Thursday, March 24, 2011

Cats, Cupcakes and the Letter C!


After a two week break we are back! This has been the month of birthday parties and celebrations. March is a busy, crazy month! 

Today's preschool lesson was done in stages throughout the whole day. That wouldn't be how I would normally choose to do school but with a teething baby and everybody fighting colds it was the best we could do. Ethan didn't seem to mind though and it kept him busy off and on. 

 We always begin our morning with prayer, a devotional (today's was from The One Year Devotions for Preschoolers), and Sunday School songs.

I wanted to teach Ethan about the letter C and he loves the book, If You Give A Cat A Cupcake, so that was the theme of the day. 

Ethan with his name tag that says "Ethan is ready for fun with Cat!"
Earlier this morning I went out to our sandbox and hid a bunch of seashells and random items (like a shoe, comb, hat, book, etc.). After we read the story I told Ethan we were going to a pretend beach in our backyard to look for seashells and a few other things as well. He was completely confused and looked at me like I was crazy. So I proceeded to dig in the sand and before long I found a seashell! Ethan looked at me with wonder in his eyes and I'm sure he was thinking how in the world did that get there?? He was hooked after that and had so much fun finding items in the sand. He especially loved the seashells and every time he found a random item like a shoe, he'd say "that's silly!" 







 After we came inside Ethan got to decorate his own cupcake with markers, crayons and stickers. 



 We also worked on a connect the dots worksheet and a match the items worksheet relating to the story. These worksheets came from an activity booklet found on the harpercollinschildrens.com website. 


Remember the teething baby I mentioned earlier?? Well, here he is in all his glory. :) 


He sure is cute though and I can't wait till he's old enough to join in on the preschool fun!


Later in the day we learned about the letter C on starfall.com. This is a great website and I highly recommend it!!

After dinner we got the chance to decorate our own cupcakes. I of course had no sprinkles on hand!! And you can't read If You Give A Cat A Cupcake and then decorate your own cupcake and not have sprinkles!! So I quickly found some packs of Smarties and crushed them up, and we had sprinkles! I'm pretty sure this activity was Ethan's favorite part of the day! 









Thursday, March 3, 2011

M is for Monkey

Exhausted is the word that comes to mind as I write this post. I had no idea how much time and energy goes into parenting! I love my boys to pieces, they are my delight and joy, but they are wearing me out! :) I have so much respect for my own mother, she was and is truly Super Mom! All this to say that I've decided for now, while Ethan is still 2, we're only going to do preschool one day a week. Thursday will be that special day. Today highlighted the letter M and the focus was on monkeys of course!

Here are my monkeys ready to learn!

Bible lesson:
  • Open in prayer
  • Read today’s devotional (from The One Year Devotions for Preschoolers)
  • Sing Sunday School songs

Story and Music Time:
  • Read Five Little Monkeys Reading in Bed (by Eileen Christelow)
  
            
Ethan had a blast singing Five Little Monkeys with the puppets and bed. I made the bed out of a cereal box and construction paper. The puppets were made by printing out monkey clip-art from Microsoft Word and then pasting onto craft sticks.



Snack:
  • Bananas of course!

Online Learning:

Craft:

After our structured preschool time I always have the special book basket available with books containing titles or themes with the letter of the week. Ethan loves to read the stories to himself. I love that he has a love of reading!