Letter Pp & Much More!

Letter Learning & Activities
This week we studied Pp and we had a phenomenal time!! I could not believe the number of Pp activities there were - my mind nearly exploded with the possibilities!
Treyton is flying through the code books and even letter learning at this point. That's why this week we added in alot of extra subjects and daily review because the Explode the Code and even writing doesn't take nearly as much time or energy (from either of us) to get through. In the next couple of weeks we are going to do some letters that I don't have as many activities for so we may even combine some letters in the week (we'll see how it goes).
It took a little while for Treyton to get the hang of writing a lower case p, his perfectionist nature had a hard time accepting that he could write below the line. I decided to wait a while before I had him practice upper case P so that it didn't confuse him too much.
For review we did our consonant sound cards from Homeschool Creations - Treyton and I both really enjoy this activity. We also practiced writing letters b, m, r, t and k. (Treyton was tired by the time we got to f)

Fun Letter Activities and Crafts
Like I said before, I really feel like the Pp activities were endless I could hardly decide which activities to do!
Packer Game - of course of Sunday we had to watch the Packer game!!
Paper Picture Placemats - which I wrote a post on earlier here - this was one of my favorite activities EVER!

Painting Pink Pigs: We talked about how there are different ways of painting. We decided to use paint brushes and a sponge technique (but we also talked about finger painting) to paint a couple pictures of a pig. Treyton preferred the sponge technique because he said it was "more fun". (Treyton did a great job painting in the lines)

Pink Pig: We cut out and glued a pink pig from a template I found from the best kids booksite a year or so ago and had saved. Treyton actually did a great job drawing the pigs face (his looked much better than mine). We added a pipe cleaner for a tail... we thought it was a cute addition.
Finger Painting Penguins: We finger painted some penguins
Pajama Day
Puzzle: as part of pajama day Treyton also worked on his alphabet puzzle. I got this puzzle when I went to CHEA this last May but Treyton really struggled with it and I put it away for another time. This week when I said we were going to do a puzzle Treyton said he wanted to do a hard one - he picked this one out himself and did it totally on his own the first time. It is truly amazing just how much he is soaking up this year and how far he has come!!
Popcorn Snack: I had planned to use some of the popcorn for a craft but the popcorn didn't stand a chance only an hour before lunch!!

Math
We did Pattern Matching and Penny Counting from our Activity Box. Treyton is a pro at pattern matching now!
Bible
God Made People
This week our Bible story was about how God made people. After we read the Bible story we took some play-doh and made some of our own people. We talked about how different and special each person is - some tall, some short, some thin some round. We also asked some hard questions like "Why do you think God made you?"
Prayer
We did a second Bible story later in the week about Joshua and how God made the sun stand still and how when we pray God listens to us. We chose to pray for a special person in our life we then made a prayer note and mailed it.
This was a particularly fun activity for Treyton because we talked about how mail worked and what all we needed to do before we could mail a letter. Treyton had lots of questions - I'll probaly get a book next week from the library regarding the post office/postal system because he showed such an interest.
~ Just a little note here - a great book we have and read during this time is called "Does God Hear My Prayer?" You can find it below in my widget - I think it's a great children's book on prayer.

Daily Binder
I wrote on this earlier in the week here but I just wanted to touch base and let you all know how it's going ---- and it's going AMAZING!! I LOVE it and I can't wait to see where this may lead.
Calendar time is going well, everyday Treyton seems to remember a little more and in this past week he has gone from counting to 12 to counting to 30 (today). He still struggles a little with the teens (13, 14, 15) but is even improving on these.
Geography this week Treyton asked to learn two more states - we picked Michigan (where they make cars) and South Dakota (where there is a mountain with faces on it) and so far he has gotten them right everyday. The truly amazing thing is that it was only Saturday that he learned Tennessee and Texas and he's gotten them right every day as well. I almost feel like he's learning the states too quickly, but I don't feel right holding back when he specifically asks to learn a new state. He now knows 13 states.
Weather Graphs Treyton loves the weather section, I won't say it's his favorite because right now he really likes all of them but he is definitely excited to do this one --- maybe because it's new and easy - compared to the calendar which is also new but harder for him to learn.

Science
We live in an area with a lot of paper mills. One day we were passing one and Treyton asked what it was. I told him "that's where they make paper" Treyton said "How do they make paper?". We were actually on our way home from the library where I had just picked up a book called "from tree to paper" (see below in the widget). We read this book several times throughout the week. I wanted to come up with an activity of making our own paper but never got around to it... maybe next week...

