One of the main things we (mostly Hollis) will be working on this school year is learning her letters and letter sounds. There are so, so, sooooo many fun ways to teach the alphabet but today I'm going to share three of our favorites. In the past we have done a letter of the week type of curriculum and did a craft project with each letter. That was fun and great and wonderful. But a couple of weeks ago, we attended a homeschool convention where I went to a class on whole brain teaching. It was so interesting! I have actually signed up for another free workshop on the same topic next month. But the speaker shared ways to bridge both left and right brain thinking so that a concept could be easier to learn, master, and recall. She mixed a lot of black and white information (for left brain learners) with colors and stories (for right brain learners) so that we are using are whole brain to learn new things!
So I came home and searched blogs and Pinterest for a new way to teach the alphabet. But....I couldn't find anything with this approach! I found gestures for the letters on one blog. And I found poems for each letter on Pinterest. But nothing where the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic all matched. So, I got busy and made them for our girlies! And we LOVE them. We have been practicing all week just looking at the posters and telling the stories. It is AMAZING how many gestures and sounds they remember simply from remember the picture and stories! This whole brain learning stuff works, ya'll!!!
Drinking her juice and saying /j/ /j/ because every juggler needs his juice to be strong enough to do all that juggling!!!
Marin is telling the stories and listening to the sounds in the whisper phone!
This video was after hearing our Alphabet stories twice! She remembered so much having all those "clues" to pull from! Way to go, Hollis!
If you are interested in this alphabet set, just click on the picture above!
Other favorites.....SONGS!!! If we can sing it, we have fun with it!
This is a simple song using letter magnets! You sing it to the tune of "Five Little Ducks" but instead of ducks..."five little letters went out to play. When the teacher calls /z/ /z/ /z/ /z/....only the letter ____ came back." She has to decide which letter was being called home and pull it down. Loves it. And it is SOOOO simple. You could easily write the letters on a white board and the student erases the correct letter.
This last activity was actually one of my very first games I ever made for the girls. It is an I Spy ABC game.
I have the student flashcards printed and laminated (larger sizes available) but they use a dry erase to circle all the letters on the card. Again, super simple but reinforces letter recognition! You can find it in my by clicking on the picture above.
I'm linking up with The Inspired Apple for her AlphaBoom link up! Go check out all the other wonderful alphabet ideas!
Our summer has been busy, busy with pool days and play dates and ice cream runs! The girls have loved the summer activities but this Momma is ready for a routine!! Shhhh, don't tell them. We have been doing more indoor playdates because it is soooo HOT. Even the pool feels like bath water so indoor we go! I will take AC with that thank you. But here are a few of our latest play dates...
Today we met up with some of best neighbor friends at good ol' Chucke Cheese. Pass the ibuprofen please. The girls LOVE it, of course, and had a wonderful time! Again, the horrible phone pictures. Sorry family!
Crazy kid.
Last week, we went BOWLING. Best Play Date Ever. It was so easy. They had this little ramp for them to roll the bowls down and they kept up with the order all by themselves. It was perfect! We love our buddies!!
Summer has been a blast and we love all these sweet little friendships!
We have decided to homeschool for a few reasons. Although, we have done "tot school" in the past, this year we will be a bit more serious. Well, as serious as preschool and pre-kindergarten can be, you know? We will still be flexible but have a little more structure to prepare us for next year. So....why are we homeschooling?
Reason #1: We really love this guy. Love him. And his work schedule...stinks. So, in order for us to ever have any family time, we really need the flexibility of homeschooling. This is by far our greatest motivation for homeschooling.
Reason #2: Our learners are pretty unique. We have a "quick to get it" learner and a "needs a lot of time and practice" kind of learner. Both are incredibly smart and gifted but I know from my personal experiences teaching, that sometimes those are the exact kiddos that get left behind. Not by any fault of the teacher (I was one of those teachers!!), it is just so hard to juggle all the different levels plus the content that is required to be covered. So for this time and season, we want to guide our girls' learning at a pace that is appropriate for them...that fits their learning styles...that fits their interests and personalities...and that offers them the most growth possible as little learners.
Games....this girl loves some competition! She is listening to the sounds and blending the words to find the picture on her Bingo board. This game is in my store. You can find ithere.
This is my latest math center I made for Hollis. She was so excited to try it out. She scans the code to listen to number poems and traces the number in her book as she listens along. She is my super independent learner. She wants to do it all by herself (even if she has no idea what she is doing). See my problem?? :o) So this fits her perfectly! She gets so much practice recognizing numbers, writing numbers, and listening to the number poems....AND she can do it all by herself!
