Preschool at Home: Week 2

And we've completed week two of this school year! If you missed Week 1 or are interested in why I am suddenly homeschooling, make sure you check out that post.

Please note that this is a weekly lesson plan. I'm finding that this is working pretty well for me and my preschoolers. I decide what I want them to study in advance, and make sure I have all materials and books prepped ahead of time. Every morning I get ready by setting all books and supplies out all over the dining room table, opened to the right pages, and then I just get whatever we need for the next subject off of the table. It makes for a really smooth transition from one activity to the next. Much of what we do is repeated daily (songs, memory verses, vocab. practice, reading, counting), but I scatter the more active or crafty activities throughout the week--more exciting projects like making our own book or playing with bubbles usually come only once. For now, planning for a week at a time instead of making really specific daily plans works well because both teacher and students appreciate the flexibility. I have italicized all the daily routines below.

Week 2:

Major Themes: The Letter B and the Human Body

Notebooks: 
-Check the weather and mark the weather on the graph (sunny, cloudy, or rainy) each day
-Color in the number of the day on the calendar.
-Point out which day of the week it is.

Alphabet:
-Sing the letter sounds song.
-Sing the short vowel sounds song.
-Practiced writing names. Counted letters in their names. Because Anna already knows her name, I am having her do all activities with her surname, as well. When we're practicing on the whiteboard, I have them circle the capital letter at the beginnings of their names.
-Practiced writing upper- and lowercase letters with workbooks.
-This week we focused on the letter B and had several associated activities:
  -Found things in the house that started with the 'B' sound.
  -Asked, "Does your name have the letter B in it?"
  -Listened to this Letter B Song.
  -Looked at the B page in our picture dictionary
  -Made books with black covers. We discussed the different parts of a book (i.e. pages, cover, binding). Sarah (3rd grade) joined in this activity. She actually wrote a story (involving electric eels) in her book, but the little girls just drew pictures and random letters.
  -Butterfly craft
  -Used q-tips to make a paper model of what our hands would look like without skin, showing the blood and bones.
  -Blew bubbles. This was probably their favorite activity. They had to tell me what letter or sound bubbles started with before each bubble they blew. We did this two separate days because they loved it so much (obviously...it's bubbles. Who wouldn't love it?).
  -They love to eat bread, so we had bread for a snack one day and talked about the letter sound.

Math:
-Number flashcards up to 20. Anna is pretty solid at these by now, Shiloh is still learning most of the teens.
-Counted parts of the body: fingers, toes, elbows, knees, etc.
-Practiced writing numbers on whiteboard.
-Dot-to-dot pages
-Built shape puzzles. See picture above. Mom has a set of these shapes and cards--the goal is to figure out how to put the shapes together the right way to make a little picture of some sort. They are able to handle the simplest, 2-4 piece puzzles at this point.
-Counting blocks--I have a bag full of little blue blocks--I'll usually dump them all out on the other end of the room and give the girls orders to bring me specific numbers of blocks until all the blocks have been picked up. If they bring me the wrong number of blocks, I send them back to try again, reminding them to count carefully.

Reading:
Anna: I Can Read it! and practicing sight words with flashcards, along with B + short vowel blends.
Shiloh: This week I had her read letter blends with short vowels: ba, be, bi, bo, bu
We practiced adding an end letter, too: ba-t, bu-n, be-d, bi-t.
Both:  Teach Your Monster to Read for 5-10 minutes a day.

Bible and Storytime: Week 2 from Sonlight Core P4/5 Instructor's Guide. This includes their Bible stories, memory verse, song, along with nursery rhymes and short story books.

Days of the Week: Still listening to this song on youtube. 
We added a Months of the Year song midway through the week, since they're feeling more comfortable singing the names of the days.

Science: The Human Body. I kept things really simple, since I largely only chose this theme due to the letter B and the fact that I wanted to continue with more body parts vocab in Bahasa.
-We had long (and hilarious) conversations about all the things that are inside our body (i.e. blood and bones...and food and water.).
-The blood and bones activity above (in the Alphabet section) obviously has a big application to our science theme!
-Watched video about human body parts.

Storybooks: Baby Says by Crockett Johnson
- Noted that the word baby begins with the 'B' sound. Also helped girls to point out the boys and the blocks and brothers in the book. Shiloh has a baby brother, so we talked about what kind of toys it's okay for Joshua to play with and what kind of toys it's not okay for Joshua and other babies to play with.
From Head to Toe By Eric Carle
This one is less about the letter B and more about our Human Body theme. This blog post has great ideas for activities relating to the book. I used their idea of having them count the legs on different animals and count how many different animals there were in this book. We also used the pictures in the book for Bahasa practice, pointing out that animals have lengan and kepala and kaki too! The girls got to mimic all the body movements in the book.

Bahasa: 
This week's unit was words for parts of your face and head:

Body = Badan
Hand = Tangan
Head = Kepala
Face = Muka
Arm = Lengan
Leg = Kaki

We did a lot of physical response activities, i.e., "Where is your kepala?"
Played Simon Says, reviewing last week's vocabulary as well.
Continued having them repeat the simple sentence structure Saya ada ... {I have...}
We identified body parts in Bahasa using our body craft
We also listened to the Didi and Friends song Kalau Rasa Gembira every day. It's a Bahasa version of "When You're Happy and You Know it," so it was perfect for this week since tangan and kaki and mata make appearances in the song.

Life skills: 
-They helped me put laundry in the washing machine, watched the machine tub start spinning, and helped put laundry on hangers.
-Helped me take everything off the bathroom counter (hair gel, toothbrushes, makeup, etc.) so that I could clean it, and then put everything back on the counter after it was dry.
-Helped me wash green beans for lunch and watched me cut up green beans from a safe distance while I explained the importance of keeping fingers away from knives.

Crafts + Play:
-Went to the park.
-Went swimming.
-Went to the playroom.