Saturday, March 14, 2015

Alphabet of the week: Letter B for body

This week is for letter B. For Body! We had a really fun week and my boys are exposed to a topic that is very new and interesting to them. Initially, I am a bit worried that they will not be interested in biology at such an early age, but I am wrong. And I am so glad that the materials I prepared are put to good use this week.
 
As usual we did our work on letter B curriculum from thisreadingmama.com. And I wont be going into details for them.
First, I brought out all the books on human body to them, and introduced this new topic to them.
 
 
 
Our favorite book of all is by scholastic My Body book. It is the prefect first book to introduce this unit as the texts are simple and concise. Images are attractive to the kids and they enjoyed it very much.
 
 
Aidan and his ugly face and his favourite book.
 
 
Next, I pulled out 2 pcs of parchment paper and taped them together into a huge piece and invited Allen to lie on it as Aidan and I traced him onto the paper. This pc was then taped to the wall for later lesson use.
 
Next, we worked on our body 3parts card which I downloaded from http://everystarisdifferent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-world-around-me-all-about-me.html.
Her blog have many free unit studies resources, do check her out!
 
 
Next we had a discussion of the many different hair colors people have and practiced our colors again at the same time.
 
 
Next is the sequencing of life stages.
 
 
A little exercise game. They have to take turns to choose the numeral cards and action cards and do the action that many times. I used our Chinese numeral cards for this. Nasty and cunning mummy...
 
And we had a fun time singing and dancing to the song: Head and shoulders, knees and toes.
 
 
We are fortunate enough to own lots of the leapfrog educational leap reader materials. And we used the set of human body to reinforce what we have learnt. Mostly on the digestive systems as that is what big brother Aidan is interested in since we read My Body book from scholastic. Child led learning hor, mai siao siao.
 
 
Body parts self correcting puzzles by learning journey.
 
We watched the magic school bus episode on digestive system on youtube. The boys first time watching magic school bus shows and they loved it.
 
 
Next we build our body map. The organs images are downloaded from confessionsofahomeschooler blog. The boys have to color in the images first then we taped them to our body.

 
Allen trying to put the large intestine at the head -.-"
 

 
And finally a cut and paste worksheet I got from the internet. Forgot to save the link down, so sorry...

 
For numbers practice, Allen used the flashcards and learnt counting and sequencing to 20.

 

 
And we worked on the counting puzzles from learning journey as well. We snatched up many sets from ROSS at $5 each during the Christmas sale last year.

 
And we also revised on our at and an family words using Melissa and doug wooden alphabets pcs.
 
We did many more activities but I did not have any nice shots of them. A very fun week indeed and it makes me miss my work back in Singapore. (I am a nurse:)
 
Ok. gtg... thanks for stopping by.
XOXO
Ashley



 



 

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Alphabet of the week: Letter D

 
 
Time passes by so quickly. We haven get to enjoy the letter D week fully and it's over. The boys loved this week as D stands for DINOSAURS! Many of the dinosaurs materials we already had at home as they have been Aidan's favorite since he first watched Jurassic park movie years back.
As usual, we always start off with the mini alphabet books from this reading mama reading the alphabets curriculum. Thank you so much for your free curriculum printable. They are especially helpful for us new to homeschooling.
 
 
The sightword of the week is 'my'. This sightword maze worksheet is for Aidan.
 
 
And this sightword poke is for Allen.
 
 
Sightword search worksheet printed from overthebigmoon.com for Allen. We will say the sound of the letter D when he found it. Allen still tends to confuse the letter b with d. So I made a note to work on it.
 
 
Letter D do a dot worksheet.
 
 
And letter D tracing worksheet.
 
 
Working on their gluing and fine motor skills with KUMON sticker workbook. Kumon series are great and fun, I brought many of their workbooks for the books from amazon.com first as back in Singapore their books are sold at an even higher price. Better to stock up here first. LOL. Typical kiasu mummy.



 
For maths concepts, Allen did the sequencing of 1-10 with the dinosaur numbers from confessions of a homeschooler blog. We also practiced our colors with the dinosaurs.

 
Next up is the sequencing of the sizes of dinosaurs. Allen gets the concept of big and small. But he still have difficulty understanding the instructions of arranging the dinosaurs from small to big. I had to show him once how to arrange then he gets it but when I asked him to arrange from big to small, he will blur again.

 
Recognizing the 'big' , 'medium' and 'small' sight words.
 
 
We had a fun time working on our Melissa and Doug dinosaurs puzzles. Their puzzles are of very good quality, able to stand up to the violence from my boys. I have also purchased their solar system floor puzzles as well for our future solar system unit study.
 

 
 
Next, I pulled out our dinosaur toobs and the 3 parts cards which I made for it. Unfortunately, my laptop crashed shortly after that and I have lost the printable for it.
 
 
Next the boys turned into Paleontologists and had fun digging for T-Rex tooth and poop in this T-rex dig kit which my husband scored at a toy store in Scottsdale shopping center.
 
 
 
 
For art and craft, I remembered I still had this foam kit I brought last year from Walmart craft section. And we revisited it this week. The building of the foam dinos are done mostly by ME of course, they are too lazy to try, but the decorations are all sticked on by them.

 
The books used for this week. The boys loved Dinosaurumpus the most as it is very fun to read and you can even sing it too! I borrowed it from our local library and Aidan asked me whether I can buy it for him instead.-.-" Ok darling, I will order it from amazon for u ok...
 


 And that concludes our letter D week.
thanks for stopping by.
xoxo
ashley