We're Back!!

It's been a busy four months... Can you tell?? :)

Since my last post in November, my family and I have welcomed a new addition to our Sweet family: Lincoln Connor! And although he's a pretty mellow baby, it can be crazy taking care of all three kiddos! So, as you can imagine, attempting anything that might resemble a home preschool agenda has been pretty tricky. 

Lincoln is now 3-months-old and I have just been getting back into the swing of things!

Aislin is still part of the co-op preschool, which is another reason I've been pretty lax on my homeschooling efforts. (Before Linc was born, I had already started slacking because I was very tired and pregnant...or tired of being pregnant. Probably both.) However, after realizing that some of the skills she had learned before joining the co-op were starting to slip from her grasp, I told myself I'd resume my home preschool efforts--at least part-time and with a more casual schedule--as soon as I was able. I didn't want to burn either of us out, and I knew it would be futile anyway to maintain a more structured schedule while taking care of a newborn! 

Also, Desmond is almost 3-years-old and wants so much to learn alongside his sister. If she's practicing her handwriting on a sheet protector, he'll come up to me with a dry-erase marker and say, "Des work, too, Mom!" And he's been showing that he has the maturity to learn how to take turns--something he did not understand a year ago when I had first started this blog and home (pre)schooling both kids. So now I do it for Des as much as for Aislin :)

While Aislin is in preschool, I work with Des. We do the calendar/weather/season bit, sing songs, work on something, like alphabet recognition, number recognition, counting, etc., and then do an activity or play a game, like Memory, or something else that was easy to make up. We played a letter game where I'd place a few cards with uppercase letters into a paper bag and their lowercase letters on the table. Des would then shake the bag and pull a letter out, and then match it with its partner. Simple! And he managed to do the entire alphabet 4-6 letters at a time!

And I love working with Des. He's eager to learn and enjoys learning. I can tell that he also appreciates the attention and being taught the same things that he's seen me teach his sister :)

With Aislin, I have her work on her handwriting (writing letters and numbers without having to see them, and therefore copy them, first) on some days, math skills on other days, followed by an activity or game. She pushes through the more tedious things just fine because she knows they'll be brief, and enjoys the activities.

Aislin and I played BINGO together using pictures, letters and sight words. We played it several times--she can be pretty competitive lol! 

Another preschool tool that I love to use: my Kindle :) It has an app specifically for kids that allows me to create an account for both Aislin and Des (for under $10/month). Using their age and sex, as well as entertainment preferences, this app compiles a ton of movies, games, books, TV shows that are just for Des or just for Aislin. It not only teaches them how to master a touchscreen, but also how to utilize "quiet time" :)

Des doing an animal puzzle :)

Just to clarify...our schedule doesn't look like the above every single week. I don't work with Des every Monday and Wednesday morning, and I don't always get to use everything I have planned for either kid. Instead, we do what we can when we can. And trying our best all the while :)

Learning to Read!

I initially took a break from blogging when Aislin began a new learning adventure--reading! I decided to try a  curriculum developed by a former elementary school teacher/current stay-at-home mom, and it's called Ready2Read. I looked through as much of the material as I could before purchasing Level 1: Unit 1 (only $5 via teachersnotebook.com for about 40 pages worth of material), and I felt like it would be a good fit for my daughter. So I downloaded the unit and printed off the first week's activities. I had decided, since using this curriculum was really an experiment, having had no previous experience with it nor feedback from friends who've used it, that I would wait until the end of the first week before blogging about the results!

Let me first show with pictures before words...

 Color-by-number flashcards (I, see, the, and, a)

 Great thing about these flashcards is that you can put objects between them to make a complete sentence. For instance, "I see the dinosaur and a crayon." 

Aislin loved that she was able to read complete sentences!

Cherrio/decorating mats

We used sprinkles...which clearly didn't get us too far in this activity LOL! As fun as it was to use food, I think I'll try laminating them (as instructed, but I was too lazy to get that done!) and doing something like q-tip dots with washable paint or using removable stickers. 

Finally, let me show you with a video taken at the end of the week (via dropbox.com, since blogger has been giving me a hard time uploading videos)...

