December 13th, 2012

In looking back through some pictures the other night I stumbled across the pictures I took while Mikayla and I were staying with our friends Lylah and Lara.  I realized that I never posted those anywhere and they were so fun I thought I would go ahead and do it now.  Better late than never.  We had a blast on our few days with these dear friends, and Mikayla asks often when she can go back and play with Lylah and reminisces on our time there!

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We had a movie night one night and Lara had this genius idea to make snack necklaces.  The girls spent time lacing different foods (i.e. fruit loops, cheerios, pretzels, gummy rings) onto string and then wore them during the movie to snack on!

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Concentrating hard!

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Cheesy toddler grins.

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Making pizza for our movie night.  Please note that Mikayla is not really helping out, but licking her spoon!

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Enjoying the movie (The Lorax) and having a picnic dinner.

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One of the local farms was having a fall celebration so we hit it up.  Mikayla loved riding the horse.

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Especially with her best buddy!

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Aren’t they sweet?

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First face painting.  She was so serious about this.

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Trying to get a good picture of two toddlers is almost impossible.

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Pumpkin picture fun.

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Love this face!

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Mom it is so heavy!

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One of my favorite snaps of these two crazy girls!

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November 27th, 2012

**Just realized that I wrote this post weeks ago and never posted it!  Better late than never I suppose!**

How is it already the middle of November?  These past few months have flown by!  Not much happened this week, Mikayla and I hung out a lot while Ben was gone for several different meetings in town.  This week should slow down for him some.

An interesting fact about Swaziland is that the school systems operate much differently than in the states.  Here there are three main testing years, Grade 7, Form 3 (like sophomore or junior year) and Form 5 (like Senior year in states).  Everyone in the whole country (in these grades at least) have set tests that last for a couple of weeks sometime in November (school year is over in December).  When the students finish their testing they are free to leave school, in other words there are no classes for them for the rest of the term.  The Form 3’s finished their testing last week, so they have had a lot of free time on their hands.  I offered to do a baking class with them twice a week and am so glad I did.  We have had so much fun.  So far we have made banana bread and no bake cookies. 

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On Thursday, we got word that the Queen Mother was going to be in the area to look at her cattle.  There is a big royal farm just down the road from us, that she visits once a year.  It is always a big production, the kids perform, she gives a speech and then there is a feast afterwards.  I decided it might be fun for Mikayla to see the Queen Mother so we set out on a rainy day to see her.  It was about a thirty minute walk, and Mikayla walked the whole way!  I was really impressed because she is usually asking to be held.  We got there a little after 12 (she was due to arrive around 11:30 or so).  It was 2:30 before the Queen Mother and her entourage showed up.  Love "Swazi time" (insert sarcastic tone here).  Then another hour before she made her grand appearance.  By that time my napless girl was running on fumes and being quite the stinker.  I did not think we were going to make it through the whole thing.  She did though…never ceases to amaze me.  Afterwards we grabbed some food and then made the 1/2 hour trek back home.  Again, Mikayla opted to walk the whole time playing and chatting it up with her friends along the way.  By the way, friends in Mikayla’s book are anyone who says hello to her!

On Friday Mikayla wanted to paint so I got out some pegs that I wanted to turn into peg letter people and we spent a good hour or so painting.  She has loved playing with her people all weekend! 

At one point during the week Mikayla looked at me and said, "Mommy your my best friend".  Sometimes she can be so sweet!

On Sunday Mikayla was up at 5am ready for a play date with Joe!  He promised her earlier in the week that he would play with her on Sunday and she has been looking forward to it since.  I am not sure Joe would have appreciated us waking him up at 5am to play though!

Coming up this week is the Feast of Mother Cabrini.  If you want to see last years celebrating you can check out some posts here and here.  It should be a good feast, one of our staff members got ducks and impala donated for it.  Looking forward to trying some duck. 

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November 4th, 2012

This week we moved onto the Letter Cc.  Here is our learning poster for the week:

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And here are some activities for the week.

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Here is a picture of her number book we add to each week.  The number and number word is at the top with space to put the correct number of stickers.  At the bottom I have made lines for her to write/trace the number.

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Acting out our Nursery Rhyme Three Little Kittens

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Letter C cat – I used a C for both the body and tail.

