Learning to read is fun

I love to see my children learn to read!  It is simply one of the best things in life.  We’ve used many approaches in order to learn to read.  My preference is to mix a phonics approach with a sight word/whole language approach.  In my school teacher years, we called this balanced literacy.  I see pros to both methods so to me it just makes sense to mix the two approaches in learning to read. 

We begin early in teaching our little ones the letter names.  We take a fun, hands-on approach when learning our letters.  By the time our kids start kindergarten, it has been easy to move on to letter sounds and the blending of sounds because they have been exposed to the letters for over two years.

It takes a lot of repetition to get the letter sounds committed to memory so we try to make it fun.  Some of our favorite learning to read are games.   Some of the kids’ favorites are:

 

 A simple file folder, some markers, and a little time can made a board game that our kids love.  We use this to review letter names, letter sounds, and sight words.  It could be used for math too.

 For a little variety, I quickly made this game on a piece of cardstock.  Despite its poorly drawn path, the kiddos enjoy using it for a quick review.

 Our curriculum calls for a weekly letter name review.  Sometimes we play go fish or memory with the cards.  One day, I just dumped a bunch of letter tiles out onto the table and called out a letter.  They would try to find as many letters as they could as quickly as they could and put them back into the jar.  Such a simple game but they loved it! 

We can’t forget about good old Bingo either!  We’ve had these cards for years but it is really easy to just make Bingo cards too.

We have recently added a morning message to our calendar time.  I write a message with the children who are with me.  (This morning it was just Abby.  Sometimes it is also Evan.  He joined us a little late today though.)  We write a quick message and I have Abby help me fill in what she can.  I plan on incorporating more sight words into the morning messages and having Abby find the words.

At the bottom of our morning message, we work on different reading concepts.  Today it was rhyming words/ –at word family.  We’ve also worked on number words, color words, and words beginning with the letter sound we are working on.  They love to watch me draw goofy pictures to match the words.  (I am so not an artist.)  Then they try to draw the pictures too. 

This year, we have been using the sight words printables from 1+1+1=1.  We go very slowly through the words.  Actually we spent weeks just going through unit one.  For more great ideas, be sure to check out 1+1+1=1.  She has wonderful ideas!

 One of the most important things we do is read!  We read a lot.  Everyday, the little ones and I sit down and read books…many, many books!  They love it and I love it. 

 

Resources we use to learn to read:

The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading

My Father’s World Kindergarten curriculum

Easy books like Bob Books

Abeka’s Letters and Sounds

Planning for preschool ~

There is a lot of homeschool planning going on in The Little White House School.  While planning the year for our four school-aged children, I always try to remember my preschoolers and plan for them too. 

Originally, my thoughts were to write my own curriculum for my preschool aged son.  Let’s just say, I must not have been thinking clearly when I decided to do that.  Summers are mighty busy around here and there is definitely little time for curriculum writing. 

As I thought on it some more, I realized that we would have four school-aged children this year…one getting ready for high school (!) and one learning how to read.  I know my stress levels and so I’ve decided that for this year, our preschool lessons are going to look like this:

 

• We’re going to keep it simple.

No more late nights copying tons of activities from the internet.  This mom needs sleep.  Sleep makes for a happy mom and happy kids.  But our Baby Boy will still have fun and educational activities…just not so many. 

• Only one planned educational activity a day.

Sometimes I plan (way too) many activities and end up with large messes and an even larger headache.  Baby Boy and I will do one main activity a day.  Add to that some singing, some reading, some playing, and some listening during his siblings’ lessons, some nature study…I believe that there will be a lot of learning for our little man. 

Instead of planning all new activities, I’ve decided to just look back over what I did for Sunshine Girl when she was three.  My blog holds most of the activities and many, many links that will keep me from reinventing the wheel.  Here are all of the preschool posts that I’ve written.  And here are the posts pertaining to learning the ABC’s.  There are more ideas here on our very short-lived homeschooling blog.  (See the bottom of this post for links to many sites with preschool learning activities.)

So how will Little Man stay busy while I work with the older children?

 

• We will have planned extra activities for Little Man to work on during the school hours.

We keep plastic shoe boxes of activities on our preschool shelves.  These activities are only used during school hours.   Some of the things in our preschool boxes are:

• playdough and cookie cutters, plastic knives, and rolling pins
• beans or rice, a kitchen scale, and things to scoop with and into
• pipe cleaners and larger beads ( and as with the beans, please watch for choking hazards)
• dot paint markers and printables found online
• scissors and things to cut (Kumon has a great book for practicing cutting skills)
• large pompons, glue, and paper
• plastic dinosaurs and playdough (He likes to build mountains for the dinosaurs.  Sometimes he will drive trucks over his mountains.)
• large building blocks

This summer, I have also joined a group of  twenty moms of preschoolers from our homeschool group.  We are each making an activity but we are making 20 of our activity.  At the end of the month, we will meet to swap out our activities and will come home with 20 different activities for our preschoolers!  How cool is that!

We are using the book Preschool Activities in a Bag for our activities.  You can learn more about the book and swaps if you follow that link.  If you might want to do this with a group of friends, be sure to hurry.  The book is not being reprinted and they are selling the last few copies of it.   (There is more than preschool stuff there too if you are looking for some learning activities.) 

*Where do I get some of the ideas for our learning activities?  Check out these places:

1+1+1=1 

Delightful Learning

Hubbard’s Cupboard

Making Learning Fun

Confessions of a Homeschooler 

No Time for Flashcards

Walking by the Way

Totally Tots

ABC and 123

Homeschool Creations

Do you have any places that you like to visit for preschool activities and printables?   

 

 

 

Preschool fun ~

It is amazing the amount of learning that happens when you are having fun!

