Preschool ~ Sight words

~Smiley is currently 41 months old~

READING...

A lot of our week was focused on reading. We love the Ready2Read Program, which combines phonics families and sight word drills, as well as Carisa's You Can Read Program. We have been using both programs in addition to using ABC Reading Eggs and Hooked On Phonics. 

This week we focused on the following sight words: a, I, the, and, see.

Smiley used his car to help him read his sight words...

He colored them and then cut them out... (great fine motor practice for him!)

I love the cute sight word caterpillar. We colored the circles, laminated them and hung them in Smiley's room :)

We then worked on our phonics family by using this fun pasting activity. He really enjoyed this.

We then used Carisa's You Can Read Program to further work on these first sight words...

He used his car to drive from word to word...

(he did eventually use a pencil as well, but I didn't snatch a picture)

He loved this dot paint activity. We did "a" and "the" first. He then felt the need to completely cover the words in dot paint and it got a little crazy ;) but he really enjoyed it...

Ladybug THEME

We continue to learn about insects. We introduced ladybugs this week, and what better way then to start with a little craft. We had some flat stones and I thought it would be fun to make some ladybug stones :)

We covered them in red tempera paint...

and then added heads and dots with a black sharpie.

PLAY...

Megablocks were a big hit this week. Smiley built a castle for his cars ;)

Ladybug Craft

We are still learning all about insects. We finished our study on bees and are now learning all about Ladybugs. I though I would kick off our study by making ladybug stones. The kids had a blast!

We used relatively flat stones and colored them red with tempera paint. You could also use waterproof paint, particularly if you plan on putting them outside!

Even my 20 month old was able to color her stone independently :)

We let the stones dry while the kids napped...

We then used a sharpie to make a head, a black line down the middle and dots... Our little lovebug loved this and wouldn't want to give the sharpie back. I let her make two ladybugs, and big brother made one. This is still difficult for them, so I finished up the rest of our ladybugs ;)

We made this craft this past weekend and the kids have been carrying their ladybugs around with them. What a great hit! You could probably spray the finished stones, so they last longer! We may end up doing that (if I make it to the store again soon).

By the way, the picture below is not very good. It was very dark when I took it and it doesn't do our ladybugs justice. Just know that they are much cuter in real life ;)

Muffin Tin Monday

I saw these cute muffin liners at Michaels the other day and just had to pick up a pack (set of 12). What better way to use them, than to start a Muffin Tin Monday post :)

I made a pretty simple lunch, including:

Organic cherries from the farmers market (x2), organic animal crackers from Trader Joe's, Organic Brown Rice and Beans, Organic Split Pea Soup (Trader Joe's).

I try to feed the kids organic food as much as possible, although we also have non-organic things at times... I try to stick with Organic particularly for the "dirty dozen" produce, meat, eggs, and dairy products. We get most of our food from Trader Joe's, which has a lot of organic selections, as well as the farmers market. I started buying raw milk from our local farmers market, and at times also buy pastured eggs and meat at the farmers market as well.

Tot School

~ Our Little Lovebug is currently 20 months old~

Our little lovebug is starting to be more interested in puzzles. She loves these big chunky ones right now...

Dot paint is one of her favorite art activities :)

Just being silly with daddy and big brother...

Putting bugs together...

or just using the bin as a hat (whatever floats your boat, I guess)...

We started working on color recognition a little bit. She knows red, blue and green (and yellow, purple and pink occasionally). Here she sorted buttons by color...

however, she was more interested in doing a fine motor activity and pouring them from one container into another ;)

I gave her some additional bottles and cups...

We enjoyed the beautiful weather and spent much time at the park... We try to go out for at least 1-2 hours every day. Most days, we go out in the morning, and again after naps...

She is a great climber now.

and goes down the slide all by herself.

She LOVES flowers!!! (notice the flower in her hand)

She actually loves the swing as well, although her face doesn't show it in this picture :)

Picking flowers, of course...

Riding her little fire truck. This little leapfrog fire truck is always a huge hit on the playground. All kids love to play with it! Best 10 dollars spent ever! Oh, and notice the little flowers she is holding in her hand :)

Preschool

READING...


Our main reading program comes through "Hooked on Phonics" and "ABC Reading Eggs", both focus particularly on phonics, but also integrate sight words. We add in some BOB books every now and then, as well. We have been moving pretty slowly in terms of reading. I really don't want Smiley to get burned out, he is so young! However, I think it is more me holding him back rather than him not being ready... He really loves reading as long as it is on his terms... He loves ABC Reading Eggs and would probably do it more often. He learned several sight words now, "see", "and", "the" and I want to make sure he is solid in them and not move too quickly...

I came across this cool, FREE reading program a few weeks ago, which combines phonics and sight words. It is perfect for us. The first unit covers exactly what Smiley is working on right now :)

He is still OBSESSED with CARS (and can't wait for CARS 2 to come out in a few weeks). I yelled out a word and his car (I forgot the name of the car, oops), had to find it and drive on it...

We then went apple by apple and Smiley read the words. He does great sounding them out :)

We then used this cool work sheet and Smiley dot painted the correct words. He loved this. Do you think he pushed his paint hard enough ;)

We then did this apple page with our dot marker as well. He was supposed to use two different colors, based on which word family the words belonged to, but he insisted to just use one color...

BUG THEME...

I have been majorly slacking on our bug unit. I hope life slows down soon and I get to pick it back up! Smiley still talks A LOT about bees though, so he definitely remembers :)

Here we built a bug with a toy that we recently got at a consignment sale.

MATH...

I am trying to add some more math to our preschool. He does really well with counting and has one-to-one correspondance down pat. We are now working on simple addition problems. I took advantage of his love for cars and came up with this simple math game...

It was Smiley's idea to actually match the cars by color ;)

PLAY...

Most of ours days still consist of lots of play, of course. The math game quickly changed into a street building game...

Smiley even made street signs for his cars ;)

He's quite creative at storing his cars as well ;)

This is the first face I saw Smiley draw :)

The weather has been so nice that we spent a lot of time playing outside as well. (he insisted on wearing his helmet the entire time we were on the playground...)