Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? BFIAR: Day One

Today's "first day of preschool" or tot school went so well!

We started off by taking some "first day" photos with all three of the girls and then after they were off to their schools Vada and I got ready for our day. First I had Vada put on her brand new backpack, this was time of having Vada wear a backpack to class. I know that it may seem like a silly thing to have her do when our plan is to homeschool her permanently, but we figure that she will need it when she goes back and forth from speech and it will help her learn to hang up things -like her coat when the weather calls for one. Plus, her older sisters have backpacks, so she can have one too.

After learning where her backpack now belongs in the classroom we discussed today's weather and the season that we are in right now.

"What Season is it?" came from Confessions of a Homeschooler and is new to our classroom and routine this school year.

Then we went through the months of the year, sang the days of the week song, marked our "official" first day of school and began our BFIAR work.

The "Days in School" chart came from Homeschool Creations and can be downloaded for your morning board for free by clicking on the link.

This week our BFIAR book is Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by: Nancy White Carlstrom. I wanted Vada to be able to associate one of her teddy bears with the bears in this weeks row. The funny thing was that this was the only stuffed bear that she had! She has like fifty stuffed animals, seven ugly dolls, four BlaBla dolls but only one, one teddy bear. The great thing is that this guy has a story! He is Vada's Heart warrior bear. He was awarded to her after having gone through OHS and has been with her ever since! Now they get to go on another journey together, a reading journey.

We read Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?.

Then began to work on another color identification book. Vada finished about half of it today. We will continue to work on it through out the week and then I will laminate it and put a ring or two through it and we will put it with her other color recognition books, we read them often.

Vada's coloring skills are getting to be quite impressive! She really stayed inside of all of the shirts!

Next we did some pretend play and color identification with some ice cream toys. I only used three colors, three of the four that she colored on the Jesse Bear shirts for her book. I would have done all four colors but the ice cream toy didn't come with purple.

For this game, I laid all three "ice cream" colors out onto the table and then I would ask Vada to hand me one specific color at a time. If she was correct at getting the color that I asked for then I would put it on the cone and ask her to share some with her teddy bear. If she was incorrect then I would tell her that she did a nice job at trying, put the color back, point at the correct color and tell her that this is the color "blue" and then ask again for that specific color. It never took her more than one mess up. She either got it right on the first try or she figured it out with the little help that I gave and corrected herself.

At the end, I asked for one color at a time and we stacked the colors as a way of cleaning up.

Next we worked on a page from our Homeschool Creations packet, "Did Eat" and "Didn't Eat". It was a reading comprehension page. Vada had to separate what Jesse bear did and did not eat and since this activity is beyond her abilities right now, I basically worked through it with her saying out loud everything that I was doing and why I was doing it. While she was quiet during this activity, I believe she was understanding some of what I was saying because she was putting the food cards in the correct places. Either way, she did great!

Vada's occupational therapist would be pleased with this next activity. It was suggested that I incorporate more puzzles into Vada's learning and play, so I have. This specific puzzle was perfect for this weeks row as it had bears on it!

Together Vada and I practiced on her handwriting. With my hand over hers we traced two pages worth of different curvy lines and once we finished that I let her have free range on the pages.

The "scribbling" is a normal part of her practice handwriting during her free time.

However, something new and something fantastic was that today she specifically circled and then colored over the shirts and the bears on each page, without being prompted to do so! I was amazed!!

Next, we practiced cutting with loop scissors. Together Vada and I cut all of the foods and drink pictures off of a piece of paper from a Jesse Bear packet that came from Homeschool Share (Homeschool Share is a different site than the above link to Homeschool Creations. But both packets are free to download and I highly recommend both sites!). These were the same foods and drink that Jesse Bear had for lunch in the story.

With a glue stick Vada covered the plate in paste and then placed the paper images of food into the place that she felt were proper for food items to go and then we hung it on the I Did That wall.

Next we did some rubber duck bath tub counting. At the end of the Jesse Bear book, Jesse Bear takes a bath before bed and on the wall are rubber ducks. Just like the book, we have a bath tub with rubber ducks and today we counted the ducks up to the number five.

For each "rubber duck" I would hand Vada the correct matching numeral card and ask her to put it into the correct place and she always did. I even made up a silly song that kept her attention and she loved this activity. Vada even took the numeral card and tapped it on each individual duck just as I did when using it to count the ducks. We also worked on isolating our fingers to show the same number on our hands as well as doing some finger counting.

Last Fall we got to letter 'D' in our Letter of the Week curriculum that I purchased through Confessions of a Homeschooler. I had planned to continue a pretty structured routine throughout the Summer but with my mothers passing I had a hard time following through with this plan and only did minimal school work. Therefore, my plan is to do a refresher of letters 'A' through 'D' for the next two to three weeks, depending on Vada's memory of them and then continue through the alphabet. 

Today we started back with letter 'A'.

If you've been following along then you kind of know our routine, if not we start our LOTW day or lesson by reading from Big Thoughts From Little People. I love this book and we read it every single day when we are working with LOTW because it goes with it perfectly!

I used a letter 'A' alphabet rubbing plate and made this little coloring page for Vada. I gave her three colored pencils, red, yellow and green and told her that those are the colors that apples grow in, so that's the colors that we were going to color with on this page.

Vada colors longer and is more attentive if I color with her sometimes, this was one of those times. I colored the upper case letter 'A', just in case you were wondering.

Next Vada worked on some more fine motor skills by lacing this worm through the apple. She enjoyed this much more than she has even enjoyed lacing any other toy, paper, card or bead! I was thrilled to find something lacable that she liked! Although it was from Hong Kong or Korea so I have to make sure she doesn't put it into her mouth because i'm not 100% on that paint and while my daughter loves this toy, im in no was endorsing it.

We purchased our Alphabet Soup sorting game cans after we had finished letter 'A' last Fall, so the contents of this can was all new to the both of us!

Vada learned to make the Alligator "chomp" as it "walked around. She pretended to eat the apple and she learned how to beat her fist on her chest like any good Ape would. It was a very fun letter can indeed. 

As our day was coming to an end and you could tell that Vada was pretty much at her end I did attempt to do some apple sorting. 

She was more interested in throwing the apples and watching me scurry around to get them than she was at trying to match the colors into three nice coordinating groups. I did however end up getting her to hand me one apple at a time while I sorted them into three separate color groups. We will be using this set more tomorrow as we continue to refresh on the letter 'A'.

For the last fifteen minute I gave Vada free time. She really enjoys getting into one specific cabinet and pulling out the play-doh, which she payed with for awhile. After she was done with the play-doh I got out some "apple specific colored" Hexie Blocks and let her play with those for a bit. She was able to connect a few pieces together on her own -something else that is newer for her.