Day of the Dinosaurs

I decided that we would only work on letter 'D' for two days, this being our second and last day. Vada seems to be able to recognize the letter 'D' and she knows how to make it's sound. So for now, we are ready to move on.

Today we started with writing practice! I just love writing practice! Vada is not fond of the hand over hand method that we use in the beginning and sometimes puts up a stink but I thoroughly enjoy watching her concentrate afterward. I like seeing the progress that she makes each and every lesson that we do. She is so determined. It's great. These worksheets below cam from Confessions of a homeschooler, Letter of the Week curriculum.

Because Vada was so successful with the letter matching yesterday I thought that we really needed to continue to focus on this activity and more than just once a week. I think that the LOTW curriculum calls for it to be done once a week (I don't have it in front of me to check and see) but I think that I may throw it it two to three times a week, unless it seems to become boring to Vada.

Since a good dinosaur color is green, I then gave Vada two different shade of Do-A-Dot green paint dabbers and a letter 'd' coloring page and let her paint it by doing her "dot, dot, dots".

She is "kissing" a thank-you in this photo.

To stay with the green theme, I pulled out this dollar Crayola puzzle. I mostly did it myself but I did have help from Vada. Vada turned all of the pieces over so that the photo side was correctly facing up, she also handed me the pieces and then when it was time to clean up she picked up all of the pieces and put them into the box.

Before we put the puzzle away, we did talk about all of the green objects on the puzzle. We did all of the signs that we knew, sounds that we could think of to go with the objects and then I asked Vada to find certain things for me.

I choose this puzzle because it had a dinosaur on it and this is where the green theme came from! I pointed out the dinosaur specifically to Vada and said "Look Vada, a dinosaur! 'D' is for dinosaur and 'D' is our letter today!"

I then pointed out the green crayon. It was perfect for our next activity.

Learning Resources and this great color recognition game where each crayon is filled with corresponding colored items. Vada loves the Alphabet Soup Cans and the 1-10 Counting Cans, so I knew that these would be a perfect addition to our classroom and for her learning style.

This crayon had a vine and a bug, celery, grapes, a Christmas tree, frog and a grasshopper!

Next, we did Dino counting with clothes pins. I had these prepared ahead of time. I would first count the pins out loud, I did this while I was still holding the card. Then, I would point to the number on the dinosaur card before I handing the card to Vada so that she could remove the pins. While she was removing the pins I would count them each outloud.

'D' is for dog! So we played a bone matching game that had a dog that we named "Ruff" (although, I think that "Ruff" is suppose to be his name anyway, hence the name above the dogie door).

This game is intended to be a tactile and matching game. We used it as that today and only highlighted a little on the "D" aspect of it when we found Ruff in the mix of the bones in his dog house.

We also brought out our Alphabet Soup can for letter 'D' and discovered what was inside of this can.

I think I mentioned earlier that Vada thoroughly enjoys these activities..?

I had a small water sensory bin already planned for Vada. We had the tweezers from another kit and the grow pills I purchased from a local Dollar Tree, so this bin was very inexpensive and Vada really liked playing in it.

After bath time, while I got Vada ready for bed, all of us sat down and watched a couple videos from this DVD.

And then (because we always read at least one story before naps and bedtime) we read a story from this book. And that was our final day of letter 'D'.

Digging for Dinosaurs

Our first activity yesterday was another sensory bin. I wanted to do it in our new sand bin but Vada wasn't too fond of the sand, so I thought that I would do it in the rainbow sand that I made a few months ago. She really likes this bin and later this week I may try playing in one of our raised beds that hasn't had anything planted in it yet.

For today's sensory bin I had an archaeologist dinosaur dig in mind. I actually had this sensory bin in mind since the beginning of last month! I told you, I have really been looking forward to letter 'D'!

I brought out a bunch of kitchen utensils that I had bought last summer from a dollar store especially for these occasions. Vada seemed to enjoy using them.

Along with the "dinosaur skeletons" (which I found on Amazon and it was the best $6.58 that I have spent in a long time!), I also added in some "dinosaur fossils" -you know, for authenticity. *wink*wink* I also ordered the fossils from Amazon as well. I do a lot of my shopping through Amazon.

