'C' is for Caterpillar

I have been debating on waiting on the letter 'C' and skipping to another letter or just staying on track. We have caterpillars coming in the mail at the end of this month and this weeks lessons would be perfect for raising caterpillars into butterflies. Obviously, I have decided to just stay on track! I have also decided that if all does go well and our Milkweed plants do attract butterflies (this summer) and they do end up laying their eggs on the leaves then I may do The Hungry Caterpillar lesson all over again in the middle to the end of the summer. For now, I have decided that it is best to keep going straight through the alphabet this first time around.

Our letter of the week is letter 'C' and 'C' is for caterpillar. 

Our Memory Bible Verse is from Ephesians 6:1, Children obey your parents in the Lord; for this is right.

Letter of the Week (aka LOTW ) is a program that I purchased through Confessions of a Homeschooler.

We read from Big Thoughts...

I can not express enough, my love of this book! It is SO good! We read it everyday that we do lessons. The short stories are engaging and there is always wonderful questions about how we should behave and more importantly, how God expects us to behave. The pictures are very active and it seems as if we are always finding something new in them. Plus, most of the things that can be found in the pictures go along with the pages letter, like 'C' is for carnival, clown, cage, camel and cotton candy. 

We then moved onto one of Vada's favorite weekly activities. The Magnet page.

Today we used Power Magnets that I ordered from Amazon.

Vada also did her caterpillar lacing activity but she needs assistance with that and it is far more important to give her the attention she needs to be successful at her work than it is for me to get photos of her struggling through something. I will try to remember to get a photo of the actual lacing card later this week though. Erica, from Confessions of a Homeschooler makes some really cute stuff and I am a fan of the lacing cards, even though little Miss V. is not.

To go along with the Caterpillar theme we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Vada is very familiar with this book, it was the book that inspired her third birthday party!

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One if Vada's gifts from us was this caterpillar beanie, he's going to help us with some of our lessons this week.

Next we worked on colors and food with these fun printables that I downloaded for free from 1+1+1=1.

We worked on sight word reading from the foods that the caterpillar in the book ate.

For this lesson I laid three photos in front of Vada. I then asked her which one she wanted to do. Typically she would just point to the picture that she wanted me to get the matching word for. Sometimes if she was board and feeling frisky she would use her nose and sometimes she would really surprise me and attempt to make the sound or even say the word. "Lollipop" was the word that impressed me the most. She would get the 'L' sound out there and then follow it up with a forceful "pop!". It was great and a great effort on her part. I was really proud of her work with reading today.

After Vada choose her picture we would put it into an open slot and then I would get the matching word out and show it to her, then read it to her out loud so that she could hear it and then I would place it next to its photo. At the very end when all of the slots on one side was full we would go back through the photos along with the words and then we went to the other side and continued the process. 

'B' is For Butterfly: Day One

We are starting day one of week two of Letter of the Week by Confessions of a Homeschooler and this week we will be focusing on letter 'B'. I think that I have mentioned before that I plan on going through this curriculum more than one time, probably more than two times and the next time around I will begin with the vowels first and then the consonants but this time I am going straight through the alphabet in order -being the first my first time using this curriculum, I want to get a real feel for it.

Our subject is Butterflies and our Memory verse is from Acts 16:13 Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and Thou shalt be saved.

After spending some time focusing just on the letter 'B' card and then the Bible verse we moved on to our reading of the week, this is from a book called Big Thoughts for Little People. This book also has a alphabetical theme which fits right into our Letter of the Week "theme"! Everyday we read the same page, this week, you guessed it, we will be reading from page 'B'

The picture page that goes along with the reading is always fun as well! It is full of things that begin with the letter of the reading, so as the week goes on (or depending on the age of the child you are reading to) I can point out to Vada more and more things that begin with the letter 'B' and have some confidence that she will understand better what it is that I am saying to her. 

