so that we can watch it . She's familiar with the process of how a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, but it's always fun to get to watch!
Daddy has a vacation coming up, and we're going camping. Reagan is really excited to go camping, and was asking several times a day if we could go yet. We even drove to the camp site (it's quite near where we live) the other day and looked around to get an idea of where we would like to get our spot. Reagan counts to 10 easily, and know many other number, though not all in order. So we thought she might have fun counting down the next 10 days until we go camping! I wtore the number on sticky notes for her and she put them in order from 1 to 10. Now each day we will count backwards 1 until it's time to go camping!Last night Reagan chose a sheet of Barney stickers as her potty prize, but she wasn't allowed to open it until today. She was so excited by them we took the opportunity to learn about dinosaurs today. Mommy made a dinosaur coloring sheet.. stegosaurus by request! Then wrote DINO in the corner, and Reagan copied it. Here are her coloring, and "DINO."Regan has been using an empty container as a drum, so to tell it apart from the newly emptied ones that are trash, we did a bit of art today and wrapped the drum. Reagan decided she wanted to draw lollipops on it so that became the theme. She did a great job maing circles with lines for sticks! Drawing actual things instead of ust coloring or scribbling (other than letters) is something pretty new for her, and we're very excited about it!We have also started receiving some great educational magazines recently. Yesterday we sat down and read through the entire first issue of Your Big Backyard that arrived. We learned about chipmunks, Reagan helped read a short story.. telling me which words the pictorials represented, and finally read a story about a groundhog going into hibernation.

Goldilocks Info

As promised, here is the information on that excellent edition of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. The story is very well done too, and reminds children about things they should and should not do.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Retold y Jim Aylesworth, and Illustrated by Barbara McClintock.

Mama Bear's Porridge Cookies
Baby Bear love to help Mama Bear bake cookies!

Before you begin:
Preheat oven to 350F
Grease two large cookie sheets.

Sift into a big bowl:
1 1/4 c flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t nutmeg
1 t cinnamon
3/4 t salt

Add to flour mixture and mix well:
3 c rolled oats

Beat together in another bowl:
1/4 c butter (Cookies made like this will be light and crunchy. For moister, richer, and chewier cookies, use 3/4 c butter.)
1 c dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 c white sugar
1 egg
1/4 c milk
1 1/2 t vanilla extract

Add the sugar mixture to the flour and oatmeal mixture. Mix until all ingredients are moist.

Fold into well-mixed batter:
1 c raisins
1/2 c walnuts
(For variations, you can mix and match the same amounts of coconut, peanuts, and/or chocolate chips.)

Drop mixture y tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets. Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until golden brown. MAkes 40 cookies.

Make sure you have a grown-up help you.

And they were...just right!

The Past Week In Education

We've done so many things this past week... and I have been so bad about writing them down. :-(

Most recently... Tuesday in fact, we did Goldilocks and the Three Bears again. Reagan really loves the version of the story that our library has, and is going to be so disappointed when we have to return it this week. We read the story and made Mama Bear's Porridge Cookies at her request. I will make sure to post the recipe, as well as the edition of the book before we have to return it in a couple days.
The best part of helping make cookies!That night, Adam was wondering where his cookies were!
We did a day where we learned about transportation last week. The main thing we did was to make a collage and talk about different types of transportation. Reagan told me which each item was, and a little about it as she glued them down, and then we made a list of all the kinds of transportation she could think of. This was reinforced at the fair as we discovered another kind of transportation... tractors!
We went to the county fair, and used it as a great hands on learning experience about farm animals. Reagan was full of questions and answers about the many animals in the live stock exhibit. She was also very interested in the Farmer For A Day program, and practiced counting to one by collecting one of each of the different items. It was a great learning experience about where our food comes from and how it grows. And although it was a little tough to get her started on it, she was able to figure out where to look for the things she needed by us asking her questions. She was very proud to have gotten a ribbon for being such a good farmer, and it is now hung on her bedroom wall next to her gymnastics medal.

