Archive for the ‘Preschool Activities For Home’ Category
Schoolwork and Videos
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Katelyn has loved going to school so far. Every now and then she gets a little sad at drop off and doesn’t want me to leave but for the most part she is loving it. I think the structure and focus is really good for her. I’ve been impressed with the academic side of her school so far. But, with them being there only two and a half hours I would hope they did academics rather than lots of free play! Every day at pick up I check to see what she’s eaten of her lunch(I only send three items and haven’t sent anything with nuts it by accident again! Yay me) and check her folder for notes and her work. I’ve really enjoyed looking at her work and reading any notes to me. It feels so “grown up” although I’m really in no rush for all the hub bub of elementary school life for Katelyn. It’s still cute. Madelyn seems to enjoy the drop off and pick up too. She will usually plop herself on the floor or one of the tables and start playing with whatever the older kids are playing with at the time. And then she doesn’t want to leave! I feel sorry for her because she doesn’t understand why she doesn’t get to stay. I make a little “lunch” for her in her lunch box since she gets upset if she doesn’t have something to take too. You can tell she feels so big carrying her lunch box to the car. I usually let her eat in the car on the way home. And sometimes that is her lunch if we are running errands and not going back home before I pick Katelyn up. They kids are now focusing on letters and sounds each week and the teachers said that by the end of the year most of the kids will be able to tell us what sound each of the letters make. Great pre-reading skill!
Oh, and in case I didn’t explain the Kindergarten thing well here’s the deal. Since she will technically be too young for Kinder next year she will be doing it for two years. If we stay with this school she will do their Kindergarten program next school year. She’ll be almost five. That seems so weird to me!! And if we decide to stay for another year she would do a more advanced version of their Kinder program the following year. They told us that most of the kids go into first grade already knowing half of the stuff the public school is teaching them at that level. So we have the option of sending her to the Faulkner Kindergarten program for two years OR sending her there one year and then to our public Kinder program when she is almost six. We’ll cross that path when we get there. I”m not sure yet what we will do. It would be easier to send her to our public program in two years since it’s right down the road from us and is longer hours. So, we’ll see!
Here are some pictures of her work…
The front of her letter “C” worksheet
The back. She had to circle all the words that started with “C” and color all the pictures that started with the letter “C”. I thought it was funny that she also colored the hand. They get stickers on their papers when they complete their work. So cute!
The teachers sent home these laminated name strips for the kids to practice writing their names at home. They are expected to know how to write their first name by the end of the school year. Their last name is optional. The laminate works like a dry erase board so the kids trace their names with dry erase markers and then we can wipe it off for repeated use. Apparently, I’ve been teaching the Katelyn the wrong way to write her name. Which, was the right way when I was teaching preschool.
I’ve taught Katelyn how to write her name in all upper case since she hadn’t learning lower case letters yet. We had always been told to teach the younger children this way to write to promote consistency and for them to be exposed to the upper case letters all the time to help in letter recognition. Apparently,these teachers and Kindergarten teachers hate this. Because they have to teach the children to write their names all over again the right way. With only the first letter of their name in upper case. Excuuuse me. I won’t be making that mistake again with Madelyn.
This is some of her art work. She painted, cut this out and glued it all herself. It thought she did pretty good with the cutting!
This was her homework! Apparently, many of the k ids with older siblings were asking for homework so they could do it while their older brothers and sisters were doing theirs. So the teachers made up some homework for the kids to do each week. They said it’s optional and that they barely look at it when it’s brought back to school. They just put a sticker on it and tell the children how wonderful they did and hang it on the wall. Katelyn wanted to do this homework but if there is ever a time when she doesn’t want to do it I won’t make her. Since this was Fire Prevention Week they learned a lot about fire safety. So Katelyn had to draw our family meeting spot if our house were to ever catch fire and we were separated trying to escape from our burning house. I told her it would be our detached garage so that’s what she drew. I guess those lines are our garage door??
I created this little corner in our playroom for showing off her school work and for school, dance and awana calendars and notes. I also have a large children’s school calendar to help the girls learn counting, the days of the week, the months of the year and time concepts like “yesterday was”, today is” and” tomorrow will be”. I also have special squares I put on there so Katelyn can see when special events are coming. As you can see by the date I haven’t done anything on the calendar since September 24th!
We hung this neat plastic chain link organizer to show case art work and school work. I got tired of taping stuff on the wall and my stainless steel fridge.
Here are some more videos I wanted to post. These videos are from the day of Katelyn’s birthday party. She got a microphone stand form her Nana and Papa and the girls were having a blast singing with it. Madelyn even put on a little show!
Here they were being silly with their party blowers. Madelyn was really cracking herself up!