The picture page also has things in it, like this one for example, two girls fighting and two dogs sharing, then reading then points out these two situations and asks the reader to think about it. Who is being nice? How does God want us to behave? When I read these questions to Vada, I give her a second to process what I am asking and then I answer my own question out loud. For example, I said something along the lines of "Oh, those girls are being naughty, God doesn't want us to argue or fight with each other. It's much better to share like those nice little puppies are doing." I make a conscious effort to point to what it is that I am talking about as well.

Next, we went onto the 'B' coloring page. Before I let Vada do independent coloring, I assist her in tracing the upper and lower case letter in the corner of the pages. She isn't too thrilled about this but as time goes on I am confident that she will grow to understand that this is what comes first and what is expected.

She does love to color!

We worked on size sorting. I was really impressed. First, she wasn't into this at all. She threw the biggest five or six mini fits (That's a whole lot of yelling, tears and some smacking on the table all in a thirty second time frame.) in her attempt to resist doing this activity. At first I was like, whats wrong with my poor baby..? And all concerned. But as I continued to watch her I realized she was just being SUPER stubborn! How did I come to this conclusion? 

Well, in my first attempts to calm Vada I went from having all of the butterfly shapes in front of us to only one at a time. The remaining ones were left on our left hand side and then once Vada had placed correct shape onto the correct size I would flip it over and place it above the chart.

I figured out that Miss V. was being stubborn or Miss Smarty Pants because instead of placing the correct butterflies onto the correct sizes she would take them from my hand, make them fly around, flip them over and put them in the "all done" pile above the chart! What a stinker! Finally, I got her to do it the right way and she really did a pretty great job! So, it was her cleverness that impressed me as well as her improvement compared to last week in this same area.

We began working with the milk cap alphabet sheets. Hopefully, by next weeks letter I will be using something other than milk caps! While the milk caps are a great idea and free (which is great!) they take up too much room and I have none to spare! For now, they work and that's what we are using!

In the picture below, Vada is doing her sign for butterfly. 

I make a little game out of the milk cap sheets. After introducing the sheets and caps and letting Vada mess with them on her own for a few minutes, I flip them all upside down. I have her pick one up at a time, flip it over to reveal the letter and then put it into my my hand. I then say the letter out loud, I then sing the Leap Frog Letter song that goes with whatever letter I am holding. 

We practiced pre-handwriting, which is Vada least favorite thing to do because she has to have me help her before she gets to independently write on her own and she is an independent kind of girl!

I try to only lightly guide her hands. I really want her to feel what it is that she should be doing. This can be frustrating for her but to me, having her tiny little hand in mine, ours making one fluid motion like this is very soothing. Someday, Vada will be writing on her own and I will be able to sit back and say, "I taught her that." What an amazing gift God and my husband has given to me!

Again, after we do all of the pre-writing together, Vada gets her independent writing time! It's only fair.

We finished up day one by reading Beautiful Butterflies. 

Justin's Aunt gave this book to Vada a couple of years ago and I have read it so many times I should have it memorized by now! Good thing I like it and that I enjoy reading! I really do enjoy both, the book is good for color recognition, rhyming, textures (Some butterflies have foil wings to feel), sounds (the crunch of the foil paper wings) and colors. The book is sturdy because it is a board book, so it has held up through a lot of Vada's love! 

After I read Beautiful Butterflies to Vada, she read it to me...

Rainbow Fish and Letter 'A': Day Two

 After our normal morning routine, singing the 'A' song and going over our memory verse of the week (Romans 3:23), I read from a book that I forgot to mention in yesterdays post. Big Thoughts for Little People: ABC's to Help you Grow by Kenneth N. Taylor is such a great addition to the Letter of the Week, in my opinion, I just had to make it part of our curriculum.

Each page is a letter of the alphabet and also has a bit of a memory verse (wrote in a way that young children can understand) as well as a description of whats going on in the picture. It then asks a couple of questions like, If the bears in the picture could talk what would they be thankful for? Just because Vada isn't extremely vocal yet, I don't assume that the wheels inside her noggin' aren't spinnin'! So I often do the talking and thinking out loud. The bear question was one that was asked and I answered it by pointing to the bears and telling Vada to also look at them. I of course counted them (more by habit than anything) and then pointed out that they were having a tea party and that maybe they would be thankful to God for their tea party. I then asked Vada what she was thankful for. Giving her an extra second to process the question and even answer it if she wanted to or could, I waited and after a few seconds I began to give her things that maybe she might be thankful for like her Daddy, her Sisters, her toys and so on. I then said things that I was thankful for and ended it with being thankful for her and gave her a big squeeze and kiss.

