Lesson Plan Template

I have been messing around trying to figure out the best way to display my lesson plans for Monkey and Alligator this summer. I have tried various styles. Finally I came to the decision that I think this will work best for us. It isn’t anything spectacular, but I thought it would be useful.

I am going to be doing a mix between teaching Monkey sight words from 1+1+1=1, and the reading program that The Moffatt Girls are using.

This is a week that will be mainly catching up on word families. The sight words are a review for him this week. I think I’ll end up doing 1 week of sight words, and one week of word families. We’ll see how it goes.

On top of all of this we will continue to do Mother Goose time together in the afternoons.

Race to the top

I am getting ready to start teaching Monkey some word families. I am using THe Moffatt Girls Reading lessons, to guide us.

I revamped my “roll a word” game to use with word families.

I figure I will load Monkey’s 2 education cube dice with –at and an words.

1. He rolls both dice.

2. He reads one word. Decides if it is an –at word or an –an word.

3. He makes a dot on the correct column on his paper.

4. Which ever column is filled first wins.

I made it a racing theme so that he would be a bit more interested. He loves a good race….who doesn’t.

Here is the download. Click the image to download!

Favorite Post of the Week #1,,,take 2

Edited to add: I messed up! I was trying to save myself some time, and I tried to reuse the Favorite Post of the Week #1, as my basis for #2. However, what it did was change that post, and therefore get rid of it. WHOOPS! So I am reposting it.

I have decided on Sundays to feature a post that I really liked.

No…silly, not one of mine.

I read a lot of blogs, and each week I will choose a post I really loved and share it. And since I get to decide, I am adding the princess picture to the top of the page. Yes, that is supposed to be me. :)

For my first week I am featuring The Moffatt Girls.This is a completely free, learn to read program!

Read and Enjoy!

Favorite Post of the Week #2

I have decided on Sundays to feature a post that I really liked.

No…silly, not one of mine.

I read a lot of blogs, and each week I will choose a post I really loved and share it. And since I get to decide, I am adding the princess picture to the top of the page. Yes, that is supposed to be me. :)

This week I am featuring an activity that looks really fun. It is from Stay and Play. There are downloadable recipe cards for making different colors. It looks really fun, and I am so going to have to give it a try. You should too!

Monkey loves to cook, so he would probably really like this!

Read and Enjoy!

Beach Week

We just returned from vacation.

We went to the beach, and had wonderful time.

Here are some of my favorite pictures.

    

I am always amazed at how quickly Monkey can make friends. Everyday he would meet up with a new little boy and play with him all day. It was awesome.

More vacation pictures will follow!

Put out that Fire!

We played another sight word game by the pool. But anyone with a hose could play it.

I wrote out our sight words, with chalk, and had monkey read them to me.

Then I called one of the words and told Monkey it is on fire. (He is a little obsessed with the idea of being a fireman when he grows up).

 

When he found the word, I put a red cone on it, and he would spray that word with the hose till it went away. (The red cone, was the fire…he wanted me to draw fire on it, but he said the cone would work).

 

 

And yes, that is me in the pool. Apparently I am being braver than normal (or feeling the 18 pound weight loss!!) and am actually posting me in my swimsuit on my blog. Progress….

Catch That FISH!

Last week, I posted about a fish phonics activity I picked up at Ross (you can read that post here).

Well, we added a twist to it today.

To start I found fish that would make one of Monkey’s sight words.

I threw the fish in the pool (you could use a tub, or a wading pool…whatever you have on hand).

Monkey caught the fish with his net.

Then he connected the letters together to make one of his sight words.

  

I ended up writing the words out for him, so he could try to figure out which word these letters would make. It was easier having that visual.

It was really fun. We will definitely play again.

I love finding games to play to work on our sight words, but playing them at random times, like when we just happen to be having a pool day!

New For US

Teach Mama has a great blog. If you haven’t checked it out you really should. She hosts a blog hop, entitled New For Us Fridays.

This week, my addiction to Ross, continued. I found some great things there again. One of the items I found was called “Marble Race, and Domino Chase”. This seemed right up Monkey’s ally.

I purchased it for $9.99. Which I think is a great deal.

It includes a marble tower to build, and a domino set. But not just any domino set.  It comes with a train, that you load the dominos in the loader, and the train will lay the dominos for you.

Let’s just say it was great fun.

 

The only thing we noticed is that the dominos fall down easily if they are not on a level surface. So we ended up going outside to  our porch.

Once the dominos are laid. You send the marbles down the tower, when they get to the bottom it sets off the dominos.

We are loving it!

Tip of the Week #1

I have another new feature in my blog. It is called….Tip of the Week…. (yeah…you probably could have guessed since it is the title of the post).

If you are smart, beautiful, wonderful, anything like me, you probably print a bunch of printables off of wonderful blogs.

Sometimes these documents are multiple pages long; some of the pages you want to print on cardstock, and some you want to print on regular paper.

Here is where this week’s tip will help you out.

I scroll through the download, and type into “notepad” (it is in accessories on my computer), which pages I want in cardstock and which I want on standard paper.

So for instance I might type:

1, 3, 5-9, 12

2, 4, 10, 11

Then I can just copy paste into the print pop-up.

See, you can’t type it directly in that screen as you scroll through, so putting it in notepad first, will save you from having to do 1 page at a time.

Then I just put a bunch of cardstock in my paper loader, and let it print. Then when it is done, I take it out and let it print on regular paper.

Hope that helps some of you out!

