Our Favorite Preschool Apps

(43 Months)

We use our iPad as part of our quiet time activities (when Wild One doesn't nap or when Little Miss wakes up very early from a nap) and while I'm cooking dinner.  I am so happy with these apps, they keep the kiddos fully engaged, while learning- and I get to complete some never-ending housework.

The kids love using the iPad to do "work".  All of these games are fantastic learning tools, they don't even realize they are practicing - heh heh heh (evil laugh).  I've spent hours searching and playing with numerous learning apps.  These are the ones that the kids and I really like and decided to keep.

Handwriting
Letter School
Letter Quiz
Dora's ABC's
Wet Dry Try - Handwriting Without Tears

Math: Problem Solving, Puzzles, Matching, Sorting, Counting
Snake Tangrams
Amazing Shape Puzzles
Jurassic Jr. (Dinosaur Train)
Phonics Island
Candy Count
Teach Me (Toddler)
Countalicious

Reading and Spelling
Super Why
Phonics Island
BOB Books Lite
Sight Words
Word Family
Fun Rhyming

What are your favorite learning apps?

First Day of Homeschool Preschool

(43 Months)

Today was our first day of homeschool preschool!  Since they turned one, my husband and I kept toying with the idea of sending Little Miss and Wild One to a Montessori or Montessori-like school a couple of mornings a week.  Each year when it's time to register the kidabunks for school, I back out and we decide we'll keep them home "just one more year."  Well, we're 3 1/2 now and almost everyone I know has their little ones in daycare or preschool at this age.  I'm grateful that my husband supports my decision to stay home with them, and that we are lucky enough to be able to have a choice of whether or not to send them to school.  Now, for our first day of homeschool preschool.  Yaaaayyyy!

Although, they are going to be home with me.  I still wanted to capture this important moment in time.  I saw this idea all over Pinterest and knew that I would be making one for my kids also.  There were over a dozen variations of the same thing- some messages were written on chalk boards, others on poster boards, some on just sheets of paper.   Our take was quick and simple.  A week before, I asked Little Miss and Wild One what they wanted to be when they grew up, printed it out, taped it inside a nice picture frame.  Viola!  Our sign is finished and if we want to continue with this tradition, we can even use the same frame.

FINE MOTOR ART- After we took our picture, I traced an outline of Little Miss and Wild One on easel paper.  Then I asked them to draw on their faces.  Wild One added bones, a heart and of course a plate of cookies.

 

WRITING- I love the idea of a progress journal.  It's simply a notebook that is used to showcase the child's growth over the course of a month.  My plan is to include writing samples of their names, the alphabet, a self-portrait, shapes and and number recognition (for example, write the number 1 and draw one soccer ball).  Each month you just repeat the pattern, adding anything new that you want to begin tracking.

We also completed a short all about me interview (it's free).  Some of their answers were intriguing.  Their favorite food- they said marshmallows.  They have had marshmallows maybe three times so far.  I really thought it was going to be chocolate chip cookies or pancakes or muffins or salmon sashimi or bacon.  Marshmallows wasn't even on my list of possibilities.  Oh and their favorite song?  I was convinced Wild One would say, "Yo Ho, A Pirates' Life is For Me" (since he has me sing it almost every day) nope- he said "Twinkle, Twinkle".  I really thought on Little Miss's favorite things list, would be to play with play dough.  Nope, not even in her top three.  Her top pick though, was to play with her cousin, Jake, at his house (I love that little girl!).

MATH- I asked Little Miss and Wild One how many blocks did they think we needed to show how tall they were.  They both estimated ten blocks.  Then we connected ten blocks (we needed at least triple that amount).  When I asked if that was tall enough, Wild One said "no."  Yay!  I followed up with, "what do we need to do?"  He replied, "make it bigger."  We kept taking turns adding more blocks, laying down next to the line of blocks and then determining if we needed more blocks, or if we had enough.  When we finished, we measured just under 27 blocks tall.  We counted our measurements both laying down and standing up (we were one block taller laying down).

