F is for Fish - 5/13/11

Free play activities today were puzzles and a Chutes and Ladders game. We had park day today so we didn't have much time at home in the morning. That meant free play time went quicker and we moved on to school after their game was done.

More preschool, I took out something new. I have a set from Lakeshore Learning called I Can Build Simple Words.  It has 3 letter words on cards with pictures and then letters that can be laid on the cards. They had a fun time finding the right letters to match the cards. Freddie was taking it a step further by really trying to hear the beginning sounds and thinking about what letter that would be and asking me the letters he didn't know.

Next I had them take the color/number Fish from Wednesday and lay them out in a line in order from 1 to 10. Then I gave them some counters and let them go at it. I wanted to see if by now they could do this on their own. Freddie went right to it. He did not get stuck until #6 when he asked me what number it was. I reminded him he needed to start with number 1 and count his way up to find out what number he was on and from that point on he was able to finish on his own. Flossie got #1, and then put 3 on #2. I reminded her what we were doing and how to do it. She then successfully did #2 and #3, but after that wasn't able to do the rest without help.  This is still a challenging task for her for her age. I am going to have her just work on numbers 1 through 5 until she perfects those. While they did that, Jem did some copywork out of his phonics reader, he was thrilled that he read this one through on the second time. This was his first time doing copywork in that way. I told him he just had to pick one sentence to copy. He had to look for a sentence that started with a capital letter and ended with some type of punctuation mark.  Here is a good discussion of why you should do copywork in the first place. I do it because I like both the Charlotte Mason and the Well Trained Mind methods of homeschooling.  He did well with it for day 1 :)

Next we worked on our feet activities! First I traced their Feet on some paper and just put out some markers so they could decorate them however they wanted to. That was to keep them busy while the others were having their turns making their clay casts of their Feet. After all of that, we headed outside to paint with our Feet. It wasn't too much of a mess :)  By that time, it was time to head over to the park for park day.  Another busy day gone by!