Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Isaiah's turn!

I've been putting off posting about Isaiah's learning time because we do so much stuff on any given day!  He has learning time every weekday for 30-60 minutes.

 But here is just a quick run down of some of the things we do.

FINE MOTOR--- we always start off with this--- usually cutting and gluing.  its a great way to start off because he can get his supplies out on his own and get started if i'm busy with one of the other kids.

We use a cutting workbook for our practice


HANDWRITING
We are currently working on the formation of his lowercase letters.  The lowercase are much harder than the capital letters, which are all tall and fill up the entire space of the line.  Most lowercase letters fill in the bottom half of the line, but some are tall, and some go in the "basement". 

after he finishes a paper we glue it into his notebook

which leads us into...
WRITING---  Isaiah is really confident with his writing skills.  He writes all the time--- I think the next post will be pictures of things he has written on his own time.  But my goal for him is to write with all the conventions of punctuation and capitalization.  He's actually pretty good at punctuation himself.  But during learning time I help him write journal entries.

I give him a lowercase sample to help him remember which letters are tall and which go in the basement.  The only words I helped him spell in this entry were angels and cocoa!

MATH---  Isaiah is working on learning his math facts.  I also give him number patterns which he has to figure out and complete (counting by 5s or 2s).  We have done nonstandard measurement, money, and time as well.  He works often with the 100s chart, unifix cubes, and counters.  I would love to buy him place value manipulatives next.

Isaiah asked me if he could figure out counting by 4s one day.  So I let him figure it out with counters and the 100s chart.
doubles practice
Nonstandard measurement using cubes
Filling the blanks, counting by 5s.  He has to figure out the rule by looking at what I have already filled out. He has also started to put the date at the bottom.
partners to 10.  He fills out the left side first and then we cover it up and he does the right side.
READING---  Isaiah is reading the Magic Tree House series.  Most of these books are probably around the end of 2nd grade reading level.  (The book he just finished was listed as an M level)

We are now on book 5!  These books are great because they are very heavy in content and he learns so much about different places.  

Here is his word list for book 3-- about ancient Egypt.  We even made faux hieroglyphs using a guide that his grandfather bought me from a trip he took. 


We gather important clues about each book.




 OTHER CONTENT:
We have studied habitats, maps and continents, animal classification, primary colors, amongst other everyday things.  

He loved classifying animals and maps the best.  Here is our ending project on animals.  He answered all the main questions and listed all the animals he knew in each category.  I helped him with spelling :)


It's hard to believe that he's still only in preschool!  Especially when he looks so grown up :)

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Christina's learning time

I've been asked a lot recently about what kinds of things I do during learning time with my kiddos.  I'm going to post separately about each kid since I do completely different things with them!

This post is about Christina.  The main things that we focus on are:

1)  Reading/Writing --- sight word practice and fluency, phonemic awareness activities, solidifying letter sounds, writing the letters in her name

2) Math --- counting items with correct 1-to-1 correspondence, counting up to 40, AB patterns, sorting, comparing items

We go over these things in many different ways!  Here are just some of the examples...

AB patterns using stickers.  Sometimes we use unifix cubes, sometimes counters.


Counting... this was taken a while back when she kept skipping 15, haha.  We slowly added numbers, but not until she had mastered the numbers that were there.
She now counts up to 49. (She thinks 100 comes next but I have yet to burst that bubble). 


Sight word practice.  We practice them with flash cards and when she has learned them they go on the papers that we hang on the wall so she can be proud of them.  She has two and a half of these papers up now!  She starts her learning time morning by reviewing the old words that are up, as well as counting (as seen above).  Sometimes we do different activities with the new words besides just flash cards but I don't have any pictures)


Christina's notebook where we do most of her written work.  She doesn't really need one but I got one for Isaiah and thought it was important for her to have one too!


Sorting and counting counters.  Then we compare the amounts.


She searches for letters and gives me the sounds while tracing them.  Sometimes I use lowercase letters instead.


Just some cues for the letter sounds that she has a difficult time with.  There are hand motions that go with them.


Here she is practicing her sight word fluency with some sight word books.  We read one at the end of each session.


 
Here she is putting sounds together for her phonemic awareness practice.  She has really really improved here!  When we started she was working on syllables.  We moved up to onset/rime but she could only do initial continuants.  Now she is really good at working with initial stops.  We had our first practice with blending phonemes last week and she did great!





















The last thing that we spend time on that I don't have any pictures of is writing her name.  She can spell her name which is great considering how long her name is!  She also has really good fine motor skills and can hold a pencil really well.  She is just very hesitant about forming letters and moving her pencil in purposeful ways.  We have a new magnetic board from Handwriting Without Tears (*thank you Linda!) which she LOVES to use.  We are only working on the C and the H for now.  R is going to be quite difficult to tackle!

Shoot me an email if you have any questions!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

5!

october is almost over!  can you believe isaiah turned 5 this month?!  for his birthday we had a fun celebration at chuck e. cheese's where he got to go up with chuck e. and have a guitar solo, and he got to go in the ticket blaster!

here are some fun pics of our family.  next post i'll have some fun halloween pics :)



micah getting strong


isaiah's version of chicago


umma and isaiah out to lunch


micah caught his first cold from christina.  here he is with super red cheeks!


isaiah at the front of his party with his inflatable guitar


getting instructions about the ticket blaster


getting ready to go


tickets everywhere!!!


he caught the big 1000 ticket!!!


tried to take pics of all three kids... it was really hard!


isaiah making a silly face


christina hair all over her face


micah was too tired to take any more pictures!

Monday, October 7, 2013

Fall fun!

Team Shin has been enjoying fall with tons of activities and busyness!

here is a random picture of our family!

we went to the apple orchard with abby and her family!
















we like to go for walks after dinner--- here's a picture of micah in the stroller!

we had picture day at school--- a preview of christina in her picture day outfit!

this is just sweet cheeks hanging out!

umma got to help out in both isaiah and christina's classrooms!

here is isaiah at school on a rainy day

christina had a farm day at school--- here are some pics of her playing!





here are both kids at school!

and can you believe micah turned 6 months old?!  he is getting ready to crawl!!!



and finally we went to a pumpkin patch the other day.  they had all sorts of rides too!





here are some final pics of hanging out at home!