One of the best parts of teaching our kids at home is having the opportunity to see the wheels turning and then seeing something ‘click’ into place. I just absolutely love that.

This week there was a whole lot of whining from a little boy during our school time. Lots of “I don’t want to do school” and “Again?” and “Do we have to do this?”…just basically enough to drive me nutso and about want to throw in the proverbial towel.

But then there are these moments of ‘AHA!’ that I get to be a part of, and it makes those other times worth it. You know the ones that I’m talking about, right?

Reading

One step at a time, things are falling into place with reading. Things that used to be a little frustrating suddenly become simple as the pieces all click together. I can not express enough how much I love the All About Reading program that we are using with Kaleb. While he may struggle understanding something one moment, another aspect makes a concept ‘click’ with him.

This week the ‘th’ sound was mastered as we played a silly egg flipping game form the workbook. Something simple, but approaching it from a different angle did it! His reading is becoming more fluent each time he reads, he is recalling the concepts I’m teaching him {again, the teacher’s manual ROCKS!}, and his confidence gets another boost and makes him smile!

Handwriting

We’re focusing more on the lowercase letters with our Handwriting Without Tears now.

The smiles in the photo above? I think mainly because he was happy NOT to be working on the lowercase c. The lowercase letter t is a piece of cake in comparison!

At the end of the week when he shut his book, he noticed that he had written his name at the beginning of the year on the front cover in all capital letters. He apparently felt that wasn’t right anymore after the lowercase letter work this week and brought it to me with the old one erased and his name written upper and lowercase – so happy with himself!

Celebrating Advent

We’re working through a few different things together as a family – Everyday Emmanuel and also Tabitha’s Travels {one of the books in the Jotham’s Journey series}. I pulled out this little countdown to Christmas calendar from a pile of Christmas things and Kaleb put it on his desk for us to open up a window each day and read the verse to go along with it. Something simple, but he loves it because it’s special just for him!

Psst!! It’s not to late to start celebrating Advent and preparing your hearts for Christmas!! I’ve shared some of our families favorite Advent and Christmas Resources in a post you might want to check out.

Math Learning

Another thing that clicked this week is the even/odd concept. We had practiced a bit before Thanksgiving with the Thanksgiving Number Sort printable I had put together, but during math time this week it just came naturally – no thinking about it.

Math is one of those areas that Kaleb really enjoys – so we try to extend the activities with it as often as we can. He had much fun this week having us ask him addition and subtraction problems at the table so he could show Daddy what he’s learning ~ and we even heard him asking the cat math questions. Too cute!

Fun with Blocks

This week, the blocks we received from Larsen Toy Lab were out and all over the house. The boys are playing with them together and they pulled out a HUGE stash of other wooden blocks to build together – which makes me so very happy!!

We have the Building Bridges Block set {pictured above} and I love how it incorporates literature with creativity for kids – for hands-on fun! You can read more about the blocks from Larsen Toy Lab in my recent post, but be sure to check out their products {and help this great start-up company!}.

More Preschool Links

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! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

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Apologia Educational Ministries ~ producing resources to help homeschool families learn, live, and defend the Christian faith.

Maestro Classics ~ introduce great music and classics stories to children with this classical music series. Don’t miss their newly released Carnival of Animals that you will want to check out!

Guess what? I never did get around to sharing pictures from what our children have termed the ‘best week ever’ of school. A.k.a. – they had free reign over the arts and crafts on our shelves and managed to overrun and destroy create some amazing Thanksgiving-related masterpieces. It was a short-lived reign though, but one that resulted in turkey this and turkey that.

Kaleb and Laurianna made Pilgrim hats together – can you guess who did the coloring?

We made turkey placemats…or something fairly resembling one.

Drew pictures of turkeys {and a little someone obviously had the help of a sibling on this one}.

Spent some time playing with some GREAT new wooden blocks from Larsen Toy Lab. The block set has a go-along book that you read and then try to recreate some of the things in the illustrations using the blocks in the kits as well as your creativity. Stay tuned – I’ll be sharing more about these next week with you all!

Although whipped cream doesn’t seem school-related, it has played a part in Kaleb feeling better since he had a nice squirt of it to follow up his antibiotics this week {we ran out of his grape juice}. He was rather happy to use this substitute and is doing AMAZINGLY better {as in jumping up and down constantly and will.not.sit.still}.

And the big fun this week was a 6th birthday celebration, apple pie and all in lieu of birthday cake.

That is the quick sum-up of our week, minus all of the math, reading, and language that we worked on as well – but wasn’t as fun to take pictures of. We’re talking about nouns, reading the sounds ‘x’ and ‘qu’ and having fun with patterns and addition and subtraction.

What was your week like?

