School time is finally getting into a ‘groove’ and routine for us, which is a HUGE relief for me. I’m not a big fan of anything chaotic and crazy, so it’s nice to feel that we’re settling in. Zachary is really enjoying having his workboxes and strips to help him along and knows his morning routine now too.

Even though I haven’t really had the free time this week, I’ve been fiddling with graphics and html, and I made a new graphic for the Preschool Corner. If you’ve used the code on my sidebar to link to Preschool Corner, it should have already changed over for you! :)

This week I’m going back to breaking up what we did by subject/area since that’s the way my lesson plans are laid out, they way I’ve done it in the past, and it’s a lot easier to remember things that way. And just to let you know, in a few weeks I’m going to be teaching at our local co-op and will be sharing what I am teaching during that time too.

Bible

This week we talked about Adam and Eve and being obedient to God. It was actually a GREAT practical hands-on lesson and we walked through examples of what different actions were pleasing to God or ones that showed disobedience. Later in the day something came up and Zachary put two and two together with our lesson and had a ‘lightbulb’ moment, realizing that his choice was not the right one. {And Mommy shouts ‘hurray!!}

Math

Zachary is about impossible to stop in his math lessons lately. I had only planned to have him do a little at a time, but he gets upset when I try to have him stop.

Okay!!!

This week we’ve been focusing on writing numbers up to the number 6 {more on the handwriting aspect of it, since he recognizes the numbers}, making sure he understands the difference between right and left, following simple one-step directions, and following directions ~ i.e color the shirt on the right green and the pants on the left red.

Zachary is also working on telling time to the hour using a standard clock {i.e. non-digital}. He had fun playing some bingo games and folder games that cover telling time too.

Science

The two caterpillars that went into their chrysalis at the same time almost 2 weeks ago, both emerged on the same day and Zachary was able to help release one of them too. Both of the butterflies were boys, so the kids have been so excited that we had ‘twin boys’. :)

Zachary also worked on finishing up his mini-book on a caterpillar’s life cycle. See his little caterpillar on the cover?

Phonics & Reading

We’ve been working on the ‘th’ sound this week and the two different sounds that that blend makes {think of the words ‘this’ and ‘things’ and see how your tongue feels different when making those ‘th’ blends}. He’s also working on the ‘ng’ sound.

During this year we’ll be using the Rocket Phonics program with him and I’ll be posting about his progress throughout the year. I’m really enjoy it at this point because it goes along very well with our spelling program.

Spelling

For spelling this week, Zachary learned about counting syllables in words and how to build the ‘ch’, ‘sh’ and ‘th’ sounds. He also worked on spelling words with the short ‘u’ and short ‘e’ sound.

I would normally have him use the letter tiles on the board to spell the words, but since his two older sisters sit down and write theirs out…well, he wants to also.

Before we start our spelling for the day {using the letter tiles and the board}, I mess up a bunch of the letters and Zachary is getting quicker putting them all back into alphabetical order. Watching him mentally singing the ABC song to put them in the right order just cracks me up!

Handwriting

Since Zachary has a pretty good handle on his uppercase letters {they are at least recognizable}, we’re working on lowercase letters and how they are formed. This week’s focus was on the letters o, c, g, q, and d.

Geography

Some of the things we are doing in geography are a little above Zachary, but he still sits with us and listens along. He did help with our country meal – well, with the eating end of it, that is. :) We made Pico de Galo and he thoroughly enjoyed that.

About the Preschool Corner:

This week, the big news {and excitement} was butterflies!! All of the kids have been fascinated watching our caterpillars grow like crazy and we were able to watch two of them go into their chrysalis at the same time.

A little later in the week, we watched as one of our earlier chrysalis broke and thought we had a little tragedy on our hands. If you want to read a little more about it, you can read about the Birth of a Butterfly on No Ordinary Moments.

