Wednesday Preschool: Airplanes

For preschool today, the kids pretended to pack, board, and fly an airplane. Laura (Chelsie's mom) had all the chairs set up in rows and labeled them.  They each had a ticket (Robert is going to Hawaii) and a seat assignment.  Laura was going to make them picture IDs but got the pictures printed too late. 

 Here's Robert's suitcase with cut out items that he would need.

They got to take turns being the pilot, but Laura said Robert just wanted to stay in HIS seat.

I'm so glad I have other mom's to do preschool with because I would have never thought about this idea (and it would be hard with just Robert and I).

Morning Devotional: Ears (part 2)

We were only able to do morning devotional once this week.  Most of the time was spent making these shakers that I filled with rice.  The shakers were a big hit, which was a little tough because I didn't have enough time to let the glue dry.  Thankfully they didn't fall apart! I also went over the Sunbeam's lesson again and Robert was a little more responsive.

Monday Preschool: Airplanes

Preschool was at Chelsie's house this week.  The topic was airplanes. So, they made this paper airplane and were flying them in the front yard, when I can to pick Robert up.  Robert had a lot of fun, it was hard to get him to leave.

Kindregarten: Week 3

The highlight of this week is that Hailey had snack and show-and-tell day. Hailey had a tough day at school on Tuesday. It was so bad that Mrs. Thomas came to me after school and said that Hailey was emotional about everything and suggested that Hailey needed more sleep.  (Hannah didn't sleep well and kept everyone up). However, she was wearing her show-and-tell sign and was so excited for the following day.

I suggested that Hailey should bring Lambie, but surprisingly she choose My Little Pony. Hailey wanted us to a "dress rehearsal" of her show-and-tell.  She told us we can ask one question each, then she would talk more about pony.  So we asked: what's her name? -rainbow hair pony, where did she get it?-Christmas (real answer is for her 4th birthday), who gave it to her? -Santa (real answer is her friend Emily (Trista's daughter). Then she told us a huge story about flying in clouds.

Hailey had a great show-and-tell day.  She brought granola bars, (I gave her 40 bars (2 boxes) even though they only asked for 30, expecting the extras to come back home, but they didn't.) the kids asked a lot of questions about pony, and she was even Mrs. Thomas' helper.

Here is Hailey's schoolwork that she brought home for the week.

The blue thing is a small cat, and the big picture is Hailey dressed up as a cat.  I think they talked about big and small this week.

 This picture is of Hailey and Audrey flying a kite next to a tall building.  The words are "We like to fly a kite."

 Here's the back side that she doodled on. It's of Hailey and Audrey holding hands under an umbrella. The small drawing in the left corner is a house, and the big blue/purple drawing is a volcano erupting. But don't worry, Hailey and Audrey didn't get hurt because they had the umbrella.

 They practiced writing the letter B. The circled letters are the ones she did really well on. She also struggles a little with lowercase b's and d's. 

 Hailey wrote see how people grow on little card stripes, cut them out, then pasted them on the paper. The picture around the words, has something to do with a long ladder, a booby trap, a treasure box, and a swing set.  It was a very involved story that Hailey described.

 I bet this picture was in correlation to a book they read.  Hailey wrote, When I was small (under a shorter person) now I am big (by the tall person). There is a rainbow between the two people.

She also had a writing practice that I'm guessing she didn't finish.  Hailey said they were supposed to write words that rhymed with Hat.

Blue Rice

On Thursdays, we have library time at 10:00am. So after morning devotional, I pulled out the blue rice so Hannah and Robert could play with it.  I'm completely new at the whole sensory tub idea, and really can't go out and buy cool things for them to find in the rice, so I just gave them kitchen toys to see what they would do.

Hannah first tried eating it (remember it's uncooked rice). It seemed like she got over that quickly and played with it instead. She used her hands to more the rice from one container to the next.  She made a huge mess and most of her rice ended up on the floor. 

 Robert pulled out more kitchen toys, like the mini cupcake pan, and pretended to make food.

