Preschool at Home: Week 7

Funny story instead of useful preschool tips this week:

I figured I had to tell this story on the blog, because I've told it to exactly everybody I know in real life ever since the whole thing went down. 

There were some loud construction noises going on close to our apartment the other morning, and of course the girls responded by screaming, "Ahhh! Ahhh! It's a monster!" and running around the apartment in terror. I responded in a more calm and sensible manner myself, and just ignored the noise.

Later, just before lunch, I decided to take the girls downstairs to the community playroom for a little bit. As we were walking toward the playroom, we saw on the tiled walkway ahead of us a man lying down on the ground with his hands behind his head.

Of course, Shiloh's immediate response was to shriek, "AUNTIE RACHEL! THERE'S DEAD PEOPLE!"

This caused Anna to instantly join in, "Dead people! Oh no! Auntie Rachel, dead people!!!!! Look! He's dead! Oh no!"

I was in damage-minimizing mode, whispering through gritted teeth, "Shhhh. Shhhh. He's not dead, he's just taking a rest. He's not dead, don't worry."

My reassurances went unheeded, and the murderous plot thickened, "Oh no! The monster from upstairs came down here and killed him. Monsters!! Dead people!!"

It was to a repeated refrain of "Monsters! Dead people!" that I hurried the two girls right past the guy lying on the ground.  After we passed him, the two of them were still looking back at the supposed "dead people" when the guy decided to sit up. 

Anna grabbed at my hand in relief, "Oh, good. Auntie Rachel. He's not dead. He was just sleeping!" 

They found their mistake to be hilarious and laughed the rest of the way to the playroom, in relief that the walk hadn't been quite as gruesome as they'd initially thought. My gritted teeth earlier had been due to repressed laughter the whole time. Do you ever just wish you were 4 years old again and could get away with screaming "DEAD PEOPLE!!!" at the sight of anyone taking a nap?

Week 7:

Major Themes: The Letter H and Shapes

Notebooks: 
-Write in the number of the day on the calendar each day.
-Point out which day of the week it is.

Alphabet:
-Sang the Sing, Spell, Read, & Write letter sounds song.
-Sing the short vowels sounds song.
-Practice writing names. 
-Practice writing upper and lowercase letters with workbooks.
-This week we focused on the letter H and had several associated activities:
  -Found things in the house that started with the 'H' sound.
  -Asked, "Does your name have the letter H in it?"
  -Listened to the Letter H song.
  -Looked at the H page in our picture dictionary
  -We made hearts, using the art technique of folding the paper in half to cut a symmetrical heart
  -Made handprints with paint. Shiloh missed the footprint day during Week 1, and she's wanted to do something similar ever since, so this was fun.
  -Made this cut-and-paste H worksheet.
  -We practiced carefully combing each others hair and talked about how to keep hair clean and looking nice.

Math:
-Number flashcards up to 20
-Practiced writing numbers on whiteboard
-Math worksheet from Abeka 1st Grade Math
-Counting blocks.

Reading:
-Books 1 and 3 from Sonlight's Fun Tales. We've just barely started with book 3.
Shiloh: this week I had her read letter blends with short vowels: ha, he, hi, ho, hu
We practiced adding an end letter, too: ha-t, hu-t, he-n, hi-d, ho-t.
Both:  Teach Your Monster to Read for 5-10 minutes a day.
-Four sight words we're working on now: to, is, has, and the

Bible and Storytime: Week 7 from Sonlight Core P4/5 Instructor's Guide.

Months of the Year: We use this song.

7 Continents of the World: Memorizing the seven continents with this song.

Telling Time: I use this song with a little clock that had movable hands. 

Science (Sort of): Shapes
-They already know all of their basic shapes in English, so we worked on more advanced, 3D shapes like a cube, cone, sphere, cylinder, and pyramid. We found things in the house that had these shapes.
-Among my math tools collection (also known my mom's collection that I'm borrowing), we have a bunch of these 3D shapes, so we did some adding and subtracting with the plastic models.
-Watched this 3D Shapes video by Teacher Tipster and this one. After a week, they are pretty close to actually knowing Teacher Tipster's rhymes by heart. I think we'll continue practicing these every day for about two more weeks.

Mother Goose rhymes are terrifying sometimes.

Storybook: 
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
-This was a first time read for me, and I had the girls point out the sounds of all the letters on the pages after we read it.
The Sneeches and other Stories by Dr. Seuss
-We taped green stars to our bellies, and took them off, and experimented with whether we could still be friends with someone whether they had a star on their belly or not. (Spoiler Alert: Your friends are awesome whether they are Star-Bellies or not. I posted my stylish belly star on Instagram).

Bahasa: 
This week's unit is shapes in Bahasa:

Triangle = Segi Tiga
Circle = Bulatan
Square = Segi Empat
Rectangle = Segi Empat Tepat
Star = Bintang
Heart = Hati

-We brought out the shape puzzles I've used in the past and identified the different shapes using our Bahasa vocab.
-We always review old vocab and the two sentence patterns (basically, two verbs) we've used so far.
-We also listened to the Didi and Friends song Bintang Bintang ("Twinkle Twinkle Little Star") for obvious reasons.

Life skills: 
-Wiped my glass table.
-Helped pick up all the rugs so that I could sweep and mop the floors.

Crafts + Play:
-Visited the playroom (as mentioned in the dramatic tale above).

Previous Weeks: 
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6