Letter Z is for Zoo

 We did the letter Z in one day.  I tried to keep the theme around zoos and zoo animals.

Tray 1: Beginning Sounds page with stamp pen

Tray 2: Letter z do-a-dot page with stamp pen

Tray 3: Letter z letter hunt with stamp pen

Tray 4: Letter z handwriting page

Tray 5: Animal sticker play

Tray 6: Cutting practice

Tray 7: Animal Mazes (taken from My Book of Easy Mazes)

The last two activities we did together.  First we played with our toy animals using our different play mats.  We like to sort the animals out depending on the environment they live in.

We also matched up mommies and babies with this cute felt play set. Look at those adorable baby penguins!

Letter Y Week (ish) :)

Hello again, friends.  It's been quite awhile since I wrote a post, mostly because we moved, the boys joined a Joy School group, and I got involved in other activities.  But I HATE leaving things unfinished!  I actually did "finish up" the letters y and z with the boys (probably about 6 months ago), but I never put it up on the blog.  Mostly because I just reused activities I had made for previous weeks and didn't spend a whole lot of time on it.  But they still enjoyed doing those extra school activities with me, and I decided to just share what we did anyways.

DAY 1

Instead of doing our full Calendar Time and Notebook time, Alex decided he wanted to put up the whole calendar by himself.  He worked hard, sifting through the number cards to put them all in the right order.  And he did great!

We introduced the letter with our usual letter sounds basket.  I only had a few items, including our foam letter y, sign language y card, Yoda toy, Yoshi toy, yo-yo card, and yarn card.

Then I introduced our activity trays for the day.

Tray 1: Beginning Sounds worksheet with stamp pens (Original and updated versions here)

Tray 2: Numbered counting pages with counting bears

Tray 3: Foam letter y with glass gems

Tray 4: Inchworm Counting file folder game (made using the Inchworm Counting activity here)

Tray 5: Letter y do-a-dot page with stamp pens

Tray 6: Jackson's Reading Lesson from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Here the boys are hard at work:

We ran out of bears for this activity, so we finished it up with the glass gems.

I also had some "fast finishers" set up for Alex to do during my reading lesson with Jackson, as well as after all the activities were completed.  Those were putting together puzzles and painting.

DAY 2

 Tray 1: Coin pattern strips with loose change

Tray 2: Beginning sounds clip cards with wooden clothespins

Tray 3: Geoboard with rubber bands

Tray 4: Elephant graphing cards with Cheerios

Even with activities they have seen before, the boys still enjoy doing "school activities."

After the tray activities were cleaned up, we decided to play Memory with our Numbers Go Fish game.  This is always a favorite!

Jackson also got to listen and read along to his Usborne phonics reader book titled Ted and Friends.

We also have been working on storytelling.  When we went to my parents home last year we were able to bring back our set of felt stories, including this one of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  The boys really enjoy retelling the story themselves!

Letter X - X is for Xylophone

Daily Learning Notebook:
 - Jackson: Confessions of a Homeschooler
 - Alex: 1+1+1=1

LDS Scripture Verse: 

"Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

-John 3:5

DAY 1

After Calendar Time, I brought out our letter sound box.  Letter x doesn't begin many words, so I only had four things in my box. These included a foam letter X, our sign-language card, a xylophone card, and an x-ray card.



Tray 1: Xylophone Color By Number

Tray 2: Beginning Sounds Coloring with stamp pen



Tray 3: Musical Instrument Vocabulary



Tray 4: Roll a Xylophone game with numbered di



I forgot to print out two copies of the color by number page, so the boys split the numbers to color in.  :)



We loved reviewing the different instruments.



And with a little prompting, Jackson did quite well with the di game.



I turned on the Magic School Bus sound episode, titled Inside the Haunted House (Or In the Haunted House).  This is actually one of their favorite episodes of The Magic School Bus, so they were excited.



While they watched, I set up our (planned) final activity for school...

The Water Xylophone



So complex.  ;)

I used five glasses with different amounts of water and a spoon.  When the boys finished the show, we reviewed how sound is created by vibrations (the show talks about this).  I talked about how hitting the side of a glass causes the water and air to vibrate, creating sound.  And that different amounts of water created different sounds.  I then played Mary Had a Little Lamb using my "water xylophone."

They were very excited to have a turn, too.  :)









We were so excited with our homemade instrument that we decided to make some more!  Jack decided he needed his Iron Man costume to proceed...





Our new assortment of instruments.  We used an old oatmeal tub as a drum, rubber bands on a loaf pan as a guitar (or other string instrument), rice and plastic Easter eggs to make shaker eggs/maracas, popsicle-stick harmonicas, plastic straw pan flute, and I pulled out my college recorder.



And then...all the noise! Uh, I mean, music!







DAY 2


Tray 1 (Jack): Do-a-dot worksheet with bingo marker



Tray 1 (Alex): Letter Hunt with bingo marker



Tray 2: Letter Matching with wooden nickel letters



Tray 3: Shape and color review pages (torn from a workbook) with crayons



Tray 4: Watermelon counting seeds puzzle (I found it after we finished the letter w, so we used it here, instead!)



Tray 5: Foam pumpkins and leaves for pattern building



Doing the Activities:

Alex did this counting puzzle all by himself! I was pleasantly shocked!

Wanting more, I started doing math problems with Jack on our new easel. He writes the problem himself, too, to practice number writing.

Our addition problems get bigger each time.  If he's ever stumped, he consults our wall calendar to help him count it out.

And feeling left out, Alex took a turn at the easel.  Pretending to be "Teacher Alex." Which turned out to be some sort of pictionary game.  :)

"Okay guys! Who thinks this is a donut?"

DAY 3

Tray 1: Alphabet mazes (taken from a workbook) with bingo markers



Tray 2: Letter poke pages with toothpicks



Tray 3: Handwriting pages



Tray 4: Name writing wipe pages
-when I first made these, I wrote their names on the top and in traceable letters on the bottom and laminated the page so we can use them again and again



Tray 5: Upper and lower-case alphabet puzzle



Tray 6: Pom-pom size-sorting activity
- I included tweezers and mini-tongs to use to pick up the pom-poms. The goal was to sort by color (green in green cup, red in red cup, and white in the ice cube tray)



Doing the Activities:

Jack does such a good job writing his name!

After sorting the pom-poms by color, the boys and I decided to sort by size: small, medium, and large.



We soon realized, however, that the medium group included 2-3 different sizes. So we sorted them even further into all the sizes.



And we finished off the week by reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and putting the letter X on the coconut tree.