It was a good activity to let them do. It works on their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. Also I kept telling myself not to worry about the rice on the floor because I can allows vacuum it up and make more rice.   I get the rice from Winco which is only $0.50 a pound! Little did I know that my vacuum would decide to not suck up anything that day.

Morning Devotional: Ears

I'm not too sure about the "success" of our devotionals.  It seemed like when I started this with Hailey and Robert (who were roughly the same age as Robert and Hannah is now), there was some kind of connection and Hailey would answer the questions with me. 

Robert and Hannah colored their ears the whole time I tried to discuss how important our ears are. (If I didn't give them the sheets, they would have not stayed at the table at all).  We talked about people who are hearing impaired, and sign language, and the story of Jesus healing the deaf man and how happy he was to hear again.  Robert did answer a little about what sounds he could hear and when I asked who made our ears, he said Jesus and Heavenly Father. 

Hopefully, I can be consistent enough for these mini lessons to work out.  I know they are learning even if they don't act like it.

Random Wednesday Activities

So our Wednesday went like this:

After we went on our walk to drop Hailey off at school, we played with Paint Dots and Robert put polka dots on his Ps as his preschool homework. Something that I forgot to note in the previous post about this, is that Robert started to mixed the colors. He would put blue on top of yellow and be so excited when it turned green. So we were able to talk about a lot of different colors.

 Then we had our morning devotional. After that we went on another walk to take Robert to preschool and Hannah and I went to get rice at Winco for another activity we'll talk about later.

After preschool, we have about an hour before it's time to pick up Hailey, so we played with play dough (yeah, a P word!)

 Hannah likes the play dough containers a little better than the play dough itself.

 After a good 1/2 hour or so of that, I made them clean up and go outside.  Generally, I just sit on a chair and watch them play, but today Robert was interested in his soccer ball. So, Robert and I kicked the ball to each other and then started to play keep away.  He laughed the whole time we played and would randomly yell "SCORE" when he got close to a fence, or the sandbox, or the porch.  He is definitely going into soccer in the spring/summer again.

 Then Robert rode his scooter to pick up Hailey (he is much better at a scooter then Hailey is).  I made cupcakes the night before so after lunch the kids got to frost and decorate them.

Hannah loved destroying the cupcake better than eating it.

 Finally, it was nap time and I was ready for it. Hannah and I nap together upstairs while Hailey and Robert watch Dora, Diego, or BusyTown on Netflix through the Wii.

When I woke up, I had Hailey and Robert help me make colored rice. It's 2c of rice (any uncooked rice should work), 1tsp of rubbing alcohol, and then the food color, stir, the spread out to dry.  Our goal is to make 2 cups of every color of the rainbow and use them in sensory tubs for Hannah when Robert is at preschool. Robert got to pick which color we did today and picked blue.

 It was a very busy day that I devoted to playing with the kids.  Not everything went smoothly, I was exhausted by the end of the day, and my house was a wreck but being with the kids is very important to me. 

Devotional: We are thankful for Hands

I've been wanting to add a little devotional time with Hannah and Robert for a while.  When I did this with Robert and Hailey it seemed like I was able to handle the day better (not that the days were easier just they way I handled them).

So we started where I left off in the Primary Sunbeam's manual with I am thankful for my hands.  Since I have two activity books to go with the manual, we do each lesson twice.  Months ago I did the first half, so today I was able to just open up the book and do the lesson again with a new craft with no preparation. 

Hannah and Robert did not have the attention span at all, so they just colored while I tried to cover the lesson.  They did however enjoyed their hand bracelets.

Wednesday Preschool: Boats and P

This Wednesday, I had a lot of energy (Hannah slept well the night before), so the kids and I did a lot of activities together.  We have an hour inbetween the time we take Hailey to school and when preschool starts, so we worked on Robert's homework.  I have dot paints, so Robert put polkadots on his letter P.