The little ones think that they are just having fun as they paint, glitter, and eat but they are really learning…

letters

numbers

counting, graphing, classifying, and colors

writing skills

vocabulary

And for those times when they want to do school like the big kids, these books are wonderful. 

 Workbooks are from Rod and Staff.  The Kumon workbook was found at Barnes and Noble.  Kumon workbooks can also be found in many homeschooling resources such as Rainbow Resources. 

While I sing, paint, glitter, snuggle, dance, run, read, count, and many other fun things with my little ones… I am blessed with this:

Learning is fun! 

Preschool ~ The letters M & X and plans for the new school year

We are in the middle of planning & organizing for the new school year and I realized that we did not even tell about our letters M & X.  I think we did these back in…MAY! 

Since we were nearing the end of the school year, we kept it very simple and had fun.

~ M is for markers~

 

  

 

 ~ X is for xylophone~

~ M is for music~

~Clapping a rhythm and the remnants of a painting session~

~Making music with some instruments (and a little more paint…we love our paint!)~

 

 

~We even made some of our musical instruments.~

 

 ~Here comes the marching band!~ 

 

~ M is for motion~

Ok, so I didn’t use the word “motion” with Little Brother but he gave me some blog photo ops and he learned a little science too.

 

~ M is for movie day~

 

One day, we popped a bowl of popcorn, got comfy, and watched a movie.

 

 ~The big kids joined us too!~

 

~M is for Memorial Day Weekend~

I’d really love to edit out my double chin but I don’t have photoshop. ;) So please focus on my Sunshine beauty instead.  :)

We still have two letters left to do – the letters O & Y.  We will finish those up so she can put them on her alphabet wall and see all that she has learned this year!

Plans for Preschool 2010 – 2011

I really wanted to write our own preschool curriculum this year.  However, I  realized that I really don’t have the time to do it.  So here are my plans for  the year.~

Before Five in a Row

Letter  & Character Curriculum at Hubbard’s Cupboard (free curriculum)

Begin reading (if she is ready) with The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading

Math Ideas from Hubbard’s Cupboard

This past year we did an alphabet wall to display her letters.  However, this year we are going to do a scrapbook.  I’m thinking…

My memories of my letters, numbers, and me 

Or something like that!

Our preschool ~ The letter Z

 During the month of May, Sunshine Girl has been learning her last few letters of the alphabet.  This week we focused on the letter z.

~ Z is for zebra ~

Using an idea from Walking Along the Way, we made a zebra from a z using black electrical tape.  We read about zebras using the book shown.  It is the Kingfisher First Encyclopedia of Animals.  We love this book and have used it so many times this year to learn about various animals. 

~ Z is for zoo ~

 We love the book Good Night, Gorilla.  It is about a little gorilla who gets out of the zoo and takes some friends with him.  Sunshine Girl is showing us the reaction of the zookeeper’s wife when…well, I don’t want to spoil the book.  This book is a favorite around here.

I found some zoo animal stamps at Hobby Lobby and Sunshine Girl made a zoo by putting the correct number of animals in their habitats.  (I called it cages but my older boys informed me that it was their habitats.  I stand corrected!)

 I also found these zoo animal puppets to sew at Hobby Lobby.  Sunshine Girl made the elephant.  I’m glad there were four in the package because everyone wanted in on the action.

 

~Other Various Z activities~

~ Z is for zig zag ~

This year, I decided to only buy the three primary colors in paint and some white paint to make tints.  So when my children want a color beside red, blue, or yellow, they have to mix the color themselves.  Sunshine Girl chose purple for her letter z. 

 After she mixed the colors and painted, we cut zig zags from folded paper and glued the zig zags to our letter Z.

 

Z and not Z found at Hubbard’s Cupboard

 ~ Singing about Zacheus ~

We only have four letters left to share for our preschool this year!  I can’t wait to show you our completed alphabet wall.  :)

 

Our preschool ~ The letter V

(This is my first post to Preschool Corner and I am super excited! :)

It has been a while since I’ve shared Sunshine Girl’s preschool happenings. We ended up just sitting down and spending a lot of time on the letter V.  There has just been so much to do with the letter V and we still didn’t do it all.  But here is what we did do:

~ V is for Vegetables ~

 Using various vegetables, Sunshine Girl made prints on the letter V (template at DLTK).  I carved a little face in the potato for the smiley face!

We spent time outdoors and planted vegetables.  Radishes are good for little ones because they give quick results.  We also planted some sunflower seeds and transplanted herbs and tomatoes.

 

Sunshine Girl did many fun activities with the letter V!  She…

• recorded her daily intake of fruit and veggies on a bunny graph.
• identified letters (printable here) that she had learned.  We “planted” them in our dirt patch in the backyard to make it extra fun!
• used playdough to make the letter V.
• read many great books.
• sorted letters into “V” and “not V”.
• cut fruit and vegetables to help get ready for lunch.

We spent a lot of time exploring seeds.  We placed seeds in a clear glass vase with damp paper towels.  Over the days, we have been able to observe the stages of a seed which we had read about in the book How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan.  We are also trying to sprout avocado seeds and a potato. 

Sunshine Girl also made a lapbook this week and helped me draw the garden in my gardening journal.  :)  (Items for lapbook found here and here.)

V is such a fun letter that you have just can’t spend time on one subject.  Oh no, you also have to learn that:

~ V is for Volcano~

  Printable found at Making Learning Fun

 We made a “mountain” around a glass of baking soda.  (Ok, you have to squint really hard for it to look like a mountain. ;)  We poured vinegar into it to make a volcano.

We had so much fun learning about the letter V!

Books we used this week:

• How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan
• The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds
• Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
• Eating the Alpahbet by Lois Ehlert

 To read other Preschool Corner posts, please visit Homeschool Creations.