PreK - Week 5

This week we read about some of Jesus' miracles - turning water into wine, helping Peter to catch many fish, healing a lame man, and healing a sick boy.

We started working on the letter T. Samuel learned to write lowercase t this week and next week we will work on the uppercase T. Samuel is starting to really like writing. He will sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and have me spell various words or peoples' names out for him so he can write them. He doesn't know how to write all the letters correctly yet, but he knows what they are supposed to look like so he usually does pretty well even with letters we haven't actually "learned" yet.

We read some books about the ocean and did a sandcastle craft and made a book showing different animals that live in a tide pool. Samuel also has been moving along with his reading and is over halfway through the first workbook in the Grade 1 Hooked on Phonics set. He loves getting a sticker everytime he reads a new story! He also has started sounding out words whenever we are in the car or at the store. He tries to read everything he sees.

Making a T letter sheet with pictures that start with T

Samuel wanted to practice writing. I gave him a dry erase board and marker, and he had lots of fun. He wanted to write people's names so here are a few he did.

Practicing writing t's

Cutting out shapes to create a sand castle

The finished product

Cutting out pictures of creatures that live in a tide pool

We made them into a book

PreK - Week 4

This week we read about Jesus beginning His ministry. We read about His baptism, being tempted in the wilderness, and how he chose the disciples. Samuel also started learning how to write the capital M (we learned lowercase last week). He is doing a good job with his writing and is starting to really get the hang of it. He still tries to hurry through some days, but most of the time he takes his time and does well. We read several books on bees and butterflies this week and did a few crafts that went along with those themes.

Samuel practicing writing our street address. This was one of his LA assignments this week. I made dots for him to trace since he can't write all the letters by himself yet.

Just being silly...that's Mr. Potato Head's mustache

Coloring a picture of a bee and bee hive. Actually, he was coloring the parts, we had to cut them out and then paste them together correctly on a seperate sheet of paper.

Learning to write capital M's

This was a cool craft we did to show symmetry in butterfly wings. He painted half of the butterfly and then we folded it over and pressed the wings together. When we unfolded them, both wings were identical just like they are in nature.

PreK - Week 3

This week we started reading Bible stories from the new testament. We started with stories about Jesus' birth. I was surprised at how many of the stories Samuel remembered from Christmas last year.

We also started to learn about the letter M. We changed our Language Arts schedule just a little and are now taking 2 weeks to do one week of plans because Samuel needs more than 1 or 2 practice days to really learn the letters. So we are doing the lowercase letter one week and the uppercase letter the next. There were also a lot of workbook pages to be completed each day and this way he has a few less to do each day.

We've been reading stories about bugs and this week have learned about houseflies and spiders. Samuel has really liked learning about bugs.

Working on his M letter sheet. He was choosing pictures that started with the letter M and putting them on the page.

Practicing writing m's

Samuel working on gluing pictures of a fly life cycle in order.

Coloring a book about spiders

More spider pictures

More writing practice

Putting together a Little Miss Muffet flap book

The finished product

After he finished, Samuel wanted to draw his own picture of Little Miss Muffet. She is on the the right. The circle on the left is the "tuffet" that she sat on with the spider above it.

PreK - Week 2

Our second week of PreK went really well. Samuel and I both had fun. We read stories about Daniel in the Bible, starting with the hand writing on the wall and ending with Daniel in the lions' den. This was the last of our old testament stories, and next week we will be beginning with the new testament in our story Bible.

We also learned how to write the Letter B and did some various phonics exercises learning the B sound. Samuel already knows his letter sounds and reads pretty well, but we are doing the activities anyway because he likes them and they are a good review.

We have also been reading stories about plants and I found various worksheets and craft projects about plants to help us learn more. Here's a few pictures from this week:

Samuel practicing "writing" in rice. This is a good way to get him to learn the strokes to make the letter before actually attempting it on paper. He loves this!

Here he was counting how many stickers he had left to get to the end of his reading chart.

Working on a plants worksheet. He had to cut out pictures and then glue them under the appropriate heading either "Plant" or "Not a Plant"

Letter B worksheet. We had various pictures and he had to choose which ones started with B and glue them on the paper.

Working on his Explode the Code workbook. These cover phonics and he loves doing them!

We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom one day and made a coconut tree just like in the story.

More Explode the Code. I think he was coloring only the parts of the picture that had the Letter B in them.

Coloring the parts of a flower. Later we cut them out and glued them together in the correct order. He also colored and assembled the parts of a tree.

This was a sequencing worksheet. He colored a plant in various stages of growth and then had to cut it out and put the pictures in order. He actually got them all in order without any help from me.

The big highlight of the week was that Samuel finished his reading chart. He suddenly wanted to read at every spare minute and was finishing new books right and left. Finally he was down to the last one and he was so excited he couldn't wait to read it, but I made him wait till Daddy was home to listen to. Here he is putting his last sticker on his reading chart.

So, he has finished all of Hooked on Phonics Kindergarten and now we are moving on to Hooked on Phonics 1st grade. I showed him some of his new HOP books he would be reading eventually and he was really excited because there are "big" books -- meaning regular story books not just little booklets like in the previous level.