I also threw in some paint brushes to use as our cleaning brushes. Again, I was trying to keep it real. (Never mind the rainbow rice.)

After Vada had her first job as an archaeologist  we took some of the dinosaurs over to one of the desks and got with play-doh we experimented with different impressions that we could make, including the tracks.

While Vada was entertaining herself with this project, I was warming up some Crayola Air Dry Clay. I wanted Vada to help me make one more impression. In a couple of days, when the clay has fully dried, I will bring out the paint and let her paint this "fossil".

We worked on some of the curriculum from Letter of the Week starting with the Do-A-Dot letter 'D' page.

Vada is getting much, much better at getting the sponge tippers into the circles!

Check out how centered she was able to get the dotter below!

Obviously, there is a lot of progress to be made but hey, she is only three years old, so I would say that this is pretty great! And maybe I am being biased (and that's okay) but I happen to admire those who think and in this case, color, outside the box (or circles).

The end of the school year is always busy around our house. My older two girls are public schooled so they have a lot of "end of the year" activities to go to. Therefore, this week has been pretty busy. Yesterday, Vada had OT therapy in the morning which is when we typically do classes because I don't like to not be unavailable to my other girls when they are home from their schooling times. However, yesterday they got out of school early and also had chores to do and I didn't have to prepare dinner because of a family activity at our church so while the older two girls were doing their chores, Vada and I went down to the classroom to do some letter 'D' learning. 

We were in the middle of another craft when Kiliegh came down to tell me that she had finished with her chores and asked if she could help Vada -for a minute. (Literally, her attention span was only that and then she was off doing her own thing again!) 

Together, they started coloring a letter 'D' that Vada and I had just cut out together with her loop scissors.

After coloring seemed to no longer hold Vada's attention we moved on to pasting.

I usually have our classes prepared a week ahead of time now, for crafts such as this one, its not unusual for me to prepare it the night before. I actually had the pieces of construction paper precut and ready for Vada to grab and paste as she was going for this activity (other than the letter 'D'). For now, at her skill level, I felt this was a good way to begin doing a project of this size with her. We will continue to work on cutting more each week and pasting and eventually she will be doing it all on her own.

I would start by putting a piece down, such as a "green triangle" and then ask her to do the next one, after placing a gob of glue down, she would use her pointer and push the triangle into its place. She did the same thing with the googly eyes.

And then after completing her dinosaur picture she proudly walked it over to her I Did That Wall to show me where she wanted me to put it.

We ended our class time with some dino math.

This is an activity that we do at least once a week, usually in theme, this week being dinosaurs. Vada is getting really good at the process and knowing what it is that I want her to do, so today I added an extra step at the end. Everything was the same as usual, I would Say the number, point to the numeral on the dinosaur, count the clips out loud and then hold the card for Vada so that she could take off the clips and place them into the bowl. The final step added was that I would then hand her the dinosaur and she would put it into a new pile, upside down.

We did the process with the new step for the first few cards like it was no big deal and then Vada began getting very upset with me. I thought it was because she wanted to take more than one clip at a time and I am a stickler and make her do one at a time, for now. She was smacking her hands on the desk, raising her voice and over all just mad. My tolerance level with her is something I am pretty proud of (then again, she is just really an easy going child). She doesn't overwhelm me in her "moments" and I am typically able to quickly figure out what she wants when she is unable to vocalize it because I am able to keep my cool and just read her. 

Today it took a couple of minutes for me to figure her wants out but I finally did, it was a moment that told me that I must be doing something right because she was learning. 

She was trying to tell me (or so I assume because once she got this she was content) that she could do all of the steps of this counting activity on her own and without my assistance. I handed her a fully loaded dinosaur and one by one she pulled off the clothes pins and placed them into the bowl and once they were all on the bowl, she flipped the dino upside down and put it into the correct pile. then she signed more! All I did was count out loud while she removed the pins!

What a great way to end our lessons! I am one proud Mama!