September--Lesson One

This is the first lesson for the week of September 6th-11th. Click the image below to print the lesson plan out for yourself.

Prep Time!

1. Head on over to PBSKids.org and print out Activity One: Making Applesauce!

2. Then head over to No Time for Flashcards and briefly look at her Alligator A page so you have an example of how Activity Two will look when finished.

3. Gather your materials:

• 8 apples, peeled and cut into chunks
  
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• cinnamon
• two bowls
• wooden spoon and/or potato masher
• medium-sized pot
• 2 pieces of construction paper (different colors)
• 2 googly eyes
• white foam paper or white construction paper
• glue
• scissors
• markers
• 2 books from our Reading List for this month (I suggest Apples and It's Hard to be Five)
  

Fun Time!
(For this week since it's new I'll break down each day for you, but all you really need is the printable learning plan above)

1. Pray for the Day--this can be either my suggested prayer or any prayer that works for your family.

2. Calendar/Weather--sit down in a circle or with your munchkin on your lap near the home's calendar. Move any pieces or use a marker to show which day of the week it is. Point out the month and season as well. Sing the two calendar songs together.

3. Songs/Nursery Rhymes--find a comfy spot to sit and sing the Counting Apples song. Use your fingers to demonstrate. If your munchkin is old enough, have her join in too with her own fingers, or just allow her to watch you be silly :) Then sing the Be Careful Little Hands song, this is an introduction into our fruits of the spirit theme for the month.

4. Activity One--follow instructions on the lesson plan. This one's not too messy, but a bib might be good for younger kids. Once the applesauce is made you can take a break from all this hard work and have a mid-morning snack!

5. Activity Two--this one includes markers and glue, so I'd recommend an apron, old t-shirt, or bib for the under-3 crowd. Draw a large, uppercase A on the construction paper with 2 triangles off to one side near the top of the A. Let your child color it however they want. While they color, cut out some white triangles for teeth. Cut out the A (don't cut off the triangle spots for the eyes). Glue it on the second piece of paper. Glue the googly eyes onto the triangle spots. Glue the teeth onto the inside, bottom portion of the A, that's the alligator's mouth. Let it dry.

6. Read Aloud--read the two books aloud together. If some of your kids are very young or antsy by this time feel free to set them up with a quiet activity like blocks or cars on the floor near you. You can read aloud and they can listen as they play. Keep the books in a basket or something in the main living area so your kids can go back and browse them, look at pictures, or chew on the corners ;-) when they feel like it throughout the week.

Show off crafts to Daddy, Grandma, and whoever else likes to dote on your child!

Prepping for September

Alright everyone, we're just 2 weeks away from our start date, yay!

To make sure everyone feels confident and prepared going into the month I thought I'd explain a bit and open this post up to any questions for those joining in on the lessons.

First, make sure you have glanced over the supplies list for Week 1. Click the image below and print it out if you'd like. Most things are pretty standard, and other things like construction paper, googly eyes, and fingerpaints are things that will be used for future lessons so don't feel like they are one time things. If you need ideas on the cheapest place to find things you don't have just let me know! As a hint, Target's dollar section has googly eyes and IKEA has a $5 small set of primary colored fingerpaints. Construction paper can be found anywhere for pretty cheap, as can markers and crayons. I'm getting apples from our backyard tree (aren't you jealous, hehe!) but I'm pretty sure those are easy to find elsewhere :)


Second, hop online or head over to your local library to reserve some books for this month. Below I have the entire month's list of suggested books. Don't stress if you can't find all of them, this is a suggested list, not the end-all-be-all of reading time! So long as you can scrounge up 2 books per week you'll do just fine I promise. Oh, and The Little Red House with No Windows and No Doors is a printable booklet I've adapted that you will be able to print out, fold along the crease, and staple into your own little book. Very cute and very easy I promise!



Third, think about where you want to do your crafts, songs, and reading time. Then you can put your craft supplies in easy reach. Remember, old shoeboxes make perfect boxes for craft supplies and they're free! Don't forget an old t-shirt or bib for an art smock. I plan to hang my son's in our pantry door for easy access since we do crafts at the kitchen table.