A Few Links for You

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! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

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I hope that you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving together with your families. I have things to share from our week, but our internet has been down {again}, so a more detailed post will follow.

For now – feel free to leave a link to your posts from this past week below!

More Preschool Links

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! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

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Sometimes I think it would be nice if we just had a ‘normal’ week around here. But then I realize that we are so amazingly blessed to have flexibility in our homeschool day and go along with all of the little bumps in our days.

The last little bit Kaleb has been complaining of leg pains and a few other joints that we thought were just growing pains – but a trip to the doctor this week let us know that we apparently haven’t nipped his Lyme disease and he is still having flare-ups. We didn’t exactly plan on spending quite so much time at the doctor’s office this week, but the meds already seem to be making a difference and that has also changed how he is acting during school {yay!!}.

During the week, I’ve been trying to take pictures using Instagram so hopefully that explains the square pictures in my posts lately. Makes it handy for me during our school day {especially since I leave my camera downstairs most of the time}.

Reading

With a change in how he felt, came a little change in Kaleb’s reading – and his participation. We’re still working through our All About Reading Level 1. Right now we’re breaking up our lessons over the course of a week, depending on Kaleb’s interest, so at least one lesson a week. He’s picked up the ‘qu’ sound and reading words with ‘x’ in them as well now – woot!

Science Learning with Blocks

We’ve finished up our pet unit in Science K and this week pulled out the big bag of foam blocks that comes with our science program to start the next unit. Kaleb was RATHER happy {since I’ve had them up high on a shelf!}. During our lessons we’ve been talking about the ways to describe the blocks {how they are the same/different} based on texture, size, shape, etc…

More Drawing…

The drawing continues each and every day. I have piles of pictures on my desk from a certain little boy who SO enjoys our Draw Write Now books. He just likes to flip through the books and pick pictures to draw. Usually we use the Draw and Journal Pages and he’ll write a little bit to go along with his picture, but sometimes he gets carried away and into my stash of paper. 

3 Letter Word Cards

The huge hit this week was the Three Letter Word Cards that I shared earlier this week. We’re using our Letter Tiles from All About Spelling so that we can tie these in with what we’re learning in our spelling and reading time. Definitely something that we’re keeping handy and using each week.

That’s a quick look at our week – we’re still working on our Calendar notebook, handwriting, Saxon Math and other subjects too. How has your week been?

More Preschool Links

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! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

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The big excitement this week was quite obviously the election. The kids were rather thrilled that they were able to walk up with me and watch me fill in my ballot.

The stickers at the end were just as fun too. They all think they are hilarious. {I might agree}.

We have two different learning groups that we are a part of {call me crazy}, and Tuesday was our morning to spend with one of the groups. Kaleb spent his time learning about caves and bats. They built caves using sugar cubes and clay and had much fun….and I have no pictures to show for it.

Geography Time

We’re using Little Passports for geography this year and Kaleb is really enjoying it.

This week we ‘traveled’ to Brazil and learned about the red-faced monkey, amethyst caves and more. Next week we’ll be doing some of the online adventures that are a part of Little Passports – and Kaleb is thrilled because he has a chance to be on the computer.

We’ve also been talking about the continents and how we live in North America and Brazil was in South America, the size of Brazil compared to other countries {the US, Canada, China, etc…}, and looking at the countries that border Brazil.

Math Time

We’re into a new month – so some new pages in our Calendar Notebook. We may have {ahem} forgotten to work on it last week, so we caught up on it this week.

Math is really one area that Kaleb enjoys tremendously. He absolutely loves math facts and memorizing them. I can honestly say that he has a better handle on his math facts compared to his siblings at his age/grade. Not sure if it’s the Saxon math or just him, but it’s really fun to see. At the dinner table this week, he answered a bunch of addition problems for us and was excited to have his little moment in the spotlight. {We were excited too!}

One of Kaleb’s favorite hands-on toy are the big bag of Wedgits that we have. We have the Wedgits starter kit and a deck of the Wedgit design cards – definitely a purchase that was well worth the investment!

Preparing Ahead

In the upcoming weeks we’ll be working on some Thanksgiving fun and getting ready to celebrate Advent. I’m really excited about a few of the resources we’ll be using with Kaleb and Zachary {especially the Everyday Emmanuel from What’s in the Bible}. The boys are going to LOVE it. Take a peek at our favorite Advent and Christmas resources for a coupon code too!

Did you take your kids along with you when you voted this week? What was their favorite part?

More Preschool Links

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! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

<a href="https://www.homeschoolcreations.net/category/Preschool%20Corner" target="_blank"><img src="http://i678.photobucket.com/albums/vv146/homeschoolcreations/PreschoolCornerbutton.png" title="Preschool Corner" /></a>