Preschool Fun!

I just wanted to take a quick minute and share just a little of the fun we have been having recently in our home preschool!  It seems like we have been flying through the curriculum recently, which is very exciting. Mikayla has been chomping at the bit to study Jesus and we are finally there!

In the past few weeks, we finished up the Old Testament study with Daniel and Jonah. The girls really enjoyed making these lion puppets and scaring their dad with them!  They have very impressive roars! 

Since then, we have moved on to the New Testament and our studies of Jesus. Here is where Mikayla made a replica of the stable- I was very proud of her drawing of baby Jesus in the manger.

Sorry for the large picture- just trying to get her drawing to show up!

We have been moving right along in our Reading Lesson curriculum. Mikayla used to fight me tooth and nail about doing reading every day.  To me, this was a little weird, because she loves stories and books.  Reading independently will open up a whole new world for her! I finally realized that she was scared to make a mistake. She hates to be corrected or told that she was reading it wrong. This curriculum has helped me to be able to give her lots of positive reinforcement for the words she can read. Each lesson contains many short stories and she loves to read them. I let her color the page when she has done a good job and she loves that part! Overall, it has really helped to build her confidence in attempting new words and learning each lesson. We have also switched to doing reading first instead of last, so I think she is a little more fresh when we work on it. Not to mention that Mikayla's goal is always to move onto the "fun stuff."  That's code for her Little Hands to Heaven curriculum. :)

Here are some word slides that I have printed from the free part of ABCteach.  Sometimes on the days I work, I will leave something like this for Mikayla to work on with Jeff as "homework."  I try to find easy things for her to do that will not only review some of the things we have been working on, but also to build her confidence. These fit the bill beautifully and she LOVES them!

 

For Math, we have been doing some activities in our normal curriculum, but I had to go back and re-teach Mikayla how to count the numbers from 11-20...with a little practice, she has finally mastered it!  She needed to see the numbers to realize that they do come in a logical order. She can now count to about 40, but the number increases every day we practice. In our curriculum, we have also been working on more/less-than, some basic adding and subtracting, and the concept of zero/none. 

No classroom is quite complete without a class pet, and our 8 month old kitten, Sallie, always seems to show up when we are getting really productive. She sits on our classroom table and looks out the window, using her twitching tail to clear off our table! :)

We are having lots of fun with our first year of school. We will probably do lots of spring activities next week and can't wait!