Reading
This week we also started "Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". We just finished lesson 5 and so far it is going great. It is hard work for Treyton but he really wants to learn to read so he seems willing to put in the extra effort. To be honest I was a little overwhelmed at first (worried about saying the wrong sound or pronouncing it wrong, etc.) but so far I haven't faced anything to difficult.
Our greatest struggle came today with lesson 5 (learning the long e sound, because on his video that he watches e says "egh" as in egg). I tried to simply explain, without going off script too much, that the letter Ee can make two different sounds. He seemed to understand, but he didn't have to like it! :~)
We'll see how it goes in the next few weeks.... pray for us.... I'm nervous.

Books We Used this Week
There were actually alot more books we used this week but for some reason I couldn't find them on Amazon.

Word Analogy Worksheets

I looked online for some preschool word analogy worksheets and couldn't really find any that worked for us. Treyton was actually able to answer up to third grade level analogies but because he can't write I wanted ones that had pictures he could circle and manage to partly do on his own.

So I went ahead and made two of my own. Here they are:

Word Analogy Worksheet

Pp is for Paper Picture Placemats

This week we are learning the letter Pp we have done SOOO much this week (the possibilities are truly endless) but this was one of my favorites and I had alot of pictures, so I am giving it it's own posts.

We wove together some Paper Picture Placemats!

The weaving was a little tough for Treyton but he figured it out and did a great job not getting frustrated and sticking with it. I ended up doing most of the other 4 (we had to have one for each family member... right?) then we got some pictures sorted them out for each person's mat, glued them on and had Dad take them to Office Max to get them laminated. All in all it wasn't very hard, but a little time consuming.

So far they have been a big hit (we did them on Sunday) and have used them for every meal since.

Treyton weaving the mat together (this one is his)

All finished with the weaving

Four of the finished five (the orange is Treyton's, pink is Lexie's, purple is dad's, blue is new baby and green below is mom's)

The laminated finished products!

Daily Binder

Very exciting changes have taken place this week in our schooling. It all started on Sunday after I spent most of the day putting together a Calendar Binder for Treyton. After I put it together, and we used it the first day it got my mind to going (always trouble).
What if I could add all of his daily activity/review items in this binder?

That's all it took and I was off on a mission. So now, instead of a Calendar Binder we have a Daily Binder which includes a section for:
Alphabet Review
Calendar Time
Weather Graphs
Maps/Geography
(I plan on adding more as we go along, but we're starting slow)

Alphabet Review We had a big letter chart up on the wall, but like I said wall space is something we struggle with, we don't have much of it and what we do have is actually in a different room. So I printed off an Alphabet Chart from www.busyteacherscafe.com and while I sat in front of a movie last night I colored it in myself with colored pencil (it was originally b&w)

This morning we went through and the letters that Treyton could identify he received a little sticker for right now he can identify 17 and make the sounds for most of them.
We also sang through the alphabet song 3 times while Treyton used a pointer to guide us through (this was probably Lexie's favorite part of the school day).

Calender Time
This is obviously a very new subject for us so we're keeping it pretty simple and basic and I am doing most of the work at this point asking Treyton questions as I go, most of which he doesn't know the answers to.
For right now we are NOT even talking about the months of the years, their names or anything really. We are starting with singing a days of the week song (that goes with the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star - one of Treyton's favorites). I made our days of the week chart to coorelate with our days of the week cards that we put in the sleeves, thinking that maybe Treyton would help Treyton correlate them in his mind.
We then fill out our calendar - Treyton doesn't know how to write very high numbers so this has been great practice for him (for this month I filled out 1-25) if he was frustrated when we got to this particular part I would not have a problem filling out the date myself. We use this opportunity as well to count up to the date which is also great math/number practice which Treyton is also learning.
Next we use our baseball sleeves to change the date as well as talking about yesterday and tomorrow and the days of the week. I have these inserted "backwards" in the binder so that we can see the calendar as we do the sleeves.

