More Ideas and our new schoolroom!

Both Isaac and Eli love this USA puzzle. Each piece is a state.

Great way to learn a little about the states and have fun doing it.

Another Confessions of a Homeschooler.com idea.

Poking the lines of the letters with a tack/toothpick,

then shining light through the paper with a flashlight

to see the light come through the holes and light up the letter.

I remember teachers using these in classrooms to make their children

 whisper while they read. Theirs were made out of PVC pipe.

 I just bought the real thing. Pretty cool. You can hear yourself read. Fun for the kids.

BTW- Isaac is reading Dick & Jane here. Controversial but I like Dick & Jane.

It gives kids confidence, opportunity to practice some fluency, and learn some sight words. Obviously, you have to still have a phonics program, duh, people!

Confessions---using magnetic letters to spell out the number words with her printables.

Domino Parking Lot - Love this! I set out dominoes that add up to 12.

 Isaac has to figure out which number parking spot they go in.

Helps him see groups when adding. Just plain fun.

Leah was home one day, so she joined us. Our Bible Study Guide lesson that morning was about the descendents of Adam all the way to Noah. So we made our own family trees.

Isaac chose to put all kinds of fruit on his.

'

Eli just wanted a banana tree.

I finally started turning the storage room into a schoolroom. We have two unfinished and partially finished attic spaces. Half of this room is still full of rubbermaids and baby supplies. The other half is all things pertaining to school. I had to find a place where I could leave my stuff out of sight. I was tired of seeing it in my bedroom at night! This room is right off of the playroom, so it works great. When Eli gets bored, he just walks right out, but I still can have an ear/eye on him. The dream is to have the other attic space finished for storage and this all schoolroom, carpeted and painted!

Coloring our letter B's.

Putting down glue dots for the beans!

Don't know why Eli looks so forlorn here! lol...just love the pic!

Workin on placing his beans on the glue. Concentration!

Beans beans the musical fruit...

Confessions printables--tracing B.

Fraction tiles! These are great intro to fractions even to the little ones.

Sorting...How many different ways can you make 1?

If the tile says 1/6 how many of those tiles will you need to make 1?

Unifix cubes! They love building towers, making patterns...

taking apart and putting back together.

Proud of his work. :)

Making letters with Playdoh

Confessions Upper-Lowercase/color match.

I got this out for Eli but Isaac wanted to do it.

Lots of puzzles!

Math U See. Isaac has been working through the primer. The first half of the book was really too easy. Last half has more challenge, but I'm still not too sure about what we'll do next year. Would like to see the Alpha book in person.

Painting letters.

I wrote the letter in pencil, he had to go back over them with the proper strokes.

B is for Butterfly. Tissue butterflies! Got this off of Confessions AGAIN!

 Just love that woman!

Eli's work.

They were supposed to put glue around their butterfly and wad up the tissue paper on it.

I thought Isaac did great. Good for motor skills, creativity. He liked it!



Stations

The whole month of December was pretty laid back with holiday happenings and such. Isaac and Eli really started to play together more, so who was I to interrupt that? If they are playing really good together I feel that is more important than any other learning at this point. They need to learn to get along, play together, share, use their imaginations, make memories.

So with that in mind, I started stations. I pick out about 4 activities. I set them up around the dining room table, and I let the boys rotate through them. Sometimes we use a timer, sometimes it is not appropriate. The good thing is this way of learning keeps Eli preoccupied (for the most part) and learning too. I keep all my activities organized on notecards. I saw this notecard organization on www.whyamysmiles.wordpress.com. I've collected so many supplies, and I can just flip through the cards for ideas to keep track of what we've done and what I have!

The majority of these activities focus on motor skills. I've started introducing Isaac to writing simply because he is finally interested and wants to hold the pencil, crayon, whatever the right way! So we've been going over how to write each letter (very lax about this) and at the same time, trying to teach Eli his alphabet and sounds. He could really care less. It is so funny how different the boys are. Isaac knew his whole alphabet and sounds before Eli was even born. He knew them because he is good at memorizing and loved letters. Eli just wants to play and explore and watch OU football. :) So here are some of the activities. We might spend 45min to an hour total on 4 activities. To find many of these activities head to my fave websites: www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com, www.mama-jenn.blogspot.com, and prekinders.com

Matching letters, upper/lowercase, this was more for Eli, but Isaac enjoyed

getting the sticky tak and putting the apples on. Good for fine motor :)

Like I said, sometimes Eli loves it.

Sometimes he gets mad and goes to the corner.

Working letter puzzles together.

Prehandwriting with dry erase.

Cutting practice

Tongs and pom poms...practice motor skills,

counting, sorting, colors, etc

Balancing marbles on golf tees!

Playdoh and puzzles!

I have the number and letter playdoh stamps.

Do a dots!

 Ring Stands

 Melissa & Dougs Locks & Latches

 Handwriting without Tears Stamp & See

 Learning to writing the letter a with the magnetic pen

that comes with the Stamp & See

Ants in Your Pants! ---I came up with a physical activity for each letter in the alphabet.

They jump around holding their pants up with this one. They LOVE it.

A-ants in your pants, B- Bounce, C-Crawl, etc.

Sometimes I start the stations with a book.

Lacing letters

Dollar Tree money - recognizing coins, counting by 10s with dimes,

 adding simple dollar amounts by 1s, 10s, $5 +$1= ? stuff like that.

Drawing letters in sand with your fingers!

Outlining shapes with stickers and tracing shapes

 Rice box with letters...has to find the letters to spell his name.

Must find the right letters. Uppercase I...lowercase "aac."

 I stuck some lowercase i's in there to try to trick him.

I just asked Eli if he knew the letter he found.

Sticker dots instead of do-a-dots.

Hooked on Handwriting - this was given to me.

Practicing vertical lines. lol

pattern blocks

Tracing C---Oil pastel wax resist with water colors.

Caterpillar dice game with Leah (from Confessions)

The Very Hunger Caterpillar graphing chart. (from Confessions)