Handwriting Without Tears School Book

(4 Years)

*Blah, blah.  This post is my own opinion, I have not been compensated in any way.  Blah, blah.

"I love this school work.  I'm a lucky, lucky girl."  I hear this as I'm making the kids their breakfast.  I look over to see what she's so happy about.  It's her new school book.  Now, I know it sounds like I'm a walking advertisement to the folks at Handwriting Without Tears, but I can assure you I'm not being compensated in any way.  It just so happens that the few products that we have bought, they really like: the app, the slate board and tiny sponges, and the My First School Book (here's a link to their site*).

Little Miss was busy coloring in her school book.  I noticed how she was carefully trying to stay within the lines.  We don't do a lot of coloring, we do a lot of drawing, but not a lot of coloring.  So, I was surprised that she was concentrating on keeping the color inside the lines.  We have never even talked about coloring inside the lines before.  Although, we read a lot of picture books and that's probably where she picked it up from- the illustrations show coloring inside the lines.

These books are similar to the Kumon writing books, in that they both provide a lot of repeated practice.  They begin by drawing vertical and horizontal lines, then they use those lines to teach L, F, E, T, I.  Little Miss really enjoys working in her school books.  She takes her time choosing which marker she wants to use (she's been picking markers over colored pencils and colored mini pencils lately).

Little Miss will sit at the table and work on page after page after page after page... She has sat there for almost 40 minutes, on several occasions.  She will take her time and work on the entire page, then move on, without talking, until I finally ask her to put it aside so that she will eat her breakfast.

When she's working, she's in her zone!  It's cute.  It's hard not to interrupt and ask questions or give a compliment.  I know she's working, I let her work in quiet- that's how I like to work.

Wild One isn't really interested in this book.  There's times when he'll work on a page or two, but he'd rather "read", play with Legos or play pirates.  That's fine with me.  They are four years old.  There will be plenty of times, unfortunately, that they will be required to sit and write, whether they are in the mood to or not.  For now, if he wants to write he'll write - or maybe he'll take down this puzzle from the shelf and work on it by himself.

One of my friends asked why I leave that puzzle on the shelf for them, when they have already learned how to put it together so quickly.  Good question.  Not everything needs to be a struggle, sometimes it's fun to do something easy.  Plus it's great for his self confidence, and he really likes this puzzle.

Pinterest Challenge & Sight Word Fun

(4 Years)

So... I'm addicted to Pinterest.  I enthusiastically pin with the anticipation that I'm going to actually do what I pinned.  Well, life gets in the way and there are a lot of pins on my board that I haven't tried yet.  Does that stop me from still spending hours searching for pins that I'd love to do?  Nope, I just keep pinning (guilt free hoarding).  Well, it's time to try all of those great ideas that are filling my boards.

Behold The Pinterest Challenge!  It's actually two parts:
The first part, is to update each pin with a post of our success (that's probably my teacher side coming out, share what works and what doesn't)- did it work, what went wrong, what we would change for next time, and hopefully if I documented it, a link to our post showing how we used the pin.
The second part, is to actually do what I pin (with a post of its success).
No more excuses, every day I need to either update a pin with a post of our success or complete a pin.  

Now, for today's Pinterest Challenge.  I chose to use Classroom Freebie's CVC Word Activity for our sight words.  It has stamping, it has cutting and it has pasting AND it looks easy enough to put together!  I just need ten minutes to set it up.  It was perfect timing, the kids were busy "reading", so I quietly slipped away.  I altered Diane's form slightly to fit our needs.  Instead of "write it" we have a "say it and trace it" column.  Other than that, it's basically the same.

Little Miss was so adorable; as she was tracing each letter, she said the letter slowly.  

Wild One was very quiet as he worked.  Before he glued his letters on the board, he placed each letter on the "trace it" word.  Hmmm, good idea.  I wish I thought of that.

The kidabunks really liked this activity, thank you Diane for a fun way to practice our sight words.  I know we'll be doing this again.  I'm glad we finally tried it.  One pin done.  A little less than 800 pins to go!

While Wild One was finishing up his work.  I gave Little Miss the left over strips of construction paper to glue.  I love how she immediately noticed that the strips are different sizes and she began pasting them in decreasing size order.  A few minutes later, she turned her upside down Christmas tree into a stick collage.

What a productive morning!  Sight word practice, tracing practice, stamping practice, cutting on the line practice, pasting practice and beautiful artwork!  Hmmm, I wonder which pin we will be working on tomorrow.

Monthly Journals

(44 Months)

We began monthly journals last month, when we started our homeschool preschool year.  My plan is to have Little Miss and Wild One repeat the same format each month so that we can show their progress (and it can be a cute keepsake for when they are older).

We're working on drawing a self-portrait, writing their name and practicing tracing the six letters that only have horizontal and vertical lines (according to Kumon they are supposed to be the easiest to master):  E F H I L T.

Sadly, this hasn't been their favorite part of homeschool.  In fact, they reluctantly come to the table to work on journals.  I thought they would really enjoy this process.  Since they don't, we only spend a few minutes on it and then move on.

They do get a lot of practice writing letters on the iPad (see here for our favorite apps).  I was looking forward to some good old fashioned pencil and paper practice.  Maybe next month they will want to work in their journals.  We're going to go play with play dough now.  Have a fun day!

Play-doh Letter Fun

(38 Months)

Little Miss loves play-doh.  C'mon, who doesn't love playing with play-doh.  She loves squishing and pressing molds into the play-doh.  She loves adding Mr. Potato Head accessories into the play-doh.  She loves making pancakes and muffins for her babies out of play-doh.

Today we decided to practice rolling the play-doh into snakes or ropes, and then form the snakes into capital letters.  My plan was to practice the letters with just horizontal and vertical lines (E, F, H, I, L and T).  Little Miss had her own plan (as she frequently does), she wanted to create the letters in alphabetical order.  She's only three and she's already so determined.  Oh boy!

I used sidewalk chalk to draw the letter on her picnic table and offered her the chalk to trace the letter.  Next, we created rolled snakes out of the play-doh.  Creating evenly rolled play-doh snakes are still hard for us.  I was proud of Little Miss for practicing again and again, even though she was frustrated at times because the snakes would sometimes split apart in the middle.

  

For the first few letters, I gave her the appropriate number and lengths of snakes.  She carefully placed the rolled play-doh on top of the chalk letter, "squishing it together" at the corners to form the letter (I love how she describes what she's doing).

As we neared the letter E, she started creating her own lengths of snakes, and if they were too short, she would tear off a piece of another snake to complete the line or curve.  She continued working all the way through the letter M, and then she asked if she could stop.  I was thrilled that she kept happily practicing letter after letter.  We gladly put away the play-doh and she began building with blocks.

I'm so proud of her.  I love my little (sigh, big) girl.