David can count to 10 out loud and he can recite his ABC’s. So now I’ve been working on teaching him to read letters and numbers. I thought I’d share some things we’ve been doing, and a few resources I found.
I got the idea for this Ice Cream Cone Counting Chart from First School Preschool Activities and Crafts. I add a new scoop with each number that I introduce. It’s really simple, but David get excited every time we get to top off the cone with another scoop.
First-School has all kinds of free activities, craft ideas and printable worksheets and coloring pages. There’s something for just about any skill or topic you want to teach your pre-schooler. I’ve been using their alphabet coloring sheets to teach David his letters.
We also started memorizing the days of the week. I found several charts and printables to help with that at Easy Learning Activities. And Enchanted Learning has pages and pages of activities for teaching all aspects of time from days to months to clocks. All of these sites are free.
Since Martin Luther King Day is coming up on Monday David and I talked about that a little bit today too. Racial relations are kind of deep subject for a four-year-old. We looked at some pictures of King on line, and we talked about how God loves everyone and we treat everyone equally and with respect even if they are different from us in some way. I told him King tried to teach that to people. I wasn’t sure what kind of craft I could find to go along with that lesson. But I came across this printable to make a little Martin Luther King figure fat DLTK’s Crafts for Kids.
My printer inconveniently decided to run out of ink this morning, so that’s why the poor man is covered in stripes. I knew David wasn’t going to really sit and listen to the King’s I Have a Dream Speech, but I pulled up a video of it on the computer, and let it play in the background while we made the craft.
So there’s just a few things we’ve been doing around here. Do you have any good resources for pre-school activities on an idea of your own to share?
We hardly ever get paper grocery sacks these days. In fact the store where we do our shopping most of the time doesn’t even offer them. But one day I went into a small local supermarket to pick up a few things, and was happy to get a couple brown bags to bring my things home in. As soon as my son saw them, he wanted to play with them. He kept putting them on his head (something you can of course never do with those plastic shopping bags) and wearing them around. So I asked him if wanted me to cut holes in one so he could see. Well, it evolved from there. We decorated the sack and created this Brown Bag Monster.
Well, it’s pretty odd to be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and Easter in the same week. Will the Easter Bunny bring a pot of gold instead of eggs this year? I hope so!
We’ve been getting into the holiday spirit with some crafts. Here’s a couple things we made this week.
This first is an Easter Bunny craft idea that my SIL over at A Cup of Joy found while she was Ultimate Blog Party hopping. It was posted at The Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.
This second craft is a Leprechaun hat that we made. My very own invention. I know. I know. It’s hard to believe I came up with this all on my own. Ha!
My son did wear it around the house for a little while, but he refused to be photographed with it. I guess that’s not how he rolls.
To make the hat we just cut out a shape like this:
I drew ours freehand. I didn’t think to make a pattern like this on the computer first. Then we added an extra strip of paper to the band to make it fit around my son’s head. We decorated it with a hat band, buckle and a four leaf clover. We also glued an extra scrap of paper to the back of the hat to reinforce it and help it stand up.
We started homeschooling this week. O.K., everyone who knows me pick your jaws up off the floor. I don’t plan on homeschooling my son for the next 15 years. I’m just doing pre-school home-school, because quite honestly the only way we could afford to send him to pre-school is if I went back to work. That would sort of undo this whole SAHM thing I’ve been doing for the last three years.
Now you committed home-schoolers out there, don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against homeschooling. It’s just not for me. I utterly lack the patience years of homeschooling would require. And frankly, selfish as it may sound, I look forward to the day I can load my son on the bus and take an uninterrupted shower and my freshly mopped floor will actually dry before little feet pad across it.
We did all kinds of activities this week. My son’s favorite craft was the pig we made out of a pop bottle. Martha Stewart and her quarterly magazine Good Things for Kids was the inspiration behind it. My son bestowed the simple name pig upon him. Pig has been a constant companion these last few days. Except for Wednesday night when my son had what I call a “boy” moment and decided to tear pig apart. Then he cried because he missed pig. Unlike Humpty-Dumpty, we were able to put pig back together again the next day.
Pig sleeps on the bookshelf beside his my son’s bed. Pig rode with us in the car yesterday evening to run errands. Pig watched TV with us and joined us for school this morning. Pig played Ring Around the Rosy with us this afternoon. Pig joined us for dinner tonight. My son craddles pig in his arms, and pets pig saying, “He’s a nice pig.” This is big stuff for a vessel that had humble beginnings as a Mt. Dew bottle. (It has crossed my mind BTW that I will not be getting my 10 cents back for that bottle.)
So at the end of home-school pre-school week 1 my son learned a couple new songs, started using safety scissors, is beginning to understand how to read a face clock and made friends with a paper and plastic pig tacked together with tape and glue sticks.
Just as I finished this post my son had another “boy” moment, and used Pig as a hockey puck. Pig looks like any of us would if we’d been pummeled by a toy hockey stick. My son’s not crying this time. Guess that’s the end of Pig. Good thing he’s immortalized forever on my blog.
