Hello F - F is for Farm - 5/9/11

We started letter F today! Right away Flossie said, "I can make that one!" and proceeded to do just that. Looks like the Raising Rock Stars plan of picking letters that are easiest to write first is working out. Today we did lots of Farm things. We made a big Farm out of wood blocks and then sorted all of our Farm animals identifying each one and talking about what sounds they make and then putting them each in their "pens." For some reason Flossie had a hard time doing this. She didn't seem to know what a lot of the animals were and then didn't get the idea that we were putting all the horses in one pen and then cows in one pen, etc. She does great with sorting other things, so not sure why this was different. I guess because there was more variation in the animals. Who knows? Anyway, she had fun with it which is all that matters.

I had several Farm books out. Flossie and I read The Farm Book and On the Farm and then she looked at all of them for awhile on her own. Freddie didn't want to read today.

Next we had two kind of Farm puzzles - a big floor puzzle and then a smaller wooden puzzle. I again removed several pieces of the wooden puzzle for Flossie and she was excited to be able to put it together that way. For the floor puzzle I sepearated the pieces into sections so that it was easier to do it chunks and Freddie was able to be successful with it that way.

The other two things we had out for free pay were Farm animal stencils and the wooden Fruits and vegetables.  They loved being able to cut up those Fruits!

For table time school we did Fingerprints on the letter F, letter F writing practice with dry-erase markers, and a farm animal matching game from Tot School.  Today for writing practice I had Freddie use a special device on his pen called a Crossover Pencil Grip . He is still really struggling with his pencil grip so when I was at the teacher store I picked one up just to try. He thought it was a little weird but didn't balk too much at using it and it didn't give him any trouble with his writing, so we'll see how it goes.

While the little kids were doing all of this, Scout was listening to her History and Music lectures, working on her Handwriting and Grammar, and doing her Math and Calculadder. Then she did some free-reading. Jem did Math, Handwriting, Calculadder, Handwriting, and Geography. He also started a new Phonics reader and read through the whole thing on the very first try! He was very excited and said, "I think I'm becoming a reader!"