Preschool - Letters R & S!

Well, we've finished up two more weeks of school - we studied letters R & S! It is hard to believe we only have 7 letters left for the year - plus a light Easter unit, and two separate weeks of vacation, so ten more weeks till school's out for the summer, but still - we're so close to the end!

So, we studied the letter R - again, I failed at getting pictures of our circle time & Bible time board, but our Fruit of the Week was patience, and our song was Gotta Wait from the Sovereign Grace To Be Like Jesus CD.  Our verse was Ephesians 4:2 - Be patient with each other and lovingly accept one another.  We talked about showing patience but we had kind of a crazy week and I didn't catch them displaying it to each other very often... :)

Natalie dot painting an R page

Z dot painting his R page

I was super proud of both of them - Z's is on the left, and Nat's is on the right - she even dotted in some of the holes - great fine motor skills! :)

We played with playdough, they both love to cut it with knives. :)

We made Rainbow R's (idea here).  We glued strips of paper on a page with an R drawn on it, then after they dried, I cut out the R's.  I thought they turned out cute!

This was Z's rainbow Color By Number (from Confessions of a Homeschooler's LOTW curriculum). I thought he did great on this, too!

Z traced the number 18!

He circled all the things that begin with R - www.beginningreading.com(worksheet here).

Sorting rockets according to size (I got this here, but due to copyright issues, she had to remove all the printables from her blog - sadness - her stuff was SOOOO cute!! :( ).

Natalie surprised me by doing a great job sorting by size, too!!

We made rockets out of old bottles - first we painted the inside of the bottle with acrylic paint (but I only had a little, it was metallic black & sparkly, so then we used tempera paint for the rest, it never did dry, I finally gave up after 3 whole days & just hot glued the lids on so the kids could play with them).  Then we glued on construction paper wings & windows & a door, but they fell right off, so we had to tape them on & then Davey ate one of them....okay, don't tell the kids but I already threw these away. But it was a fun craft & when they weren't falling apart & refusing to dry, the kids had fun playing with them! :)

Our finished rocket bottles. :)

Natalie gluing her R cut & paste page (from here).  

Z cutting out his cut & paste things.

Zachary playing playdough - has anyone else had issues with Blogger uploading their photos in RANDOM orders lately?  I don't know why this one is here and I'm too lazy to switch it now. :)

Natalie pinning a clothespin onto a number flashcard.  The clothespins have the numbers on them & the flashcards have a number of items on them to count & match.

Z playing the counting/matching game.  These flashcards were $1 at Walmart & the clothespins are super cheap, too, you could probably make this game for about $2 & 20 minutes total. :)

One Saturday morning, we made paper bag puppets - Z made a dog. :)  

I love the eyes he drew - here's a closeup! :)

Whoops - while I was taking pictures, Natalie was gluuuuing away! :)  We decided to add buttons to her pig since he had glue all down his belly. :)

Our paper bag puppets! :)

 Next, we studied the letter S.  Our fruit of the week was kindness, and thankfully the kids did better at showing kindness to each other this week.  They ended up getting Twizzlers for showing extra kindness at least a couple of times. :)  Our song was You Show Me Kindness, and our verse was 2 Timothy 2:24 - A servant of the Lord must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone.  What an awesome verse to use in discipline situations!  I will definitely be referring to it in the days and weeks to come - as anyone who has more than one child has surely experienced, we talk about being kind to your siblings A LOT! :)

Zachary practiced his cutting - this is from Confessions of a Homeschooler's LOTW curriculum again.

Z practicing cutting while Nat writes (scribbles) on Z's letter hunt paper. :)

Pinterest Idea!! I buried the letters from this foam puzzle in some rice (I only had brown & it is kind of messy, it gets 'dust' on the puzzle, I think white would be better in the future), and the kids had to find the letters and put them in the puzzle.  They just really enjoyed playing in the rice more than anything. :)

They did put some letters in the puzzle, though!  

We made Superhero S's for our craft!  I just noticed Nat's (the white page) was upside down - whoops!  This idea was from No Time for Flashcards - I love her crafts!!

Here's Z and his finished verse puzzle - he consistently loves this activity, and it is SO easy to make!  He is getting better about working independently on his puzzles and seatwork, so that is nice. :)  

Natalie LOVES to glue! :)  She's working on her cut & paste page again!

Gluing on her S items!

Z is concentrating on cutting out his S things.

And carefully arranging them on his page. :)

Matching snowflakes together - Z also came up with a game where he hid these around the schoolroom and I had to find and match them - he loves to make up games! :)

Another Pinterest idea - we painted on the inside of cereal boxes with homemade puffy paint!  The recipe includes just salt, self-rising flour, water & baby shampoo & food coloring.  

We had a lot of fun with it!

Here is Nat's picture before we put it in the microwave for 30 seconds to dry & puff up.

And here is her picture 30 seconds later!  The kids LOVED this activity & when we were talking through our week, Z said this was the craft he'd like to do again. :)

Here is my puffy paint picture! Now that you're all jealous of my artistic abilities...moving on... :)

Here is Z matching number clothespins with a counting wheel (game here).  

rolling it like a wheel...of course. :)

One perk of being the kid of a program director is that sometimes he gets samples of fun stuff that people want him to buy to use at camp!  And sometimes he brings them home for you to play with! :)  Here are the kids playing with a sample of something called Saucy Yuck.  It was really fun, I was just worried because you're not supposed to let it go down the drain (it starts out as little crystals that absorb water), so I was wiping the kids with paper towels instead of washing their hands, etc.  It ended up working out okay, and the kids loved it! :)  

Here's my requisite Davey picture!  He has grown up a TON these last couple of weeks!  He now has two teeth (bottom middle), is getting some cuuuute spiky blond hair on the top of his head, and is rolling & scooting backwards!  It is so weird to walk into a room and think, 'Oh! Didn't I put him down here? Oh, there he is!' since he can motor around the room now. :)  He loves his baby food, puffs & now Cheerios, but he still loves nursing the most. :)  It's so fun to watch him interact with Z & Nat more and more as he grows! :)

Well, so that's what we've been up to around here for school lately!  To see what everyone else is up to, check out Tot School and Preschool Corner!