Reagan also drew this picture last week.. I think it pretty much speaks for itself... this is the first time she has done anything clearly like this... all of the labeling was done based on where she said things were.
Our work on understanding change, reversible change, irreversible change, and transformation is continuing. There are about 5 episodes of Sid the Science Kid that deal with these topics together and separately. It's great to watch along with activities, and to use for review. Reagan has started requesting the show, and usually sits and really concentrates the entire time. Every day she makes sure to water the seeds we planted, and has noticed that some look like they are starting to sprout. It's such an amazing experience for her, and she's really enjoying it.

A couple other things we do daily, and writing in her joural.. a "free write" while I'm getting her school things set up. She has a notebok, and can write or draw whatever she wants in there. Then she tells me what it is, or about it. We also always talk about the weather. Reagan has become quite the weather expert... telling us weather changes throughout the day. The other day she even got philisophical with it, stating about tomorrow, "It might be a sunny day, it might be a rainy day, but it'll be a day." We also always to slate time where she practices writing numbers and letters on her dry erase slate, or in her dry erase slate book. I'm hoping we can develop more of these good practice routines that teach a lot, and that Reagan seems to really enjoy! :-)

Growing

On Tuesday we learned about growing!

We watched an episode of Sid the Science Kid called Shrinking Shoes that teaches about growing and transformation. In the episode they look at beans that they have planted and how much they have grown. One of our projects for the day was to plant some beans that we can watch grow. Reagan is really excited about her beans, and love checking every day to see if they've grown, and to make sure they are watered. We also talked about how plats grow, and did a project where Reagan had to put the stages of plant growth in order, and then told me about each of the stages.


1. SEED: Get the water and you put it in the sun so it will get bigger.
2. PLANT: It happens, and it grows bigger, and bigger, and big!
3. BIG PLANT: It has a flower on it's top. A sunflower on it's top.

Then Reagan told me an impromptu story that I jotted down on the back of her paper;
Once upon a time, there was a sunflower on this plant. It was tired of growing, and growing bigger. And that's what happened to the seed.

One of the other things they do in the show is measure how tall Sid and his brother have grown on a doorway in the house. Reagan recently got a new growth chart that we hadn't yet put up, so we did that as part of our lesson too. She was excited to help put it up and make her first mark for how tall she was. Sorry I don't have a picture of that! She is super proud to be 3ft. 3/4 inches tall!

We'll be continuing this study by checking on the beans as they grow, and planting more after these have spouted, so that we can compare how much the different ones have grown. And of course we'll be checking to see if Reagan has grown any more too. :-)

Although it's unrelated to growing, we also made Jello on Tuesday as part of our work. We have a Jello US flag mold, and were supposed to make it for Patriot Day, but didn't have enough Jello, so we were making it a little late. It is quite tasty though!

Oh So Behind on This

Wow, it's kind of embarrassing how far behind I am on blogging about school activities. We've been doing some un-schooling recently, and that may be a contributing factor. It is fun, but Reagan really misses doing her school work on a regular and scheduled basis, so I'm going to be working on some solid lesson plans and getting back to that some here in the very near future.

We have discovered a new TV series that Reagan loves and has been introducing her more to some basic science ideas. It's called Sid the Science Kid, and airs on PBS in the mornings just before one of her other favorites, Super Why! I'm really looking forward to building some lesson plans around the shows since they talk about concepts, and then give you some really great, simple projects that you can do with your own child. We were doing this a little with Super Why as well, but have had some problems with finding the stories at our public library.. quite a disappointment.

One of the things that we have been learning about recently is Halloween. I know it may seem a little early for Halloween, but all the books were available now, and as the holiday gets closer, there choices will me much slimmer. So we took them all out, and have been reading all kinds of different Halloween stories. Reagan is very excited about it, and understanding a little bit about the holiday has helped her to decide what she would like to be this year. She's decided to be Cleo the poodle from the Clifford series , and Adam is going to e Clifford. Of course there are no Cleo costumes out there, so I'm going to have to make one. I like doing this.. but was hoping for something a little easier this year. lol

Reagan has also been enjoying doing more cooking, and is really excited about the tomatoes and peaches that we have been harvesting out of the back yard!