READING- We read The Little Mermaid several times, using our Blooms Taxonomy Cards.  These cards are fantastic for helping me ask open-ended, higher-order thinking questions.

CRITICAL THINKING- Lastly, we ended with identifying and circling pairs of items that are the same.

 
GROSS MOTOR/DRAMATIC PLAY- Then we had lunch, and played pirates.

What a fantastic first day!  Did the morning go as planned?  Nope.  The progress journals were not as big of a hit as I thought they would be.  Little Miss didn't want to create a self portrait, she wanted to draw lightening.  Our first attempt at writing our names in our journals, wasn't their best effort (their names from a few months ago looked much better).  They just wrote to write.  I didn't want to push to get a baseline assessment in the journal.  They just weren't interested at that moment, so we just moved onto the next activity.  There's always tomorrow and that's part of the beauty of homeschool preschool.

"I love school" Thank You Calendar Time

(31 Months)

My cheeks hurt from grinning like the Cheshire Cat.  We had our first Calendar Time this morning and the kidabunks loved it.  They even sat on their mats, listened to directions and followed instructions.  I'm telling you this school board is magical - WILD ONE sat still (well, for a little while).

We began by inviting them over to sit on their mats with a special friend.  Little Miss chose one of her tiny teddy bears and Wild One choose his blue nosed puppy.  So far, so good.  Next, I introduced them to the school board and let them just look it over.  We began at the top, I told them today's date.  Then we clapped to ten.

We sang the Days of the Week song.  I tried to explain the concepts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.   They took turns placing each of the place holders in their respective days.  We looked out the window and saw that it was sunny and beautiful, then we looked at each of the symbols and put on the correct sunny card on Monday.  We talked about Summer and how the weather is really warm, and all of the fun things that we do in summer.

Next we looked at what we'll be working on this week.  We sang the Leap Frog song, "the E says eh, the E says eh.  Every letter makes a sound, the E says eh."  I pointed to the word pink and then asked the kiddos that on the count of three to try and find two things that are pink.  Little Miss quickly ran and grabbed a big and small Abby Cadaby and Wild One found a big and small pig.  

Then we discussed the rectangle and we went around the room grabbing objects that are rectangular (books, lids, sheets of paper, a shoe box, picture frames, the cookie trays...).  We practiced saying "at" and I said we'll come back to that one later.  

We sang the Months of the Year song, while pointing out each month on the board.  Wild One decided that he wanted to point out the names of the months while we were singing.

We read the poster All About Number 2, and then we went off finding pairs of objects.  We made a huge mess, my fault- I should have said just find one pair of objects.  I was brought animals, trains, pillows, coffee/tea cups, books...  I'll try and remember tomorrow to just let them show and tell two sets each.

We played point to the shape on the Shape poster.  We didn't spend much time on it, I noticed that I started losing their attention.

Then we moved onto the _at blocks.  I was so surprised at how quickly Wild One picked it up.  He loved playing school and kept wanting to say the word over and over again.  I'm so proud of my little man.  Little Miss decided it was time for her baby to eat breakfast, so she began cooking for her in their kitchen.  I noticed that she was watching her brother while cooking.

These were so easy to put together.  I didn't write on the blocks themselves.  I placed tape on the blocks and then wrote on the tape (that way we can use the blocks for other word families).

After we finished with the blocks, Little Miss came over and wanted to play.  I asked Wild One to show his sister what he was working on.  He lit up and said "I do school!"  He told his sister that a-t is at.  Look at my little teacher!  I'm so proud.

We played again with our Pinkalicious play-doh.  We made sandwiches, pancakes, faces, poked holes with pretend carrots, made textured patterns with pretend corn, and then it was time for lunch.  What a fun morning!

Calendar Time

(31 Months)

I've been wanting to making this board for several weeks now.  Calendar time offers so much learning in one confined space.  For the past few weeks, after the kidabunks were asleep in bed for the night I searched blog after blog, Pinterest board after board, looking for ideas.  The process seemed to be too time-consuming to tackle during a once-a-day, hour long nap.  Then, one wonderful day last week they took a two-hour nap (two glorious uninterrupted hours).  It was the jump start I needed to get this project underway.  Once I started, it actually came together pretty quickly (although not as fast as homemade play-doh).  

