Nov. 16-29, 2009

The week of the 5 senses.
1. Sight...we played "I Spy"
2. Smell...while blindfolded we smelled a variety of items from around the house and tried to guess what the item was (lemon, lotion, toothpaste, etc...)
3. Hearing...stayed very quiet and made a list of the sounds we heard in different areas of the house and outside.
4. Touch...found different items in the house to touch and describe how it felt.
5. Taste...more fun with a blindfold. Now we are tasting foods blindfolded and guessing what it was (lemon, sugar, salt, cheese, pretzel, chocolate, etc...). Then Lili listed all the foods she likes the taste of.
To finish off the week of the 5 senses Lili made her first file folder project. I thought she would love this and she did like the beginning and the end but I think it took to long and she lost interest until the end when she got to play the game. In the file folder we glued little pockets with pictures of items on them (such as a rainbow, ice cream cone, drum, coat, etc...) and then we cut out pictures of eyes, ears, noses, hands and mouths. In each pocket you put the picture of the sense you use with that item (such as an eye in the rainbow pocket) Next time I will do most of the cutting ahead of time and just leave a couple for her to cut out so it takes less time and she hopefully will not lose interest the next time.

During this week we also worked on...

• spelling...Lili picked out of a pile of letters which ones she needed to spell her name and them made another pile and picked out the letters that do not belong in her name.
• reading...Lili finished and got her sticker put in book #15. Five more books to go and she will finish the set. I need to take a look online and the other sets and decide if we should get another one or just move onto early readers from the library.
• Lili likes to do at least one art project a week (usually more). So this week we traced our hands to make hand print turkeys for Thanksgiving. Then we colored them with colored pencils.

2nd week (22nd-28th)

• Spelling...we took turns spelling words with letter magnets.
• Math...addition and subtraction with blocks. Gabi likes to help with the subtraction by stealing blocks from us :)
• Reading...Lili got her big girl bed this past weekend and we had to re-arrange a bit to fit it in her room so now we have a bookshelf from her room in the closet of our classroom and it is filled with books and some puzzles. Lili calls it "our" library. So this week we read lots of books from our library and played a game or did a project based on those books. We read one called when is Saturday and then talked about the days of the week and looked at a calendar. We read a book about different jobs and then Lili picked to be a train conductor and we played train. Gabi and I were the passengers and gave her our tickets. Lili also read from her level 1 book set.

We just read, had some free play time and Lili picked out stuff to do on Thursday and Friday. We kept it relaxed since we had other things to do for Thanksgiving and after that we all came down with a cold :(

See you next week!

Nov. 1-15, 2009

Another two week post here. I am getting a little behind. Gabi hasn't been sleeping well so instead of staying up and blogging I have been taking any sleep I can get. She is getting better so here I am at 11:30pm squeezing in an update on what we have been up to for the last 2 weeks.

• Lili has been writing her name so I thought I would use a fun and messy activity to see if I could spark an interest for her to write some other letters. We made chocolate pudding and spread some out on a plate and wrote letters and our names in the pudding with our fingers. I gave Gabi a small plate of pudding as well to dive into and boy did she! It was a mess, but a fun mess. Lili wrote her name over and over and drew some lines and circles but no interest in learning to write any other letters. Oh well, in time we will get there. The pudding was yummy :)
  

• Blue and red make PURPLE!!! Lili learned how to mix colors today. We used water with food coloring and mixed colors together to see what we would get. We made purple, orange, green and of course, black :) She had to see what would happen if she mixed all the colors together.

• We drew a life size Lili! I had Lili lay down on a large piece of paper and I traced around her. We drew her face and hair on it and labeled all of the parts of the body.
• Lili is really into "projects", as she calls them. Anything involving paper, markers, paint, stickers, etc...is a huge hit. Even after we are done with school for the day she will sometimes ask to do another project.
• We are getting started on addition and subtraction. Robb has been introducing this concept for a little while now. We have been doing math using toys such as cars, legos, etc... She is doing well and now learning the terms add, subtract, plus, minus and equals.
• We are learning our address. Grammy R. and Aunt Laurie sent Lili mail so she could see her name and address on the mail. Then we made pretend mail with different addresses for me and Gabi. Lili got to be the mail carrier and deliver the mail to the correct mail box. She had to match the address on the mail to the address on the mail boxes we made from empty tissue boxes. She had a blast being the mail carrier and hopefully it will help her learn her address. We are still working on our phone number as well.
• We tried a bubble painting activity that I saw online but had trouble getting it to work. Lili doesn't have a lot of patience with things that do not work out so she was done with it right when I started getting it to work a little. That is about all you can expect from a 3 year old.
• We traced our hands and colored them like turkeys for Thanksgiving. Lili enjoyed this. It was like a project! :)
• She is still reading her book set and we are on book #14 I believe. Only a few more to go in this set. Then I will have to look into the next level for her.

We are all still enjoying school and looking forward to more holiday activities coming up. I will be on the hunt for winter/Christmas "projects".

