C is for Caterpillar (and colors and cars...)

This week we studied the letter C!  We've been trying to make body letters each week but we got a little behind.  So here is "Cc," Ss," and "Pp."  Hopefully you can figure out which is the uppercase and which is the lowercase hahaha. 


On Monday we studied Colors.
We got this great emergent reader from here and had a blast creating colorful hair for each page of the book.




For our song this week, we had to sing "C is for Cookie" and watch the Sesame Street video here. (BTW, this website, kideos.com is great for watching Youtube videos, but it screens them all for kids and you can choose if you want it to link to Youtube or not. That way your kids can surf without getting into trouble.)

Our wall words this week were "like" and "there." Since Monday was "color" day, we found this great emergent reader, "I like colors."


Other little readers we read this week using our sight words were "I like to Munch," "I Made a Face," and "I measure," all from this book.

For Family Home Evening we discussed "The Turkey with the Terrible Temper." I printed off a turkey from google images in each color and then we put different colored feathers on the brown turkey as the story progressed. The story kept the kids' attention and I think they enjoyed it.

We're still studying Moses in our Old Testament reader. Some activities we did this week relating to what we read came from here and here.

Tuesday we began our study of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."






We learned a lot about the days of the week, sequencing, counting, science (life of a butterfly) and nutrition. There is a ton of free activites online for this book and I had a hard time narrowing down what we were going to do!!

I found quite a few different "letter C" activities devoted to caterpillars.

Here they are using little rocks to fill in the C and the caterpillar.  They loved using the rocks to create letters free form... even if it wasn't the letter C.


After using the rocks, they used jumbo push pins to punch holes making the letter "C." All 3 kids LOVED this. 

After reading the book, we made a poster of the sequence of the book. Here's the boys after they'd cut the pieces out... using WAY too much glue.


Our snacks and lunch that day were all from the book. Morning snack was all fruit, lunch was the salami, sausage, cheese, watermelon, pickle selections, and afternoon snack was just sugar. The kids had to taste everything, and there were (obviously) some things that they loved much more than others!


Other activities based around caterpillars, cars, and the letter c:

Caterpillar letter C tracing page, Youtube link to the video version of the story, word search, lacing sequence activity, cake letter C tracing page, Draw things starting with C page, What begins with "C" book, C is for Car tracing page.  I also ripped out a few pages from The Never-Bored Kid Book, Ages 4-5.  The car JJ is holding is a little wooden thing I picked up from Michaels the other day for $1.  Both boys loved coloring their cars and spent the rest of the day crashing them into each other.

Our lapbooks this week were full of activities:

They colored the Caterpillar shaped Emergent reader, glued the lift and paste activity together, stamped the number to create caterpillars, and glued together the life cycle of the butterfly (can't remember where I got this one.)  Each week they also do a "My First Letter ___ Book."  This week was no different with the letter C.

Because one child is also learning English (including the alphabet and numerals we use in our language) he's a little more behind than a child who has grown up speaking and hearing English his whole life.  I decided to enroll him in an online program to help him with phonics and language.  I chose https://www.time4learning.com/ and he's been enjoying it.  Each day he plays "games" on the computer which review more of the alphabet and sounds.  After 15 minutes of "lesson games" he gets to do 15 minutes of "real computer games" of which he always chooses www.pbskids.org.    The program also came with a curriculum for extra help at home, which I've been using.  It has extra worksheets and ideas for lessons that I can teach him.  Each day I've spent an extra hour with him working on this while the other child's responsibility is to watch VV.  It's worked out okay so far.  We've also included a TV show into our daily schedule (gasp!)  Every morning they watch "Super Why" on PBS and LOVE it.  They participate in the show so I think it's fun for them.  Each day they follow the Super Readers through an adventure and learn about letters and sounds.  Plus it gives me time to prepare a snack and fold laundry.  :)  I think homeschooling is all about tweaking and changing everything to suit the needs of the kids and that's what we're doing. 

Next week, Grandma & Bonka are coming!!  We'll try to squeeze in some study about Thanksgiving... but we're also going to be prepping for the new baby.  So after this week... we're taking a few weeks of "vacation" (hahahaha) from school as our family grows!

G is for Golden Plates, Grandparents, Giraffes, Gumballs...

I didn't want to spend a whole week on one "G" word, so we did a different theme each day. Our first day, Monday, we studied the Golden Plates, learning the primary song, "The Golden Plates," and then doing these worksheets.

During FHE, JJ told us the story of the Golden Plates and we impressed Daddy with our song.

This week our sight words were "we" and "my." I found some great printable worksheets for the boys and they actually have done much better at remembering the words when they see them after writing them so many times.

WE (I can't remember where I got this one!!)


MY
Thanksgiving "I am Thankful for MY..."

Sight books for our words:

Bedtime, We Like School, My House, What begins with G?

