Cowboys and letters

This week has found us studying about cowboys.  I found some great websites that offered free printables and I downloaded and laminated the cowboy themed worksheets.  I'll try to make a list of links that I use when I get a chance.  I've had so much fun planning for his school year!

We take clothespins and place them on the letter that matches the letter to the left.  I also make him tell me the letter name so I know that he knows it instead of just visually matching them.  We've had fun with these.

 He likes to do the clothespins himself.  He doesn't like me to help him too much.  He's very independent.  Both good and bad! 

Nanny R took B to the "cowboy store" to get his boots and his shirt for his birthday party.   He's so proud of these boots.  He wants to wear them everywhere.  And since it's just shoes, I oblige.  Not a fight that I choose to pick! 

He had to get on Princess to try riding her with his new boots.  I think he was re-enacting the Backyardigans.

Baby M is just waiting for B to need her for the hammer....or for him to yank it away from her.  Yeah, the second part is probably what happened.

School Days, School Days, Dear Old Golden Rule Days

Long title for post but when I think of school days, my mind automatically goes to this golden classic "School Days."  No....I wasn't alive when it was written or recorded!  We sing it a lot at the nursing home in our music therapy session so I know it by heart now.  I think my kids do to!

Moving on.  Now that B is 3, we have started doing preschool here.  He loves school and has begged since he was 2-1/2 to do "school."  That school consisted of Before Five in a Row things when I would get a chance to prepare it.  I kinda fell off the wagon a bit through summer and he has asked nonstop about doing school since then.  Because of his enthusiasm for learning, which I say he got from me because I would still be in school if we could afford it and I could balance life, I decided to start preschool.  We do school for 1-2 hours (some days more and some days less) depending on his level of focus.  I've spent lots of time planning, prepping, laminating, cutting, and printing.  I'm LOVING all that I've found for him to do.  I'm so excited about the themes for this year.

To start off, I'll show you our morning school routine.  It's a fun way to start our morning.  I used several different websites to get calendar ideas, but I mostly got my printables from here.

Here is a look at our foam board calendar.  We also have a laminated calendar beside it where we add our days to the squares.

Every morning, we start with singing our books of the Bible.  I learned my books of the Bible through song, so we're using that song.  The song is actually from the Wee Sing Bible Songs CD.  I like the tune and still sing it to this day!

 I think that it's never too early to start learning character traits.  I know I'll be teaching it to them throughout their entire lives, but I want B to give an idea of them.  For this month, or maybe longer, we are learning about obedience.  I found a workbook that is meant for his age that is full of games, puzzles, and coloring pages based on the Bible.  We spend a few minutes each morning talking about how certain people in the Bible obeyed and then what happened when they chose to disobey God.  We are also learning a Scripture verse that corresponds to the trait.  B has actually had this verse memorized since he was 2, so we're just saying it every morning now.

I used the Days of the Week Songs to start this section of our calendar.  We sing the songs, going through the days.  We then find what today is, label the day for tomorrow, as well as figure out which day was yesterday.

I haven't put the Velcro on this section of the calendar yet, but it has cards to go with it.  They show snow, rain, sun, and clouds.  This will help us be able to look outside and observe what the weather is like at that moment.

To be honest, this is the part of the calendar that I'm the MOST excited about!  We are using the Children's version of Operation World and are spending about a month going through different countries, learning the basics about them for right now.  I started with the U.S. because I thought that would be a good place to start.  We are committing to praying for the people in that country and are going to be writing a missionary to each country, as well...unless there aren't missionaries in the hard-to-reach countries.  I plan to use this throughout our homeschooling time and expand our knowledge on the countries, religions, and learning more about the people groups, and praying specifically for them.  We'll probably start out with the countries of several of our friends that are missionaries and then go to the countries where our Compassion and World Vision kids are located, since they hear from them quite often. (So in the next couple of months we'll be studying Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Uganda, Philippines, and Rwanda.)

We are learning seasons and have learned we are in summer now, but headed towards fall.  Perhaps it will start raining again in the fall!  We desperately need it!  Our house hasn't gotten rain in over a month.

So, that's a look at our calendar.  I'm excited about our school year and all of the fun learning things we're going to be doing.  We'll be adding lots of things that I'll share as we do them. 

Welcome to Preschool, B!

Memory Verse for Corduroy

I put a memory verse with each book that we study so that not only do we read the book daily, but we also say our memory verse many times throughout the day.  I firmly believe that I should saturate my kids with Bible verses, as well as I should be doing in my own personal life.  I'm not saying that just because he knows these verses that he will choose to submit to Christ at an early age, but my job as a mother is to present and live the gospel in my own life.  My home is my mission field at this point in my life.  That's why I always say that I never take my job lightly.  It's not easy, but I know one day it will pay off.

Our memory verse for Corduroy was Proverbs 17:17.  I choose to use the Cubbies worksheets from Awana for our Bible time.

Corduroy Lesson #9

On this particular morning, we dug out some teddy grahams and counted them by putting them on a graph that I had made.  We counted bears up to 8 and then the favorite part of all that hard work was getting to eat them.  Yum!  Of course, he may have been missing a few before he got to 8....I just might have been tempted to eat some while putting them on the table for him.  I saw him take a few sneak chews, too!

Corduroy Lesson #8

Corduroy is now completed!  We had a lot of fun with this book.  We did many things besides what I posted here, such as collecting money in our piggy bank for small tasks that could be completed around the house.  We also went to the mall to ride the escalator (which those of you who know me know just how much I hated that!  For those who don't know me as well, I love escalators for some odd reason...perhaps because the country doesn't have escalators).

