When we found out we were pregnant in October I immediately got sick. I was struck with some intense morning sickness (really all day sickness) that made it difficult to sit down for structured learning time with Mikayla. So, I opted for occasional learning time throughout the day and put our regular school schedule on hold for a bit. Then Christmas came and even though I was feeling better, we were pulled in too many different directions and again our regular preschool schedule got put on hold. However, once we got settled back into a routine in January, I immediately started back up with our school time (with a few minor interruptions). For the past three weeks we have been covering the LOW curriculum for weeks 6 and 7 as well as learning all about the ocean! Here are a few things we did over the course of our learning time.
Learning Poster LOW Week 6: Letter – F, Number – 6, Color – red, Vocabulary word – waves, NR – Humpty Dumpty, Theme – Ocean
Learning Poster LOW Week 7: Letter – , Number – 7, shape – star, Vocabulary word – twinkle, NR – Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, Theme – Oceans
She glued little fish onto the letter Ff.
She sorted pictures that started with F and those that didn’t, then she glued on the F pictures to a fish.
We went fishing for letters. When she "caught" a fish she said the letter name and the sound. She did really good with this for the first 10-15 letters and then just wanted to play.
**To make the fish I just cut out fish shapes from construction paper and added letters. Then I attached a paper clip to each fish. For the fishing pole, I tied string to a magnet and then to a small dowel rod.
We made a Humpty Dumpty Egg (hardboiled) and then reenacted the Nursery Rhyme. She got a big kick out of having the egg fall onto the floor!
She drew a self-portrait of her family. Usually she adds more details to her pictures, but on this particular day she wasn’t feeling very artsy.
She put Humpty Dumpty together again!
We went fishing again, but this time with numbers!
We played a "How Many Fish in the Ocean Game" courtesy of Jolanthe from Home School Creations as well as a few other of our ocean activities.
We made a Girl wearing goggles using the letter G for the goggles.
She used her stamp pads and fingers to make fish in fish bowls according to the number on the page.
She used cranberries to match up correct letters of beginning sounds on a picture.
She rolled an ocean animal dice and then colored in squares on her graph to match.
She put star stickers on numbered squares.
This activity was a bit complicated for multiple reasons. One – I didn’t have any lowercase stickers, which I thought I did when I planned in out. Two – it took a long time and she lost interest. If I were to do over again, I would only do a few letters at a time. For letters that fly in the sky like b put in sky, for letters that are regular like a float on water, and for letters that go below the line like g put in ocean. Since I didn’t have lowercase letters, I wrote them all out in her journal and then pointed to them. Once she identified where they went on the picture I gave her the capital sticker. Like a said, a little complicated!
Our journal activities for the two weeks included: practicing writing her name, cutting out pictures of red things from a magazine and gluing in, stamping letters we were studying as well as matching letters that were written on the page to her stamp, a free writing story about the ocean, and drawing and writing fish.
We also made a beautiful ocean mural that I failed to snap a picture of. I will try to get one soon and post it. We painted a sheet of chart paper to look like the ocean one day and then the remainder of the weeks we worked on different ocean creature art projects to include. I think it turned out pretty good. Another fun thing we did was read the book The Rainbow Fish (if you have never read it go read it today!). Then she colored a fish to look just like the rainbow fish. In the story the rainbow fish has these sparkly scales, so I decided to allow Mikayla to earn sparkly scales for her fish. I chose an activity that she really struggles with, staying at the table and eating during meal times. So, for each time she stays put and eats she gets a sparkly fin! When I taught kindergarten I did the same thing, but the kids could earn a sparkly fin for any good deed that they did at school or home. I had some science activities planned that we never quite got to. I still might do them in the upcoming weeks because I am sure she will love them. I am sure we did other fun things over the course of the two weeks, but that is all I can remember for now.
Next week we will move on to LOW Week 8, where we will be studying the letter H, the sun, and Hickory Dickory Dock! It should be fun.