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Shape cat – I gave her different shapes that we stared by sorting and then putting together to make a cat.

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We made a Jack-O-Lantern bag for our trick or treating.

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She matched up crayons based on color.

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She used two triangles to make diamond shapes.

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Mitten matching activity.

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Special Halloween lunch – mummy juice, apple jack-o-lantern and hard boiled egg ghost with raisins for eyes and mouth.

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Number matching with stickers.  She did so good with this!

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Color by letter Cat

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Jack-O-Lantern coloring book.  Each page had a different color you were supposed to color the Jack-O-Lantern.  She worked really hard on this and it took most of our school time for that day!

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Stamping letters.  I had found this sheet at 2 Teaching Mommies website and she loved it.  The pictures had beginning sounds letters next to them and she stamped that letter across the blank space.

Next week we will move onto the Letter D!

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November 4th, 2012

We had a beautiful week here in Swaziland this week. The weather was gorgeous (much different than the sweltering November we experienced last year) and Ben even had some meetings cancelled in town so he was home (working regular schedule) all week.  Next week is a different story, but this week was nice!

We started our "Thankful Tree" this week.  I drew a large tree on some chart paper and posted on the wall with fall colored leaves.  Each day in November we will work together as a family to say what we are thankful for and put on our tree.  Basically Mikayla gives us an idea and we fine tune it!  So far she is thankful for food (especially the people who make corn), art supplies, toys and maps!

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On Wednesday we passed out some candy to our neighbors and they graciously allowed us to let Mikayla trick or treat at their houses.  Since we only have a few Americans here that understand the concept, we trick or treated at both front and back doors.  Mikayla was so excited and had so much fun!  Ben even got in on the action too.

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Pretty (albeit cheesy) princess grin.

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Twirling in her dress from Uncle Tim and Aunt Chelsea!

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Mikayla and daddy ready to go.  Please notice his massive bag!  I think he was a little ambitious.

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Stephanie (a long term volunteer) passed out candy from both office doors.

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Sister Barbara even got in on the action!

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Joe, knowing Mikayla’s love for cooking, gave her spices in addition to the candy.  She LOVED this!

Joe’s birthday was a couple of weeks ago, but we were waiting until the sisters got back in town to really celebrate.  He requested a dessert themed party, so on Friday and Saturday I spent the day making desserts!  We ended up with quite the spread and all were on a sugar rush when it was through!  We had donuts, churros, cookie dough brownies, frozen cheesecake, fudgy oat bars, and rainbow cupcakes with icing!  We ended the sugared evening with a showing of A Bug’s Life on our "screen" outside!

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Joe with his birthday candle and spread.  The picture of the desserts is not great, but trust me there was a lot!

Today we have had another lazy Sunday filled with a walk to the river to skip some rocks, tomato basil soup (thanks Joe) and then plans to grill out tonight!  Last weekend we introduced Mikayla to "Family Reading Time".  Basically this is where we all take our respective books and spend some time reading (or in Mikayla’s case looking at pictures).  Last weekend she spend almost 45 minutes "reading" and then asked for it again later in the week.  This morning she asked if she could paint during Family Reading Time.  She spent a good hour painting this morning!  She is doing so good at painting and staying in the lines and is so proud of herself when she does so. 

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November 2nd, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, we received a letter in the mail from a friend in Kentucky.  Their daughter was participating in an exchange similar to Flat Stanley, but instead it was Traveling Charlie.  Each child in the class was given a paper cut out of a Charlie doll and then chose somewhere in the world to send him.  When you receive Traveling Charlie you are supposed to take pictures of things around your area and send a letter with pictures back to the class telling them all about where you live.  We were excited to be chosen to spend time with Charlie and Mikayla had a blast!  During our two weeks with Traveling Charlie, we did a lot of fun things.  Here are some pictures of what we did!

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Charlie got to spend one day in preschool while we had our learning time!  He learned all about Little Bo Peep and the letter B!

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He even got to go on an adventure to South Africa!  This is at the border crossing on our way home.  Hamba Kahle means "Go Well."

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We were even able to introduce Charlie to the Giant African Land Snails!  Don’t worry, I wouldn’t let Ben feed any to him!

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Charlie tagged along for one of our childcare meetings.  Here he is with Mikayla and some of the staff.  They were a little confused by why we were snapping pictures with a paper cut out of a boy!