Weather Graphs
I got this idea off of Roger's Family Blog and at first I didn't think I was going to do them because we've already done alot with the weather. But once I started looking at it more and thinking it through I decided to do it primarily for the experience with graphs. This morning was the first we used them and Treyton LOVED it! (so far, so good) We printed these off at Hubbardscupboard
Maps and Geography
This is probably my favorite section because Treyton just FLOORS me with how much he knows and how quickly he learns his states.
He has been learning his states for a while now and we just introduce them when we feel ready, I also introduce a little tidbit about each state to help him "recall" which state I'm talking about. He does very well with most of the states but with California (one of the more recent ones he's learned) because we don't know anyone who lives there I said "they make movies and milk there" and that helps him alot!
The states that he knows now include:
Wisconsin
Louisiana (where PaPa Mike lives)
Virginia (where Aunt Nana and Uncle Mitch lives)
Minnesota (where Dad's friend Nate lives)
Florida (where we went to see Mickey)
Washington (where Pastor Mark Driscoll lives)
Hawaii (where cousin Ainsley lives)
Alaska (where Mommer went on a trip)
California (where they make movies and milk)
Texas (Aunt Tami lived there once)
I also printed off a map of North America because Treyton has been very confused about the fact that Alaska is NOT next to Hawaii (like the map shows). Today we were talking about how Alaska is North and Hawaii is South. Alaska is cold and Hawaii is warm. He was very interested and asked alot of questions and really got into this part of it - I don't think it will take long until he really gets this.
(I can't actually remember where I printed them all off - except the North America one I know I got from activity village and I colored it in my self)

Silly Question?

Do any of you know what the word puzzles are called that are like the following:

~ Shovel is to dirt as rake is to ______
~ Bee is to Honey as Cow is to ______
~ Nest is to Bird as Hive is to ______

We ran across some in a simple workbook that I got Treyton and he LOVED them but I can't find them anywhere and have no idea what they are called to find some.
I suppose I could make my own up but thought I would give this a shot first!!

Calendar Time

I've been thinking about doing something for teaching Treyton about the days of the week, months of the year and calendar time for a while.

Today, I had a little time and decided to start putting some things together. I had considered buying a calendar wall chart but couldn't find one I liked, and the one that I saw that I kind of liked was rather large. To be honest, wall space is one thing we don't have right now (doing school in the dining room and all). So I decided to make a calendar binder for us to use for calendar time.

To start the binder I first went to abcteach and printed off a page for each month - I plan on having Treyton fill in the dates every day when we start school.

Next I created some printables (myself!) so that we could still do some hands-on dates. Because we will be using a binder system, I set them up for size to fit into baseball card holders, which will be in our binder to do every day.
I'm including links to the printables below (for some reason the lines on the bottom of some of my printables got cut off but you could easily draw them on or cut a straight line without an actual line!

Days of the Week - I printed this on white card stock
Days of the Week

Months of the Year - I printed these on creme card stock to distinguish them from the days of the week
Months of the Year

Calendar Digits - I printed on white card stock
Calendar Digits

Calendar Terms - I printed on orange cardstock (because it's Treyton's favorite color) because these terms will not be moved, they are the "constant" part of the binder and I wanted to distinguish them drastically.
Calendar Terms

Obviously, I have not used these yet but I thought I would share them for those of you that are interested. I hope to start implementing some calendar time in the next couple of weeks. I'll be sure to update how it's going.

Letter Rr & Noah's Ark

Letter Learning & Activities
This week we learned the letter Rr. This was another letter that Treyton was already acquainted with, because he already knows to write his name, but this week we focused on the lower case letter which Treyton was not used to writing or seeing. He adjusted very well. The /r/ sound is not an easy one for Treyton to say, he usually pronounces it /w/. I tried to work with him a little bit on it, but it wasn't something he was very interested in doing. I didn't want to turn him off completely to trying so I backed off on working with pronunciation.
This week finished up book a in the Get Ready for the Code Series, next week we start book b (this was VERY exciting too me, I love finishing old books and starting new ones, Treyton was only so-so about it but that's okay I'm excited enough for the two of us!)
Of course, we continued to do our letter book pages that we printed off from Homeschool Creations


We did a little bit of review and handwriting practice in our handwriting without tears book which Treyton was very excited about we worked on the big K and R. Treyton was a little confused with how similar the big K and little k were but we wrote a few extra ones next to one another in his handwriting notebook - that seemed to help him alot.

Fun Letter Activities & Crafts
Runaway Bunny Lapbook
I found the Runaway Lapbook by Jolanthe on her site and then followed it over to Homeschool Share.

Here is a picture of our finished project and Treyton playing with some of the pieces.

Rock Painting
We went outside and gathered some rocks from the side of the house, then Treyton painted them.

Rainbow Crayons
This was Treyton's favorite activity of the weeks (and dad's too).
We took some of our old crayons, removed the paper (which was the hardest part of the craft by the way) and then broke them in little pieces.

