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Preschool Corner ~ The One in Which I am Tired and Share Little

Yes, we did school together this week and although we were doing Gingerbread, we haven’t finished it all up yet or done NEAR the amount of things that I wanted to work on together.

And I’m tired. Ridiculously so. The cold weather and good books have been calling me name at night and I’m curling up and reading or just relaxing and enjoying the time off rather than blogging. Can you believe it?

We’ve been working through The Truth in the Tinsel and doing {almost} every craft. We missed one and need to make it up, but otherwise the kids are thoroughly enjoying all the craftiness and messy stuff. And pictures…well, I’m surrounded by 4 kids and glue, so my focus has been elsewhere {grins}.

Kaleb is also SO very excited using All About Reading Level 1 ~ below we were playing “Feed the Monster” and as he read the words he put them into the monster’s mouth. The best part? He wanted me to make these hilarious ‘eating’ sounds whenever he fed the monster a word. Too cute.

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That’s seriously all I have for pictures this week. I’ll be sharing our Gingerbread fun next week once we’ve finished up all the fun.

What have YOU been up to this week?

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Preschool Corner ~ Beginning Advent

 

This week we all pulled back a little bit on some of our schoolwork, sticking more to the basics and then starting on our Advent activities. What did that look like for Kaleb?

 

History & Bible

During our Mystery of History time, we talked about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. That led to some cooking fun and we made lentil stew for everyone to try and see if they would have traded their birthright for a bowl of stew. Kaleb did really like it, because he insisted on having it several nights in place of regular dinner…probably good he isn’t the oldest and in line for the birthright!

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Every day Kaleb and I followed along in his Little Hands-on Bible to read the stories that tied in with the history lessons. This has been a great way to further include him in our history each day ~ and really make him feel that he is a part of things {and understand it too!}.

Reading

We’re working on All About Reading Level 1 together. Kaleb is on the third lesson, but really excited to work on it with me. We pinned his little progress chart up above his desk and he colors in a star whenever we finish a lesson. In the lesson below, Kaleb sounded out the different words and then we also put the rhyming words together on the ice cream cones.

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Advent Fun

We’re doing quite a few different things to celebrate Advent together as a family. Each night we are reading through Jotham’s Journey. During the day, the kids and I are using the Truth in the Tinsel, which is full of hands-on crafts to teach children the real meaning of Christmas. December 1st was the first day of the crafts and we made a light ornament {template was in the Truth in the Tinsel ebook} and put it in our tree to remind us of our lesson.

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And every.single.day either Rick or I have been reading the book The Gingerbread Pirates ~ I’m thinking we may have to make some fun cookies soon to go along with the book! This picture was just too sweet not to share…

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That’s a quick look at our week ~ what have you all been doing together?

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 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.
 

 

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    The Week of Catch-Up ~ Preschool Corner

    With the craziness of last week, this week ended up being a bit of a ‘catch-up’ week ~ finishing up a few things that had been put aside the week before. And while there are several things that I want to share, I will admit that I managed to get a wee bit sidetracked getting ready for Thanksgiving {we’re celebrating Friday} and pulling things together for Kaleb’s birthday, which happened to fall on Thanksgiving Day this year.

    It’s a bit strange knowing that he is now FIVE!! :)

    So…we tied up a few loose ends with a unit, had fun learning about Stonehenge and ancient Egypt together as a family {via Mystery of History}, worked on All About Reading together {speaking of which, you all are NOT going to want to miss a most fabulous giveaway coming next Tuesday!!}.

    And a little peek at the ‘other’ stuff that we play with during school time… the Animal Train Sort and Match {Guidecraft}

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    We read from our Little Hands-on Bible together…

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    We had SO much fun building our own Stonehenge for one of our history projects.

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    And Kaleb was VERY excited to get his hands on the All About Spelling board and work on some reading with me…{did I mention a giveaway coming???}. :)

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    And in case you missed it earlier this week, I also shared some of our favorite gift ideas {we’ve had birthdays and such on overload the last few weeks and Christmas coming soon…sigh}.

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    And…that’s it for this week. How was your week and Thanksgiving??

    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! Take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner.
     
     


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      CAT Scans and the ER ~ Preschool Corner

      I did have things to share this week, but the last few days have been a wee bit out of control and all my intentions of having time blocked off Thursday afternoon and/or evening went out the window when Kaleb fell off a stool  {5 minutes before our family pictures, mind you} and we ended up in the ER needing a CAT scan. So, we did get an ‘inside’ look at the big ol’ machine {Kaleb asked me to videotape it for Zachary…which we did for about 15 seconds to show how well he did}. After the scan, he saw some of the images on the computer ~ pretty fun {especially since it was all good!}.

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      He now has a lovely shiner and cut that needs some healing, but fortunately nothing is broken. He also has 12 lovely stickers to show for his pain…and a mini dinosaur and rabbit. I’m sure we’ll be billed for those too {grins}.

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      Other than that, I’ve had a yucky cold, little sleep and am having trouble holding a coherent conversation {just ask my husband}…so it might be best if I held off until another week with our week of Jesse Bear!

