Homeschooling April 2013 Part 3

This is part 3 of our great month of April. Homeschooling is going great! 

I am so happy that things are advancing and that we are all loving it.

And I hope that these posts are helping you learn a little more about what it is like to homeschool a preschooler.

These are pictures of the new shapes he is learning. Some of them 
are a little complicated, but he will get more and more used to 
the names and eventually learn them.

(Montessori materials)

This is the number train that I have mentioned in several posts. I got it as part of the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum for Kindergarten.
It goes from zero to one hundred. The "tens" are the heads of each wagon (making it easier to learn to count by tens and also to find numbers, for example, if I ask K to find twenty-seven, he looks for the twenty and then it is easy to find the 27 in that wagon. It is a wonderful tool and we use it daily for different activities.
Underneath the number train, I posted pictures of animals and their names in 7 languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Portuguese, German, and Italian). We do one or two animals a day, depending on time.

This is our window. I made it into functional space, where I 
have a high bulletin board and a low bulletin board. The middle 
part has a mesh (sun screen) fabric that lets good light in. We 
used up the two walls we had and this was a good way of making 
good use of the third wall. On the top, I put the colors in 7 
languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Portuguese, 
German, and Italian) and on the bottom, I posted the 
numbers (0-10) in 7 languages as well. We read these about 3 
times a week and yes, we do them all. I tried to do one language 
a day (colors and numbers), but K always wanted to keep going, 
so ok, we keep going. :)

And now, here are some of the lessons we did that week.

On the last post (Part 2, we made this caterpillar and, after waiting a few days, K drew eyes and wheels (he didn't want it to have legs).

K wrote his name! It was the first time
he wrote it this well. I know, it doesn't look like much,
but it is great for a 3-yr old.

        

This little guy is a fabric rotary cutter. It has ruffled edges , so it
doesn't hurt or damage fabric. I use it to trace letters or numbers
on K's back and he recognizes them. If he guesses wrong, his guess
is always pretty close. For example, I'll trace a number 4 and he'll guess
an A. Or I'll trace a number 7 and he'll guess an r. So then, I started to
ask "What NUMBER is this?" or "What LETTER is this?" and it makes it easier for him to coordinate his thoughts.

Here, K was circling rhyming words like dog and frog, tree and bee,
book and hook, etc. He did so well with this activity!

This desk activity, was about ordinal numbers.  Circle the second picture in each row.
He did ok with this (he had never been formally introduced to ordinal numbers before,
so I got a posted to put up on the wall and practice them daily. I also make sure and
point out ordinal numbers when they come up.

  

Tracing numbers. Obviously, the 0 and the 1 are the easiest. He does really well with the three, too.

I took out the hundred chart again and we went over those activities again (see Part 1 for details). The more we practice, the better he gets at it. (these are Montessori materials)

This activity is an extension of Part 1. We practiced the presentation and then
we used the wooden numbers to put them in order in reverse order (from 10 to 1).
He did amazing! These are Montessori materials.

(Montessori) Practical Life: Learning how to butter a piece of toast. We have a butter bell and a Pampered Chef bamboo knife. He has been practicing for a couple of weeks and now, he even butters his sister's toast as well. We alternated between butter and solidified coconut oil mixed in with ground cinnamon.

Desk work: I showed him cards with random numbers and he would recognize them. As an extension, I would show him 3 cards and he would order them correctly (smallest to biggest). 
The red cards are the Second Grade Dolch List sight words. He can read them all! He's only 3, but he can read 2nd grade words. Amazing kid!

This activity falls under "Desk Work," but it does require a mat on the floor because his table isn't big enough.  Each card has a dinosaur with a letter of the alphabet in upper case and a square where the matching letters go. I have little cards with upper case letters and a set of lower case letters. We chose to match the lower case letters with the upper case letters on the dinosaur cards. Fun activity.