Although we haven't done a lot of worksheets recently, Reagan have been practicing in her slate book. She now can write several more letters. She now can do; W, M, O, X, I, J and V, and has done a D. She's been working on some other ones as well, and is really excited to practice her letters. It's also been a huge accomplishment for her recently that she can sing the alphabet without mistakes every time! She loves singing the alphabet, and an array of other songs including 50s rock and country tunes. lol

We also recently found a frog in the front yard, and have been doing some bug explorations; looking at different bugs outside, and talking about them. We've looked at grasshoppers, listened to cicadas, and are currently keeping a now pupated caterpillar. Lots of fun!

I promise I will try to update more often!!! Sorry it's been so long, but it surely hasn't been because we're not doing things or learning.

Update

Wow, am I a little behind in blogging about Reagan's school work. We now have a couple of daily class activities. We do the weather; talking about what today's weather is, and guessing what tomorrow's weather might be. We also have been doing a daily journal; Reagan has a notebook that she draws pictures in... whatever she chooses to write or draw. :-)

Over the past couple of days we've been doing some school work, but haven't really had anything too planned ahead. One day we learned about the post office, reading Sesame Street Post Office, and then she made pictures to send to her grandparents. She really enjoyed making the pictures, helping put them in the envelopes, and putting the stamps on!

After going to the library, we had some fun new books to read as well, and were finally able to read Goldilocks as we had planned to do a couple days prior. Reagan really likes that story, and there's a recipe for Mama Bear's porridge cookies on the back of the book that she's really excited to make.

Yesterday we read a book about penguins and then another book that asks you to mimic animal behaviors including walking like a penguin. This is one of Reagan's favorite things to do after seeing Chris and Martin do it on Zoboomafoo.

Both kids have een sick, so it's kind of put a damper on things, but we did get out to the store yesterday to get fish for our classroom aquarium. Reagan is really excited about them. We have one tank with Blue and a ivory mystery snail. In the other we have Mickey Mouse, Molly, and a black mystery snail. We also picked up some new schooling materials about which we are very excited. Make sure to check in for new updates!

Cider Ciders

We've been a little behind on our schooling the end of this week since we've had so much to do! We finished up our colors on Thursday with 2 worksheets and 2 collages. Then Friday we took a trip to the library and learned about that. Reagan was able to relate an episode of Calliou and a Sesame Street book to the experience and talked about it a lot. We completely missed schooling yesterday just because the timing didn't work out, but Reagan kept asking to do school work.

Today we learned about fire fighters (Reagan says it cider ciders), and basic emergency information. It is the beginning of doing some learning about different jobs. We watched an episode of Fireman Sam this morning before breakfast. Then we we started school time I asked Reagan some general questions about Fireman Sam and fire fighters and we wrote down what she had to say. We wore fire hats, played with mini fie fighter figures, and read a book about calling 911, and The Sesame Street Firehouse. We also talked about what to do if there's a fire in our house, and did a fire drill. We're going to need more work on this, but it was a good start. Hopefully I'll get a chance to print out a couple of coloring pages from the Fireman Sam website. There are some other fun activities on there that I think would e good for when she is older. Plus possibly doing a dress the firefighter thing where you glue the clothes and gear on.


We also finally got some orange construction paper. Who knew it would be so hard to find!?! With it complete, and after finally picking up some more push pins, we were able to complete our rainbow of collages on the wall! Reagan's really excited to see her work up on the wall, and loves reviewing the colors this way. (They're across the top.)

Orange, Green and Purple

Today was another color day. The plan is to get through those first, and then move on to some other things. :-) Today we covered orange, green, and purple. Of course when I was prepping last night I found that in the 5 or 6 different packs of colored paper I have (some of which are rand new) I had not 1 sheet of orange construction paper!!! I had had one, but cut part of it for a collage last week... thinking that of course the other newer packs would have orange. Reagan did well doing the collages anyway, though, and we saved the orange pictures to glue on an orange paper later when we find one!

