Preschool At Home: July 2013

Hey there!! I wanted to do this post as a sort of month in review of all the things we've been doing for Pre-school At home.  I've stopped calling it tot school because the boys are getting older and not so much tots.  I suppose when CJ gets a tad bit older we will do more tot school.  You can still check out 

1 +1+1=1 for great home school freebies!  Lord knows I love a freebie!!  Anyway, I digress.. This was supposed to be a month in review, but I didn't take as many pics as I thought, of everything we've been doing.  Plus July was pretty busy with cook outs and family visitors and what not.  Any who, with out further adieu, here is our July Month in Review.

One of the things I've realized is that I focus a lot on ABC's and not so much on 123's.  So I have been making an effort to do more math at home with the boys.  My boys are only into cars and other things that go.  Seriously! No Jake and those pirates, no Super Why, and not even Octonauts.  So all those cute preschool packs out there hardly grab my guys attention.  Whenever I give them, what I think is a cute themed preschool pack, they complete them while requesting more Cars things.  For this reason, I try and do a lot of things that go activities with them and use the toy cars (or trains, or planes) we already have.

In this activity we brought out our 22,313,987 Hot Wheels Cars.  Who am I kidding, I didn't have to bring them out. They are EVERYWHERE!

I have these number cards and thought it'd be fun to not only match the numbers and dots, but also an equal number of cars.  Ace loved this, Bear got bored after we got to 4 (of course he's only 2 so that's okay).

I wanted to line the cars up this way, so the boys could visually see the lines getting longer.

Ace preferred to put them in groups this way, and out of order of course.  In the end I allowed him to do it his way as long as we completed all the numbers.

When we were done, we practiced counting backward and blasting off over the cars.  They both loved this part, I can still hear their giggles as they counted and blasted.

 We have also been using journals for quite a while.  Not everyday, but here and there I bring them out and we do some pre-writing practice.  I teach the boys how to turn the pages and go in order.  As a classroom teacher, It was a huge pet peeve of mine when kids would go back and forth all over their notebooks (yes, there is a bit of type A in there).  Anyway, typically I give them stickers or they draw a picture and then they "write" a story about them.  I transcibe their story for them.  Ace loves to "read" his stories to me when we are done.

On this day I gave them letter stickers.  First we found the letter we had been learning that week, and then I helped Bear spell his name with them.  Ace did this part on his own.  He also did a lot of practicing writing his name, which is why I haven't added a pic of his.

In my Friday Five I discussed our squash art.  The boys really enjoyed this, as they do anything that squishes between their fingers and makes a mess.

This is our School/Art area.  I like to hang their art and work up through out the week.  The Pocket chart cards are from the Zoomin' Movin' ABC's from the Royal Baloo.  It's like this woman read my mind and created a custom curriculum meant just for my boys, A-Ma-Zing!  Stop over there and let her know I sent-cha.

Thanks for Reading!! Leave A Comment, I'd love to hear from you.

I'll leave you with Cj getting in a little Baby School on the iPad2.  I love those chubba legs!!