Five Senses 1

We don't have Joy School on Fridays. So here we are on our second week of Joy School.

Today, since it's Monday, Hailey had Preschool with Audrey. This time it's at Audrey's house. Hailey was so excited and wanted to bring her backpack. (I keep an apron in there just in case it is needed.) They read "If you give a Mouse a cookie" and shaped cookie dough into "C". Then they read "A Very Hungry Caterpillar" and made very cute c-shaped caterpillars with pom-poms. Hailey enjoyed it a lot.

So with Joy School today we talked about our five senses. First, they had an easy task of picking up the beanbag and walking across the kitchen and putting in the basket. Then they had to do it blind folded. I had Hailey be blind folded first and she did it perfectly. Somehow, I think she could see. I spun Luc around first to make it harder and so my point was proven in the end.

In this picture, Hailey is trying to get the beanbag across the kitchen without hands. (they both cheated at the end to put it in the basket.)


After this, I hide some popcorn in the microwave. I had then do finger plays with me while we waited for it to cook. Then they used their senses to guess what it was. Luc loved this part. They ate their popcorn while I read "You can't eat a pickle with your ears." Hailey surprisingly did not eat her popcorn. I don't think she has ever had popcorn before today.

After learning a song with flannel board pictures, I had a smelling unit ready for them. We took turns smelling what was in my cup, then they put glue down and sprinkled the item on.

Skill wise, they both did every well. One change I would have made is that two of my smells were different Kool Aid flavors. However, Kool Aid mixed with glue doesn't harden. The book suggested jello powder but I didn't want to be wasteful. I see their wisdom now.

So here are their collages, with the jello running. (2 days later and it is still a little sticky.)
Then we had a taste center. No one could guess the sugar; Luc thought it was salt. It was funny to see their reactions when they had the Kool Aid mix because it was very sour and they didn't expect that.
There was a hide and seek game we didn't get to and also a hearing exercise we skipped. This was a very time consuming lesson but I think the kids understood a little what their senses are.

*Side Note: At the beginning, we talked about what our bodies were and Hailey first pointed to her bum again and then pointed to other body parts. Yeah, she's learning!!!

Joy of the Body 2

This lesson was about introducing the body again. We talked about how it can move. To feel their muscles working I made elastic bands for them to put on their legs or arms.

Luc really got into it while Hailey stayed hesitant.

Then after our discussion about our bodies, we shaped gingerbread dough into little bodies.

Luc enjoyed the dough a lot. However, it wasn't easy to roll and shape the dough. So, after everyone made one, we did the rest with cookie cutters.

While we waiting for the cookies to bake and cool, we made hand and feet mobiles. Hailey needed me to trace, cut and connect her hands and feet. This project was too advance for her skill level.

I encouraged Luc to do it all by himself. He traced his hands and feet. He cut out one hand and was too frustrated to continue. Once we got to the hole punching stage, he got excited and went a little over board with it.
Finally the cookies are done. I made a powder sugar icing to top it. They were surprisingly soft.

The kids loved the cookies.

*Side note: I had a hard time with the gingerbread dough. The day before, I pulled up the recipe and noticed I was missing a couple of spices. So, we went to Walmart and I finally got to make the dough around 8 or 9 that night. Since it was a brand new bottle of ginger, it went everywhere and I got more ginger in the bowl then was needed. Also I didn't have enough nutmeg. After everything was mixed, Nathan helped me separate the dough into three portions to smash down and wrap. They need to be refrigerated for at least 3 hours.

So, we finally go to bed around 11 and right before I fell asleep, I realized that I forgot to put the egg in. I'm not sure what that would have done to my cookies but I know it's not a good ingredient to forgot. But I'm too tired to do anything about it. Unwrapping the dough and trying to put it back together to add the one egg did not sound like I good idea to me, so I went to sleep.

I woke up around 6:00 thinking about the dough. So I got up then, showered, and went to Walmart because I ran out of nutmeg and shortening. I can back and made another batch of the dough to find out I am 1/4 c short of molasses. I just rolled my eyes and continued. By 7-7:30 everything was done and ready to be refrigerated. I bought donuts so we all sat down and had donuts together.

The end result was that the second batch of cookies turned out great. However, next time I'll pay closer attention to it.

The Joy of the Body 1

Today was the first day that Luc joined us. Hailey was excited to share joy school with him and kept telling him that there is a surprise. (that was the way I introduced it to Hailey)

We started talking about our bodies today. When I told Hailey this before the lesson, I also asked what is her body. She bend over and pointed to her bum. It was a funny sight. We started potty train recently but it's not going well.

So to start the lesson, we shaped our bodies into different letters. Both got into this activity. Then we walked in different ways following what the CD sang. Then we looked at different pictures from "Your Insides" by Joanna Cole. I finally had the time this morning to go to the library and really look for books. They were all in the nonfiction section even though they were for children.

Our little act activity is to put back the body that I cut out. They had me outline the body on the paper first which I thought was a great idea but something I wouldn't have thought of myself.
Luc saw me cut these out and so ask me when we were ready to do it.

Hailey still wanted more help from me even though I know she really could have done it herself.

