Mother Goose Time

This week we started our Mother Goose TIme September Curriculum. I am so excited and impressed by this curriculum.

We only did 2 days this week since September started mid week. We got a little behind due to Monkey starting preschool this week as well.

Monkey is in school every morning now, so Alligator and I have some one-on-one time.

I didn’t take many pictures this week but this is what I have so far.

 

Here is Alligator working on his Jack and Jill discover color paper. He loves these do a dot markers. 

Here is Monkey working on his.

We sang the nursery rhyme a lot and both boys seemed to really enjoy that.

 

Here Monkey is playing the pick the apples game with the number cards. He is very literal, so I pulled out our game of High-ho-Cherry-Oh. We used that to move the “apples” from one tree to another, based on the cards.

I will really try to take more pics next week. We will be really getting into gear next week. As we get more used to our schedule.

 

If you are interested in the Mother Goose time curriculum. Please click here. It really is wonderful! You can also check them out on facebook here.

Tot planning

I have posted so much today…I promise I’m finished….maybe :)

I finally came up with a planning sheet for Alligator that I think will work nicely.  And I even figured out how to publish it as a pdf, so it keeps the formatting. I tell you…I’m learning!

Click the image to print it for yourself.

 

Sound bin- we are working with alligator on the b sound, for speech. So these are objects that begin with the b sound. But in the future they might be other sounds.

U-play, those are the cards I want to use for working with him. Read my post here about the U-play mat and cards.

Other Speech activities- Those would be things we are working on for speech. Like the word Up, or drinking from a certain sippy.

Art activities- Alligator is my artist.  So these might include coloring sheets, or play-doh, paint projects…that sort of thing.

Toys to set out- Things to put on our shelves for Alligator to play with.

Games/songs ideas- these would be a certain song I want to sing with him, or a little game to play that maybe doesn’t fit in any of the other categories.

I hope this helps someone else out! I sure am excited!

Plans

So after my post last night, and a few helpful comments. I decided on a course of action.

I will have 6 trays. Each with a specific curriculum area. Here is my planning sheet. I downloaded it to scribd, but it took away some formatting, so it isn’t as pretty.

 

As you can see I have 6 trays, one for a letter activity, puzzle, math, color, story and activity and other. I have never really used a planning sheet before. So this is new for me, and seems like it will be very helpful. I was able to plan a whole week of activities in less than an hour.

1. I am starting with the letter A. I decided to go ahead through the alphabet and focus more on  beginning sounds than letter recognition since Monkey already knows his letters and their sounds, we are now going to focus more on the words that begin with A.

2. Puzzle, I am going to rotate through our puzzles, and maybe some printable ones. Monkey needs practice putting a whole puzzle together that makes a picture.

3. Is math, some of these activities will go with the letter or color. Like a connect the dots page, or a count out the apples. That sort of thing.

4. Color. Monkey knows his colors, however he struggles with black, white, brown, gray, pink, and purple. So we will focus on that for now, not sure what we will do after that. Next week we are focusing on Black.

5. Is a story and an activity. We will read a different book each day and do an activity with it. Maybe pointing at all the A’s, or counting things in the book, or finding black things in the pictures.

6. is other, one day we are going on an ant hunt, another we will play with play-doh and make letters then just free play, we will also have a day where we play with our colored rice.

 

I am so excited about our plans! Can’t wait to post pics of how it is going!

Preschool Dilemma

What to do? What to do?

I have been struggling for a while trying to decide what to do for my boys.

Monkey is 4, and during the school year attends preschool. In the fall he will go everyday, half-day, and one full day a week. He absolutely loves doing trays with me (click link to learn more about tot-trays at 1+1+1=1.) We started a little over a year and a half ago, and he loves it.  I am just not sure where to go from here. He loves doing work sheets, cutting, gluing, matching and that sort of thing. Not so keen on writing or coloring. He knows all his letters and their sounds, his numbers, his shapes, most of his colors…

 

I am just conflicted about what to do with him. What program to follow, or what to do? I would really like to find something I could follow, because although I have plenty of resources I don’t have to time to plan plan plan. But, nothing quite fits. So here lies my struggle. I will keep you posted as I find a solution, if anyone has any great ideas I would definitely appreciate them.

 

My thoughts are to do 6 trays a day.

1. Monkey needs to work on his puzzle skills. So I should have one tray that is a puzzle.  I could rotate it out every day or so, so he has a new one to work on.

2. I need to have one tray that works on a color. He needs to work on black, white, brown, purple, gray, and pink. So that would be an activity a day. I have a book that I could probably draw activities from for that.

3. I guess we need a math tray. He can count to 12ish. But he has trouble with one-to-one correspondence. So I need to have some type of math tray. I will have to look and see what I can find.

4. I love the activities from Confessions of a homeschooler, for her letter of the week. So I could have one tray a day that focuses on the letter of the week.

5 and 6. I just am not sure. And then, all of this looks like a lot of work, which I really didn’t want. Ugh….

I’ll keep the ideas coming…please help if you read this!

Where has the time gone

Well, it has been a while since I posted last. A lot has happened in the last 8 months or so.

My darling Alligator who is 16 months now was recently diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. He has had some significant delays in both gross motor and speech. After many tests, and many visits to see experts it was discovered that he had some damage to his brain, probably at birth. His CP is mild, and he is just starting to learn to walk. So, he is very lucky, and very blessed. Although only time will tell, so far it seems he will have an almost "normal" life.

I have decided to go ahead and post what I am working on with him, as well as what I am working on with Monkey (who is 4 now...wow oh wow).

Currently with Monkey I am doing Itty Bitty Bookworm. We are working on the June curriculum. I will be throwing in some of the games from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I love her letter themes, and Monkey seems to too. Over a year ago, I started setting out his work in trays, which he really seems to enjoy. So I still do that. Monkey goes to preschool in the fall every morning and one full day a week, so I am not sure what I will be working on with him once school starts, but for now this is what we are doing.