It's Been a While

Things have been so hectic recently! I apologize for not getting on and posting more updates. Eli woke up with an ear infection which threw a wrench into one of our learning days, then my computer completely broke on me! We're still working through that!

Anyway, my plan while I don't have a computer is to do a bit of an in depth look into my favorite activities for learning. I'll go from our daily schedule and give examples, ideas, and pictures of ways you can implement the activity at home!

Today I'll post all about number matching. I'm not sure why but this has become one of my favorite skills to work on with Eli. It may be because I can easily fit it into the themes that I am working on and I love cute, matchy things. 

Anyway, here are the activities we have worked on over the past few weeks to improve his number matching skills:

For this activity we were practicing the numbers 2 and 7. The numbers were in the trees, and he had to glue the apples into the trees to match the numbers.

There are so many opportunities to do exciting things with this activity. For Thanksgiving we will be adding feathers to turkeys, and for Christmas we will be adding ornaments to trees! You can add bows to gifts, chocolate chips to cookies, sailors to boats, etc.

Enjoy!

How I Stay Organized

Preparing for the Week

Each Sunday evening I get all of the materials together that I will need for Eli's lessons and activities. By staying on top of this and keeping all of our materials organized, we are able to spend more time focusing on learning and less time searching for things we need!

When getting ready for the week, I use 3 folders to separate the materials needed for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I place every printed or paper piece of material in these folders in the order in which I will need them for the activities for the day. Art materials, writing utensils, play dough, etc. are kept in a bucket next to us during lessons. 

Here are pictures of my folders for Wednesday and Friday this week:

This organization makes it much easier to transition from activity to activity to break to activity or however scheduling works out for the day. I hope this helps with ideas for how to stay on top of things!

How do you get setup for your week?

Getting Out and Making Connections

Spending Time Learning Through Experiences

So I'm not going to lie... When I decided on "Pumpkins" as a theme for Eli's homeschooling, it was because I REALLY wanted to take him to the pumpkin patch and tie it into his learning. I remember going to the pumpkin patch as a kid, and I love creating these memories now with my angel.

I think sometimes we get so wrapped up with whatever we're doing (grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc.) that we completely forget that there are so many teachable moments to be made out of these times. Even if there isn't a local pumpkin patch for you to bring your little one to, there are still ways you can bring the pumpkin patch home and make learning fun and real!

Look how cute my angel is!

Anyway, here is how to make connections at a pumpkin patch (or at home):

Activity 1: Pumpkin Size Comparing


This pumpkin patch literally had hundreds of pumpkins across the property, so this activity was super easy to accommodate. All you have to do is find 3 - 5 different-sized pumpkins, place them next to each other, then have your little one compare them using words like smaller, bigger, or larger. 

Activity 2: Counting

They had a variety of bounce houses available to wear kids out! A simple way to mix in some counting practice with fun is to have your little one count each time he bounces. If he falls, you can have him try to bounce MORE or LESS times than the previous attempt. 

Activity 3: Letter Review

Our letters for the week were P & L, so I took every opportunity point out things that began with these letters. I would say things like "Oh Eli! I see a pumpkin! What letter does pumpkin start with?" or "I see a leaf! What sound do you hear at the beginning of leaf? What letter makes that sound?" Etcetera :)

Activity 4: Colors

This activity is super easy! Point out things that are different colors and have your little one tell you what color they are. A fun variation is to play I Spy and have them find the object your are talking about based on the color you give them.


There are so many fun and EASY ways to make learning connections without having to prepare materials or plan lessons! What kinds of things have you done to create learning opportunities at your local pumpkin patch?

Third Day's a Charm

Have I Told You How Much I Love Homeschooling?

What a difference a day and a good night's rest can make! Eli was a little learning machine on Friday, and we had a very successful day.

10:00am - 10:10am Edible Letter Review

Eli was super excited about this activity. We decided to have popcorn for P and lemon for L. It was so funny watching him lick on his lemon. While he ate his snacks, we listened to the Letter P and Letter L songs. He is so into these songs its crazy. They are definitely catchy to say the least!

