Long overdue update!

This past year has not been without it’s hurdles to overcome.  All of my plans for this year have ultimately changed for many different reasons.  Ultimately, life changed.

We pulled Aaron from day school suddenly when my Mom was diagnosed with Stage 3B Colorectal Cancer.  We spent from March through mid-June in Georgia.  The kids and I stayed through her surgery to remove the tumor as well as her recovery and beginning stages of chemo treatment.  My sister has been there for the chemo treatments.  With lots of prayers, my Mom is doing well and over halfway through her treatment.  Things are looking up and hopefully she will finish treatment in October and be cancer free.

During our time in Georgia, I tried to keep the kid’s lives as normal as possible.  We signed up for soccer.  They played outside often.  We tried to school some. 

When we returned home and I looked through Calvert’s preschool, it was too easy for Wiggles.  Abeka’s k-4 was too intense for my taste.  We settled on starting Wiggles as a young kindergartener with Heart of Dakota’s Little Hearts for His Glory.

I hope to keep up with the blog more this year.

Next Year’s Curriculum Decision

I have purchased both Calvert’s pre-k and Abeka’s k-4.  The plan is to start with Calvert and after it is completed to do Abeka’s k-4.  Then I will make a decision about which works better for us.  I may love Calvert so much that I will skip Abeka’s k-4.  I don’t know.

Wiggles is finishing up his year of day school.  He is enjoying it and it has gone well.  I am looking forward to him coming home next year though.

I will probably keep his schooling on this blog until he starts 1st grade.

It’s been a long while!

It has been a long while since I have blogged on Wiggle’s blog.  He is still in day school and still doing well.  He has had a chronic cough since about November and I took him in to the doctor and found out it is bronchitis.  He started antibiotics today and hopefully will be much better soon.

He will be staying home next year with the big kids.  I am debating what curriculum to use.  I do have a short list though and it is down to Abeka or Calvert.

or

Ultimately, I am ordering all from one place this year so my decision weighs heavily on how I like the older grades as well.

Mix and Match week

We are still doing LHTH, but we are doing more Abeka at the same time. 

Letter-F, Review E

Number-7 , Review 3

Bible-Young Moses

I am still without masking tape and ink for my printer so we kind of just winged it this week.

 

Sorting bears by color into their cups and sorting the cups on our Pooh color wheel.

Coloring

Wiggles trying to infiltrate the kitchen and Bubba in the background jumping on the couch.

My mischevious boys acting all sweet after being caught in the act.

Wiggles Ee Abeka page.  We glued salt to our Ee’s for the snow.

Coloring out Abeka 3 page.

Finished page

Practicing Coloring

 

We love trains.

This is an activity from LHTH.  We are studying about Moses and Wiggles had to glue the basket to the water (blue paper) and hide it in the grass.

That is it for our week.  We had a good time even if we weren’t too organized about it.

Unit 7 (Sort of)

We started Unit 7 this week learning the letter F, but we didn’t make it too far.  I was out of masking tape and some other supplies…so we just worked on some fun Abeka coloring sheets.

Big Sis helping Wiggles with his coloring sheets.

  

This is Wiggles joining in on Big Sis’ BHFHG lesson.  He is pointing to the North Pole and saying Nort ‘ol.  LOL!

We are going to pick back up our lessons this week with Unit 7.

Wacky Wednesdays

We did our Abeka worksheets today.  I have kind of been doing some Abeka and some LHTH through the week.  I was doing LHTH M,W,F and Abeka and Kumon worksheets on T, TH. 

Our Cc cow sheet.  We glued little squares of red construction paper to the Cc’s.  This is too funny not to share.  You see the cowboy in the right side of the picture?  Well the list is of c words to look at and read to your child.  Well, we are all Indiana Jones fans and the kids have the ps2 game and such…Well, when I brought out the Cc worksheet…Wiggles looks at it and I thought he was going to start saying Cow, Cow…Nope, Indy Indy Jones!

 

Here are 2 of our Abeka number 3 worksheets.  I’ll be honest they have too many sheets for the numbers.  It is overkill.  I am going to quit doing all of them.  We will do 1 letter and 1 number sheet on Tuesday and Thursday.  The rest I will just ignore.

Here is our Kumon Let’s Sticker and Paste sheet.  He had fun putting the animals on it. 

Wiggles Work

We did a little more with the Abeka this week.  Since Wiggles got a virus, we didn’t work on LHTH.  This is from the day before he got sick.  I printed out some papers from Handwriting without tears for Wiggles to start working on his name.  I do think this was an exercise from LHTH Unit 3 Day 1.  The only day we got to do this week.

I printed his name sheet off of Handwriting without Tears web site and printed the page twice.  I wrote his name on both sheets.  Then I cut up each letter on one page for him to match up to the other.   One thing that HWT does is puts a happy face in the top left corner to teach where to start writing. 

We worked on our sandpaper letters with Cc. 

We are feeling a lot better and we will pick up with our Cc week starting tomorrow.

Terrific Tuesday

I don’t know how many Tuesdays at Tinytown we will be having from now on out.  It was very fun, but I think we will be taking an extended break from there. 

Now on to Tot School!

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This is a really neat puzzle game for toddlers.  I have the Classic Pooh hide & seek game.  I found it on sale at Target.  I can’t find it on their web site now, but Toys R Us has several different ones including Disney Princesses.  Wiggles really enjoys this.  You can click on the picture to follow a link to Toys R Us and the product.  It is recommended for ages 18 months-3 years.

This picture is actually from the weekend, but I thought I would throw it in.  Wiggles and Big Sisters were coloring on the driveway.

