Rainbow Fish and Letter 'A'

We have officially begun "Letter of the Week" here in the Wilson homeschool and this week, our first week, we are on letter 'A'. 

I purchased this curriculum through Confessions of a Homeschooler and if you are interested I have attached the direct link to her blog name for your convince.

After reading the memory verse and then introducing the letter of the week I sticky tacked both above Vada's "work station" So that she could look up and see it and so that I could point to it with ease whenever I needed to throughout the week.

The curriculum actually comes with more than what you will see us using but with Vada's age I have selected only a few things to begin with. We will continue school throughout the summer and when I make it around to letter 'A' again, I will add those things that I have decided to leave out. I am thinking by late Fall or even into the Winter sometime that she may be ready for more of the difficult tasks that are in this curriculum  (Not that they aren't age appropriate, because they are! They curriculum is just geared towards typically developing children and therefore I need to take Vada's unique learning styles into consideration and be flexible and patient.)

We spent some time on the apple lacing card that came with the Letter of the Week Curriculum. This is a very good activity for Vada to be working on daily -fine motor skills!

I did a lot of helping and cheering her on but she stuck with it all the way through and finished the whole apple! Justin was showering while we were doing this activity and had just finished when we did, so Vada was able to hope down and show her "Papa" the hard work she had just done. She was proud and he was very proud of her as well!

Another printable that came with the Letter of the Week Curriculum is this "A is for Apple" coloring page. Vada really enjoyed coloring it. I took the time to show her how I could trace over the dots to make letters and then I read the scentence. I counted the apples on the tree out loud for her to hear. I would tell her the color of crayons that she was using or that I was using. I would sing "the A says ah, the A says ah..." song, and we just enjoyed our coloring time over all.

After we finished up our Letter of the Week learning I brought out our Book of the Week. The "book of the week" is my idea. I am preparing myself and Vada for Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row. I ordered Before Five in a Row and it should actually be here today! Needless to say, I am pretty excited about this book and the "curriculum" side of it. I love to read and read to my children. Building lessons through the books or stories that we have read so far has been really enjoyable. I think BFIAR is going to be as well.

After reading The Rainbow Fish I talked briefly to Vada about how good of a friend the Rainbow fish became because he ended up sharing with all of the other fish of the sea. We then began to work on our own Rainbow fish made out of stickers. This is another fine motor project for V. It turned out to be very difficult for her. The stickers are very small and stuck to her fingers and it took a lot of manipulation to get the sticker off of her finger and onto the sheet of paper. So we only got a few stickers onto the sheet. We will continue this project throughout the week as well.

I wanted to keep a theme of sorts with fish and underwater creatures, to go with The Rainbow Fish. So another project that I got out was again for fine motor but again an area that really needs improvement is the "Marble Mats" -I don't really know what to call them but I first wrote about them here, I think "Marble Mats" is fitting.

Next we moved onto the Jackson  Polluck inspired "Counting Fish" that Justin made. I also mentioned these earlier but today was the first time that we have used them with Vada. I was a little nervous that the fish would be a little too "busy" and that Vada wouldn't be able to pay attention to the task that was given to her but after showing her the first fish, I don't know what I was worrying about. She took right to the counting lesson and went all of the way through to number ten. The only exception is that with numbers nine and ten she wanted to put the glass pebbles into my hand and then wanted me to put them onto the fish. I could deal with that!

We clean up the classroom everyday after we have finished our lessons but with it being the first of the month it is heavy cleaning time. This is a time when I sweep, mop, vacuum, dust and Little Miss helps.

Whenever I walk away from my cleaning devices she runs to swipe it up!

After we cleaned the classroom we watched the Letter Factory by Leap Frog.

And then we went over the Letter of the Day again... watch and see! ...

Curriculum and Children's Books

Vada is feeling a little under the weather today. It started over the evening last night which caused us to end up with very little sleep, so we took it pretty easy today. We watched a lot of Sesame Street and did even more reading (in between the numerous changes of clean clothes and training pants!). 

With Vada's lack of energy I took advantage of the little extra time I had from not doing class with her and tried the Vegetable soup recipe from the Lois Ehlert book that I recently read when I was we were on a gardening kick.

I've got to say, this book really did come with a bonus having come with this recipe at the end. Yes, it is so easy and all it really consists of is a whole lot of different vegetables but it was delicious and it's fun being able to do projects based off of books like this one. I will cook this recipe again and again with my girls and especially with Vada as she grows older. If for no other reason than for the memories it may create!

I still remember a similar project that we did when I was in school. I had to be in Kindergarten, maybe between first through third grade but for sure, no older than that. The story was Stone Soup and the project was after we read the book at the beginning of the week in the class we were told by the end of the week to bring in our favorite vegetable for our own version of some "stone soup".  I have no memory of how the soup tasted or even what vegetable I brought but what I remember is the class project, the book and more importantly, the story. 

Reading is important to me. I want to help make reading just as important to my children. By thinking up fun and exciting activities to go along with the stories I believe can really help to do just that! So while the soup was cooking and Vada was snuggled back into my lap I began to go through my book called Creating Curriculum Using Children's Picture Books. 

Mentally, I began to adjust the lesson plans to better fit Vada's age and and areas of interests. I  planned out which books I would do first, second, third and so on. I was excited! I then grabbed my iPad to see if I could find a second version of this book or something similar to it. I was hoping that there was more like this one out there, considering this book has only eighteen different story books to choose from, which is a great beginning selection and the selection is just that, great! But I just had to see what else was out there! That's when I ran across Five in a Row, also known as FIAR. Have any of you heard of this? In short it is suppose to be this great literature program of sorts that deals with one story that you focus on for five days in a row. If I have mis-spoke wrote, feel free to correct me. I barely know about this program. I am only mentioning it here and now because FIAR also has a starter program called Before Five in A Row for ages two to four year olds, which is what I have ordered for Vada and I to begin together either after or throughout the remainder of the above book. I'm very, very interested in what FIAR has to offer and if any of you out there have used it or are currently using it now, good or bad, please, share your experiences with me. I would love to hear them!