Then we read a quick book about feet to more onto our finally activity...painting with our feet.

Chloe came here right in time to join us. They got the sidewalk pretty messy but really enjoyed themselves.

And that ended our Joy School for the day. Luc was talking to Chloe later about having his picture on the school house with his own window. I was afraid that he would think that this was too childish for him but he had fun today. He is a more active boy who needs to move. Robert is like that too so it's great that I have this chance to work with Luc to learn how to work with Robert.

Preschool School: B for Birds and Bats

Today for preschool we focused on bats and birds. So we read "Stellaluna". It's kind of a long book but both girls enjoys books and so they sat through it.

Then we made bat puppets. Audrey did great and only needed help with the wings and eyes. Hailey wanted a little more hands on help and Robert just tore everything that that I put together for him.
Then we made birds. The kids were able to color their wings with stamps, while I cut out the bodies for it. They had a lot of fun stamping and also got it on the table a little. Hailey also got some on her mouth by not paying attention to what she was doing.

They got a blast out of flying them when they were done.

Robert, however, tore him up within the first five minutes.

This lesson surprisingly took 55 minutes. So afterwards they played outside.

Joy School Intro 2

Hailey couldn't wait to start Joy School. She goes to the calendar and counts the numbers. At the start of Joy School we did the weather chart. At first it was just cloudy. We moved on to the calendar and then before we set down for the lesson, I noticed that it started raining. So we changed our chart. By the end of Joy School, Hailey pointed out that it stopped raining and was sunny now. This was a great chance to further explain the weather.

For this lesson we are still introducing Joy School, so did a lot of singing and finger plays. We learned "I got Joy." Hailey who is generally shy when put on the spot, still repeated after me and really tried to learn the song. Later that night we went over the song the daddy and Robert. The next morning, Nathan started saying the words and Hailey went over and wanted him to repeat after her. Grant it that Hailey can only really remember nine words but it's a great start that surprised me.

For the actually learning session, we talked about the last three rules. We talked about how following rules can make us happy.

Then for the craft we cut or tore colored paper to make a design on a blank sheet. Hailey got frustrated in trying to cut that she gave up. She wanted to color with markers instead so we did that for a little.
Here's my pretty picture to demonstrate to Hailey what she can do.

We didn't get to everything on the lesson plan but Hailey enjoyed our time which was the main point.

Joy School Intro

Besides the fact that instead of getting "books" and I have to download all the materials, there were a lot of other preparations I needed to do. I like having paper copies, so I print it all out and had Staples bind it together. Also, I need to make family puppets. The orange puppet is the brother, the pink patterned one is the sister. The dad has the tie and the mom has a weird vest or collar.

And I made three different charts that we will be using everyday. Here's our school house so that Hailey can open her window when she's ready for school. This is meant to also be a tool to control behavior but our windows don't stay open. Also Hailey is very excited about Joy School so that eliminates behavior problems.

Here's our weather "clock" as Hailey calls it. She's been interested in the weather recently so this is great that we can visually describe the weather.

Finally, we have the calender. I don't think Hailey is ready for this concept yet, so I'm going to focus more on the days of the weeks before I try to explain what a month is.

So on Sunday, I had most things ready. After Hailey's timer went off for quiet time. I told her I had a surprise for her. Since Hailey doesn't understand waiting or time, I generally don't tell her future plans. So she had no idea Hailey School was starting again.

Hailey came downstairs and saw the posters in our kitchen and was excited. I explained what they were and then continued with the introductory lesson Joy School provided. The lesson main purpose was to get the kids used to each other and a school environment. So we went over some finger plays and songs.

There's a little part where a puppet talks to the class and tries to get the kids to introduce themselves. I feel strange about using puppets. We used the sister puppet and called her Sally. Hailey was very shy and wouldn't really talk to the puppet. However, after Joy School, Hailey grabbed Sally and asked me the questions I asked her earlier.

Then we talked about Joy School Rules and went through the first three. We learned the song about the rules.

The craft was meant to show how crayons follow rules too. "When crayons get hot, they melt." So, I shaved the crayons and we made pretty designs on one side of the paper. Then I melt it with an iron. It was a very cool craft. Hailey liked it a lot.

This is Hailey's.
This is the one I did.

We did Joy School for about an hour maybe even an hour and a half. It was a good experience and I know things will run more smoothly once I get use to the flow of things and learn the music.

Preschool: A for Apples

Monday was our first day for Preschool. I decided to do apples again like last year. First we read "Ten Apples Up On Top". Then I cut into the apple to show the star. With the apple they could dip it in the green paint to color the letter A page.

Audrey just wanted to use the paint brush.

Robert had fun with the paint. Luckily, it came off the tray pretty easy.

Then we talked about where apples came from. They put their own apples on the trees using their fingers.
After we quickly cleaned up, we read about Johnny Appleseed. Since Robert found the bubbles while I was reading, we played with bubbles when I finished the story. Then we had apples for a snack. All this took 30 minutes.

Then for the next 20 minutes they were pretty happy with play-dough. We finished up preschool with dress-up. I think the kids enjoyed their time together. I was very surprised at how smooth things ran today.