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Charlie with our kitchen staff and a couple of the high school students.  Look at those huge pots!

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This is Mikayla showing Charlie where the kids wash their clothes.

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Mikayla, Charlie and some of the preschool students.

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This is a view from our walk up to the hostel.  It is really green right now, but soon will be dry again!

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Mikayla and Charlie posing in front of one of the mango trees.  They are almost ready to eat!

Below are some pictures of the animals we saw while traveling with Charlie:

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Tags: | Posted in Life, Parenting |
October 29th, 2012

This was our second week of the Letter of the Week curriculum.  It is still going really well.  Although I will admit that some of the themes are a little strange.  Like in two weeks the theme is eyes…I think we might be switching that one up a little!  Here is our learning poster for the week:

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Letter – Bb, Number – 2, Color – green, Theme – jungle, Vocabulary Word – vine, and Nursery Rhyme – Little Bo Peep

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We practiced dressing her baby doll for a practical life activity.  She still gets very discouraged if she can’t do something right the first time, but we are working on gaining confidence and independence!

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I started implementing a sticker chart last week to help with her independently completing activities.  She is always wanting me to do some part of the activity for her.  For each activity she completes on her own (for the most part), she earns a sticker.  When she completes a row of five activities she gets a piece of candy.  If she fills up her chart she gets a sucker.  So far it is working out well.  Although, if she doesn’t earn a sticker then she tends to give up for the day!

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Shape race.  I laid out green shapes on her desk and then would call out a shape for her to race and get and place on the blanket.  She would choose which action she wanted to get from place to place (i.e. run, hop, skip).  She did so good with this!

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We practiced writing the letter B all over a balloon. 

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Bird and nest letter match – she matched capital letter to capital letter.

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I gave her a sheet with different pictures on it, some starting with B and others not.  She had ot choose the B objects and color them.  Then we cut them out and glued onto her butterfly.  I was really impressed with how she was able to determine the correct sound the words began with.

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On this worksheet with her nursery rhyme she colored to B’s with a purple marker and the A’s with a yellow one.  This required a little assistance and we had to go line by line, but she did great!

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She glued white pom poms onto a cut out of a sheep.  Then we talked about what you would see around the sheep.  She said she would see green grass, a red sky and a yellow sun.

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She practiced stringing letter beads onto a piece of string. As she would string the letters she would say their names and sometimes their sounds.  (Helpful tip – place a piece of string on the end they will be stringing the beads or objects onto to decrease string from fraying.  Also tape down to the surface you are working on to keep it steady for little fingers!).  Please take note of the collection of "objects" watching her during learning time!

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Sheep number match.  The sheeps bodies had certain number of dots and she had to match up the heads with the correct number.  We did the same game with some capital and lowercase letters later in the week too.

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Letter B bear!

We also played with her blocks and babies a lot this week.  I didn’t do much with the theme this week because I ran out of time to research it!  We did make a rainstick though out of a paper towel tube, toothpicks and rice.  She has enjoyed making music with it this week.

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She also enjoyed playing teacher this week and walking through our calendar time, which includes going over our learning poster!

Here were her journal words for this week:

  1. Name – we continue to practice this and get her writing it at an appropriate size.  She writes so large right now it covers the whole page and is all over the place!
  2. Green – she found pictures of green things in a magazine and I cut them out for her to glue in her journal.
  3. Baby – I modeled for her how she could draw a picture of a baby on her own.
  4. Vine – she practiced drawing squiggly lines for vines.

Next week we will move onto the Letter C, as well as trying to do a few fun Halloween activities!

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October 29th, 2012

Not much new to report this week, but we did do a couple of noteworthy things!  On Friday night we had a Family (and friend) pizza and movie night.  We made homemade pizza and breadsticks and then set up a sheet and projector outside by the fire for us to watch movies on.  Mikayla chose Finding Nemo for her movie and Ben chose Top Gun for his.  Both are great movies!  We enjoyed the cool air and warm fire while watching them and munching on our pizza.

On Saturday we had to head into town to pick up Sister Barbara from the airport so we made a day of it.  We headed in for breakfast at one of our favorite stops in Manzini, Baker’s Corner, for donuts and quiche!  Then we popped into Mliliwane Game Park for an hour or so.  We saw lots of new animals and some of the regular ones too.  Mikayla really got into spotting the animals, so we created a game out of it to see who could spot the next animal first!