Isn't he the cutest?!

10:10am - 10:30am Bean Gluing

I'm glad that I planned for this activity during our 20 minute time slot because it took about that long for us to complete our work and to get a shake break in. We used beans to decorate the number 7, and this was Eli's first time using a big boy glue bottle. He needed some help at first, but eventually he got it! I let him do what he wanted with the beans even though I would've personally put them along the outline of the number (problems of an OCD teacher, AMIRIGHT?). He talked me through the entire process: "Oh! This spot is open, let's put some beans there!". I mean he's just the cutest little thing. 

ANYWAY!

We used glitter glue to make it even fancier!

PS. We have a new favorite shake break song: Shake Break!

I mean how funny is that? "Since bwekfast."

10:30am - 10:40am Prewriting

10:40am - 11:00am Playdough Number

I don't know if you've noticed the trend, but I've been very lax with our timing. If we go over or end before time, I really don't stress it. Sometimes it's nice to end early so that we can have some quality cuddle time or outdoor time. Y'know, the important stuff.

As for the activity, Eli loves this playdough mess, so when I told him we were using it again he got VERY giddy. He did really well with forming the number and practicing his writing. (I'm obviously a proud, braggy mommy.)

Click here to view and / or print the number mats: Playdough Numbers

11:00am - 11:20am Letter Craft

We skipped theme coloring to do our letter craft. Eli prefers paint over crayons anyway, so he did a watercolor leaf. It turned out so pretty! He was very proud of his work.

11:20am - 11:35am Counting and Pattern

I was very upset because I had all of these fabulous plans for this activity, but because our internet was down I had to improvise. Yay for flexibility!

Anyway, had my internet been working, I would've shown Eli the Pattern Video on BrainPop Jr. as an introductory lesson. Instead I had to show him some short thing I found on Youtube on my phone. I'm not even going to share because it was not very good.

I digress. 

After about 3 modeled examples, he finally got the hang of making AB patterns, and he created 3 of his own using different colored pumpkins. I was impressed, of course!

 

Sorry about the blurry picture.

What a great day of learning, though! I'm loving this new journey we're on! 

Stay tuned--

Day Two in the Books

The Best and Worst of Times

My gracious! It's already Sunday. I feel like last week was gone in the blink of an eye, and I have not been able to get online because we had a bit of a storm that took out our internet for 3 days. Anyway! I'm back now, and I have lots to show and share!

Our second day of homeschool was a pretty rough day for Eli and I. I was thinking about how I could write about it and remembered that I set out to write this blog to document our successes AND our setbacks. So this would definitely be considered a day of setbacks. Hopefully you'll be able to learn from my mistakes and avoid some of these issues all together!

I woke Eli up for breakfast and devotion time, and he was still pretty sleepy. I normally don't have issues with him when he is sleepy, but today like I said, was a day of setbacks. :) He ate his breakfast pretty slowly, and he was already set on doing his own thing rather than learning at the table. 

Once it was time to begin our prayer, pledge, and memory verse, the tears began! He just was not interested in participating, and I realized that it was because he hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. Right at that point I decided that we would have an altered schedule for the day. I do not ever want him to hate learning, and if I had forced him into our regular schedule, it would've been a negative experience for him.

Here's what we ended up with:

10:00am - 10:25am Playdough Letter

First of all, this activity definitely took more time than I allotted for. I'm positive it was because we worked on 2 letters, it was Eli's first time doing the activity, and we were having a rough morning. Other than this minor setback, Eli absolutely LOVED this activity. He loved how the playdough felt, and he couldn't get enough of rolling it around in his hands. He also did extremely well with forming the letters with the playdough. 

This activity helped with his letter recognition, prewriting skills, and fine motor. I could see his little fingers working to form the playdough to fit the letters.

10:25am - 10:30am Toothpick Punch

Notice the time on this activity: Mom's first mistake alert! I obviously neglected to test out this activity before having Eli try to complete it (of course this was set for our nice, tear-filled day of setbacks). 