Along with the collages we did three worksheets, read a book about colors, practiced writing "O" for orange, and did mini 2-piece puzzles to practice matching color splotches to the correct names. Reagan did all of the puzzle by herself, only needing help with new colors like tan and maroon.

The really exciting thing today was our snack. We made painted toast. I got the idea from an online home school for preschool group that I've joined. I of course hadn't written the exact directions down, and when you're 2 year old is ready to go, it's not the best time to say wait, mommy needs to look this up on the internet. So... based on what I remembered we made it this way;
Rainbow Painted Bread
What you need:
several slices of bread (white bread works best- all we had that was white was hamburger buns!)
food coloring
milk
small bowls
cutting board
baking pan
pastry brush

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Put the cutting board down as the child's work surface. Put two drops of food coloring in each of your small bowls for however many colors you want. (Make colors you don't have- like purple- by putting one drop of each color that goes into the color you want. We made orange, green and purple.) Add a small amount of milk- 1/4 cup or less- to each bowl and mix until evenly colored. Make sure you have one bowl set aside with some water in it for rinsing the brush between colors. Allow the child to use pastry brush to paint their bread to their liking! Place masterpieces onto baking pan and toast in the oven for about 15 minutes. LEt cool to eating temperature and enjoy!

Pictures from our snack making!
The painting begins!

The masterpieces about to go into the oven!

Yummy! Enjoying our color themed bread with oranges and milk for snack.

It's Rainy Today

I hadn't been planning to be schooling 7 days a week. In fact I think that's a little much at this age, but Reagan insists. Yesterday daddy was home and Reagan had her gymnastics class in the morning. But when daddy left for a dentist appointment in the afternoon, and Adam went to take a nap, she insisted we do school work! Of course, since I was planning a day off, I hadn't done any of the lesson plans for this week yet! But I managed to throw something together, and we had a good time.

Reagan was excited that it was raining, and has been very interested in the rain, hail, etc that we have gotten recently, so we did some studies on weather. First we talked about weather and started our (now) daily weather predictions on the pocket chart.

We did a home-made worksheet on identifying what things are weather, or have to do with weather (cloud, sun, rain etc.) And did a collage (one of Reagan's favorite things to do) where she glued rain drops under one cloud and snow flakes under another, using verbal numeric directions. She did so well with that! I think it was a good way to help work on listening skills further, as well as focusing on the weather, and of course the counting and number recognition math aspects. (I know this one really isn't a collage, but that's what Reagan calls any paper gluing craft at the moment. :-P)

Then Reagan drew a picture of some weather and told me about it. :-) Reagan wanted to do more of course, so we worked with an alphabet set that's on the wall, practicing singing the song, remembering which letter came next, and then matching words that began with the letters to the letters. She did a great job with this, and did very well matching the puzzle pieces for the letter with the pictures. I think it was extremely successful for having been completely impromptu.

This was our first day where Adam was awake for any of our school time. In fact he didn't nap very long and was with us most of the time. We had some challenges because he wanted to participate in the coloring and worksheets, but he did have some nice time reading his books too. It was quite a challenge to keep him otherwise occupies, and I hope he continues with such a god nap schedule so for a while so that we can get as much school work done as Reagan is wanting.
lol

Red, Yellow, Blue

I had a lot of things planned for today, and really thought that it might be too much. But with Reagan's recent enthusiasm we ended up doing everything planned and more! Today was the colors red, yellow and blue. We did 4 worksheets, 3 collages, 2 sets of car matching games, read a book, did a scavenger hunt, and had a color themed snack. Those were the planned activities. Then we also did Play Doh, and were going to do some coloring, but Reagan said her tummy hurt again, so we watched an episode of Super Why instead.

I won't bore you with uploads of the worksheets. One was matching colors, and then there was one each for our focus colors today. Reagan did really well with them and is getting increasingly better with circling objects, and drawing lines between them.

Here are some pictures of our collages The idea is to make them for every color we do, and out them up on the wall in the classroom, so that eventually we have an entire rainbow set.