 During preschool, they put together a big boat on posterboard and talked about shapes and colors. They also had a float experiment in the tub (which got Shauna all wet), colored this worksheet, and brought home freshly cut pineapple chucks.  Shauna told them that when they can write their names she will have a special surprise for them.

After Robert came home, we kept noticing and talking about P words, like potty (and potty related words).

Preschool Monday: Boats and P

The kids were at Jenna's house this week. Jenna is the 4th kid out of 5 so her mom has more experience then I do.  They made purple boats and also worked on the letter P.  I'm so impressed with Robert writing the letter P, I didn't think he was ready for that.  They also had homework; to glue things that started with the letter onto a worksheet they gave them.  I'll post about that on Wednesday, since that's when we did the assignment.

Robert enjoys preschool a lot! He is so happy when I pick him up again.

Kindergarten: Week 2

On Thursday, Hailey's school had their Back-to-School night. They had pizza for dinner, then we played outside until it was time to see the classroom.  The neat thing about Hailey's classroom is that there is a boy's bathroom and a girl's bathroom inside the room and it's all kindergarten size.  Hailey says that there is a special potty sign that they do to tell the teacher they have to go. (they shake the T in sign language)

I already met the teacher and was going in to volunteer the next day, so we didn't actually talk to her.  We picked up two of the crafts Hailey worked on and Robert and Hannah played with Lego's that were available.

 Hailey wrote her name 10 times on this sheet of paper (there's more on the back) and she either got tired or distracted but by the end she started leaving some letters out of her name.  I really need to work with her on making a lowercase A in her name instead of the uppercase.  It was actually her friend, Audrey, who told her to do the lowercase e (and Hailey listened).

 They also had this fun name plate that Hailey enjoyed doing.

I think it was great that Nathan had the chance to see Hailey's classroom and teacher at back-to-school night since he really won't have the opportunity to be involved like I do.

Then on Friday I was able to volunteer for an hour during their math center time.  Her schedule as far as I'm able to understand is that early morning they have about 2 hours in reading centers, then they have snack and show and tell time, recess, then an hour of math centers before the Kindergartners leave. (It's a K-1 program).  I got there a little early during their recess time which happened to be inside since it was raining.  They watched Elmo's World for a little bit. Unfortunately, Hailey was very excited when I got there and tripped coming to see me. When she went back to her seat to watch TV, the chair fell on her feet, which hurt a lot.  Poor Hailey!

There were 5 centers that the kids rotated through.  The 1st graders rotated between just two of the tables. At one table, they rolled a die and then graphed which number they got (this must have been the random number graph Hailey had last week). The first graders did this on their own.  The second table they went to was with Mrs. Thomas. 

For the kindergartners, there was a center at the computers, then a table with shape blocks that Hailey said they made a beehive at (it was unattended).  Then there was my table.  I had about 4-5 kids and everyone had little one unit blocks that could interlock.  I then rolled the dice and they show me the correct number of blocks.  It was fun but hard to find ways to change it and keep them engaged.  I had them race, and whoever was the fastest could roll the dice.  We tried making stacks of a certain color.  There was only one boy who said it was boring half way through and refused to play anymore.

Generally, Mrs Thomas has an assistant, Mrs. Liz, but she was gone that day. Also while we were working on the different centers, there was another lady taking each kid aside to do some kind of assessment.

I'm really glad I had the chance to volunteer and my goal is every other Friday. Hailey said me being at her school was the best part about that day.

Here are the worksheets that Hailey brought home for this week.

 I haven't had a change to ask Hailey about this picture yet but I bet it has an interesting story.

 On this piece of Hailey has each letter of her name written down the side.  Then she wrote a word that started with that letter.
Hannah hug
ant
ice
love
end
yellow

Since I was there on Friday when the teacher passed out some of the sheets (most were actually returned on Monday, since she was a little shorthanded), Mrs. Thomas told the class that they should finish their papers. I actually never thought about that because they really don't have homework. So, now I'm going to try to set time aside to have Hailey finish.  It usually takes another person to point out simple, no-brainers.