So here's the story: I purchased a dry erase board at Dollar Tree and placed the letters P and L on the board for Eli to punch holes into with a toothpick. I modeled the activity for him, then let him go wild with the toothpick. Needless to say, he was very excited to try this activity. Unfortunately, about 6 toothpicks later, mom realized that the board was not soft enough to punch the toothpicks through. My fault! The good news is that when you are making preparations to complete this activity, you now know to purchase a bulletin board that is soft and not from the Dollar Tree :)

10:30am - 10:40am Scissor Practice

Overall Eli did pretty well with this activity. I'll let you know that he has not had tons of practice with scissors AT ALL, so instead of actually cutting paper we just worked on how to hold the scissors and how to squeeze them. It was a workout, but he did well either way!

These are the scissors we have for Eli to practice. They are Fiskars brand, and we bought them from Walmart.

10:40am - 10:50am Color Sort (Notice we skipped numbers)

Since Eli refused to pay attention during number identification (even after a shake break), we moved on to our color sort. This took some preparation on my part. I'll go over that first, then I'll discuss how we completed the activity.

At Dollar Tree (obviously my favorite place to go), they sell dip trays that are separated into 3 sections each. I purchased 3 trays and hot glued color labels to the bottom of each section. 

The trays look like this:

And they looked like this after I glued the color labels:

I had red, orange, and yellow in one tray; green, blue, and purple in the next; and black, brown, and pink in the last. 

After I glued in the labels, I used my Cricut to cut various colored pumpkins. Eli used these to sort by color. He was having a bit of trouble with brown and black, so I made sure to have those included in the activity. Toward the end he thought it would be funny to place the pumpkin in the wrong colored section to see if I would notice. It was pretty dang cute.

10:50am - 11:00am Letter Search (the end of our day)

At this point, Eli was completely done. We began the activity, but he was not in the mood at all to complete it correctly. I decided that we should take a lunch break, have a nap, then get some outdoor time.

Here is the activity in case you want to try it. It's super cute!

                          Letter Detectives

So basically my day didn't go as planned, but after typing this I realize that it could've ended up much worse. I love my little boy, and I'm totally okay if his stamina isn't perfect each day. He's 3, so I am almost expecting it. After a really good nap, we had an awesome time outside riding his bike. What a good end to a somewhat hectic day!

Getting Through Our First Day

A Breakdown of Our First Day

Eli and I had an absolutely wonderful first day of school. He was so excited to learn, and I was so excited to work with him. I'm excited to share all that we did!

8:30am - 9:00am Breakfast and Devotion Time

I'm not even going to pretend that this wasn't one of my favorite parts of our day. We listened to some soft worship music while we ate breakfast, and I began reading a book that I have been meaning to get to. It was the sweetest thing hearing Eli singing and relaxing with momma while we got into the right spirits for our day.

9:00am - 9:45am Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, Memory Verse, Letter Review, Song Time

This part of the day didn't take the full hour that I scheduled for, but Eli needed small breaks between tasks so the extra 15 minutes was good for a stretch break. I also was able to give him the pre-assessment I created to see where we stood with his learning.

The memory verse we worked on today was 1 John 4:19. "We love because God first loved us." I was so surprised with how quickly Eli picked up the verse, and after repeating it a few times he did really well with reciting it. The picture prompts helped with his memorization. 

Click here to view or print the memory verse: 1 John 4:19 

9:45am - 10:00am Pre-Assessment

The pre-assessment that I created was a bit thorough, but I wanted to be sure that I assessed Eli's knowledge up to this point. The results of the assessment also gave me some insight into what we need to focus on during our daily work. We had to take a short break  about halfway through and at the end of the assessment, but he did really well with listening and giving me answers.

Click here to view or print the pre-assessment: PreAssessment

10:00am - 10:10am Letter Introduction

I told Eli that this week we would be working on the letters P and L this week. For the letter introduction I used the letter songs from Have Fun Teaching. Eli is familiar with these songs, and they really keep his attention. We watched each letter song then talked about words that began with each letter.