On this particular day, we sorted buttons.  Poor Corduroy was missing a button, so we did one day of sorting buttons by colors and by sizes.  He stayed focused on the task at hand and really enjoyed doing it.  We repeated this activity later when Daddy T got home because he was so proud of what he could do.

 And the completed task looked like this...

Can you tell he's one proud boy?!

Corduroy Lesson #7

 I'm a little behind on posting our Corduroy activities, but we have completely finished it and I'm finishing up the stuff so we can start our next book.  I'm hoping to accomplish a lot of prep work this next weekend and week!

We used the animal classification cards and talked about each animal on the card and what they ate, where they lived, and how they sound.  He knew all of them from going to the zoo so much, but I wanted to have him find the animals in the book and match them with the card.  He did great matching a drawing with the live picture of the animal.  It was also a good self-control activity (leave it for the therapist to turn simple activities into behavioral goals) because he had to sit still for so long and tend to the task at hand.  He did great!  I was afraid he would be  bored after the first couple of pages but he wasn't.  Of course, Baby M liked to participate, so his job was made a bit more complicated trying to find which one she had picked up to put in her mouth this time! 

And this is how Baby M likes to spend her school days................................................

making messes for me to clean up!

Corduroy Lesson #6

I saw this on the Delightful Learning blog and tracked down the patterns and made these letters for us to use at school.  They were so easy to make!  I'm making my own patterns for the lowercase letters and numbers because B really enjoys playing with these.  The fabric was just some scraps because I didn't know how much I needed yet and wanted to make sure they turned out good.  I'm going to add the buttons to them so he will know the correct place to start when he is writing the letters since he is learning to write them now, too.  I can't wait to go pick out some more fabric to make several sets of these so he can use them to make words and do simple math problems (when he's older!). 

Spelling Corduroy...(which is missing some letters since we had already used them once)

Hard at work.  These are by far his favorite things to do in school.

Corduroy Lesson #5

Math and sequencing was on our to-do list for our Corduroy lesson of the day a few weeks ago.  I was a little hesitant in doing this one because I wasn't for sure that he would be able to understand sequencing.  However, I made a folder like I always do for some of my therapy sessions and decided to see if it would work.  I did!  Not only did he understand sequencing, but he loved it and wanted to do it over and over.  He needed a little help at first, but the he got the hardest one right all by himself.  Yesterday we were cleaning his room and he kept begging me to do "school' which consists of reading the book and doing one activity.  I happily said "yes!"  Next week we start reading about a yellow ball.  I'll catch you up on Corduroy, though....as if you were really longing to know!

I end today's post with a picture of the happiest baby!  Love those cheeks!

Corduroy Lesson #4

What can you do with felt and ribbon and a button?

 If your guess was to make a ribbon snake, then you'd be correct.  I saw this idea on the Delightful Learning website and thought it was a neat concept so decided to make my own.  B loves it.  He doesn't even wait for our time for school to play with it.  He'll just bring it out and practice putting his Corduroy and overalls over the button onto the ribbon.

Even Baby M likes them.  B was nice and let her hold one of the bears until he needed it.  Progress in sharing his things with his sister!  By the way, I'll update on ALL of Baby M's progress this weekend.  My, when she decides to learn something new, she goes ALL the way in a matter of a week!

Corduroy Lesson #3

This particular day's lesson wasn't challenging, but it was fun for B since he loves to color.  He's getting good at his gross motor skills and is able to start coloring in the lines and draw shapes.  He's perfectly content sitting and drawing or writing.  If there's a pen or paper lying around, it's fair game for him to write on.  I'm in trouble if I forget to put up a book!  The hardest part to explain is when I'm doing my Bible study and am marking in my Bible.  He'll ask if I'm coloring in my Bible and I try to explain to him that it's not exactly coloring, but I am using colored pencils.  He doesn't quite understand that one and I'm not for sure how to explain it, so some of my Bible study books have cute little markings all over them.  That's okay, because it makes me smile to see what new "note" he left me from the day before!  All of that to say, this activity took a while since I got to color with him.  This was our art lesson.

Corduroy Lesson #2

What can you do with these?

Use them for a lesson in math and graphing, of course!  I can't believe that wasn't your first guess!  In my search for lessons to do on Corduroy, I joined Tot School and used some of their ideas, as well as some homeschooling websites and then my own brain.  Part of this idea came from one of my favorite blogs, Delightful Learning, but I decided to make my own worksheet and colors that related to the colors that came in the gummy package.  B liked this activity, although I think he ate as many as he graphed!

This lesson was fun for both of us.  He did a very good job at sorting by color.  Good thing I didn't open up the 2nd package to graph, though, or he may not have eaten dinner that night!

Corduroy Lesson #1

We decided to kick off our Corduroy lesson by going to.....

Build-a-Bear!  I like hands-on learning, so I decided that we would go and build our own "Corduroy" so he could have a tangible thing to look at while he was reading the story.  Our Corduroy looks a bit different since he doesn't have green overalls, but he does have overalls and underwear on (that's from potty training).  We would have had a lot more accessories if I hadn't have reigned B in from his clothes collection.  He didn't want Corduroy to have "his overalls" and "his undies."  I kept having to explain to him that those clothes wouldn't fit him!

Caught the heart and put it in the bear before they closed it.

Catching the heart

Every bear needs a bath

Getting a good scrub

Overalls and undies...and so many more possibilities!





B has really enjoyed Corduroy. Corduroy has been on the tractor, driven in the car with Baby M and has slept beside B. He has to show everyone Corduroy's overalls and undies! It was definitely a fun way to start our lesson.