Next, we divided our colors into 6 muffin tin sections

We then preheated the oven to 275 degrees and put them in for 10 minutes. (I had to reput them in for about 3 minutes because a few of Treyton's crayon's were pretty big and hadn't melted yet)
After we took them out we let them cool and harden back up.

 

Soon enough we were able to take them out and color away!!

Rainbow Shape Book 
We found this idea over at Delightful Learning and I can tell you for sure we will be doing more projects like this in the future... I LOVED IT!!

Michelle actually has a video up that illustrates how to do this book and books like it --- so helpful!

Bible 
Our Bible Story was Noah's Ark (to go along with the rainbow theme) after we read the Bible Story we did a Rainbow Ark Picture - we drew on a rainbow and put on stickers of animals.
We also played an animal memory card game.
We kept it pretty simple because this is a Bible Story that we've done many times before.

Math 
For Math this week we made a number chart 1-20 - I forgot to take a picture but I will try to get one on here soon. Treyton can count up to 20 but struggles with 13-16 because he can't say them well.

Also for math this week Treyton played with our rice box which I made several months ago. He practices lot of things like measuring, pouring, sizes, etc. Of course I tied in the obvious "R" correlation, which Treyton informed me (politely) that he already knew. :~)

Books We Used this Week

Letter Tt

Letter Learning & Activities 

This week we learned about the letter Tt. As far as letter learning goes... this one was a piece of cake. Treyton already knows Tt - VERY well, in fact he spent most of the week telling me what I'm normally telling him. He was more used to writing the upper case T, but had no problem writing the lower case one. 

He loved to write the letter Tt's and could do an entire page in less than 5 minutes, he really did zip right through 'em. 

We also spent some time reviewing writing our other letters, which he did much better at this week than last. - Kk is still the one he struggles with the most but compared to last week I think he is doing much better. 

 

Fun Letter Activities and Crafts 

Tissue Paper T

(sorry I tried to rotate it.. no luck)  

Coffee Filter Turtle 

For this craft I just had Treyton color a coffee filter and glue it on to a piece of construction paper, we then drew a head, arms and tail for our turtle.

To be honest, I had a lot more crafts in store for this week (a shape train and track painting to be sure) as well as an elaborate Bible Lesson, however, the kids got the flu this week so we really only had 2 1/2 days of school.  

Science 

This week we were able to actually incorporate a science experiment into our letter Tt week. 

We decided to learn what reaction certain liquids (drinks) have on our teeth. We did four different types of drink:

Water, Orange Juice, Soda and Milk 

Treyton poured the different drinks into the cups, and then dropped the eggs in as well. 

We then put a smiley face on the ones that we thought would be good for (or not hurt) our teeth, and a frowny face on the ones that Treyton thought would be bad for our teeth. Treyton decided, completely on his own which ones he thought were good and bad... I think he did pretty well. 

Experiment Conclusions: The soda turned the egg brown, and especially where are finger prints were on the eggs (don't really know why that is) the water egg seemed unaffected by the experiment as did the milk egg. The juice egg actually started to peel a little bit... some of the hard shell was slimy and would rub off. 

Treyton had a very hard time accepting the fact juice was "bad" for your teeth. We tried to explain to him that it wasn't bad all the time, only if you had alot... he still had a hard time.

Seasonal Pumpkin Fun

Painting Pumpkins

Lexie almost got involved... painting a few strokes before she got bored and went down for her nap :~)  

This was actually a VERY special school day for us because Aunt Tami decided to join us for a little while and participate! 

Here are our diligent students hard at work!

Pumpkin Seeds 

I cut open the pumpkins and had Tami and Treyton dig out the pumpkin seeds

We separated the seeds from the pumpkin 'ickys" and then rinsed them in water.

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

Mix Pumpkin seeds with 2 Tbl of melted butter and a touch of salt

Spread into a single layer on a cookie sheet

Bake for about 40 minutes or until roasted (ours took a touch longer than 40 minutes)

Cool and Enjoy!!

 

This is Lexie chewing on a pumpkin seed... I think she looked so cute :~)

(Side note: for a typical 15-month old, most pumpkin seeds will come out in the same condition they went in... if you're wondering!) 

Books We Used this Week

After reading the "I am a Sea Turtle" Book, we decided to watch the Planet Earth DVD with the section on sea turtles. Treyton loves the Planet Earth movies, so this took no convincing... in fact, he watched the sea turtle part twice. It was really awesome to see (in HD) the sea turtles hatching and making their way to the sea, just like we had read in the book!!