Sight Words, Catch a Fish Game

I recently went to Ross, and found some great deals. Ross is a store like TJ Maxx, which has lots of name brand items at a great discount. I love shopping at Ross, you can find some great deals.

I would this game:

Click the picture above to see it at Amazon. Amazon is selling it for $19.99, but I got it at Ross for like 6 dollars (I think).

Here is the picture off of Amazon. The fish have letters on them. There is at least one fish for each letter in the alphabet, as well as many blends, and chunks. So it will be great when we get into word families.

But for now I had Monkey make his sight words with them. I pulled out the necessary letters, and he built the words. They click together like puzzles, but you can also string them on the provided shoelace.

 

  

It comes with some cards, which we haven’t explored yet, but I will eventually.

This is just another way to expose Monkey to his sight words. The more exposure, the easier they become automatic.

You can also turn them over so that the letters aren’t showing and work on patterning. Monkey had fun with that as well.

Make the Word

This post was inspired by Carissa at 1+1+1=1. I love her “I can read program”. I have added another printable to my collection.

We have Letter Tiles by Eureka.

I created this document, to help Monkey make his word. You can also use the tiles that Carissa created and glue them onto this sheet.

Now he can use the tiles to create the word. Necessary tiles for each set in a tin, so that they can easily be found.

Here he is working with his tiles.

I am linking up to Word Play.

Graphing Sight Words

As we are working on our sight words, it occurred to me to make Monkey a sight word graphing sheet.
You can download the sheet here:

Here is how you play. I used our Education Cubes membership, and printed out his words. I used 2 words from the week before, plus this weeks words, for a total of 6. I then wrote  the words in the bottom of the graph.
How to play:
Roll the dice.
Read the word that comes up.
Put a dot in the  space on top of the word, on your graph.
First word to 10 wins.
Or, you could play with 2 people and have them take turns rolling, winner is the first one with a whole column filled.
Linked up to Word Play.

Stamp a word

Monkey has been working really hard on his sight words. I owe a huge thank you to Carissa at 1+1+1=1, for her “You Can Read” program.
As we have been working, I decided to get out our stamps, and try stamping the word. Monkey found this very difficult.
I thought it would be much easier if I changed 2 things.
1. I have ordered some new stamps. We have a set of stamps but they have multiple letters on each stamp (on each side is a different letter). This made the process hard because it was difficult to find the letter, plus once he did find it, it was hard to orient it the correct way. These are not his set, but they are similar.

So I purchased these from Amazon

I also bought an uppercase set as well.
2. The second thing that I changed, was I made a sheet so that he could stamp straight onto a paper. I created a set of the cards for Carissa’s first 6 sets of words. I will create more as needed. Click the thumbnail below to download. If you would like more, please let me know, and I will create more.

Enjoy!
 I am linking up to Word Play, at 1+1+1=1.

New Motto

As I was writing my Messy Mom post today, I got inspired. I was describing my fridge (of all things) and I wrote:

~I know it isn’t perfect. I am not trying to be perfect, just better~

All day I have been thinking about these words. I have strived for perfect my whole life, but not in that, type-A, very successful, straight A sort of way. I never got all A’s. I had a very high GPA in grad school (3.83…but I am not shamelessly bragging), but prior to then I just sort of scraped by. I was never the thinnest, or the prettiest, definitely not the most popular.

As I became an adult, married, had children…I just never felt good enough because I wasn’t perfect.

So today I was working on my kitchen trying to decide if I should share my before and after pictures. Not certain my afters were good enough. It occurred to me, how about if I just try to do better?

My fridge is better than it was, but not perfect. Is that enough???

Yes, It is!

And each day I will work so that things are better for myself and my family. I will never be the PERFECT mother, wife, woman….

But I can always make things better!

Messy Mommy Coming Clean Day 1 and 2

A few nights ago I happened to be on Facebook, and a friend of mine posted about:

At the time if you spread the word, the author would send you the eBook for free. Well, So I reposted and by the next day got the eBook. Here is her facebook page, check it out.

I was excited that each day she has set out a task for you to complete. At the end of the month your whole house is clean. Sounds easy right???

Ok, well I think some days are going to be easier than others.

Day 1 was to look through the rest of the missions and see if you needed to buy anything.

Right ON!!!!! I read through the rest of the missions and made a mental note of what I needed. Some oven cleaner…

Day 2: Clean out your freezer and fridge, inside and out.

Oh boy!

I am going to be brave and post pictures. I am assuming you won’t judge me, since you are also going to see how clean it is now….RIGHT???

I am going to do side by side shots so you can really tell.

Outside:

Freezer:

Fridge:

          

 

~I know it isn’t perfect. I am not trying to be perfect, just better~

On the facebook page I mentioned above you can find the calendar that has each of the missions listed on it. I printed it out and am hanging it on my fridge. Each day crossing off the missions I have accomplished. I might will actually finish this. I am excited to see the results as I go.

If you are following this guide, or just trying to get your house together leave a link. I would love to see what your up to!

Answers….Sort of ~

I went to the doctor today. After messing with my ankle till I was ready to hit him, or cry carefully examining my ankle, the doctor is sending me to get another x-ray on Thursday. He is thinking I may have chipped the ankle bone. UGH!

If it isn’t chipped then I no longer have to wear this:

And I will get something more like this:

He said I would need that for 6-8 weeks but that as soon as I felt up to it, I could resume normal activities.

However if it is chipped… Well, he didn’t say what we would do then. So I guess we will see!