Oct. 18-31, 2009

It has been to long since my last post. We have been busy and sick but still kept up with school. Lili won't let me slack off, lol I thought we would take breaks in the year around holidays and such but I think anything more than a couple days and Lili would ask for some school time. She treats it like a game and has a great time everyday. This is what we have been up to for the last couple weeks.

• We made apple shake-ups. I found this activity from another homeschooling blog. Lili cut up apple slices into bite size pieces with a small plastic knife and we put the pieces in a zip-lock baggie and added some sugar and cinnamon and then... shake it up and eat it! YUM! Lili loved it and we made this a few more times over the past couple weeks.

• We did a pattern activity where I would make a pattern with toys and Lili had to tell me what would come next. She caught on right away and hand fun with that.
• We did some sponge painting of a Fall tree. I cut a kitchen sponge into small squares and we used brown, green, orange and red paint to "sponge" on our leaves to the tree. Lili loves painting so this was a hit. After the tree she wanted to make a sponge painting of herself. I helped draw it and she sponged some paint on it. A few days later she wanted to sponge paint another Fall tree.

• At Gabi's party grandpa R. gave Lili a painting kit with water colors. It came with 3 pictures to paint. Sort of like a paint by number but instead of numbers the the items in the picture are outlined in the color you are to use for it. Lili did a great job painting these. She stayed in the lines really well.
• We also spent time this week getting ready for Grandpa Riner's surprise birthday party. He turned 50! We had his party on Saturday the 24th. Lili had a great time and loved the whole surprise aspect of it.
• Earlier last week we made a paper pumpkin and Ghost and glued them to popsicle sticks. Lili loved it and this week she requested to make "a bat on a stick". So we did. I do the cutting, Lili is getting better but itsn't quite ready to cut out shapes yet, and Lili does the glueing. We are ready for a Halloween puppet show now.

Will it sink or will it float? That was the question we asked for our project this week. We filled up the water table that Gabi got from Grammy for her birthday and found different objects to put in the water to see if they would sink or float. We tried different bath toys, kitchen tools and coins. I wrote down the items to test and Lili put them in the water. It took until we were almost done before Lili started to get the idea of "guessing" whether an item would sink or float before she put it in the water. She was in such a hurry to see what would happen there was no time for a hypothesis, lol

• We attempted to make a food group chart. We cut food pictures out of magazines. Lili even cut out a few herself! But before we could make the chart or put some food pictures on paper plates to make a picture of a healthy meal Lili was tired of this activity. Maybe it was to much. I put the chart and the pictures we cut out up in the closet for another time. We will go back to this subject later.
• Lili wants to learn to jump rope so we started practicing for that. I tied a rope to the bottom of the banister of the stairs and we started with the rope lying on the floor. Lili would jump over and then I would make the rope higher. Then I would slowly turn the rope . She still needs some practice with this but she had a blast trying and did really well jumping over the rope at different heights.
• A great activity for a gloomy and cloudy day....making shadows!! We kept the shade closed in Lili's room and set up daddy's flashlight to shine on the wall. Then we found toys and stuffed animals to make shadows with. Your favorite part was making a shadow of yourself and walking closer to and farther from the flashlight to make your shadow really BIG and then small.

We have 2 more days of school activities until we are done with what I had planned for Lili for preschool. This schedule was supposed to last us until August. HA HA HA! Not even close. Lili flew through it all so fast. There are a few things we will need to go back to but other than that we are ready to move on. I have been searching online for preschool and kindergarten ideas and lessons for us. I am finding a lot of great ideas from reading other homeschooling family blogs. I have all of November planned out. We are still working on Lili's reading set. She just finished book #11. And can read #'s 12-16 with very little help. We are doing great and having fun!

Oct. 11-17, 2009

Gabi's party went great! Lili had great practice with patience this week. Planning and getting things ready all last week, it seemed to take forever for Sunday to arrive. After all the fun and cake, Monday sneaked up on us. Lili was in the mood to color so we went with it. She doesn't ask to color very often. We colored some Halloween coloring pages that I printed. Lili is starting to get the idea of coloring inside the lines. She did a great job on her picture. We did some work with scissors this week. Lili can cut along a line now. Next is to cut out a picture.
We played a fun game to build eye-hand coordination and distance perception. We tossed clothes pins into a basket from different distances. Lili loved it and Gabi enjoyed getting the pins that missed the basket and tossing them in herself. So simple and so fun!
Lili worked in her dry erase letters workbook a little bit and we worked on books #11 and #12 from her reading set. On Friday we made a jack-o-lantern mask/puppet. It is a jack-o-lantern made from paper and glue and then we put him on a popsicle stick. It was a little laid back but a fun week.

Oct. 4-10, 2009

Ahhh......what a busy week. School was low key since we were so busy getting ready for Gabi's 1st birthday party. We still did a little something on most days because Lili can not go more than a day or two without some school time. If we don't do anything in the morning she will ask in the afternoon for some school time. It is great that she enjoys it so much. This week we...

