Learning at Home with {Caps for Sale}

~Kai is 49 months old~

This week, we read Caps for Sale which Kai loves.  He read the book over and over again.  His favourite part was: Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!  I collected all the caps we had at home and realised we had a checked cap.  He happily wore it and I took a picture of him in our backyard.  He practiced balancing all the caps on his head and tried walking with them, just like the peddler in the book.

Literacy

Kai worked on the beginning sounds /m/ and /p/.  He would say each word and sound out the first letter. We also practiced rhyming words and surprisingly, he did very well!  I thought he would confuse the beginning sound and ending sound, but he didn't!

I made some preposition cards and we headed outside with Boots the Monkey to practice prepositions.

Math

We are working on recognising numbers 11-15.  Kai knows the number 11 well because we ride the tram 11 to the "big school" every day.  We did this number flippy book together and watched Harry Kindergarten's Numbers in the Teens video.  I made a number mat for him to practice number recognition.  I call out a number and he places a counter on the corresponding number.

Mandarin

We started and progressed with Lesson 1 of this book and I was happy that he could recognise almost all the words!  From the picture, you can see him reading the phrase and matching the phrase to the correct picture.  I cut out all the words from Lesson 1, call out a word and Kai would glue the word onto the blue paper.

Craft

Kai coloured 17 caps using the same colours from the book and stacked them up on top of the peddler's head, just like in the book!

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Learning at Home with {Tops and Bottoms}

Spring is finally here!  We finished our Letter of the Week back in February and with life getting in the way, I didn't do much with Kai at home for more than two months!

Kai is now 4 years old.  He recognises all uppercase/lowercase letters and the associated sounds, numbers 1-10, shapes, colours, rote counts to 30 and able to make ABAB patterns.  Before he enters "big school" in August this year, I was thinking of exposing him to beginning letter sounds, rhyming words and recognising numbers 11-20.

With inspiration from 1+1+1=1, I decided to do a literature based unit study with Kai this week, using the book Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens.

Literacy

Vocabulary ~ Learning the names of vegetables and whether they grow above or under the ground 

Beginning sounds, letter writing (noticed how he drew a carrot on a plate!)

Math

Rolling the dice, making his vegetable garden emergent reader book (he was very proud that he wrote the word "carrot" on his own - of course I had to spell it out for him!)

Patterning (making ABAB patterns - tops/bottoms/tops/bottoms using vegetable clipart), sorting and matching vegetables to plant in the garden, veggie number puzzles 1-10 

Science

Growing a carrot top ~ Kai was super amazed that his carrot top has grown within 5 days!  He kept saying, "It's growing!" and got a gray marker on Day 5 to draw a line on the popsicle stick to show the growth of his carrot top.

Mandarin

Kai has been learning how to recognise the Chinese numbers 1-10 for weeks!  He can recognise all the characters now except for the number 9.

Craft

I wanted to make a craft with Kai that can help him recall the story.  So I came up with a craft showing Bear sleeping in his house and the crops that Hare grew in Bear's field -- carrots (made slits on the paper to put the carrot in to show that it was growing under the ground), lettuce (made of crumpled crepe paper) and corn.

Just for Fun

And just for fun, Kai helped me make vegetable salad for his dad's dinner.  He enjoyed breaking the lettuce leaves into pieces, pouring the veggies into the bowl, plucking off cherry tomatoes from the vines, and finally pouring sesame dressing onto the salad.

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St Patty's Day 2015

St Patrick's Day holds a special place in my heart because it also happens to be my birthday!  Belle & Kai were unwell so I had all three kids at home. 

We read The Luckiest St. Patrick's Day Ever! and followed it up with a writing craft and drawing.  Keefe ended up colouring my leprechaun.  I think Belle's leprechaun drawing turned out so much better than mine!

Keefe & Belle did various math and literacy activities but all the action shots are Keefe's since Belle was not well enough for photos.

Printables from A Differentiated Kindergarten, The Printable Princess, Ingles 360 and Our Little Monkeys 

Kai did the activities over two days.  The poor fella has to wear an eye patch an hour a day because his right eye was diagnosed to be "lazy".  We have not been doing a lot of printables work lately since we've completed our letter of the week activities.  He is turning 4 in a few weeks' time - time to think of something new to keep him busy learning!

Printables from Our Little Monkeys and Over the Big Moon

Mommy School ~ Yy is for Yacht and Yoyo

~Kai is 46 months old~

And we made it to our last letter -- Yy!  (We did letter Zz back in Spring 2014.)

Letter Yy printables from In My World & Royal Baloo

Yy is for yacht and yoyo crafts

Mommy School ~ Xx is for X-ray and Xylophone

There were not a lot of activities we could do with the letter Xx.

Kai did a lot of tracing but made a conscious effort to trace along the lines only once (notice the smiley face?).

X is for X-ray printable pack

We made our x-ray craft using q-tips.  Kai remembered doing a similar activity with her playgroup teacher when they did x-ray hands back in November.

Kai also did a colour-by-number activity, which tied in nicely with the xylphone craft he did back in November at playgroup. 

Kai has been working on recognising the Chinese characters 1-5 for a few months now.  I laid down some q-tips on a paper and asked him to put the correct Chinese character beside the q-tips.  He was very happy when he got everything correct!

Mommy School ~ Ww is for Weather

We are back with Mommy School after a month long winter break!  Kai missed playgroup yesterday and today due to an eye infection.  We squeezed in some time to work on letter Ww.

We read What Makes the Weather? and followed it up with a weather craft.  We talked about which type of weather he likes most and he said, "sunny and cloudy". 

We did some weather printables and surprised me with his mastery of ABAB patterns.

Today, we made our winter scene craft.  I painted three of Kai's fingers to form the lowercase w.  Next, Kai used the end of a coloured pencil, dipped it into white paint and stamped it on the blue paper to make snow.  I drew the snowmen after the paint dried and Kai commented, "three handsome snowmen puppets"! 

Kai brought out the Leapfrog Fridge Words toy today, played it for a while and built a word with his name!

And finally, a walrus craft that Kai did in playgroup last November during letter Ww week.

Hello, 2015!

We rang in the New Year as a family in Marseille, France.  There were no big fireworks to count down the New Year but we enjoyed the pretty views from the Old Port underneath a clear, blue sky. 

A New Year means staying organised with a new planner!  My Limited Edition Starbucks Coffee 2015 Planner came last month, complete with a personalised name bookmark & metallic pin bookmark.  Love the embroidered cover with the Starbucks Siren holding a hot coffee mug!

A New Year also means new resolutions!  Belle missed school today but we managed to make a New Year's resolution craft (writing activity from The Starr Spangled Planner).  How cute are the eyes and necklace that she drew?!?

And finally, our littlest one turned 45 months old today.  In three more months, he'll be turning 4!