Recovering

We are all recovering. Me from surgery, David from his seasonal job (between his regular job and that one he was working 60 hours per week) and all of us from the holidays. We took a small break from official preschool with Blueberry. Nonna and Daddy filled in a lot of the instruction while I was recovering.

Blueberry is getting really good at recognizing letters so we are now working on lower-case letters. She recognizes numbers and counts to 10 (sometimes skipping a number). She loves to do file folder games and we have been reading a lot. She got a lot of books for Christmas so we have been going through them all.

She has discovered she likes pancakes with "syrpup", also "waf waf" with "syrpup" are great! She got a Dora (the Explorer) shaped pillow for Christmas who has become our second daughter. Blueberry makes sure that Dora has her food and drink and blankie when it is time to sleep. She talks to her and for her. She nods her head for her and does the sign language for please with Dora's hand on Dora's chest. It is fun to watch her pretend with the Dora doll. She interacts with her more than any other doll or toy, though she really loves her baby dolls too.

I am facing a challenge with her academically. She seems to be pretty advanced with shape, letter and number recognition. I do not want to push her to learn how to read, nor do I know how to lead her into it so early, but I think she would really enjoy it and may be able to learn by her 3rd birthday. She is very interested in learning and reading so I don't want to hold her back either.

I was so excited that we were able to get a cabinet for her homeschool stuff with some of our Christmas money. I was able to organize everything to have on hand for her but also have a locking mechanism so she can't get into it unsupervised. It has freed up a lot of our office as well as reduced chaos. I can now see the floor!

I am excited about this year and all that we will accomplish together.

Happy New Year!

Christmas 2011

Giggles

We are going through names of body parts with Blueberry. I ask her where her elbow is, she sticks her arm out straight, looks at it and says "uh oh!" with furrowed brow. There is a pause, she bends her arm then she goes "heh, there it is!"

Homeschool: Preschool

These are some of the activities we did last week:

-- Reading: Abbie's Book of Shapes, Cookie's Book of Numbers, Muppet Nursery Rhymes ABCs, Curious George's First Words at the Zoo and First Words at the Farm.

-- Coloring with washable markers, Frog and bee pictures. We spelled her name many times.

-- Traced shapes. www.preschoolmath.info

-- Apple Color Matching File Folder Game

-- Shape Matching File Folder Game (made my own)

-- Colored Halloween Pumpkin and Cat pictures to decorate the front window.

-- We sang and danced to children's songs

-- Did patterns with Nonna with the chalk outside. Nonna makes patterns and Blueberry continues them.

-- Playing blocks with Daddy is becoming a daily routine. They talk about the letters and colors on the blocks.

-- Health: We incorporated fluoride-free toothpaste in the pre-bed routine. Blueberry loves brushing her teeth every night and yells "yay!" as we run down the hall to the bathroom when I say it is time to brush our teeth.

-- C is for Caterpillar with the numbers 1-9

Homeschool Log: Preschool

We are starting a new nap schedule today so I was trying to keep her busy so I could put her down later today. For the last week or two Blueberry has been able to go down at her usual nap time but refusing to take an afternoon nap, indicating that she might be transitioning to one nap. However, the first nap is not lasting her until bedtime, so we end up putting her down earlier which makes her a very early riser (before the sun). SOooooo.... We're trying the noon nap. I kept her up until after lunch then she slept for three hours and it worked out perfect. We are truly blessed with how well she sleeps and how easy her needs are to read.

-- We colored fish pictures. She loves "ish"!

-- Butterfly Numbers Practice. I have this printed out, laminated and on a ring like a flip book. She doesn't trace them yet, but we flip through them and I sing through the numbers 1-10, then backwards like a song we heard on Sesame Street. She asked me to repeat this many times, then she wanted to flip the book for me to sing. It was a fun game.

-- I wrote the Alphabet on paper with a crayon as I sang the Alphabet song. She wanted me to repeat the song many times. We went through it once where she repeated the letter back to me after I said it. She is starting to recognize some letters, though not consistently.

-- Sang the Stegosaurus song. She has been favoring the dinosaur toys in the last few days.

-- When we played with blocks I pointed out the letters.

-- I let her watercolor paint while I washed dishes.

Daddy Time

Homeschool Log: Preschool

-- Apple Color Matching File Folder Game. Blueberry did this three times, asking to do it "more", and her matching was more precise each time. There are several shades of each color and I was impressed by her distinction between shades. We talked about the names of the colors but she did not need my help differentiating. I did not tell her it was wrong if she put green on the wrong shade of green, for instance. She would correct herself if she put it on not-quite-the-right color.

--We made a Fall Tree by gluing leaf shapes on a

construction paper tree. I drew lines for the tree trunk and cut the top part out of green construction paper. The leaf cutouts were using a leaf-shaped punch from the craft store. Blueberry learned the word "leaf" and "tree" and I told her that in the fall the leaves fall off the tree like we see outside. Blueberry glued some leaves on individually and then we put a lot of glue all over the tree and ground and let her sprinkle the leaves on the paper. We shook off the ones that didn't stick and then sprinkled them on again. She loved doing this over and over.