With the arrival of spring, our homepreschooling got switched up a bit as the warmer weather brought opportunities for some outdoor exploration and hands-on learning.
Aside from just getting to see chickens at NaNa's, we also got a close up look at some other animals like this caterpillar we found in our yard. We had a chance to go back and talk about what we'd learned about caterpillars already earlier this year, and the kids also learned things like the need for being very careful when handling these delicate creatures. (Sadly, they learned that the hard way.) With Hadley, who is a lot more cautious than her brothers, I also got to teach her that these creepy crawlies are nothing to fear.
From ants and worms to rabbits and vultures, we've all kept our eyes pealed for opportunities to see and talk about different types of animals. I'd hoped we'd make it to the zoo, which didn't happen, but we still got plenty of chances to see wildlife right around us.
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| Caleb came out of the woods with a worm...at least it wasn't a snake. |
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| Aunt Susie trying a little mint Caleb gave her from NaNa's flower bed. |
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| Hadley tried it out too. |
Caleb was very curious about birds in particular this year. He even requested an observation bird house so he could watch them build a nest, hatch their eggs, and tend their babies. When Granny heard about it, she gave us a bird feeder that stuck to the window to try out. While it wasn't exactly what he'd requested, we thought the kids would enjoy watching the birds nonetheless - and have they ever! Over and over and over, Caleb asked us to attach it to the window until Dave finally got a chance to do so one day. Then our son just sat at the kitchen table waiting anxiously for one to appear.
For days though we never saw anything. We had placed the feeder at about the kids' eye level because we thought they would be able to see the birds better, but after none came to feed, we decided to try placing it a little higher. Thankfully, it worked and all three kids pointed, shouted, and squealed with delight each time a bird stopped by. They loved describing and comparing the colors and sizes of each new bird that appeared and noticed which ones seem to visit frequently. Even months later, they are still loving it.
With Caleb's birthday coming up, I debated getting the observation bird house too, but we'd already purchased his gifts so I suggested it to my mom. We forgot to put it up until a few weeks ago though and I guess all the birds already made their nests elsewhere because we haven't seen any....maybe next year.
The warm weather gave us opportunities for developing our fine motor (and gross motor) skills too. We frequented playgrounds and climbed trees. No need to drill handwriting...this was much more fun.
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| My former cheerleading coach, who is a kindergarten teacher, told me letting the kids have lots of opportunities for playing on the monkey bars was a great way to build up the muscles in their hands for writing. My little monkeys preferred the trees at NaNa's house instead. |
We also continued to use other techniques to prep those muscles in our hands. We used play dough...
...played with clothespins...
...built with Legos, Tinker Toys, and blocks...
...and made use of our Cheerios play book using that pincer grip over and over.
We painted...
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| Hadley got in the habit of wanting to paint her weekly letter coloring sheets instead of coloring. Messy is just more fun! |
...did activity books...
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| Caleb loves doing mazes. He can't sit still to write letters very long, quickly losing interest and moaning about the process. Strangely though, his hand just doesn't seem to get tired completing ENTIRE workbooks of mazes. |
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| I love that smile and enthusiasm. |
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| He's finally got the grip! Hooray! |
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| "Do you think I can do this one?" he'd question me with mischief in his voice, looking for a challenge. |
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| Hadley tried her own hand at workbooks - doing mazes and drawing circles to complete the pages. |
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| Think she'll be ready to try some letters soon? |
...and drew pictures.
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| Of course markers are a step up from crayons to the kids. |
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| I must have been brave this day in particular to let Reid have markers. |
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| Don't write on yourself! (At least he's not eating them...) |
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| Caleb got a bit creative and he didn't always want to use my ideas. The smilie and sad faces for the letter S were his own creation. For the letter T, the "turtle" he painted was also a Caleb original. |
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| More of Caleb's work |
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| Here's Hadley's :) |
Though Hadley had solidly mastered her colors, I also picked up a tote from the library full of books about colors and used a few we had at home to review.
With Caleb, we really got into some fun stuff. He's actually reading!
While we've been working on sight words for a while, I began working with him a little on sounding out words some too. One of the activities we used was an Easter egg trick for teaching word families I spotted on Pintereste awhile back. He caught on pretty quickly, and with the work they were doing at preschool, it wasn't long before he took off!
One day we were sitting in the Dr.'s office for his five-year check-up, and I'd brought along some new leveled readers I'd purchased from one of his Scholastic book orders. I opened up a level C book while we waited, thinking I could make good use of our one-on-one time to work with him, but he surprised me and read pretty much the entire book by himself. "You're reading, Caleb!" I said excitedly as the people around us watched both of us beaming.
After that, I began working with him regularly, reading from books that were at his level. Finding texts at the library appropriate for a beginning reader was actually pretty difficult though. Thankfully, we did find a few that worked well for us in the Puppy Mudge series as well as some Dr. Seuss. Aside from those, I also had a few sets that I bought from Scholastic that have really been our go to books at this point.
I've also tried to take advantage of opportunities when Caleb could read to Dave or my mom too so he had authentic reasons for rereading books as well as encouragement from other adults.
Sometimes he was motivated to read, but other times he wasn't all that interested. What he was always ready to do though was play sight word games with me. Since he began giving up his afternoon nap some days this spring, often we'd use that time when his siblings were asleep to read together and play these learning activities.
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| This "Go Fish" game was a Dollar Tree find. |
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| Go Fish! |
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| Caleb had a hard time holding all the cards in his hand, so he had to lay them out and hide them from Mommy this way instead. |
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| After awhile he got the hang of holding them better. |
Through Caleb's preschool Scholastic book order, I also found a set of sight word Dominoes, which he loved. It had a lot of new words he hadn't learned yet, so it was definitely a good purchase.
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| Excited little boy |
I also bought a matching game years ago that we used one day to work on phonological awareness as Caleb tried to match up rhyming words. There were 60 words so it might have been overwhelming, but I broke the set down into three groups so that Caleb only had to focus on 20 words/10 sets at a time. He was able to do this independently, and because the puzzle pieces would fit together to make a match if he was incorrect, the cards helped him rethink any errors that he made.
While it will be a long time before Hadley or Reid will be reading, right now Mommy's just doing a lot of reading to them. At the beginning of the year, my goal was just to carve out more time to read with Reid everyday since we were already doing that pretty well with his siblings, and now he's become a book lover too.
In May/June, we've gotten back in the habit of visiting the library again too. We had such a rough time with catching one illness or another this past winter that either I didn't want to spread germs or didn't want to catch them, so from about October on, I avoided bringing the kids to the library to play. I stopped by to grab books here and there, but they didn't get the opportunity to come with me. That said, Hadley and Reid were pretty excited to get back for toddler story time.
Well, I guess that wraps it up. It's been a fun and productive school year.
