Totschool

Lucas is 44 months. Gwendolyn is 22 months. Catherine is 6 months.

We finished up our Ll, 1, yellow, etc lesson this week. The kiddos were starting to loose interest, so we moved on :)

Lucas practiced writing Ls. He is so focused! We are working more on holding the marker properly right now than the actual letter writing. As an added benefit, Gwendolyn keep asking me to help her hold her marker the right way! While Lucas practices letters, Gwendolyn colors her Bible verse printout with the color of the week. It keeps her happy, involved and away from Lucas so that he can concentrate :) (all of our printouts are from the Raising Rock Stars Preschool site)

Gwendolyn is reading out sight word book.
Both kids colored with yellow markers, crayons and stampers. Then added L and 1 stickers. They had so much fun with this!



This week we started on our new lesson:

Tt
2
Thou shall not steal.
green
the
triangle
Memory matching cards

Lucas is still practicing to write L because, well, I don't know. He wanted to? And Gwendolyn is coloring her Bible verse with a green marker.

Lucas made himself a green necklace. Then he made a pink and red bracelet for Gwendolyn :) Such a thoughtful boy!!

The kiddos put green perler beads and green pipecleaners into a cup. Daddy even helped Gwendolyn put some of the beads onto the pipecleaners.



We played with soft fabric triangle blocks. Catherine is enjoying playing with them! Gwendolyn can now correctly identify and point out triangles! We were at the store the other day and there was a sample cart out. The kids got samples on napkins folded into little triangles. Gwendolyn held up the napkin and started yelling 'TRIANGLE!!' She was so excited and proud of herself!


They practiced putting change into a piggy bank. This, of course, ended up with the kiddos pushing the change off of the table to hear it hit the floor. Fun with sound as well as fine motor work!
We built with green duplos.
I set out a farm play set for the kiddos. With green felt as the field. They didn't play with it. Not even once. I thought it was cute tho. (I got the idea from Tired, Need Sleep. Such a fun blog with so many great ideas!!)

Magnets on the fridge. Lucas is working on learning to spell his name :) And every week, I plan to add a new set of letter/number/something that starts with the letter if I have it magnets.

Watching Leap Frog Letter Factory on the laptop. They are currently obsessed with my laptop, so every movie is watched there because it is *so* much better than the television :) We have also been playing a lot of Starfall and other various games.


Our green, T, 2 artwork.


We have been working on being kind and gentle with Catherine. And playing with her in an appropriate manner :) They adore the baby, but can be a little overzealous when sharing toys. And jumping around near her.


Alot of our school has been outside lately:
We played with penne pasta and put it into soda bottles.
Gwendolyn is watering our plants with a spray bottle.
I have started packing a bag of things to take outside with us everyday. It makes it so much easier to head outdoors for our school time when everything is sitting by the door waiting. The bag contains: a container full of penne pasta, a container with a ladybug craft project in it (we made ladybugs out of bottlecaps - I found the idea on a blog, but I can't remember where), a couple of interesting toys for the baby, a few board books that I wouldn't mind getting thrown in the pool, my journal, and a microfiber towel (they like pouring water on their little table. I dry it off before they use it for schoolwork). I usually keep markers and paper in there, too.


Once again, I didn't get pictures of half of what we did. But we did it, and really, that is far more important than capturing a picture of it!

School time!

Lucas is 44 months. Gwendolyn is 21 months. Catherine is 6 months.

I haven't posted about our school activities for a long time. (since before Catherine was born?) We have been doing some unorganized school stuff the whole time, I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to organize, photograph, blog about it. But all that has changed ;) I realized that Lucas really needed the structure and activities of TotSchool back. I went to the 1+1+1=1 website (the home of TotSchool) and found Raising Rock Stars Preschool! Awesome!! It looks absolutely perfect for Lucas!! And easily adaptable to include Gwendolyn, too! I am beyond thrilled about this :) It's lots of fun and super easy to add other complimentary activities to (as is suggested - it's a foundational program, not a complete program) I think it will take us a little while to get into a routine with this (because I have been unorganized with school for so long), so for now we are taking it slow and having fun. And will work on the first lesson (Ll) until the kids seem ready to move on. It will probably be a few weeks :) I decided before we began that this would be more about fun and exposure than about trying to rush through the lessons just to move onto the next one.