AISLIN READING :)

My conclusion: this experiment has been a wonderful success :) I really appreciated the schedule provided with this curriculum because I already felt pretty timid about starting this new adventure. Instead of jumping into it, I really crept and tried to get a feel for it with my big toe. But the schedule allowed for a number of different activities to keep her busy each day, and half of those things were review. 

There were definitely times when we had to switch things up a bit (after I had learned what she enjoyed more and what she felt wary of), and there were times when we had to shorten the schedule for the day so it wouldn't be too much, but she got through it. 

The mini-books (reviewing -at and -an words) were a big hit with her. I think they made her feel very grown up because she was reading from books and not just bits of paper. Another big hit was the STARFALL website listed on the schedule for the end of week one. It has fun activities and games on the same word families she had just learned about! 

Like I said, I had initially taken a break from blogging so I could test this experiment. However, this post should have been written and published about two weeks ago! Since then we've been busy with Halloween stuff (which shall be on another post), but now that Halloween's over...I think we'll move on to Unit 2!

I'll let you know how that experiment goes ;)

Fall Field Trip (for the Co-op)!

Where better to take the co-op preschool class than to a pumpkin patch & corn maze?! For $8/child (parents were free of charge since we all teach our group--woot!) the kids were able to take a hay ride, go through the kid's corn maze, peruse the pumpkin patch and take their favorite pumpkin home, and ride on the cow train! It was about a 2 1/2 hour event (including the time it took us all to finish lunch) but the kids had a blast and it was certainly a memorable experience for the whole group :)

*A note about the following pictures: these are from my first batch of film used with my manual camera. (Read again, if needed. The shock can be intense.) This season has put me in the mood to use my old camera--something I haven't done in almost 10 years! I bought two rolls of black and white film (one of which I'm still waiting to be developed...because it takes two weeks...because b&w film is, sadly, a dying invention) and one in color, and I figured...if we're going to a pumpkin patch, on a farm, where the reds and oranges will be too vibrant to pass up the chance to take pics in color...then this is the time to use that roll ;) With all of that said...I've learned that a faster shutter speed is, in deed, necessary when taking pics of kids!!
Nonetheless, here are my favorite ones (and the only good ones LOL):

 Aislin with one of her preschool buddies, and Des at the back--as much a big kid as the others in his rain coat and boots!

 "Cheeeeese!"

 Cuties!

:)

 Gotta roll up those sleeves to do this job right!

 "Hi, Mom!"

The kids ran through the corn maze to find the next page of the "Spookly" story!

These next pics and video were taken with my phone...obviously lol ;)

On the cow train!

Gotta love this kid :)

Yes, I kept Des from hopping on the train...because it went fast enough that I was worried he'd just scream his face off! He was already uncomfortable enough having to trek through dirt that day, with no even ground to stand on, and he certainly didn't appreciate the times I let go of his hand just so I could take these pictures...so I figured he'd sit this one out. Bob was kind enough to wave to him, though :)

For some reason, blogger was having a hard time letting me put my video on the blog...so HERE'S the link to the video via dropbox!

Magnets, Dry-erase Marker, and Letters...Oh My!

Letter match invitation

I love when an activity works out using materials you already have!

I prepared this one night as an invitation to match lowercase to uppercase letters once the kids saw it in the morning. It was a success!! My 4-year-old and my 2-year-old were both intrigued, and the younger one even got a few on his own and said those letters out loud! 

The reason it's a success is because it's been up for the past few days, and the kids still stop by the board to match up the letters :)

Science? Yes, please!

We know our daughter loves art. Now to test the science hypothesis...

A couple weeks ago I bought a children's book from Barnes and Noble called "My Body." I got it knowing that Aislin was interested in bones/the skeletal system, so I had planned to use it for a home preschool lesson and wondered if it would be as successful as the flower anatomy lesson we had last spring. It took me forever to get around to this lesson! This brand new book sat in its B&N bag for weeks, and then after I had cleaned the desk a couple days ago, it sat on top of a shelf. It wasn't until Aislin saw it on the shelf that I remembered it was there...and that something I had paid for was going unused! Sometimes that's all the motivation one needs ;)

So today we finally did the lesson.