• Mon - We went to the library. Lili always picks out at least 10 books. Gabi also picks books now. We made a phone number chart and cards with the numbers in our phone number for Lili to put in order and learn our phone number. We touched on 911 but I don't think she quite got the idea so we will come back to that later on. She kept the phone number cards as well to practice with. To end our day she had some creative time with play-doh.
  
• Tues - She still puts her weather card on the fridge everyday and if the weather changes by the afternoon she changes her card. She notices the weather all on her own now. We went shopping for chocolate lollipop making supplies for Gabi's party and while out came across a dry erase preschool workbook with letter activities, letter writing and more. When we got home Lili and daddy got started on the workbook while he was home for lunch. Lili also helped me make the chocolate lollipops. Yum!
• Wed - party planning, grocery shopping. A day of experiences out of the house.
• Thurs - Went out to order the cake and balloons. I let Lili pick them out for Gabi. Decision making 101. :)
• Fri - A few pages in our new workbook and some house cleaning for the party. Lili is a great helper!! We read all of our library books throughout the week as well.

Back to our "normal" schedule next week.

1st month at L.G. comes to an end

Our first month of homeschooling went great. Lili still loves having school everyday and even when I plan for a day off she ends up asking to have school at some point in the day. I was going to schedule for a few days off next week while I get the house ready and do some shopping for Gabi's first birthday party but I think I will have to squeeze a short session of school time in for Lili :) She is breezing through most of my scheduled plan for the year. We are already into Nov. and Dec. activities. So I will have to find more to add or jump into a Kindergarten curriculum soon. She has been reading a lot all week and has finished several of her "Now I'm Reading" books. We are on book 11 now. I may have to look into getting the next set for her by Christmas or sooner.

This week Lili learned how to pour her own glass of water. We haven't attempted juice yet. She did really well with the water though. I filled a empty bottle from apple juice half way with water and let her pour into different cups. She had fun and even drank the water. She usually only wants juice. She now says she wants water sometimes and that it is going to make her grow big and strong. :)

Lili kept up with her weather cards all week. Most days were cloudy and or rainy. We did get out one day when it was warm and grabbed some leaves before they all fall to the ground. We brought them in to make leaf rubbings. We placed the leaves under white paper and rubbed paperless crayons over them and saw the leaf prints appear. Then we traced a large leaf onto orange paper and cut it out. Lili wrote her name in glue and then we poured lots of purple glitter on her name. She has recently tried writing her name a few times and is getting really good at it. She gave her leaf to daddy. He was home sick that day :(

At the end of the week (now it is Oct.) we made labels for items around the house. I wrote the word on an index card and Lili sounded out the words and then had to go find that item in the house and tape the "label" (card) to it. Such as...door, window, chair, couch, toilet, bathtub, stairs, refrigerator, freezer, stove, microwave, etc... She loved it! And the labels are still all over the house on the items. We may add more next week.

Today we learned about money. The difference between pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Lili knows the penny but gets confused with the rest. We will go pack to money again.

That was our week. With the weather cooling off and staying home more we will have lots of time for school and get to add many more fun things to our school year. I keep adding as Lili discovers new interests.

Preschool material for Liliana (and reviews by me)

Lili picked these dvds out at the library. I didn't think she would like them nearly as much as she did. She watched each one over and over until it was due back at the library. I was shocked when she came downstairs after watching the letter factory and began telling me what every single letter sound was. I couldn't believe she knew them all and she picked it up so fast. She continued to check out each dvd and she loved them. After several weeks of getting these from the library Lili asked me to teach her to read. I wasn't expecting that but since she knew the letter sounds and how putting letters together made words I thought we would give reading a try and see how it went. I would recommend these dvds to other parents whether they are homeschooling or not. These are great!


I'm Reading Now Level 1 by Nora Gaydos. This is the set I chose to teach Lili to read. It is a great set. Lili enjoys learning with these books. This picture shows a set with 10 books and that is all I can currently find. I bought our set on ebay and it came with 20 books, the parents guide and stickers. Lili loves to get a sticker in each book as she learns to read them on her own. These books are great! Easy for beginners to learn with. Great pictures and funny stories to keep young children interested. I would definitely recommend them.



The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise.
This book was recommended on a message board I frequent so I looked at the library and they had it so I thought I'd give it a go. It is a great reference book for homeschooling all grade levels. Starts with preschool and goes all the way through high school. I may just buy this book or check it out from the library every year, lol. Tons of other book, magazine and curriculum recommendations throughout. Definitely worth the read.


Slow and Steady Get Me Ready a parents handbook for children from birth to age 5 by June R. Oberlander. This book is regularly recommended on Diaperswappers ("my message board") on the homeschooling page. And it was recommended in the book above...The Well-Trained Mind. So I had to check it out. Lucky for me he library had it. I love the library...I love all things free!! The book is full of activities for every week from birth to age 5 so there is a lot in there. There were many activities within that we had already done but I found many ideas to add to our lessen plans for the year. Although I don't feel this book has enough to keep us busy during our preschool year, we did get some great ideas from it. If you are starting from birth you will get you money out of this book. If not, I would see if your library has it and look through the age of your child and take notes of the activities you would like to try.