Letter E

For letter E, we shook things up a little bit.

1. This week's home verse was "Keep your tongue from evil.  Psalm 34:13" and Asa made a set of lips and tongue. :)

2.  For the fish, I printed a blank dot markers page and filled in teen numbers in the dots.  Then I told Asa a number the fish wanted to eat and he found it on the fish and dotted it.  It's a great and fun way to practice numeral recognition.

3.  The ladybug has dice representations of numbers.  We played with it similarly to the fish, but with this I told him a number and he had to find the matching picture and cover it with a button.  It's so, so, so good for developing a concept of number and not having to count the number of dots every.single.time.  I LOVE seeing him get the hang of it.  As an elementary school teacher before I was a mom, I KNOW the difference a solid concept of number makes for students.  It thrilled me to see how Asa did with this. :)

4.  We did some simple addition.  I haven't really addressed it formally yet.  Definitely concretely as is appropriate for this age--with pictures or physical items to count.  Again, I was most thrilled to see him circle the (correct! woo hoo!) answer without hesitation.  His number recognition improved over the summer--so much more confidence--and we didn't even do any formal homeschool.  I LOVE how play truly can and does teach children appropriately at this age. :)

5.  Asa did another dot marker letter maze.

6.  To throw in some fine motor and to correspond with his forest animal theme at school, Asa colored owl tummies the colors the owls indicated.  His fine motor is showing more control.... when he feels like it. ;) lol  I think his sister will be our big "colorer."

We also did more "marker work" using page protectors so I can reuse them instead of having to print off fresh sheets all the time.  I complied a binder of pages we can reuse no matter what letter or theme we are looking at and also a few things specific to this week.  He loved using dry erase markers to do the pages. :)  I'll try to post a picture sometime--I'm having technical difficulties getting letter F's off my phone. :)

Letter F

Since we're having fun doing preschool activities together, and I know I spend plenty of time scouring the internet for ideas to do with Asa, I thought I'd try to post now and then about what we've done.  Asa has a letter and theme for each week in his pre-K class, so that has been my launching point.  In particular at this point, I've been trying to narrow in on phonics (he can read simple phonetic words, but is just starting to take the initiative for that on his own sometimes), math, and fine motor activities.... trying to throw in some rules/procedures/following directions in there as well as some Bible verses and plenty PLENTY of FUN! :)

Here's a sampling of how we approached letter F...

1.  We'll often bury several pictures of that things that begin with the letter of the week in a pan of rice.  Asa has another sheet he matches these cards up with as he uncovers them all in the sand.

2.  Asa has a monthly Bible verse at school, so we always go on a hunt for that week's letter in the Bible verse.  Right now he's been highlighting the letter when he sees it.

3.  I choose a different verse for us at home, and he highlights the special letter in that verse as well.  Then he follows step by step pictorial directions to assemble a corresponding picture and glues the verse with it.  These are on cardstock, and we are making a book out of them. :)  For F we did, "Every good gift and every pefect gift is from above.  James 1:17." :)

4.  He used dot markers to follow an F maze of letters.

5.  He identified which numbers a frog was covering on number lines.  He loved this!

6.  He used dot markers again to follow a number maze focusing on 10-20.

7.  He identified the picture in a set that began with the initial /F/ sound.