Preschool - Letter A!

School is back in session at our house!! Zachary wasn't entirely sure if he was excited for the school year to start, and I wasn't exactly sure how we were going to fit our schoolwork into our already busy days! But this first week has been fun (due to a family trip early last week, we stretched the first week of school into two weeks and did two days of school each week, so it was a little bit spread out, which helped ease us into the school year, too, I think). We usually 'do school' in the morning - typically after we have breakfast & I clean up the kitchen while they play. Of course now this depends on David's schedule, and one day we didn't start school until noon because David was fussy & eating after I had the kitchen clean.

Anyhow, once we do get started, our school time starts with Circle time, then Bible time, which we all do together, and then we move on to any worksheets or seatwork that Zachary has for the day, and then I usually try to end with some kind of educational game (like a file folder game or puzzle) as the treat that we look forward to, just in case the seatwork doesn't thrill him. :) So far, Natalie has been working alongside Zachary, as you'll see, and other than one puzzle-shelf-dumping incident, it hasn't been working too bad. So here are some pictures of what we did this week!

We have this amazing Circle Time board from Lakeshore Learning - a gift from a wonderful teacher friend, and such a blessing! :) We start school each day by interacting with each part of the Circle Time board, talking about the date, day of the week, and weather, and then Zachary's favorite part of Circle Time, counting the gumballs! We always count to the same number as the day's date.

I am going to put up an actual monthly calendar on the wall so that we can interact with that at circle time as well, by crossing off each day, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. :)

After we finish circle time (which takes 10-15 minutes), we move on to Bible time with our Bible time board. Our verses and songs for each week focus on the Ten Commandments, at least for the first 13 weeks of the year. I picked out a verse and a Bible story to go along with each song on a CD we recently received from our pastor's wife - her son was a part of the group that recorded the CD, and each song teaches about one of the commandments - I loved the lyrics so much that I wrote the rest of our Bible curriculum to go along with it. The CD unfortunately has not been released yet, so it can't be purchased, but I did find this website, which has some of the songs lyrics & motions on it for you to see & hear.

As you can see, our verse this week was Mark 12:30 - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. We did some fun motions & had fun memorizing the verse along with the music. Our Bible story was about God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, from Egermeier's Bible Story Book.

Zachary did his first handwriting page this week! I kept his seatwork for the week organized by putting it all in a binder, each page in a separate plastic page protector. This way we can use a wipe off marker to write on the worksheets, and then keep them and use them again. Here's Zachary writing a letter A! and a letter a! :)

Pretty good for the first time, I thought! :) We did a #1 handwriting worksheet, too, but I didn't get any pictures of that.

We did this apple patterning activity from the LOTW curriculum (from Confessions of a Homeschooler). Zachary hasn't done much patterning before, but he seemed to kind of get the hang of it, and brought it up a couple other times during the week, saying, "Mommy, is that a pattern?" :)
We made an alligator A out of construction paper - I got the idea from No Time for Flashcards. Here's Natalie coloring a scrap piece of paper.

And Zachary coloring on our alligator A.

We added some googly eyes & teeth, and here's our alligator! Super cute! :)

We dot-painted a letter A - again from the LOTW curriculum. I made Natalie her own of these, and she enjoyed it. :)

Here's Zachary dot-painting his A!

Natalie decided she needed to work on fine motor skills by taking the cap off of the dot painter & putting it back on repeatedly. :)

Zachary found all the letter A's in his Letter Hunt worksheet - he really enjoyed this! :)

So much that we did two of them! Here's the finished one - you can't tell really which letters are circled because we were using a light green wipe off marker, but all the a's are circled. :)

We did a worksheet about which vowel sound is in the middle of the word, and he got them all right on the first try except one.

Another dot-painting sheet for Zachary! He really enjoyed this one, and I think these sheets are very well done. The dots are not too big for the bingo daubers as some of the other sheets I've used are. You can find this set at Homeschool Creations.

Natalie worked some more on her letter A from the first day. :)

And on her fine motor skills with that cap.... :)

And this is after she was putting the marker in her mouth so I had to close it up & take it away....not happy! :(

We played the Paint Brush Color Match game this week, and Zachary enjoyed it, and did a great job matching the colors!

Natalie enjoyed playing with the little brushes & wanted to try putting some in, too!

She got one in!

Pretty happy with herself... :)

We did an apple cutting page, which Zachary was kind of hurrying through because it was Saturday morning and I had told him when he finished his work we would watch the Bob the Builder movie we borrowed from the library....anyway, this was the result:

He did pretty well, though, just ripped it a little more than usual since he was hurrying. :)

We played with our Melissa & Doug fishing puzzle this week - since all the puzzles were out after Natalie decided she wanted to play with a puzzle and accidentally pulled down the entire puzzle shelf.... :)

And I found Zachary reading this Little Red Riding Hood book to himself! I love when I hear or find him reading by himself. :)

And here's Zachary playing 'tent' with little David - who will be 8 weeks old tomorrow - hard to believe!!! Zachary loves to play with him, and Davey's getting more able to respond, so it's really fun for both of them. :) Natalie loves to play, too! :) And I love watching my 3 little blessings interact! :)

I'm linking this post to Preschool Corner and Tot School - go check out what others are doing with their preschool age kids & tots! :)