We also practiced this song every day:


On Tuesday we talked about how excited we are that GRANDPARENTS are coming in 2 weeks!!  We read this/these books:

What Grandmas do best, What Grandpas do best

Another "G" book we read:

The three Billy Goats Gruff

We also finished:

My Father's Dragon

On Wednesday we talked about Giraffes and Gorillas.

We read through our science book about them.
We traced the letter G using this worksheet, and then used glitter to create a masterpiece using a mural and animal drawings from the same site linked above.  The glitter was the best part.


That day we also went on a nature walk looking for things that start with the letter "G" or just letter "G". Here's a few things:


Boys will be boys... and upon returning home from our walk, they insisted that they watch the construction workers across the street while they ate their snack. This was probably the best part of their day.


On Thursday, G was for gumballs. The boys never realized they didn't GET any gumballs, they just worked on the worksheets. Hahaha.

They enjoyed glueing the pom-poms to the gumball machine, and also the "Roll a Gumball" game.

Thursday was also game day. We played lots of educational games such as:

Candy Land - Dora The Explorer, Hi Ho Cherry-O, Go Diego Go! 123 Game, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Bingo.

On Friday, G was for goose.

We read The Goose who laid the Golden Eggs from the book Read and Understand Folktales & Fables and did the worksheet. Since the glitter was so popular in the days before, we made our golden eggs glittery.  The boys also did a Dot-to-Dot Numbers Activity Zone (Ages 4-6) workbook page
of a goose.

We've also been reading stories from The Friend to talk about reverence and respect.  I also picked up some "character" books from the thrift store.  Books about being too rough, etc.  The boys need to hear it from somewhere else besides JUST Mom & Dad. 

This week we also talked a lot about Moses. We read about Baby Moses, The burning bush/reverence, Moses' speech challenge, and Moses before Pharoh and the plagues.  Each day we have a coloring page that we color and it will become a cool book for the boys when we're finished. 

We had a pretty good week.  I have to change the way we do things almost every week to keep their attention, but we're managing.  And... I think (hope) they're learning something.  :)

S is for Spider

Last week we studied the letter S! Since it was Halloween on Monday, Spiders seemed appropriate to study.

We read a few poems each week. This week we loved "Little Miss Muffet." I found a lot of resources here for our Miss Muffet theme day. For example:

Wind sock to teach that spiders have 8 legs.


Poem and coloring page.

We also recited the poem with props:

The props came from this book, Kindercenters for Reading Readiness.

Our sight words this week were "in" and "on." I found a little reader from www.kinderreaders.com called "Spider." It's about where a spider is... IN or ON things. Afterwards, we did an activity placing a little spider in a book called, "Where is the Spider?"

I love the website: 2 teaching mommies.
I've found awesome stuff and been able to make some really cool file folder activity centers for the boys.


I downloaded this theme unit from 2 Teaching Mommies to make most of this stuff.


The unit also had pages to do play-doh on.  So we did play-doh!!



In our letter "S" studies we used many of these printables for tracing practice. Here's SS working on his lapbook that I created out of all sorts of goodies I found online.




Here's some of the boys' work:

(From the websites above.)  Letter S dot art, and Letter S's using star stickers.


How do you spell Spider?

We also did a little writing activity that I tore out of a coloring/activity book (Spiderman- of course!)



I also tore out some puzzles from the book and laminated them so they can work on them whenever they'd like.

Here's a little video of the boys playing "Spider Scurry."

The idea came from this book:


The boys loved creating this book.  Daddy helped them with it- just for fun.

They glued all sorts of fun things to the papers. (I'm not sure where I found this... I promise to keep better track of where I download stuff from.)

SS & I did a fun science experiement together.



We learned why spiders don't stick to their webs! The idea and worksheet came from this blog.

To practice writing numbers we did our work out of the Spider-Man Numbers and Counting book.


A few books we read this week:
How Spider Saved Christmas




Be Nice to Spiders


Spiders are not Insects


Spiders: The Ultimate Preditors
This one had amazing pictures but the text was WAY beyond Kindergarten level. They loved just staring at the pictures.


My Father's Dragon

We also continued with our study of the Old Testament, focusing on Joseph and the coat of many colors.

Tuesday morning (the day after Halloween) we did a fun sorting activity with Skittles... since we had plenty on hand from their Halloween stash.

They sorted by color, graphed their findings, and then answered math questions.  THEN they were able to snack on them.  The printouts came from here.

AND... what would "spider week" be like without spider shaped pancakes. The boys loved these!!


Almost everything we use is downloaded from the internet or I've found at the local Thrift Store.  I've been VERY blessed that someone has been donating their Kindergarten homeschool curriculum to the thrift store.  It's been such a blessing.  We have all sorts of books and resources that I pull ideas from. 

I also found a bunch of math manipulatives such as these links for super cheap.  I pulled them out for VV to play with and I was shocked when she actually lined up the links in the right direction according to color. 


Next week is the letter G!