For reading time it might be good to have a basket for books around. You can refill this basket with library books every month, so your kids can browse books related to our theme whenever they want. This way library books stay organized in one area, easy to round up when they're due.

As for lessons, we (the planners) will be making the lesson plans and posting them 1 week in advance every time. Each week will have 3 days of lessons so you can choose which days you want to do the activities. When we post the lesson plans for the week just print them out and glance them over to see which materials you'll need to get out for each day. That's it, no creativity or teaching license required I promise!! Just plan to sing songs, do a craft, read a book, and enjoy your kids. Then show off their crafts to dads and grandparents to ooh and ahh over.

Now that I've written a novel and hopefully not scared anyone off, any questions?

Daily Learning Plan

Okay, I think I've got the daily learning plan uploaded properly onto googledocs so everyone can download it and edit it for their own months. Simply follow the link below, download it, open it with Microsoft Publisher, and edit and save it on your own computer as needed.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B8CdEMsVH2jTNjA2YWU2Z
DctNWE0NC00YzZmLTgyYjAtMDM2MmU3YmY0ZmI2&hl=en&authkey=CPaWhKwP

Let me know how it works please!

Get Ready for the Code

I'm not sure how many readers might be interested, but in my search for mazes for my son I came across these workbooks that just fit him perfectly.

This is a preschool lead-up to a popular homeschooling phonics curriculum "Explode the Code". There are 3 small workbooks, all well-priced in my opinion at around $5.99 each. There are letter cards and a teacher's guide to go with it but I personally looked at those and decided they're not necessary.

Here are a few snapshots to preview what the workbook contains. There's the typical preschool work like matching, circling which one is different, etc. and the 3 books go through all the consonant letters, focusing on the lowercase. I love that it focuses on the lowercase letters because those are the ones most often used when we write anyway! The tracing mazes (third pic down) are what I know Tobias will love, this is his new favorite activity for some reason. Not that he stays 100% between the lines, but he does actually try to follow the path and I figure it's good, low-key practice as he moves towards tracing shapes and letters. This is a very phonics-based approach so as you work through each letter the emphasis is definitely on the sounds the letters make.
These workbooks can be found at Christianbook.com, along with other homeschooling curriculum choices.

Supplies Lists

To give everyone time to find the supplies they'll need for the weekly crafts I came up with an index card sized template for a supply list and a book list. Many libraries can order books you need from libraries farther away, or might have waiting lists, so I recommend doing a weekly library visit and looking for each week's books a few days ahead of time. At our house I plan to keep a basket in the breakfast area to display the books for that week. I've seen other people use a shelf too, however you want to do it I think it's a great idea to keep the week's books out on display as something special :)
There will be one Supplies List and one Book List per week. Many of the supplies lists will overlap so once you get the basics you won't need to buy anything except the occasional special food item (like apples) for a cooking activity.

The lists can be printed on 3x5 index cards and slipped inside library pockets that will be glued/stapled onto our file folders. Then when it's time to do your weekly grocery shopping or trip to the library you simply grab the index card and you've got a ready-made list, no work involved. These are available at Dollar Tree for $2.50 and Amazon.com for $4.99 for a pack of 50. They can also be made using cardstock, construction paper, or old file folders. You can choose to skip the actual pocket altogether and just put the index card lists inside the file folder or your purse, though I do think these look really neat and organized.

(and for those who are tempted by color, amazon has some really cute ones for $5.99 a pack)



**Those lists above are the real supply and book lists for September, Week One to give you a real idea and if you want to go ahead and start looking for supplies knock yourself out!