I had certain goals that I wanted to accomplish in using this board, which determined the material that I placed on the board.  My goals over the next year+ are to practice learning:

• the days of the week (in order)
• the months of the year (in order)
• the concept of yesterday, today and tomorrow
• what the weather is outside (cloudy, sunny, rainy)
• the names of the seasons and our current season
• learning about each number 
• learning numbers in sequence, through a real-world number line
• begin learning about word families
• understand that there are several ways to draw a basic shape
• practice in forming letters (out of shaving cream, play doh, blocks, sticks, pom poms) 
• -this one is for me, I wanted a board that requires little time to update, and that will grow with the kidabunks for the next two plus years.

The board is finally finished!  The ideas and inspiration came from my Pinterest board and Today's Weather is a free printable from Homeschool Creations (thank you, to all of you incredible mommies out there for posting your terrific ideas).  We're going to start using the board tomorrow and I have a lot of fun activities planned for us that I'm so excited to share with the kidabunks.

We sing the Days of the Week song to the tune of "Oh My Darlin'"-
There are seven days,
there are seven days, 
there are seven days in a week.
There are seven days,
there are seven days,
there are seven days in a week.
Sunday, Monday
Tuesday, Wednesday
Thursday, Friday
Saturday.

Sunday, Monday

Tuesday, Wednesday

Thursday, Friday

Saturday.

We sing the Months of the Year song to the tune of "Ten Little Indians" - 

January, February, March and April

May, June, July and August

September, October, November, December

Those are the months of the year

(repeat two or three more times)

I'm so excited for tomorrow!

Letter B Week (Day 3)

(29 Months)

I knew when I saw these adorable butterfly counting pages, from Confessions of a Homeschooler, that Little Miss would love them.   I printed the set on card stock and then applied the sticky dot magnets to the back so that we can play with these on our magnetic trays.  It was so precious watching her point to each butterfly and count how many there were (she would count from right to left, but she did get the number right).  Wild One was interested for about two minutes.  He was able to complete the second page (numbers 2, 3 and four), and then lost interest (he said he wanted to count with his eyes closed).  Oh well, we'll try again another day.  Little Miss counted all the way up to ten.  She knew the number zero, but wasn't confident which box had zero butterflies until I told her "none" and then she chose the right box.  It's incredible how quickly they pick things up.  They are always amazing me.

We used to practice jumping on shapes, but for some reason we haven't done that in awhile.  Hmmm.... we need to do that tomorrow.  To be consistent with our B week, I drew a bunch of shapes on a butterfly to assess which shapes they knew and which ones we still need to work on.  Instead of just pointing to the shape, I asked them to put a magnetic pom pom on the shape (when I called out a shape I did not name the color).  I noticed that they automatically chose the corresponding pom pom color to the shape color (wow- we must really do a lot of pom pom activities).

When Wild One knew the shape, he quickly found the correct color pom pom and placed it on the shape.  If he was unsure about a shape, trapezoid, he would look at me as he placed the pom pom on it with a look of "is that right Mommy?"  I let him place his pom poms where he thought they should go and made a mental note of which ones we need to work on.  Little Miss completed the first six shapes correctly and then decided that she wanted to line up the pom poms instead.  We'll come back to this one another day.

The lowercase b, d, p, and q are so unfair.  I wanted to see if they could identify each of the four letters when they were all jumbled together.  It was hit or miss with Wild One, so I'm not sure if it was luck or not that he got the answers correct.  Little Miss was completely absorbed in drawing with markers at the time and then the day escaped us before we had a chance to revisit this.  That's fine though, we do plenty of review days (non-post days).

Our Top Ten App List (Mostly Free)

(29 Months)

I was so surprised when I first got my iPhone to see how many wonderful, and user friendly, educational apps there were for my little ones (the under three group).  I spent hours downloading free apps and then trying them to see which ones we liked, and which ones would be deleted.

