We started our blueberry learning day with worksheets that I downloaded from Homeschool Creations (one of my favorite "go-to" blogs for homeschool ideas and printable's).
The first worksheet's that we did was a pre-writing practice series of sheets. When Vada and I do these, I always do it in steps. The first step is her and I do the practice together, in a hand over hand fashion, my hand over her's. After we have finished all of the pre-writing worksheets I then give her a new color of dry erase marker and give her some free time to "practice" on her own. I feel, by always following the same steps she knows what to expect and what is expected of her and because of this she is also able to be motivated to finish the exercise with me because she thoroughly enjoys her free time to write on her own.
I usually stay seated next to Vada through everything that we do including her free time (for now), I use it as a time to acknowledge verbally what she is doing. Today, I talked about the color of marker we used together and how the blue matched the blueberries and then I told her how she was using the color purple to "write". Once I said that she was "writing" she stopped what she was doing, put her marker down and began to do the ASL sign for "write". She amazing me! Every. single. day!
I surprisingly replied to her signing and once I did she stopped signing and went right back to her writing. She can be very serious about her school work!
Next we played "Where is Little Bear?" This game was created from the some of the characters in Blueberries for Sal, the book that we are rowing this week.
I like to think of this game as a pre-reading and reading comprehension game. I laminated the sheets verses using them in Vada's journal, I saw too much potential in it and wanted to keep the game to use it more than once.
Since Vada is not currently reading independently, I read the cards to her and then I have her a "Little Bear" card and asked her to put him where asked, this is where the reading comprehension comes into play.
Vada needed a lot of direction as to where she was suppose to put "Little Bear", but I didn't expect her to be able to do this on her own, I expected this to be the beginning of many times of playing this game. I was actually very satisfied with her interest and her listening skills while doing this activity and her ability to follow my directions because when it comes down to it, in the very end, Vada did get "Little Bear" where he was suppose to be on each card.
Next we did math with some blueberry counting!
For this activity I reintroduced the numbers 0-5 to Vada and I did it in many different ways to show that numbers come in many different ways.
After looking and the worded numeral and specifically saying "This say's one." I then showed her the numeral cards and said, "This is the number one." Then I showed her the blueberry card(s) and said, "We have one blueberry." Next I would give her a blue pom-pom (our "blueberry" or "pom-berry") and say, "Here is one blueberry." and then I would ask her to put the pom-berry into the blue bucket as I counted out loud. We did the steps for numbers zero through five.
For a craft and as a fine motor activity I had Vada put "blueberries" (or smiley face stickers) onto a picture of a pail that I downloaded from a google photo search.
She really stuck to this activity, HA! and she really concentrated! There was a couple of times that I asked her if she wanted another sticker and she would shake her head "no", but I would coax her and say "Awhh, come on, your doing so well, lets do one more!", and that worked for at least five more times! This is a hard activity for her, especially since she does have such a hard time getting her fingers isolated but like I already mentioned, she really did work through her problems and did a great job!
After she put her blueberries onto the pail, I gave Vada a silver crayon to color the pail with and to kind of give her a break from the hard work that she was doing.
After she was finished coloring, we hung the pail and blueberries on to the "I did That Wall" and it'll stay there until the end of this row. Then i'll take it down to put it into her journal.
We did two crafts today. Our second craft began with us taking 1x1 inch squares of blue tissue paper and polling them into tiny balls, these would be our blueberries later.
Next, I brought out a capital letter "B" that I also printed off from google images and had Vada use her Q-Tip to smear Elmer's glue onto.
As she put on the paste, I began to show her how to put on the "blueberries", only she was more interested in painting with the glue, so it became a two person craft. I did get her to put a couple of blueberries onto the letter "B", but only a couple.
This craft also was hung on the "I Did That Wall" and will be put into her journal. Tomorrow, once the projects have dried we will work on hand over hand cutting together and then re glue each craft to a new colored sheet of paper that will go into her journal book.
For lunch I wasnt overly inventive, in fact we kind of ate very similar to what we had yesterday! We had egg salad sandwiches and fresh blueberries (similar because of the eggs and fresh blueberries).
However, we did try something new, V-8 V-fusion Pomegranate Blueberry juice and for desert, for the girls (I don't do Jello) I made blueberry Jello.
Vada liked the Jello.
