Our first week of school went great! Lili is in 2nd grade and Gabi is working on K-4 which is pretty much kindergarten but if she doesn't get to a first grade level by next year we do Kindergarten again from where we left off. I mainly do a K-4 because she has gone through all the preschool level and is ready to move on even though she is only 3. Oh sorry, 3 1/2 she won't let anyone forget she is 3 1/2.
For most of the summer the girls have been watching this show in the morning called Signing Time. It is on at the time I am normally making breakfast so they get to watch while I cook and clean up the kitchen. They really enjoyed this show and were learning a lot. They were teaching me all sorts of sign language. The alphabet, numbers, colors, animals, foods, etc... I had planned on adding a foreign language to our curriculum this year but after Lili made it clear that she really didn't want to I thought why not sign language. Both girls are enjoying this show and they can both learn it this year. We were all in agreement so on the first day of school we came downstairs I headed to the kitchen and the girls turned on the tv to the channel for signing time and..............Word World?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
They were so bummed. We emailed PBS/LakeShore Kids to ask if they will have that show in another time slot. It has been almost a week and no reply. I checked their program schedule and looks like that show is done for now. BUT, our public library TO THE RESCUE!!! They have several volumes (older version) of this show that we can get. So I requested Vol. 1 and we will have it for school this week. YAY!!
I had the opportunity to sign Lili up for Book-It where you read books and track how many minutes or how many pages you read and at the end you can win a free personal pan pizza from pizza hut. Well, I like the idea of the whole program but I don't necessarily like the prize. So instead we used some of the printables for tracking how many pages Lili reads and when she meets the goal she gets a prize that is mommy approved. We have decided on 3 prizes. When she reaches her first prize goal she will be cashing in for a trip to Zig-E's Funland, the next prize will be a sleepover at Grammy's house with some type of outing while we are out there. She wanted a double sleepover (2 nights, 3 days but poor Grammy would be wiped out, lol) so we compromised with the outing (a movie, back to Zig-E's, etc...). Prize 3 will be a pizza and movie night with a few friends over. Boy those prizes sure beat a trip to Pizza Hut in my opinion. Below is her tracking sheet for September and the first book to be read. Her and Gabi both LOVE Gerald and Piggie. They are very cute and funny books by Mo Willems.
YARD SALE SCORE!! I wanted to get Gabi and set of these and for Lili to use along with a tangram set. They are not really expensive but you can't beat .50 cents. Both girls love it and we use this for independent work if I am busy with the other during school. This is a really nice set, I may have to take a look at Discovery Toys and see what else they have to offer.
Thanks again for our library, we get to use this for music class for 2 weeks. The girls will get to learn and listen to the different instruments and what instrument family they are in. Families include String, Woodwind, Brass and Percussion. They love dancing while we play the CD, my graceful ballerinas.
Gabi is doing pretty well sitting for school each day. Her attention span is that of a 3 yr old so she doesn't sit for long but when she does she is quite productive. Here is here printing practice. She is in love with markers and uses them for everything. I slip a piece of cardboard under her sheet as to not ruin several sheets of paper underneath due to her love of markers. This is a nice small tablet of handwriting paper we picked up at Dollar Tree.
Lili is moving on to cursive this year. She likes to call it fancy writing. We are doing a few letters at a time and so far very little frustration on Lili's end. She is catching on well and enjoying it. I tried to make sure we get a couple vowels in each lesson so we can actually write a few 3 letter words with what we have learned. Putting the letters together "all fancy" is fun.
I don't know where this dry erase cursive mat is from, it was given to us but it is great. We also have a couple math ones. If I come across them somewhere I will pass it on, in the meantime I bet Amazon would have them.
This past July, during our library's summer reading program they had a stuffed pet sleepover. Lili was planning all summer long on which pet she was going to take. All the kids were able to bring in a stuffed animal/pet and during the program the children's librarian read them stories, the kids made little blankets for their pet and signed them in for the sleepover. The children left their pets overnight and picked them up the next day. Well, this mom was a bit busy that week and completely forgot about this event. It was 9:00pm on the day of this sleepover when out of no where it popped into my head that we had missed it. The girls took it better than I expected but I had to promise to host my own pet sleepover for their pets of choice. The girls enjoyed sending their pets with me for the night when they went to bed. I took pictures of all the fun things their pets did that night and we put together this little scrapbook of all the fun, just like the librarian did for their event. I learned my lesson for forgetting about the library that week.
This fall we are working on this Election activity book. It is for grades 1-3 and since we have a presidential election going on I thought this would be a great year to use this book. It comes with a large poster and lots of reproducible activity pages, such as an election mini book, election time line, wheel of presidents, white house lift-the-flap tour, an election scrapbook and many more. We also found a book at the library with all of the presidents in it including pictures. The girls loved looking at all the pictures and how weird they thought the men looked. A few presidents were even compared to some of the Three Stooges, we are talking appearance here. Gabi at all of 3 1/2 years old yells out, "that guy looks like Larry from the Three Stooges!" Definitely Daddy's girls.
Time to start week 2, I hope it goes as smoothly as week 1. I will be sharing links for products and freebies soon. Thanks for visiting and have a great week!
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