Click the links to hear the songs:  Letter P   and    Letter L

10:10am - 10:30am Lacing Card

This was Eli's first time working on an activity like this. He got a bit frustrated at first, but I was impressed with how he worked through it and completed the entire pumpkin! It was so cute watching his little fingers work through getting the yarn in the holes!

10:30am - 10:45am Prewriting

I found the cutest little pumpkin prewriting activity on 3Dinosaurs that was perfect for what I planned on doing with Eli. I did the first one so that Eli could see how I went from pumpkin to pumpkin, then he did the rest. With this activity we really worked on holding the pencil the correct way and using pressure while writing. He enjoyed this activity a lot!

Click here to view the prewriting activity from 3Dinosaurs: Pumpkin

10:30am - 10:45am Number Identification

After giving Eli the pre-assessment, I realized that his number identification skills weren't as polished as his counting skills. I decided that I would focus more on recognizing numbers with him and less on counting. We decided that the number 7 would be our focus for the week. We watched a Sesame Street song all about the number 7, then we looked at our number cards and counted 7 pumpkins. Once we finished our number work, we took another wiggle break.

Here are the links to my favorite wiggle break songs:

Dancing Robots

Shake Out Your Sillies

Boom Chicka Boom

10:45 - 11:00am Theme Coloring

Eli loves to color, so I know he was excited when I told him we would be coloring next. I found this color by letter sheet on A Teaching Mommy, and it fit perfectly with our theme. We also were able to make a connection with our letter identification of uppercase and lowercase P's. With this activity we focused again on holding the crayons correctly and using pressure while coloring.

Here is a link to the coloring sheet: Pumpkin Coloring

11:00am - 11:15am Letter Collage

Since we only had 15 minutes to work on our letter collage, we made one for the letter P. Before completing the collage, we had another discussion about things that begin with the letter p. I then let Eli decorate the page, and I labeled each item he put on his collage.

11:15 - 11:30am Counting with Beads

Because I decided that we would need to focus more on number identification rather than counting, we altered this activity a bit. I still used the beads on a pipe cleaner for Eli to slide and count, but after he counted them I had him choose which number matched the number of beads on the pipe cleaner. We used number cards to choose the number we needed. After completing our number work, we took another wiggle break.

11:45 - 12:00am Theme Reading with Mom

Eli was getting antsy at this point, so I decided to push the theme reading back to after nap time. We read Five Little Pumpkins by Dan Yaccarino. It's a super cute story, and we were able to discuss how the number of pumpkins kept getting smaller. 

My Thoughts:

Overall we had an awesome day, and I was very happy with how well Eli did. The scheduling worked out really well and allowed for the breaks that Eli needed between activities! We cannot wait for Wednesday! 

Until then - 

Getting Ready to Homeschool Part 3

What Do I Need? (continued)

After organizing and setting out the plans for our homeschooling year, I was able to move on to the FUN stuff: buying supplies! I'm pretty sure that a prerequisite for being a teacher is that you must have a ridiculous obsession with school supplies. I meet that prerequisite and then some! School supplies are some of my favorite things in the world. 

So to get back on topic, now that I had my list of goals and my schedule put together, I was able to buy and organize the supplies needed to accomplish our daily work. I was very blessed with this aspect of my planning because I had many things that I accumulated through prior teaching, but there were some things that I still purchased that were more developmentally appropriate for my little man.

Here is a list of the supplies I made for the year:

Click here to view and print the full supply list: Supply List

I know this looks like a ton of stuff, and it can be overwhelming in the beginning, but you have to pace yourself. Remember you don't have to buy everything all at once. There are many people on craigslist who have supplies for great prices. You can also look at local garage sales for hidden finds.

I'm not very picky with what brand or type of supplies that I use, but there are some things that I feel are much better quality that are worth the difference in price. Overall, I try to be as budget wise as possible.

Take a look at some of our supplies! As I get everything organized and in picture-worthy order, I will post with pictures and details!

So let me know: What are your favorite supplies, and what do you absolutely need to get through your homeschooling day?