A week at school

It's letter F week at Shear Preschool and I thought I'd give you a glimpse of what school looks like for us. I'm hoping to blog weekly about school so I can keep track of what we've done, what she's learned and maybe get some ideas/feedback. Also, when it comes time for little Eli to learn all this stuff I'll already have it set.

We started off the week with family fun day and ate french fries at Five Guys. We also went to see the fish at Bass Pro, which Alison was not excited about (her fear for animals is growing by the day).

Our "normal" school day looks like this: breakfast, school time, Y, play alone time, lunch, reading time, nap, school time, play outside or computer time, show, dinner, family time, bath, bed. Monday's and Friday's she has story time, Tuesday's and Thursday's she has art class and Saturday's we're taking a mommy/daughter ballet class. In the morning school session we talk about what day it is and sing our 'days of the week' song.
Then we go over our memory verses, sight words and states. Occasionally I'll throw in some math at this point, but really Alison's just interested in the chocolate candy we use so I don't do it every day. She's got 1+1=2 and 2+1=3 down and can count to 20.
Then we spend some time working on writing. She practices tracing the letter and then does an activity of letter recognition.

The salt box is tactile tool I use to work on learning to write. I've actually found it's really helped her drawing skills in general.
Then we usually work out of our curriculum 'Before Five in a Row' which reads one book a week and works through activities that go with the book. I also add books that go with our theme for our reading time.

In the afternoon we read a bible story, do some workbook pages, color and play some games.

Along with the curriculum, we have a letter of the week. Alison knows all of the letters, can recognize them and knows their sounds. We're working on writing them and spelling simple words.

This week:
We worked on our cutting and pasting skills while making a poster for our new verse: Psalm 1:6 "For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish."
(Alison insists on writing her name on everything she does, except she hasn't quite got the concept that the letters need to go in order. She knows her name is spelled A.L.I.S.O.N, but the letters will be written all over the page instead of in a line in one spot.)

She water colored and upper and lower case 'F',

made fruit faces,

and finger painted.

We read Hattie and the Fox and The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night (which happens to be a song that daddy sang for us) and made a 'F' fox craft, while learning how to spell fox.

Eli wore his fox shirt and Alison wore a flower shirt.

We read How Many Fish, worked on counting and made a 'F' fish craft.We read The Flag We Love, learned the Pledge of Allegiance and had fun waving flags in the air (Alison thought they were fun to cheer with and made up many flag chants)

The flag activity is actually a great example of why I love the homeschooling concept. While planning F week, I thought she would love an emphasis on flowers and had several flower themed things planned. However, while at the library she discovered the flag bag and asked to get it. I was surprised at her interest but I was able to adjust my plans and encourage her love for learning about this topic. We talked about flags everyday and just had flower shaped sandwiches one day.

We also read a book about seasons and met some friends at a pumpkin patch to enjoy a fall day.

Our other F books were Franklin and his Friend, Fancy Nancy and the Fabulous Fashion Boutique, My Five Book, The Reason for a Flower, The Farmer in the Dell and Fat Cat on a Mat. The "shows" designated for this week were 'High Five', 'Sesame Street's Firefly Fun', 'Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue' and 'Dora's Fairytale Adventure'. Our bible story was Jesus feeding the five thousand.