Back to Community Helpers

We don't have any pictures of us actually doing our work from the rest of the week since George Sr. took my camera with him to India. 

We ended up not getting much done Friday.  The kids weren't feeling well and ended up napping all afternoon (despite neither of them being nappers in the normal course of things).  We did discuss Firefighters using activities from Teacher Book Bag (available on http://www.currclick.com/) and watched Elmo Visits the Firehouse video.  I think we'll need to return to this topic in the future with a Fire Safety unit.

Since George Sr. was away in India and it was way too cold out to go anywhere, we decided we would continue to do school on Saturday.

First, we read The Berenstein Bears Learn About Strangers  since Georgie loves to talk to everyone and anyone he sees.  We discussed who you should call if you get lost or need help.   Then, we did our Teacher Book Bag information on Police Officers.  Turns out Georgie was afraid of police since "they put you in jail" so I'm glad we discussed this.  We took our fingerprints and looked at them under a magnifying glass.  We tried to look at them using the Eye Clops they received for Christmas but the magnification was too strong.  We did end up playing with it for awhile looking at other things - skin, hair, stuffed animals, feathers, etc.  It's really neat but works best on things that are relatively flat.  We watched a Sesame Street video on police.

We read the Teacher Book Bag information on Mail Carriers and made collages out of stamps we printed off.   We used this for cutting practice since the stamps printed out with 20 on a sheet of paper.  I cut them into strips and then let the kids separate them.   We discussed the post office - which we visit fairly frequently since I belong to Paperbackswap.com and have to go mail books.  When we do Valentine's Day, I'm planning to have them make valentines to mail to the grandparents and we'll talk more about the post office when we go there to mail them.  We finished up watching a couple of Sesame Street videos on the post office.

Our last Community Helper was the doctor.  Georgie absolutely hates going to the doctor, whether its for a check-up or a sick visit.  He fights it every inch of the way.  I'm hoping by discussing it and playing doctor, it may help.  We did the Homeschool Share "Taking Care of Me" booklet and discussed how to stay healthy.  We watched a few Sesame Street videos on going to the doctor (can you tell I recently discovered the online Sesame Street videos?) and then played doctor.  The kids have a Fisher Price doctor kit and we went through each item discussing how it was used by the doctor and why it was important.   Then the kids played with the kit, some dolls and some bandaids.  This was a big hit.  They had a great time playing, especially with the bandaids.  I guess I won't know if it helped any until the next time we need to go to the doctor but I'm hopeful.

We finished up by doing Lessons 3 and 4 in our Math Enrichment Programme.  Georgie really likes these activities.  So far, its all pretty much review but I'm hoping he'll continue to like it when it gets harder.  It has a nice mix of physical activities, discussion and writing that seems good for him.

We also did a review of our -at word family since we haven't done much phonics since before the Holidays.  I'm trying to use a mix of stuff so he doesn't get bored.  We read In My Hat from http://www.hubbardscupboard.com/ and he was able to read the whole thing himself.  He did a fill in the letter worksheet from http://www.kidzone.ws/ and a tracing page with the words: at, bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat and sat.  He seems to have these down pretty good so next week we're going to start with the -ad word family, with sight word activities added in as we have time.

I've been trying to really mix up our activities so that the kids aren't bored and they are learning in different ways.  Both of them love to play games but neither of them are good at following the rules.   We did find a game that works really well for both of them with little modification.  They recieved the game Sequence for Kids for Christmas.  The idea is to draw cards with animals on them and match the pictures to those on the game board until you get four in a row.   I removed the unicorn (free space) and dragon (take another players space) cards and we didn't stop at four in a row but filled in the whole grid.  Vicki ended up knowing a lot more animals than I would've thought.  Georgie may end up getting bored if we play this a lot so I may make it so he has to answer a question or read a word before putting a card down, or do them in ABC order, or something. 

Next week:  Monday and Tuesday we're going to discuss Groundhogs Day and hibernation.  The rest of the week we are going to discuss Chinese New Year.

Community & Community Helpers

This week we are going to continuing studying Communities and begin on Community Helpers.

We started by sorting pictures of different objects (cars, buildings, people) into different types of communites - Suburban, Urban and Rural (town, city and country).  This project came from Teacher Book Bags (available from http://www.currclick.com/).  We colored in maps showing the streets and buldings in a community.  We read On the Town by Judith Caseley, which is a wonderful introduction to places and people in a community.

We've started a new Math curriculum with Georgie.   We are using a free program developed in England and Hungary called the "Mathematics Enhancement Programme".  So far Georgie likes it a lot - it has a nice mix of elements - physical activities, songs, writing pages, and discussion.

I'm trying to add a lot more games into our program.  We have a bunch of file folder games plus we received some new games for Christmas that should fit in nicely.  This week we played:  Winter Dominos (printed from DLTK-cards.com), Dr. Seuss ABC Stretch (similar to twister with letters and letter sounds), Picture/Letter match (file folder game), Fishing with Rover sight word game (file folder game from Frogever Smart Games) and Vicki played a color matching game with Smily Faces.

One of the things the kids received for Christmas was a chalkboard to be mounted on the wall.  I'm trying to find ways to allow them to be creative more often without having to worry about crayon and marker all over the walls, furniture, etc.  We ended up picking up a second one since they are currently not capable of sharing a 2 foot by 3 foot space without fighting.   The two boards are mounted underneath the bulletin boards used to display their school and art work.  The bulletin boards are high enough that they can't reach to pull things off.

Finally!

Since the holidays ended, we've been working on getting things organized, cleaned-up and getting everyone healthy.  The kids had really nasty colds right after the New Year that seem to be taking forever to go away.  We have finally been able to get back into our school schedule.

We've been working on a Community theme.  First we learned about our state - New Jersey.  We marked the location of our house, Granny Franny's house and Gramma Kayes house by gluing arrows to a state map.  We read the section on New Jersey in "Smart About the 50 States".  We also colored sheets with the state bird (Eastern Goldfinch) and flower (violet).  Georgie did a writing/tracing page with our address.  We're going to work with him on learning his address and phone number but I'm sure that's going to be an ongoing project.

We read the Dr. Seuss book "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" and Georgie dictated his own story "I Saw It On O------ Road".  Here's his story:
"A snake pulling a football and a cat pulling a basket with a thing of cookies in the basket......A lion pulling a shoe and a girl singing with a bologna sandwich...and there's more.....An elephant pulling a rock, a little big and enough heavy for the elephant to pull it....a dinosaur pulling a bird and the bird flying and pulling the dinosaur and its a three horn tritops.....and a bat pulling a map.....a pigeon pulling a statue and a sticker with eyes.....a cup with a blanket with a shoe with chalk with a basket."

He also wrote a story with daddy.  Here's his cover page:

And the story goes like this:  "A fish named Webo was friends with a dog named Zappa.  They liked to go to the zoo.  Their favorite animals were the Tigers."

Vicki's been going to a "Tot Fun Time" class at the Y. She gets to sing, dance, play games and do a simple coloring project two days a week.  She's having a lot of fun with it and it gives her time with mom or Georgie thats just for her.  Some of the projects they've done lately:

Next week we're continuing our Community studies with different types of communities and community helpers.