More Seasons

Speaking of seasons and weather, I thought I would share how we work on these concepts here.

Weather is fairly easy for Doodle to grasp. We talk about if it's sunny or not, cold or hot, and he understands these basic ideas. We have paired them up with speaking about the seasons and done informal conversations about the temperature during different seasons. Hot in summer so we swim, cold in winter so we wear gloves, etc.

A few weeks ago I saw these magnetic dress up dolls and I realized this was a perfect way to really help drive home the concepts of seasons and weather. This weekend we spent some time in the mornings playing with the dolls and selecting clothing for different seasons. I'd tell them to pick out a summer outfit and they'd put something together.

Seasons Days & Months

I've been thinking about how I can better teach Doodle the seasons and days and months besides just silly songs and some workbook pages. Today I stumbled on this idea from Michaels and I think it's *perfect* for helping a younger student learn about seasons and days and even months.

In the craft video the woman explains how to make this, and my adaptation is to have the tree leaves change with the season, maybe using velcro?, and under the swing having the days of the week and maybe on the other side the months of the year.

Another thing I'm excited about with this tree is how moveable it is. No matter what room we work in it can be set up anywhere with minimal fuss.

It also just so happens that I bought some leaf crafts awhile back which I can have the kids help me with for this tree. It's going to be an exciting craft weekend here!

Math | PreK+

I've been meaning to write about our Math choices because I think Math is one of the harder areas for me to pick what to give to Doodle.

We started using a Math sticker book to beging to formally introduce the numbers to Doodle. It allows him to interact with the pages and do activities without needing to write a number which is important to me as he's still struggling with his handwriting. The less I can pressure him to write and the more I can allow him to do without writing the more excited he is about learning.

Enter our Math sticker book. You can buy it off Amazon but I assume I bought it at Staples or Target or some other such place as we'd had it awhile before we used it. Doodle loves this and we've adapted it to help him learn so much. The first set of pages is one number per spread (2 pages) and it asks the child to place the sticker with the number in a box above the number word, then place an equal amount of star stickers in a designated box and finally on the other page the child is asked to color a picture and add stickers to it equal to the number being worked on.

Usually Doodle and I will do the first page and talk about the number he's putting on, count aloud the star stickers and finally i'll have him jump up and down while I count to the number again. After the number 12 the book starts to work on some basic Math functions. "Count the animals in the box" and again it's all done with stickers.

This is important for me because it shows me that despite Doodle's handwriting issues, he is still learning his numbers and math skills by using the stickers and placing them in the correct spots.

We also use learning cubes for our math time as well. Legos would work just as well, as long as they stack together easily and can be counted individually.

I've recently introduce Tracer sheets into our math time as well to match the number we're working on that day. Doodle is getting more excited about learning how to write and it's allowing him to feel more open about learning and working together. The other day I asked him out of the blue to write "12" on our easel and he TRIED. He wrote it somewhat backwards and slanted but he TRIED and I was thrilled to see his confidence growing so quickly.

Of The Week

Doodle has been displaying a reluctance to practicing writing his letters or any organized writing activity. I'd hoped over the summer he would outgrow this but it's not happened and it has forced me to really look at what could be causing it. He is a bright kid and loves to learn but refuses any suggestions at writing letters or numbers.

After thinking for some time, I stumbled on the thought that maybe his being a very dominant lefty was causing problems in him learning how to manipulate his writing utensil. I paid close attention and sure enough during our days when we came to hand writing he shut down emotionally and refused to try. I did a little research and I found some great sites talking about learn to write left handed and the obstacles that kids face in a right dominant world. This has really made me look hard at my kid and realize that it is so very very important for me to focus on giving him confidence in learning how to write well left handed. I feel so strongly about this, in fact, that I've decided to take this fall semester to focus heavily on learning to write before we jump into much anything else at the kindy level. Despite him being ready for it, so much of the curriculum I'd looked at requires Doodle to write at some point in time. (numbers for math, copy words for learning to read, etc) and if he is not confident in his ability to write he will continue to hold back in learning and refuse to grow.

So what do I do now? I take my neatly organized and planned curriculum and I decide to rearrange it in a way that makes sense on how to teach a kid to write. Again, although Doodle knows his alphabet, I'm working on helping him learn to write it which means we will be focusing time on turning letters into shapes and learning how to create those shapes first with hand held manipulatives and then followed on paper with a writing utensil.

Week 1 - August 30th - September 3rd

Letter - L

• Tracer Page -  Put into a sheet protector Doodle and I will take turns learning how to go through the motions of writing an "L" with fat dry erase markers. The sheet protectors allow us to reuse this page daily by wiping it clean after completed. (Other tracers available here.)
• Lacing L Craft - Part of learning L will also be phonics related and serve for our art time. We will be making collages and coloring letters and talking about the sounds and words that start with the letter/sound/etc.
•  Letter(word) Search - Always looking to encourage focus and logic this will be a fun new activity for us. Doodle will search for the "L"s on his own and then I will work with him to continue and find the words as a whole. Good opportunity to work on sight words with him as well. Likely will repeat 2 or 3 times during the week.
• Lizard Puzzle - 6 piece puzzles for some "fun" computer time. 
• L Book - I'm not sure if we'll use the one here or just make our own but I am enjoying the idea of a week long "Letter Book" project with a new theme each day/page.

Word - The

• Spruce Up Sight Words - While I like the phonics approach over sight words, I do think some sight words are good to learn on their own early on, even if done on a phonics approach. I love the way this site turns them into a craft to introduce the words with in a low key approach. I'll be doing a few weeks of 'review' words to see how Doodle takes to the weekly word format. 
•  Sight word memory match game - I will use flash cards of the words in various informal games to force Doodle to read.

Numbers - 1 & One

• I would really like Doodle to learn to read his number words this year. He's easily recognizing numbers up through 12 so we're going to continue with counting and sequencing through 20 but also go "back" and work on number words as well.
• Puzzles - Gotta love a perfect find!
• Patterns - Doodle hasn't shown a huge understanding of patterns so I'd like to help focus him on a new pattern each week and gradually increase the complexity.

Crafts

• Handprint Lillies