Making play doh using our five senses! These activities are perfect for both girls. They love "cooking" and play doh was a perfect little activity for the day.
Reason #3: Travel. Because of Burke's job we are in a unique position where we do have some opportunities to travel and show the girls so much of our country and our world. We hope to do that a lot with our homeschool. Again, the flexibility of it allows us to travel to places on the off seasons which makes it more affordable and possible!
Our first BIG trip....Disney World! We are pretty excited!!! There will be no learning done there, btw. Just rides and Princesses, and Peter Pan...
The pictures in this post stink because my phone is so much more convenient than my camera. Gotta work on that....
I have a small addiction to rearranging, so this may be changed soon. But for now...our little school room is ready for a new year. Here's a little peek...
Our table with their work baskets. Hollis has the red basket and Marin is the blue. I put all the work/games/books that will be needed for that day in the basket.
This is a peek inside the gray bin on the side of the table. This one is all of our ABC activities. Hollis will be doing a letter of the week type program, so she can choose a game to do each day. The white bin is our math basket. It has similar math games in it.
Our pocket charts for centers and maps (the girls LOVE maps).
Inside the closet, I store all my teacher supplies. It's, uh, very organized. *wink wink*
Here is our boards wall....magnet board, calendar board, and white board. The white board was actually a Home Depot shower board that they cut for us. We have 2 others just as big. But they work perfectly.
And there it is! We were going to start at the end of August with our school district. But our "headmaster" requests we start earlier. He's a tough one.
Burke, the best in the whole world, signed up to help deliver food for the Meals on Wheels program. He is so very good at doing service projects like these. He is always the first to help people move and mow lawns for our neighbors. Always looking for ways to help others. #hesakeeper #leadsbyexample When our church posted an email saying that the Meals on Wheels program needed volunteers, he signed up immediately. He got trained and did a few routes and decided it would be safe and age appropriate for our family to do together. So the girls and I joined him for our first route yesterday when they were in a bind and needed some help with a lunch route. The girls were pretty funny. Marin got it and asked a million questions about each home. But she would carry the food, ring the bell, and say "Meals on Wheels". She loved it. Hollis...well....she just really wanted to drink their milk. :o) But it was a great little service project for our family and we definitely look forward to next month.
So a few years ago, I started a second blog for all of the educational activities we did together because I kept gettting a warning that I lost space on this one. It was weird. But I started the old Giggles and Glue Sticks blog just for school stuff. But trying to keep up with two blogs was a pain in the behind and for me, impossible. So I rarely blogged on either one and our girls love, love, love looking back at old pictures to see things we have done (especially around the holidays). So I am giving up the old school one and just coming back here to combine both. If you are family, you can ignore the school stuff and if you are teacher friends, you can ignore the family stuff. Hopefully cyberspace has grown and has enough space for me here?!?!?
Warning, family this is a school post. No kid pictures will be in this one.
A few weeks ago, my friend and I entered a TpT Seller Challenge (Teachers Pay Teachers). Every week we were challenged to do something different to better our store. The first week was Makeover Madness. We were challenged to pick one product and make it over. I chose my Number Concepts unit. It was one of the first packs I had ever created and well....I have learned a LOT since then. So I basically trashed the orginal one because it was horrible and revamped it completely since this will be used a lot this year with Hollis' math curriculum, I LOVE the way it turned out. So much better.
The second challenge was actually to blog about your dreams for the future. I didn't really dream or blog....I just decided to redo this blog. It is still being modified and changed but it will work for now.
The third challenge was to Make Your Masterpiece...to create a new product for your store. I have had our Monthly Measuring Bundle on my to-do lists for a while and a customer actually requested that I, uh, get on the ball and get them all finished. So, it was my masterpiece project. I'm glad I had a little "help" getting motivated to finish those early because they will also be a big part of our math curriculum this year. Now, I can print and laminate and they will be all ready for our school year!
We had a fun and busy fourth of July weekend. Our day began with a parade and ended with fireworks! The girls played "parade" on their bikes all afternoon and threw candy at Burke and I. ;o) Big fan of parades.
This is probably my favorite 4th picture of the year.
They don't like the loud sirens. Can you tell?
They do love the Chick-fil-a cow!
Our neighborhor decorated her miniature horse before the parade. The girls got to feed him a little snack.
And then....the fireworks show!
The best pic we could get of our neighborhood crew. We love our neighbors.
Marin asked no less than 965,000 times when the fireworks were going to start. She loved them even though it was loud. Hollis had her face buried in my arms the whole time. She hated it. :o( They were beautiful but man, you feel like you wait hours for a 30 second show.
