In the Jungle

So this week we begin our 2nd week of tot/prek with my littlest who turned 2 this June. We're following the Letter of the Week Prep for week 2, which is Jungle. DD(2) loves books, so the real aim of at the moment is to move away from the same old books she always stuffs in my hand while I'm typing and into a wider variety with a bigger subject base. Sheer entertainment value, I'm not expecting her to learn or retain anything that I teach her at the moment. It is just time dedicated to her for the purposes of having fun, outside our normal interactions!

So a couple weeks ago (yes I've been slacking,) we picked up a stack of books at our local library, which included but was not limited to:
"Slowly, Slowly, Slowly, said the sloth", by Eric Carle
"Dandelions," by Eve Bunting
"Hug," by Jez Alborough
"Jazzy in the Jungle," by Lucy Cousins
"Rumble in the Jungle," Giles Andreae

RR/ LS (reading readiness /listening & sequencing): We have read a couple of them already but, this week I'm aiming to read 1 a day to her.

CS (Colours/Shapes): I also printed off a booklet from Enchanted Learning on the colour green (I think it is in the member section), I had to readjust it so it would fit our purposes! But she loves using descriptive words like red, blue (fav word), green and pink so I thought it might be fun to show her what green really means!

Number and Size: I borrowed some ideas for a combo file folder game / Lapbook for her which I will assemble over the next couple days. It includes a counting book to 2. And will include a Size pouch so she can stack the cards from small to large!

Motor Skills: will include the activities suggested at LOTWPrep, and will include a sensory box found here

GOOSE (nursery Rhymes): which probably falls under reading readiness but I'm giving it, it's own heading, will be "I Had a Little Nut Tree", which I will dress up with maybe stick puppets or some kind of printable thing which can be stored in the lapbook!

So there you have it. While the bigs have summer vacation, the poor little has to do school work! The aim really is to get into a routine with her, and then add the bigs to that routine one at a time, so that I don't feel so overwhelmed come the start of school in August/September!

Shaving Cream

M was busy doing her math yesterday morning. Dh was working from home on the laptop. S needed something to do so we dragged out the cookie plate. A few months ago I bought some shaving cream with the idea that the girls could use it to play with - you know sensory play! So S started and at first she didn't like it. She's really not a messy kid - doesn't like to get messy and if she does she wants it washed off right away. After the initial shock of messiness and the promise that we could wash it off when she was done, she got right into it. 1/2 hour later she was covered in shaving cream and having a great time while M looked on jealously, and dh looked on in absolute horror! (hee hee!)

She had a good time. (hopefully some pics to follow)

Preschool Begins.

While I totally believe that unschooling is the way to go in the early years, I also know that with S I need to include a few different things to let her have a feel of the things the world has to offer. I'm a totally an unorganized unstructured person, and so we do things as they work for us.

Monday - we started with Name recognition! So S is learning what her name looks like in print, ALL CAPS right now and eventually when she starts to see it and know it we'll convert to Cap with lower case! We also worked on how to hold a pen, in a none-pressured way. She is a fist holder, so I'm trying to get her to look a little more comfortable with the pen - so we're working with FAT glitter markers from Laurentian

Tuesday - we began Calendar activities. Where I'm introducing the days of the Month, day (as in weekday name) and number. Because it was spur of the moment, my numbers are just squares of paper stuck on to a $5 calendar from Staples (a few years ago!) I'm hoping to get a pocket thingy so that we can have more fun with it, but we'll run with what we've got today!

Wednesday - I made both girls Finger painting bags, similar to the Crayola Mess free Easel thing -- both of them spent a couple hours with these little thingies and they were simple to make costing less than a couple dollars

S is also getting a kick out of the tepee (mentioned below!)

So things are underway and I'm introducing one or two new things each day and including a reasonable amount of reading time. Tomorrow I'm hoping to add shaving cream activities to our list but right now I need some good cookie trays in good shape to work with! LOL!

So there you have it - that's what we're up to this week!