Last night, or rather this morning we woke up to Skype with our friends at the annual Halloween Party.  I think this is the 8th year that is has been going on!  It was so fun to see all their costumes and faces, even if we were super tired!

Yesterday we had a relaxing day at home, making pancakes and bacon and then burgers and sweet potato fries for dinner!  It was a great family day at home.

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A female Kudu

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Crested guinea fowl

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Another friend we are having a hard time identifying, but Ben came through and figured it out (Ground Hornbill).

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Beautiful roan antelope

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I am not sure why, but this guy had PVC piping on his horns!

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October 25th, 2012

Last week I mentioned that we would be starting our Letter of the Week Curriculum (LOW).  I found this curriculum here, and am using it as a springboard for our activities each week.  This curriculum centers around a learning poster comprised of a letter, number, shape/color, vocabulary word and nursery rhyme.  It isn’t a very detailed program, but I think it is great one to use as a guide and then expand on it as you see fit.  If you are looking for a cheap preschool curriculum (this one is free) then I would recommend checking it out.  We are only one week in, and I am finding it very helpful.  It also offers different levels if your child is older or younger than three. 

As mentioned above, each week has a letter, number, shape/color, vocabulary word and nursery rhyme.  I will be sharing each of those items from the learning poster each week and then expanding on them as I see fit.  Here is our learning poster from this week.

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And here are some of our activities for the week.

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This is from when I taught kindergarten.  She matched the apples (uppercase letters) to the worms (lowercase letters).  Afterwards we had to use the worms as characters and play with them for a bit!

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She made apple prints with apples halves and paint.

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We put the characters from our nursery rhyme (Hey Diddle Diddle) onto popsicle sticks and then reenacted the NR.

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I read her the story about the Little Red House and then we cut open an apple to see the star inside.

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Then we took the poem version of the story and matched up pictures for each line.  When I taught kindergarten we did this in a pocket chart.

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We graphed apples based on which color we spun on our apple spinner.

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Number spotted cows.  She used glitter glue to make corresponding spots for each numbered cow.

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We talked about real and fantasy and what fantasy in our NR and then glued pictures onto the correct side.

I was not very good with the camera this week, but here are a few more  notable activities we did.

  1. I held up shape cards and she would jump for each square and touch her toes for any other shape.
  2. Part of the LOW curriculum is to have a counting book that you add to each week. This week we placed one sticker on the number one page and practiced writing the number.  I will try to snap a picture in future weeks to show what the book looks like.
  3. Read some books about Johnny Appleseed.

I also have Mikayla doing a journal "writing" each day.  I write the word and then leave an extra line for her to write the word if she wants to.  She also has space to draw a picture or glue something each day.  Some days she is really excited about writing something and others not so much.  I only really push it on the days she is supposed to write her name (which will happen each week).  Here are her journal "writings" for this week.

  1. Name – practice writing her name on designated spaces (this did not go well Confused smile)!
  2. Cow – She glued a picture of a cow in her journal and then  colored it.  She also practiced writing the word.
  3. Apple tree – I drew the tree and then she stamped her fingerprints for the apples.  She then counted the apples as I wrote the numbers beside them.
  4. Aa – she used her letter stamps to stamp A’s all over the page.
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October 25th, 2012

I am a bit late in posting this because we were away this weekend (which is when I usually write my blog posts).  We decided to hit the road for a weekend away in Nelspruit with our friend Joe.  We didn’t do anything spectacular, but scouted out some Christmas gifts, ate some yummy food (that I did not have to prepare or wash the dishes from), and purchased some tortilla chips and salsa!  It was great to get away and we were even able to sneak in a few baths for Mikayla (and myself)!

As far as the past week goes, we had a pretty slow week.  Ben stayed busy with work and Mikayla and I fell into a pretty good routine.  While the sisters are away they asked us to feed one of the healthcare patients they feed each day, Nkosingphile.  He is one of our clients that requires higher need than most and the sisters have taken on this task.  So we began each morning with cooking some sausage, buttered bread, fruit and a side or two (beans, rice, potatoes).  While I cooked, Mikayla enjoyed putting together his "goodie bag".  He takes home some bread, fruit, sweets (candy) and biscuits (cookies) each day.  After he was taken care of we would begin school, then play for a bit before lunch.  After lunch she would take her nap while I worked on house stuff, preschool planning and any other Cabrini type work that needed taken care of.  When she wakes up we head to the hostel for play time with the kids and after school enrichment program.  Then it is time for dinner, shower and bed!  I am loving being back into somewhat of a routine.  Of course, not each day is so set in stone, but at least it gives us something to guide our days!