After the collages, we did the worksheets, and then used some Sesame Street flash cards to play a couple of games. It's a set that covers, shapes, colors and opposites. We used the color/shape cards and practiced sorting them by matching the colors, and then y matching the shapes. Preliminary shapes went really well, but the pentagon, hexagon, and octagon got confusing. Reagan is only used to pentagons, so having so many different multi sided shapes was a challenge. Then we did a scavenger hunt, looking around the classroom for things that were red, yellow, or blue. When we were done we sorted all the items by color.

Reagan asked to do some Play Doh, so we chose a color that was one of the ones we were learning about, and she got to pick out Play Doh cookie cutters that were those colors too. For snack we were going to do a bread painting project, but I didn't plan well enough and couldn't find the food coloring. So instead we had yellow bananas, red strawberries, and blueberries. While I went to get snack ready Reagan cleaned up and put away her Play Doh all by her self without even being asked! Every day she's gotten so much better and has shown at least one new, or improved skill. We're all quite enthusiastic to continue! And of course when Adam got up form his nap, he wanted to get in on the color learning action too!

One Day Off, And One Day On Deedle Deedle Dumpling

We took a day off yesterday because Reagan wasn't feeling well. Instead of schooling we took a bath. Hooray for getting clean!

So today we did the work we had been planning to do yesterday, and then some! I asked her if she wanted to do school work, and she was quite excited to have our time in the class room. She completed every activity and worksheet I had planned, and then asked to do more school work! We were doing matching organizing and separating. Matching upper and lower case letters, separating them, separating big and small etc. I actually wasn't prepared for the hands on sorting activity I had planned so we did skip that one. But instead, we went though her Sesame Street alphabet cards and she told me what letter each of the words started with. She still wanted more, so we read two books, worked on learning our address (she knows it reasonably well but keeps forgetting the first number of our house number,) drew a picture (circle and a letter R- she chose what to draw, and did it all by herself!,) and played Play Doh. She is also getting very good at putting away her things in her pencil box. She knows what goes in there, and what things we need for which activities. She also really good about getting it out only during school time, and putting it away right where it goes! She wanted to do more school work then even, but I needed to make a run to the grocery store before a party this afternoon. I convinced her to come saying we would get a special treat at the store... and we did... a new book Little People School Bus Lift-A-Flap. She was so excited about it she was trying to read it while we walking around the store and kept bumping into things.

Right now I only have one day ahead of lesson plan left, so I may need to go work on writing up more tonight! It makes me so happy and proud to see how much she is learning and how much she is loving "school."

Letters O and W

Today we did the letters O and W. Two letters that Reagan has had some success with writing on her own before. (Some samples of ones she did all by herself today!)

We did a wipe of book page, a regular workbook page, practice writing paper for the two letters, as well as an O and W word chart. We also did an activity where we went through her basket of shoes and matched them into pairs to practice the number 2. This of course turned into a practice putting on shoes session. :D


The worksheet. Reagan did an excellent job connecting the things with lines. She's been able to draw a somewhat straight line for awhile now, but has never had the control to do this sort of thing. Her abilities to apply these skills now that she's been asked to are just amazing. Not only is she connecting with lines like this, she can also circle objects reasonably well!

For the chart she wrote each of the letters up top, next to ones that I had written, and selected the correct images for each with very little help. This was also the second day of doing all of her gluing by herself! We're so proud of her gluing skills!

Then it was time for some fun, and we did a large painting with Color Wonder paints that Reagan earned from doing her chores last week. After a lot of hard work we had an O and W snack of mini waffles, and mandarin orange slices. Yummy!

The Letter B

This is the story Reagan just told me about making banana bread as part of our learning yesterday.

"I made eggs, and a little bit of flour on top. Reagan eat the pie up, and Reagan goed outside. Bana bread. I make sugar on it. I sprinkled on it. Before Reagan make it, use stirring. I did stirring! YAY! I did stirring with the spoon. I did that!"


And here's a picture of her "B" word collage.

We practiced "B" sounds, made a list of "B" words, did a couple of work sheets, and baked banana bread!

And We're Off!

We just started our homeschool work this week and I'm excited to record it and share it with everyone here. Look for updates on how we're progressing, what projects we're doing, and of course, photos!