This week we worked on:
Verse: Matthew 5:16
Letter:L
Color: yellow
Number: 1
Sight Word: see
Song: This Little Light of Mine

Game: Don't Break The Ice
Shape: star
(And if an activity looks in no way related to any of this - it probably isn't. Some stuff is just random fun)

Coloring printouts of the verse and a craft. (all of the printouts are from Raising Rock Stars Preschool unless otherwise noted) Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the finished products. The kids loved coloring and putting the craft together!!

Lucas really enjoyed cutting and taping. There were thick gray lines on the paper for him to cut along. He did such a great job staying on the line! Then he taped the strips together to make one long strip of paper. That had the verse written on it.

He was thrilled to hang his cut/taped masterpiece up on the wall :)

He loved cutting so much that I drew black lines on a yellow sheet of paper so that he could so it again. He asked (very nicely) if we could hang it up on the wall next to the first one. Of course we did!

Gwendolyn 'helped' by holding each strip as it was cut off.

She tried using safety scissors to cut her own piece of paper. But she still doesn't exactly get the concept. She had a great time playing with them tho! (Before anyone worries - they were true safety scissors. all plastic, no metal blade. They won't cut a piece of paper, much less a little girl)

We played with yellow Play-doh. And used an 'L' cookie cutter, a '1' cookie cutter, a yellow patterned stamp, and a pair of safety scissors. The kids LOVE Play-doh!!

We colored our dry erase book that is meant for tracing letters/number/shapes.

Catherine is hanging out with us :) Gwendolyn has such a long attention span these days. She often stays at the table working on something long after Lucas has gotten up.

The kids had lots of fun painting with Aunt Heidi! They didn't actually like this water color paint activity. They just enjoyed her company that much!

Lucas and Gwendolyn are playing Don't Break The Ice in the background. We played it almost every day this week. They are loving the extra game playing fun!

Not pictured: lots of things. Because I have gotten out of the habit of taking pictures of everything.
We sang The Little Light of Mine many many times a day. Kiddos love to sing!!

Tot School

Lucas is 38 months. Gwendolyn is 16 months.
We have had an exciting month around here with a new baby :) Lots and lots of time has been spent petting our new little Catherine on the head and loving her. We have done a little bit of Tot School, tho. Here's a little bit of what we have been up to since my last post.


We used these neat little plastic building pieces. Lucas really enjoyed building 'structures' (his new favorite word). Gwendolyn liked taking them apart.
We have done lots of coloring lately :)

As always, we enjoy our riding toys.

Lucas has been learning about harvest time (see his combine toy?).

We got a new, much smaller, water table. I brought it inside and filled it up with rice. The kids LOVE it!! Gwendolyn is learning an important lesson in self control while practicing NOT throwing rice all over the kitchen :)

Lucas has been coloring pages out of a John Deere coloring book. I have never been a big fan of coloring books. But it keepps him quiet and happy for about twenty minutes while I tend to the little girls. I now LOVE coloring books!!

There has been lots of lacing of lacing cards.

Both kids have been working on numbers and number puzzles. Lucas is starting to recognize some numbers and can now randomly count. I love hearing his random number sequences!

Head on over to 1+1+1=1 to see other Tot School posts :)

Tot School

Lucas is 37 months. Gwendolyn is 15 months.

Work mat
I saw the idea for a work mat at Tired, Need Sleep and loved it! We went out and got a fall themed place mat (that Lucas picked out) to use as our work mat. I'm hoping it will help with getting one activity out at a time and keeping each activity contained in one area, rather than wandering all over the house. Lucas has really been enjoying it. Tho not using it quite how I had envisioned :)
We did play Dominoes on it. And Lucas pulled up a truck and trailer to load with Dominoes.

And we tried out some new finger paint that is only supposed to show up on the special paper that it comes with. Lucas was SO not into it. The colors were really dull and took kind of a long time to show up.Games
We got a Go Fish game. Lucas has loved it!! It's great practice with color matching and numbers. Gwendolyn mostly chews on the fishing pole. She does practice colors, too.
Beads
The kids tried putting Perler beads onto the little pokey boards. It lasted all of about 30 seconds before they were both bored.

Learning through play
Lucas made a fence with the tops of lamp shades. I love hearing the stories he tells with his pretend play :)

Both kids loved putting credit cards into wallets.
And for a unique sensory experience, we played with squishy rubbery balls. Writing practice


Music time
The kids love singing The Farmer In The Dell with our stacking cards :)

Art time
We have been doing some fall themed art. And some gluing. And some stickers.

Life school
We spent a day out on the farm driving big machines around and chasing pigs :)

Recess
This has really become a favorite part of our day!