As of the past two months, these are our Top 10 (out of the 25 that we kept).  They are all free except for Letter Quiz and Dora's Skywriting Adventure (my incredible cousin Catie, gave us a free app code for this app).

1. Letter Quiz (we first tried out the free lite version, but then purchased this version)- this app has four games: flash cards, match the upper to the lowercase letter, touch the "A", letter tracing (their absolute favorite- it has bumpers on the letters to help keep the lines on the letters)
2. Count-a-licious- there are three fun games on this app: number show that tells and shows the number, a counting game and a number tracing game
3. Bob Magic Lite- from the makers of BOB books, this app has levels of difficulty for placing letters in order (mostly cvc words)
4. Magic Piano- teaches the child timing and finger coordination along with beautiful music
5. Teach Me Toddler- quizes and provides a score cards for numbers, letters, shapes, colors, phonics and counting.  Offers sticker rewards after the players gets three answers right in a row
6. First Words Sampler- shows a picture (of a cat) then has three tile letters for the player to place in order, it has a safety net that will not allow the player to misplace a letter
7. Tozzle Light- a shape puzzle that reinforces sounds and names of animals
8. Dora's Skywriting Adventure- similar to the Letter Quiz
9. Little Writer- another tracing game, this one is for capital and lowercase letters, numbers, shapes and words
10. MeMe Tales- reads aloud wonderful online stories

Geometric Matching

(26 Months)

Uncle Keith has these huge geometric volume containers.  When he brought them out, my eyes lit up.  Oh the possibilities (my geeky teacher side started coming through).  We first laid a couple of them out and watched their reactions as the sunlight passed through the container's colored base- the kids were amazed that the driveway changed color.  Little Miss kept moving her hand in and out of the light watching her hand go from skin color to green to skin color to green.  I took a few pictures but they didn't show the colors (so sad).

Here we are practicing following directions (please place the containers inside this rectangle).  It's amazing how well they follow directions when it's a game!  Although this did turn into a construction activity when the boys started stacking the containers on top of one another.  We never did say how to place the containers inside the rectangle- boys, so creative.

Next, we traced the bases of each of the containers onto the driveway with sidewalk chalk, then we asked the kids to match up the colored bases (bottoms) of the containers to the shapes in the driveway.  They really got into this, they quickly started working finding a shape and looking for the match.  I love how in the second picture, Buddy is "reading" the instructions for the geometric shapes.

The twins really liked this part of the activity so to modify it for home, I'm going to start saving empty tissue boxes, cereal boxes, plastic mayonnaise jars, plastic peanut butter jars... and we'll do this again.

We never did get around to using the geometric shapes as they were designed (to demonstrate volume), we'll try again on our next visit.  They had so much fun, just matching up shapes, looking through the bases seeing the world another color, stacking and watching the tower crash with the loud banging sounds.

Foam Window Art

(26 Months)

I picked up a pack of foam sheets from the Dollar store awhile back thinking, I'll probably need these one day.  Months later, I'm looking online for fun outdoor activities for the kids and I came across this foam window art activity from The Imagination Tree.  Perfect, all I need to do now is cut a bunch of shapes and we're all set.  During nap time (which is still anywhere between 50 minutes to an hour), I decided paying bills can wait and I'll cut some shapes for us to do today.  After cutting basic shapes, including face shapes, flower shapes and train shapes, we were all set.

Little Miss worked on adding eyes to a face, finding the big and teeny tiny of similar shapes and asking me to make her a train.  Wild One worked on wetting each piece and randomly sticking it onto the window and then knocking them all off.

They had fun creating a few art pieces on the window wall, but the other toys we had outside captured their attention more.  Oh well, we'll keep it around for another time or maybe to play in the bathtub!

They love playing with these orange cones.  The last picture shows Little Miss placing the cones in a line and Wild One stealing one at a time and moving them out of order (he's such a little skutch).

We love playing, we spend almost all day playing!  One of our favorite places (other than our home - of course) is our local community center park.  They have musical instruments, things to climb on and through, a wide open field to run and chase Grandpa, plus it's mostly shaded.