For those wanting a general list of materials we'll likely use, here are some good craft things to keep around in general:

• construction paper
• crayons
• pencils
  
• glue/glue sticks
  
• scissors
• fingerpaints (red, yellow, and blue are enough to get you all the other colors by mixing)
• art smock (use an old oversized t-shirt, it works great. Ikea also has a nice art smock/bib that fits several ages and has long sleeves so it covers the child fully)
• googly eyes
  
• pipe cleaners
• popsicle sticks
• paintbrush
• hole puncher
• tape
• puff balls
• cotton balls

Also, be sure to save things! I keep craft supplies in old yogurt containers, shoeboxes, spaghetti sauce jars, and baby food jars. Baby food jars are also perfect for pouring paint into. Tissue paper from christmas and birthdays is useful for tons of crafts. Empty milk jugs, soda bottles, paper bags, paper plates, and paper cups are also useful for crafting.

Lesson Planning Basics

I'm pretty sure I've nailed down a basic framework we can all use to do lesson plans. Now, I don't have my heart set on this or anything so please feel free to make suggestions whether you are helping to write lesson plans or simply planning to participate in the curriculum once we start up.

I'll explain this a bit so everyone understands what it is:

Below is September, Week 1, Day 1 lesson plan. I have a prayer for the day written, 2 calendar songs to get us started with calendar time, and 2 nursery rhymes/songs that relate to our themes this month--apples, trees, and the character trait of self-control. Below that are 2 activities. The first block simply mentions that we'll make applesauce (Sid the Science Kid style, using it as a science lesson almost). The second block says we'll make a letter A in the form of an alligator. For these two activities I simple printed out the pages from their original sites and slipped them into my September, Week 1 file. The last block at the bottom lists 2 book choices that relate to the theme. I'm not 100% thrilled with this section so I would love any ideas about how we should handle books since we have such a big age range (infant-5 years old).

My thought for how that last block can work is to also create a small (index card size) print-out with the total book list and materials list for each month. This would be what we could each keep with us when we go to the library to check out books and the store to get any materials we might be missing. That way there's no last minute searches for a glue stick or googly eyes in the morning before doing a craft :) In this case that last block would be a suggestion only of which books from the list might work best for the corresponding activities, but people with older/younger kids can choose what books interest them and which ones are easiest to find at the library that month.


Note that this is the entire week's lesson plans, 3 days of learning time and would fill anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on the family and how in depth you want to go with the activities.

Also look at the prayer for the day, calendar, and songs. I repeated all of those for the entire week and that is not a mistake! Kids love repetition, it's how they memorize those cute songs so please don't feel the need to come up with new songs for every day or even every week. Repeat the same songs for at least an entire week at a time, if not more! Really the only things unique to each day are the 2 activities and the books can change somewhat but again, kids LOVE repetition, I can't even tell you how often I've read Adios, Oscar this past month to Tobias, he insists on it every single night. So while it looks like a ton of planning, it's really just finding 2 songs, 6 activities, and a few related stories for each week.

Store Sales

First, I must say that I LOVE Target :) I got all the above items for $1 or $2.50 each at Target's dollar section (at the front of the store when you first walk in). So if you need pipe cleaners, crayons, paper, stickers, plastic bins, magazine holders, or a planner book go ahead and check that section out.

Here's what I ended up getting:

Wooden Date Board: $2.50 I'll be using this as part of our calendar time each morning, it just seemed perfect, it's all wooden, and it was $2.50!!

Yellow Bin: for all those arts and crafts things I've collected

Blue Desk Chart: these are similar to what's used in classrooms. The slots allow cut out letters, words, or numbers to be slid in. I used these in my K-1 classroom for making sentences, putting words together, and even a behavior chart where each child had colored cards above their name.

Blue Wall Chart: same as the desk chart, but this can be put on the wall anywhere.

Teacher Plan Book: The paper must have cost more than the $1 this item cost, I've no idea how they did it really. It's basic and meant for a classroom but can provide a nice organized place to put daily activity ideas, list the themes of the month, etc.

So keep your eye out right now for cheap school supplies that might be useful for your preschooler.

Some ideas include:

• glue stick
• crayons
• stickers
• paper
• markers
• pencils
• pipe cleaners
• puff balls
• manipulatives (anything small that can be counted, sorted, matched, or transferred)

Has anyone else found any good deals they'd like to share? Any $.05 crayons or anything?