The book is broken up into several different topics related to the body, from its senses to its skeleton, so I just showed the kids the few pages related to the skeleton. (At least I'll have tons of material to use for different lessons later on!) The kids stayed engaged throughout group time because they got to poke themselves and feel their different bones. Afterwards, we went upstairs for the art activity, which was putting a skeleton together, identifying the parts we had just learned about, and then coloring those parts with the same color of their labels.

It was a lot of work! Still, Aislin got through it without whining or getting distracted.

I had given Des something to color, but he, on the other hand, doesn't care as much for art lol. Go figure ;) Tim and I have thought about getting him legos or blocks of different shapes (since the kids have long since grown tired of the square alphabet/number blocks that they've had since Aislin was a year old), so that'll be another experiment ;)

Conclusion: YES, Aislin's strongest interests are rooted in science and art. Yes, she can focus on something without being totally annoying, and usually that focus is at its best when she's learning from her two favorite subjects. And yes, this lesson was as successful as the one on flower anatomy!

Watercolor Art Project

Last night I poured over a number of art activities found in The Artful Parent and decided to try a few. So today, we made our own watercolor paints and tried watercolor resist with contact paper.

I learned that Des was too young to be around for the paint-making process. I should have mixed the paint ingredients with Aislin while Des was engrossed in doing something downstairs, and then brought him up when it was time to paint. I also learned that making our own watercolor paints used a lot of our baking materials, and that, unless I owned baking soda, corn starch and everything else in big Costco-sized cans, buying a set of watercolor paints would probably be cheaper than making our own!

 This was taken after we had finished painting, which is why the yellow and green paints no longer look yellow and green! I now need to buy a new bottle of white vinegar and a new can of corn starch....

In spite of the bumps we ran into, including trying to use a muffin baking pan for the paints and then realizing the cups were too small for mixing the ingredients, the project itself was a lot of fun :) Des enjoyed naming the shapes I made out of contact paper and then smashing the paintbrush into his construction paper...while Aislin enjoyed putting drops of food coloring on top of her watercolor strokes.

Letting our work dry with the contact paper still on. 

I think my kids got a little carried away with the watercolors because, although their contact paper-shapes were firmly pressed onto their papers, the paint still seeped under the contact paper.

Desmond's work after his shapes were peeled off.

 After it dried.

You can see some of the shapes pretty well, but I think they might would have been clearer if he had also tried playing with the food coloring. But he was content spreading the yellow and green around :)

Aisin's work after her shapes were peeled off.

After it dried.

I love all the colors! The paint definitely seeped under her shapes so you have to look closely for a heart, a triangle and the letter B! 

My work after my stars were peeled off.

After it dried.

Stinkin' awesome!! I used the first picture as my phone's wallpaper lol :D

Plan for next time: 

Buy a set of watercolor paints and watercolor paper, and try a new activity...perhaps Leaf Paint and Print or Yarn Painting! 

Aislin the Artist

A few days ago, my husband and I were talking about what we could do to nurture our daughter's interests. She's the type who (and don't think I'm bragging here because, believe me, I sometimes get embarrassed by this...) gets bored easily when something doesn't strike her interest, is below her developmental level or has been taught to her enough times that she doesn't see the need to sit through another lesson. Today at a preschool library story time, for example, the librarian had chosen books that weren't really stimulating for a 4-year-old but were useful for interacting with a group of kids...so Aislin interacted, and then chose to stand up and start skipping around the room while everyone else sat and faced forward. (While having the discipline and respectfulness to endure a boring moment is definitely something my husband and I want her to learn...you can't help but sympathize with the kid!)

What we had determined was that Aislin's strongest interests are in science and art. And today our hypothesis was confirmed :)

 Aislin's play-dough flower made at the end of story time

Sometimes it kind of breaks my heart knowing that she's not as interested in story time, or books in general, as I am...but I'm so proud of her for the interests she does have. I was really impressed that she made that play-dough flower by herself, and I bet she even named each part as she put it all together ;)

Oh, and...gotta love that imagination, too :)

"These peas are for you!"