      BUT…

      I’d still love to hear what you all have been up to! Please link up your PRESCHOOL related posts below.

      Note: If you haven’t read the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner, please take a moment to do so BEFORE linking up today. Thanks! :)

      More Links for You

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      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! Take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner.
       
      {p.s. Linky Tools wasn’t working last night, so if you are seeing this note, please leave a comment with your link and I’ll add it when it’s up and running!}

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      Fireman Unit ~ Preschool Corner {& 5K too!}

      Preschool CornerNote: If you haven’t read the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner, please take a moment to do so BEFORE linking up today. Thanks! :)

      Kaleb’s theme choice this week was to do Firemen. Needless to say, there were many ‘sirens’ echoing in our house throughout the day {and I think I may be ready to move onto a quieter theme next week}.

      Some of the go-along books…

       
       

      Workboxes…

      Here’s a look inside our workbox setup for this week. This week and last we started using Mystery of History 1 and Kaleb’s first ‘box’ includes the things he needs to participate along with us ~ coloring pages that go along with the weekly lessons as well as the Bible stories that we read in My First Hands-on Bible {so very much loving this Bible!!}. Although he might not be able to fully comprehend all that is going on with our history, we all try to sit together and tie-in things for him as much as we can.

      Noah Mystery of History

      Most printables for our week came from the Firemen Printables Pack. A few additional links are shared below.

      Firefighters workbox

      These are just a few picture glimpses into our week…

      Language & Letters

      F is for Firefighter letter sheet

      Our Do-A-Dot markers made their appearance several times this week. We used them as ‘water droplets’ to find each of the upper and lowercase Ff’s and mark them.

      Fireman ABC Maze

      Having fun with mazes….

      Fireman Word Story

      Since the Do-A-Dot markers helped out so much during our last ‘find the word in the story’, we doubled up the colors again and had fun stamping out all of the words in the story that we could find.

      Math

      This week we worked on a new concept ~ greater than and less than. The printable was from the Fireman Printable Pack and one that Kaleb asked if we could keep doing…which was a little hard since we glued them in place the first time. :)

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      Measuring ~ Kaleb loves measuring with his own ruler, so measuring the different fireman’s tools was much fun. {On a side note: I realized when printing this off in pdf format that it needs to be done without ‘shrink to fit’ or it does not measure correctly}.

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      Crafts

      One of the fun crafts we worked on this week was a handprint fireman team {which went along nicely with our Five Little Fireman poem}. I found this idea on KidsSoup and Kaleb loved it! :) Kaleb also made a firetruck out of foam shapes {super simple}, but again…much fun.

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      All About Reading

      This week we worked on the lowercase letter f. Kaleb worked on his ‘f’ for fish craft page from All About Reading Pre1 and then Ziggy helped us sound out some words. I slowly sounded out the words on the picture cards and Kaleb had to piece them together and identify what word was being sounded out.

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      Additional Firemen Links

      Other Preschool Links

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      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! Take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you as well. Check out the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner if you need them.

       

       

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      Updated Guidelines for Preschool and Kindergarten Community

      I’ve been completely amazed at how the Preschool and Kindergarten Community has grown over the last few years. What started as something to document the weekly happenings in our house has been a fun way for others to connect and share their experiences and also have other families share all of the creative things they are doing at home.

      In order to have everything all in one place, here are the updated guidelines for linking up each week:

      By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

      To help other moms quickly and easily find things, can I ask you all to help out a bit? Here are a few things that would be SO very helpful in better connecting and sharing with each other.

      1. Please be sure to link to your exact blog post when sharing a link {not just directly to your blog}. We don’t want to miss what you are sharing! If you need help on how to do this, you can read more about permalinks here.

      2. Be specific in your ‘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}

      3. Please link up posts that are ONLY preschool and kindergarten related. I know that there are so many things we can share with each other, but this linky is specifically to share preschool and kindergarten fun ~ not recipes, giveaways, etc… Even after the linky closes, other moms can go back through the links and visit posts, but are looking for teaching/learning ideas for their kiddos. :)

      4. In your post, please link back to the Preschool and Kindergarten Corner. You can use a text link or even grab the button coding from my sidebar to place the button in your post. Having the button in your post will also help other moms find even more great ideas to use with their children when they are able to browse around.

      5. Visit others!! As much as I would love to, I don’t always have time to visit every single one of you each week. I try to visit as many as I can, but I don’t always get to leave comments either. When you link up each week, can you take a few minutes and visit the person who linked up just before you and say ‘hi’ and leave a note of encouragement. It’s a fun way to meet a few more moms and also encourage them at the same time. This isn’t a requirement, but we all know what a short note means when we’ve worked hard on sharing with others. :)

      6. If you continue to link up without linking back to this site – or if you are linking to another linky that you are hosting, your link will be deleted.

      I hope that these requests don’t offend others ~ I’ve just had a lot of spam posts linking up lately and want to have Preschool and Kindergarten Community be something that is helpful and easy to navigate for others. I appreciate all of you that participate each week and the ideas that you share with all of us!

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