We received a special mailer this week from some folks that used to attend Broadway UMC with us.  Their daughter’s class is sending out Traveling Charlie’s (similar to Flat Stanley if you are familiar with him) all around the world and she decided to send him to us.  Traveling Charlie is a paper cutout that she decorated and we keep him for a week or two.  While we have him we snap some pictures around our area.  We mail our pictures and letter or postcard back to the school before mailing Traveling Charlie off to someone else.  Each child in the classroom does the same thing.  The goal is to have letters and pictures from all over the country and world.  It is actually a really fun idea and one that I am excited to participate in.  Mikayla is excited too.  We have already snapped some pictures and I hope to blog about our whole experience when we are through!

Not much else to report, it was a pretty quiet week around here!

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Mikayla dressed herself for school last week.  I always love the outfits she comes up with!

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October 15th, 2012

Since we finished up all our letters and Mikayla is getting older, I felt it was appropriate to begin preschool with her.  If we were living in the states and both working, we would be sending her to a preschool at this age, so why not!  This past week we started our journey with one of my favorite books Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  If you have never read it, you should.  It is a book about all the letters climbing to the top of a coconut tree, falling out, and starting the climb again. There are also two follow up books we used Chicka Chicka, 123 and Boom Chicka Rock.  The first is most similar and about numbers that climb up an apple tree, the second is a book about the numbers on a clock having a good time when no one is looking!

I wanted to start off our first week of preschool with some fun stuff and what is more fun than Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  Next week we will begin with a more structured letter, number, shape approach, but more on that later.  For now, here are some of the things we did this week.

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Isn’t her little smirk here hilarious?

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She is so hard to get an actual smiling picture of!

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Journal time.  I wanted to incorporate daily journal "writing" into our learning time this year (still not sure how that will look, so I am open for suggestions).  I got her this plain composition notebook and let her decorate it with stickers to make it hers and we talked about what it was and how we would be using it.

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Chicka Chicka tree hat.  She was not as excited about this one as I was.  But I thought she looked cute!

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Counting with sticks.  We did something similar last year with pom poms, but this time I used "coconut sticks" as the counters.  She is still not a huge fan of math and really struggles to complete any math activity.

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For this week’s journal, I wrote a word and she drew the pictures.  Our words for this week were sun, tree, coconut, and letters.  On each page I wrote our word for the day and then left a space in case she wanted to practice writing her words (which she never did).  I think starting next week I will make one day each week practice writing her name.

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Chicka letter match.  The tops of the trees were capital letters and the bottoms lowercase letters.  She was awesome at this game.

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Chicka hand tree – leaves are her hands, trunk is her forearm and then foam letters were used to spell her name.

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I gave her free reign on this activity.  She got an outline of a coconut tree and her letter stamps and went to town stamping letters all over the tree.  We talked about the various letters as she stamped them too.

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Special coconut tree snack – apples for leaves, banana for trunk, peanut butter balls for coconuts and butterscotch chips for the sand.

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We pretended this paper towel tube was a coconut tree and matched the letters using stickers.  This one back fired a little because the stickers kept falling off and it turns out I didn’t actually have a sticker for each letter!  Oops!

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Coconut investigation.  I think this was her favorite activity from the whole week.  We cracked open a coconut and used our senses to investigate it.  She was not a fan of the taste of a real coconut, but didn’t seem to mind the shredded coconut!

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Coconut number match.

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Coconut shape tree.  First we sorted and identified the different shapes and then glued them together to make a coconut tree.  She also really liked this activity.

Like with most weeks we had lots of activities planned for the week that just did not happen.  I overestimate the amount of time she will stay focused each day so we end up with activities that don’t get completed.  I guess it is better to be over prepared than under prepared!  Next week we will start with a Letter of the Week curriculum, but more on that to come.

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Tags: , , | Posted in Parenting |