When I was reading to her I read that the dad in the picture was praying with his two children and Vada immediately bowed her head and started to say her own prayer. Love it! Love it! Love it!

We began our Letter of the Week curriculum with some pre-handwriting! This is a first for Vada, other than the coloring and free scribbling that she does.

I had to help guide Vada's hand over the "dots" to connect and make the letters correctly and there was some resentment here and there on Vada's part but over all she was interested enough in accomplishing this task that she let me help her and together we did it! I am very curious how many letters/weeks of pre-writing we will have to do together before she will be able to do this on her own. It's very exciting stuff for me!

Letter  of the Week Curriculum was created by and purchased from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

After we did the letter both twice, we erased the sheet completely and I let Vada have a go at it all on her own and with no help from me. 

After pre-writing we moved onto Jasmine's pom pom magnets. 

And then we worked on a six piece 'A' is for Apple puzzle.

Were continuing with The Rainbow Fish as our book of the week and since I know how much my girl loves her Goldfish crackers and I planned on using them for our next project, I thought that I would give some to Vada as a snack while I was rereading our story today. My hopes was to curve her appetite for these tasty little crackers so that I could use them for our lesson...

One.

One, is how many fish crackers I was able to get Vada to put on to the fish bowls! I did the rest in my attempt to show her what I wanted her to do. She just kept shoveling those darn crackers in! Oh, I don't know what I was thinking! I should have known, she is only three and these are, by far, her favorite snacks! Too funny! Too funny! 

I originally found these fishbowls on Pinterest but was sent to Celebrate Everyday With Me for the free printables.

 Today we also watched "Meet the Letters", a DVD that specifically focuses on the letters of the alphabet. Yesterday we watched a Leap Frog movie and that one focused on the letters and sounds, which I love! However, Meet the Letters only focuses on showing the letters in a preparatory fashion and in different fonts and colors so that the child or children who are watching the video can learn to identify the letters in different settings, which is also an important factor when teaching reading to all children but especially and importantly in the beginning of learning the letters, with children who have Down syndrome.

After the Letters video we did a fish craft. I stepped away from Vada about midway through the video to "sculpt" a fish body out of Crayola air-dry clay and set some pieces of decorations on the pan for her to fancy up the fish with.

Then we went color fishing!

Its been awhile since we've had this game out. I got it from Lakeshore Learning about a year ago and its been maybe that long! I got to admit, I really like the concept and the fish in this game but the bowl is pathetic! It is so flimsy and floppy and just out of shape! It came that way too, which made me disappointed from the very beginning! But you make the best of what you have and so I changed the game a little by putting the fish onto the desk and having Vada "catch" them from there and then remove them from the pole and place them into the bowl.

Vada really likes playing this fishing game, although she would much rather pick up the fish with her hands than to use the pole but I make her use the pole -it's good for her.

We ended up playing two rounds of color fishing.

Everyday, we end our day by reading this alphabet book. Kids Like Me... Learn ABC's. I like this book for many reasons. Almost all of the children have Down syndrome (with the exceptions of some who have siblings with them) and another off of the top of my head is that the book shows the sign for each of the letters.

After we read the Alphabet book together I take the pointer and sing the Alphabet song while pointing to each letter as I sing it. After I have finished the song then Vada gets her turn to point while I sing. She is starting to hum a little and sway back and forth when I sing which is pretty exciting for me. Vada likes using the pointer and has a really hard time waiting until the end of the song but its funny because she knows when the end of the song comes for her that she is suppose to put the pointer back on top of the counter, and she does!

Today we added the uppercase letter 'A' and the lowercase letter 'a'. When it was Vada's turn to use the pointer, I asked her to point to the Letter of the week, the letter 'A' and she did! I was super proud!