This week:

LHTH-Letter C, Number 3, God Blesses Abraham

Abeka-Letter C, Number 3, Finger play Clap with Me

Baby Signs-Mealtime Signs

I wanted to share our finger play for this week for Abeka.  It is really cute and the little ones genuinely join in pretty quickly.

Clap with Me

Clap with me. 1,2,3

Clap, clap, clap, just like me.

(Clap hands)

Shake with me. 1,2,3

Shake, shake, shake, just like me.

(Shake body)

Roll with me. 1,2,3

Roll, roll, roll, just like me.

(Roll hands one over the other.)

Snap with me. 1,2,3

Snap, snap, snap, just like me.

(Snap fingers)

Fold with me. 1,2,3

Fold, fold, fold, just like me.

(Fold hands and lay them in lap.)

 

First we did our Wiki Stiks for the letter C.  I gave no instruction since this is our 3rd letter and her did pretty good on his own.

We are cutting from our Let’s Cut Paper! Kumon First Steps Workbook.  He had to cut down the middle (still working on cutting skills…he wants to use both hands for the scissors) then match the front to the back of the car.

This was our Cc page for Abeka today.  You had to fingerprint paint the C.  He did really well and we didn’t even get messy!!

Here, he is working on his concept cards for Baby Signs.  I wanted to get a picture of him signing so badly, but every time I would get the camera and snap the picture it would always be just after he was finishing the sign.  Baby signs is really great at building vocabulary and limiting frustrations in a toddler.  I would recommend it to anyone with an infant or toddler. 

Even though he is talking more and more…there are times when his emotions and temperament get in the way of his vocalizing what he wants or needs.  Signs can be such a great benefit to the child and the parent.

Baby Signs

They also have a potty learning program to help train your child.  I can’t recommend this enough.

Baby Signs Potty Training

Wiggles watching the Potty Train video by Baby Signs.  Here he is getting on the Potty Train (choo choo).

We were supposed to color the cups, but Wiggles was having none of it so instead I numbered them and we counted a few times to end our Tot School day.

Wacky Wednesdays

We had a pretty decent Wednesday.  We did our LHTH today and it went really well after I found some masking tape.  I bought some yesterday when I bought the construction paper.  The house had eaten the first tape I used with the A.  Well, today I couldn’t find the new tape and after searching like crazy…I found the first missing tape but not the new tape…Oh well, at least I have tape.

We put blocks all around our B.

Gluing our rainbow.

Our finished rainbow.

Abeka 2 Worksheet.

Coloring.

Our new Melissa and Doug triangle crayons in their case.  I love these crayons.  They have a great case with built in flip top lid.  They are sturdier than the crayola triangle crayons too.  Our crayola ones didn’t survive the day before Wiggle Worm had broken half of them.  The M&D ones are very sturdy and hold up to a toddler’s grip and use. 

We learned about when the flood ended and Noah came off the ark with the animals.  We learned that God gave us rainbows as a sign that he would never cover the earth with water again. 

We made a rainbow with torn up colored construction paper that we glued onto a piece of black construction paper.  We are now using Elmer’s disappearing purple school glue sticks.  I love these.  It is so much easier and Wiggle Worm can actually do the glue!  Regular glue in a bottle was too hard for him right now and too much of a battle to accomplish anything.

We continued our exploration of the letter B.  I love the masking tape on the floor with the letters.  Although B was a bit tricky for me to make well.  B will stay on the floor until next week when C is introduced.

We reenacted Noah coming off the boat and it was fun.  I pretended to be animals and tried to encourage Wiggle Worm to do the same.  Alas, Wiggle Worm wanted to ride piggy back on all the animals.  It was a fun and energetic exercise.

We counted to 2 with our Abeka worksheet.  Wiggle Worm colored with his new crayons.

Marvelous Mondays

While I was figuring out what we were going to do today. Aaron played with his paper trains.
We did our Kumon First Steps Let's Cut Paper!
Kumon First Steps Let's Color!
This is my other Prang watercolor set. These are for 2+years and are great b/c the watercolors are large and easy for small hands and they don't get all mixed up like Crayola's with the small watercolors.
We did our Abeka Aa page and watercolor painted with a q-tip. I personally love this much more than the paint brush for a toddler. I would recommend it over a brush any day.Our finished masterpieceFor our Bb page we had to glue white rice to the Bb. I did not like this. It was messy and Wiggle Worm wanted to put the rice anywhere but on the glue. The rice was too small for this activity. I like beans much better or cotton balls...anything but small, white rice.
Our finished Bb with rice. This was more me than him doing it and as said before there will be no more rice even if the instructions call for it.
We didn't do LHTH b/c I needed masking tape and construction paper. I had neither. So I decided to do our Abeka pages and our Kumon First Steps workbooks. I also have the Abeka fingerplay and poems book and we did a fun fingerplay. It has poems and fingerplays for every letter of the alphabet. It would work as a stand alone as you teach your child the letters or with almost any program.
I will pick up the needed items for LHTH tomorrow and we will pick up where we left off then.
We also read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I am putting the tot book together for it now and plan to give it to him Friday after reading all week. He will get to work with the tot book all next week.
I am planning to do this with several other books and tot books. I am going to read the book for a week (while I am making the tot book), then he will have the tot book for a week. I am focusing on the literature based ones. I picked up The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Five Little Monkeys, and Brown Bear Brown Bear today.
Does anyone know how to make the pockets for the tot books? I have some extras for our tot books that I want to make pockets for but don't know how to make the pockets. If anyone has a template for a pocket for PSP, I would greatly appreciate it.