BUT…after a little intervention, we had our first butterfly – a girl! In the pictures below you can see one of the caterpillars a few hours before the big change {top left}. The butterfly that emerged is shown in the other three pictures ~ if you look closely, you can see the crumpled wing that she was sporting because she couldn’t get herself completely released from the chrysalis without some help.

Zachary pulled out his journal to draw a picture of our caterpillar tank. For some reason he drew four chrysalis’. If you can see the black dots at the bottom of the picture….well, the caterpillars do leave a lot of poop around. :) Of course, he would choose to draw that!

We also talked about the life cycle of a butterfly {in addition to watching it up close and personal!}. Zachary made a little ‘book’ that he had to sequence in the correct order. Yes, I know he’s coloring the egg black…but he thought it was poop. Again. And really, with the amount in our tank, I can’t blame the poor kid!

Zachary also had fun working on a butterfly life cycle maze.

Some great butterfly books/printables and sites:

• Life Cycle of a Butterfly mini-book ~ from WorksheetPlace.com
• Emerging Butterfly ~ a few pictures showing a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis
• Life Cycle coloring sheet ~ from KidZone
• Butterfly and moth printouts ~ Enchanted Learning {need membership}

Zachary is really enjoying having more ‘school time’ this year and begs to do certain things with me ~ spelling being the main thing! We do the majority of his spelling time on the whiteboard with our tile letters, but he wanted to write on paper like the girls this week too!

Our fruit and veggie cards also made an appearance this week too. I gave Zachary all the veggies along with the matching word cards and he sorted them out and matched the picture up with the name card by sounding them out.

Patterns and figuring out how to create a shape using various other shapes was something else that Zachary really enjoyed too this week. He started out by creating several bugs, shapes, and kept pulling out cards to complete until I had to take them away…

That’s the quick ‘sum-up’ in our house this week! :) Can’t wait to see what’s been happening in your preschool time!

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

Officially, this week marked the first week of our new school year. We have been doing a scaled down version of things all summer just to keep ourselves in school mode, but it definitely kicked up a notch in our house.

For us it means a few transitions. We’re testing the ‘kindergarten’ waters for Zachary and will be stepping things up for Kaleb, so over the next few months you may notice a shift in focus from Zachary over to Kaleb in the realm of preschool. For now, Zachary will still be our family’s poster child for the preschool happenings ~ until Mommy gets things fully lined up for Kaleb to do a little more during his school time.

Zachary has joined in with the girls to learn about geography and this week we did a basic review of the continents and how to read a map. He was so excited to be able to fill in his own workbook ~ especially labeling the compass N, S, E. and W.

He remembers the continents too thanks to our lovely Geography Songs cd {and was rather proud of himself for that one}. While I would spend time working with the girls on their language or writing, I would find him on the couch studying some of our interactive geography books.

Our workboxes have now gone full-force and the kids are loving them! Over the summer while we were adjusting them we only had a few a day, but Zachary has between 8-10 a day and we are getting in some fun learning games during the day for him. A highlight for him has been playing a new math game on the computer {and Mommy finally broke down and let the kids use the laptop}.

He and I worked together this week with Kaleb’s stringing beads to sequence numbers from 1 to 10 and then pulled blocks from the row to form 2 digit numbers. I called out a number {“63”} and he had to put the number together and show me what he did.

We’ve also spent a lot of time reading together this week. We started back on some of the basic books we have from Scholastic just to get him motivated and while he fussed about it when we pulled them out, he kept asking to do more by the time we were done. In the next few weeks we’re going to be starting the Rocket Phonics program with him {and I am very excited about it!!}.

We have a few little visitors in our house too! A friend of ours shared some of the many caterpillars that she has and we have our own tank to watch them grow and change. One has gone into it’s chrysalis already and the other two are growing like crazy! Next week we’ll be doing some more crafts and learning more about the life cycle of a butterfly.

That pretty much sums up our week! Can’t wait to hear what you all are doing!

About the Preschool Corner: