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Preschool Corner ~ Planning Forms

This last week and a half has been spent planning, organizing, re-organizing and pulling together ideas for what our upcoming year is going to look like. Overall, it’s finally beginning to ‘click’ and I’m getting an idea of what the year will look like for Kaleb ~ and that’s exciting for me.

In all honesty, I feel that he gets the leftovers when it comes to learning time, especially as I’m trying to fit in all that the older three need to do. I really wanted to have something in place for him that he would be excited about, I would be excited about…and that would be fun! Cindy from Along the Way has been busy working with me to come up with some literature based units that we can do with our boys and it has been FUN!!! We’re working on some fun printables and lapbook-style units that we’re so excited about!

This week we brought home some monarch caterpillars and have a new space {thanks to my re-organizing} to watch and observe the caterpillars up close. Wednesday morning the kids woke up and were able to watch Kaleb’s caterpillar go into its chrysalis ~ SO much fun!! We were able to video tape it too and Kaleb was so excited about the ‘dancing’ that it was doing. :)

I’ve posted about the planning pages that we used last year, but this year I’ve revamped them a little bit and focused it more toward literature-based studies. If you would like to download the 2 page Preschool Planning form, just click on the thumbnail images below.

Preschool Planning Form 2010Preschool Planning Form 2010 2 

We try to get all of our ‘school time’ done Monday through Thursday. The first page has room for planning daily activities in the following areas: reading {related to something in the actual book}, doing {something that we can do that relates to the topic: lapbook, gross motor, math, etc…}, song/game, Bible {verse/song}, and crafts. The second page gives me room to expand my ideas and jot down notes for the following areas: Bible/Character, Language, Science/Nature, Math, Gross/Fine Motor, Arts & Crafts, Songs & Games.

At the bottom of the page, I also have room to plan what the basic layout of Kaleb’s workboxes will be for the week. I have 9 planning spaces {the workbox unit that we’re using has 9 boxes overall} ~ but we’ll be using only 6 of the boxes, with 3 as more some fun ‘extras’ for our day. I’ll be sharing more soon with pictures of our school area layout for this year, so stay tuned for that!

Are YOU getting excited for the upcoming year??? Link up what you’ve been doing and what you are planning on doing. :) Can’t wait to see what you ladies are up to with your kids this year!

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Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
 

 
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Preschool Corner ~ Pledge of Allegiance & Lord’s Prayer

When I taught preschool in our school system, one of our morning routines was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance together…and really, nothing is sweeter than hearing little ones try desperately to pronounce the word ‘indivisible’. :)

Our older three know the Pledge already, so this year {especially since the older three will be studying American History} Kaleb will be learning the Pledge as part of our Morning Calendar time. The printable also has the Pledge of Allegiance printable in landscape format too {that’s how it’ll fit into our calendar}.

Pledge of Allegiance

The Lord’s Prayer is another printable that I just put together for one of you all this week. There are two pages to the Lord’s Prayer printable ~ one with a boy and one with a girl.

Lord's PrayerLord's Prayer 2  

This weekend I’ll be finishing up our school planning and will have much more to share with you all about our overall schedule, things we’ll be learning this year and our school area setup. We haven’t had much school-related structure during our week and are slowly working our way back into a school-like routine ~ getting the kinks worked out of our chore system, keeping the tv off {period}, and putting the house in ‘order’ as much as is possible.

What have you been doing this week? Share with us the crafts that you are doing, fun you are having, and plans you are making for this upcoming year.

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! I don’t like to feel mean, but if your post doesn’t link to the Preschool Corner, it will be deleted. I’ve had some strange links lately and am checking the links when I can. :) The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
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Preschool Corner ~ Lowercase Letter Crafts a-d

Preschool CornerWe finished up the uppercase letter crafts {although I still have plans for a few different uppercase ones this coming year to go along with some books we’re going to be using. One thing that I will be focusing on a little bit more this year with Kaleb are the lowercase letters.

And of course, there need to be crafts to go along with the uppercase letter crafts that we did last year, right?

Some of my time this summer has been spent coming up with ideas for all the lowercase letters with Cindy from Along the Way {and truthfully a few of them still have us stumped}. Here are the first four lowercase letter crafts to share with you all. Just click on the thumbnail picture to see the direction for that letter craft.

 a is for apple craftb is for butterfly craft

c is for chameleon craft d is for daisy craft

I’ll be sharing more with you all from these in the upcoming weeks, but wanted to share these before I forget!

Stories & Books We Used

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Preschool Corner ~ Getting Buggy

A friend of ours {hi Catherine!!} invited us over this week to do a ‘mini-camp’ of sorts. We spent a few mornings over her house with all of our kids {preschool up to 4th grade} and had fun learning about a few bugs, making some crafts, creating some yummy treats and just having fun. Cindy from Along the Way joined us one of the days too.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera on the first day, but made up for it on the second day by taking over 100 picture. I’m so glad we have a digital camera. :) The first day we learned about ladybugs and on our second day we talked about ants.

LadyBugs

Catherine started off each morning with a devotional time…and we read a book about the insect we were studying. After we sat down to make a craft ~ some cute little bug jars from Oriental Trading.

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The kids also made some ladybug beanbags {felt circles filled with rice} and glued some spots on them. They weren’t quite dry enough to play a game with, so we had to use plain beanbags to play ‘catch the aphid’, where the kids had to toss a beanbag on a giant leaf and try to land on one of the green foam dots.

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Snack for our ladybugs was a yummy cookie that the kids frosted and put little candy dots on {not healthy…but fun!}.

Ants

After devotions on ‘Ant Day’ we read Are You an Ant? and even I learned some fun facts about ants ~ did you know that ants can stroke an aphid? That they have two stomachs? The Are You? series are great books…and ones that we’ll be checking into more.

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Craft time was an ant made out of egg cartons. The kids painted them black and used pipe cleaners for legs and antennae. 

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For snack we made anthills {aka chocolate pudding and crushed graham crackers} and the kids added chocolate covered raisins for the queen ants and mini chocolate chips for the worker ants.

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Right after we finished our story time, we took three lids outside to see if we could attract ants. One lid had a chunk of watermelon in it, one had water, and one had some apple juice.

After about an hour we went back down to check out the caps to see if we had any ant action. The kids guessed that the watermelon would have ants on it ~ and it did! The water had no visitors and the apple juice had a few ants. Can you see the little visitors?

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Stories & Books We Used

These are some of the books that we read at home to learn a little more about our insect friends.

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Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
 
 
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Preschool Corner ~ Vacation Time!!

This week we were minus two kids since both girls went to camp for the week…leaving us with only two boys to keep occupied.

We went swimming. A lot. We played. A lot. Rode bikes. Took walks. Built with legos {because Grandma has oh.so.many legos…and just relaxed.

Here’s just a quick picture look at our week.

We brought along Kaleb’s Strider bike. He is doing amazing balancing and we’re thinking that when we get home he might be ready to try a bike with pedals and ride. He’s about worn the bottoms of his Crocs off this week…but he LOVES his bike!

Strider Bike

The zip-line at the park was a big hit ~ and this picture just makes me want to poke his little belly button!

zip line

A nearby zoo had a ‘touch and see’ area, so Kaleb had fun playing with a turtle shell and examining it. 

turtle shell

He loved the salamanders…{at least I think that’s what they were}.

 salamander salamander

Kaleb wasn’t quite sure what to think about the turkeys on the loose…

turkeys

This picture just cracks me up because to his left was a huge cage with a bobcat in it…but he was completely engrossed with the ants crawling around on the sidewalk and oblivious to the animals.

ant watching 

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
 

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Preschool Corner ~ Preschool Workbox Cards

I’m supposed to be packing.

Obviously I’m not.

We leave tomorrow to visit with family for the next week and there are bucketloads of things that I should be doing, and truckloads of things that I would rather be doing.

This last week has been full of fun for Kaleb ~ lots of swimming to ward off the over 100 degrees that have been sweltering our area. AND we went on a family date to see Toy Story 3.

Once Mommy got over the sticker shock of how much it is to see a movie these days, it was all ok. {Ok, really, I’m still in shock}. But the movie was wonderful and if you had been there with us, you would have noticed me dabbing my eyes to sop up the tears. It’s one we will see again…but only after it’s out on video.

I’ve been putting the finishing touches on our new workbox weekly grid system and since Kaleb is all excited about Toy Story now…I made some new workbox cards for him to use that are based on the movie characters. The Preschool Workbox Number Cards have been edited to add a new page of numbers, so the set now includes Toy Story 3, Monsters Inc, Nemo, Chicken Little and A Bug’s Life:

image image image

click on the pictures to download the pdf file

Kaleb will only have one sheet with his workboxes and still use the number system this year. It’s just easier for him and will help him with identifying his numbers and sequencing, so we’re going to stick with it. I’ll be sharing more about how we’re working on chores with him too ~ soon.

But first I need to get us packed for vacation.

Check back in next week and I’ll {hopefully} share more with you all! :) You never know…I might get all caught up in vacation and post about completely random things! Have a great week and thanks for joining in the Preschool Corner!

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
 

 
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