Alpha-laundry: Day Four of Jesse Bear, What Would You Wear?

I forgot that the beginning of the public school year could be SO busy! I now have a fifth grader and an eighth grader both who already have BIG plans for their ending year in their schools. Kiliegh, my fifth grader is now working as a crossing guard or "patrol" and has decided to play an instrument, the Trumpet.

 Jasmine, may or may not be in the science club again this year. It's still undecided if that group is even going to meet this year and she has "one really annoying student" who is threatening to join and that is ruining her motivation to participate in the group again. However, she is very excited about getting excepting into cheerleading this year.

 I'm excited for her as well! 

It's just funny how much has come with all of these new journey's for the girls. Kiliegh had a night of instrument try-outs and then a huge meeting for the parents and then next week they will have a district wide lesson where everyone will get together and learn the first five cords, get their instruments (if they don't already have them) and their books. Jasmine had try-outs for five nights in a row for two hours and then now meets every night for four night of those nights for practice! Whoever said cheerleading wasn't a sport, had no idea how hard these participants really worked! 

We have had sports physicals, eye exams and unpack your back pack nights times two! Then we have started up Kindermusik classes for Vada and I and in the last two weeks we have had our six month visit with Vada's PT Kim (everything is great) and monthly with her OT Christy (again, all is well). I'm hoping that now things will fall into a well rounded routine! However, because of the heat and lack of central air, school here has been canceled today and probably will be again tomorrow! Therefore, that routine that I just mentioned, is again kind of thrown off of course for a couple of more days. 

Making due with the time that we do have Vada and I fit in another fun Jesse Bear activity, "Alpha-Laundry" which was part of her journal/lapbook download from Homeschool Share. Can you believe that we spent over forty-five minutes on this? 

Instantly Vada was interested!

We actually have an "article of clothing" for each upper case and lower case letter of the alphabet but today we only used either or, which one didn't actually matter for our first time activity of alpha-laundry.

I colored the "clothes" myself but you can actually print them on colored paper to make it easier and then you could also use this activity for color matching but we have so many color matching activities that I thought that I would do it my own way.

I had Vada grab one letter at a time and with my help we would also remove the clothes pin and then she would put both into the basket. I would tell her what letter she chose and sing the letter song from the Leap Frog videos, "the 'e' says ehh, the 'e' says ehh, every letter makes a sound, the 'e' says ehh." We went through every. single. letter. singing this song and it was worth it. She loves that song and it stick in her head. I know it does because she is beginning to attempt to sing along with it and she knows how to make the sounds to many of the letters of the alphabet.

The printable's also came with some blank "clothes" and I used some to print Vada's name onto them, so that she can start to focus on recognizing her written name, which is one of her goals this school year.

We spent over forty-five minutes and didn't make it through the entire alphabet, so we have more laundry to do but for today we have made some real progress and this is staying out and is not only being a "Jesse Bear" activity!

"Saturday School"

This week has been a messy one. There was no Monday class day and Thursdays was used up for Speech so we did days three and four together and now day five which typically would be done on a Friday is being done today, on a Saturday. Tomorrow we'll go to church and have "Sunday school" but first we have to finish up our Letter of the Week by Confessions of a Homeschooler, Letter 'A' and have "Saturday school"!

After starting our day off like every other, weather, months of the year, days of the week, devotion, prayer etc... We dove right into the curriculum with some practice pre-writing. 

There was four sheets if you counted the upper and lowercase 'B' page.

I held and guided Vada's hand over the doted lines to make the correct shapes and lines. This was Vada's first real experience (that I can think of) at structured pre-handwriting. She has colored and mimicked some of what I have drawn but rarely have I took her hand in mine to make her draw something and never have I made her trace something while I was holding her hand. She was pretty tolerant of me helping her.

After we did all of the pages together, I let Vada have independent writing time. She scribbled wrote all over the sheets and you could tell that she was quite proud of herself for doing so!

I realized after doing this activity with Vada that I should have placed her left hand on the sheet of paper she was writing on when we were practicing on writing. She often puts her hand on the page when it's just her but not all of the time and it is something that she needs to learn to do all of the time for writing. So I will have to remember to do that step next week when we are doing the pre-handwriting activity.

We worked on upper and lowercase recognition with this 'A' is for Apple, Apple Tree work sheet.

I can't honestly say if Vada took in anything from this or not. We watch Leap Frog videos here and they have one that is called The Amazing Alphabet and there is a song that goes "Big G. Little g. Big E. Little E" and so on, for the entire alphabet. So, instead of saying uppercase and lowercase all of the time I sang Leap Frogs "Big and Little" song. I believe that by connecting the two together it'll help V better understand the meaning of the letters.

We worked on size sorting. 

 And then for more math fun we moved onto Ants on a Log ('A' is for Ants). 

For this activity we just counted the ants on each "log" and said the colors that each on was. For counting activities I always ask Vada to use her pointer. I held her fingers into a fist for her so that she could hold her pointer in a pointing position. Her thumb splints were both drying otherwise they would have helped her feel the correct position that her hands should have been in.

Each "log" has a reverse side, ants on one side and a leaf with a matching numeral.

We went through ten "logs".

And then Vada helped me put them away. It was kind of like putting a puzzle together.

All week Vada has been begging (by signing) for popcorn! She has seen this game sitting on the shelf and no matter how many times that I have shown her that it is not real popcorn, she continues to ask for it. So today I got out the popcorn, "Pop for Letters".

She was thrilled!

She was in heaven!

And she actually wanted to play!

There is actually a game to this, with rule and everything but I just let Vada grab letters and then I would take one from her handful, drop the remaining amount into the box and then read the letter out loud. I would then follow up by singing the Leap Frog Letter Song " The A says ahh. The A says ahh. Every letter makes a sound. The A says ahhh."

In the two pictures below, Vada is signing popcorn.

We also played with some more food-like learning toys, Trail Mix & Match. 

We tried to do some lacing.

And then it got pretty heavy!

It was getting pretty late in the day and since it was Saturday and everyone was home we decided to call it a day and go hang out! However, I thought that for another time, it would be fun to do patterns with these. Maybe take some pictures and have Vada try to copy the pictures? Were going to make our own trail mix as well. I really like trail mix! Yum!

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! ...