On Wednesday we focused on the feelings of being glad, mad and sad. I was shocked that the girls were able to identify those emotions just from the daily unit posters. It goes to show how much more kiddos know than we think they do. They really enjoyed drawing pictures in the included
Feelings book and coming up with ways to finish the prompt "I feel ___ when _____________". Most of Miss M's responses had to do with Daddy leaving or coming home. :)
Aside from talking about feelings and how we show them, we also played some fun games. One game involved drawing concepts on the bottom of paper cups and hiding the colored buses from this month's manipulatives bag. The child was supposed to identify the concept (a letter, number or shape) and then look for the bus. Miss M knew all the ones I put on the cups so I started introducing the concept of subtraction. I held up my fingers to show that there were five buses and said "There are five buses. You have two (put down two fingers) so there are three still hiding." She loved this game and we probably played at least a dozen times. About the fifth time through I asked her how many were still hiding and she said "Three!" correctly. I will admit I was completely floored that she got it that quickly. She continued to subtract correctly until she got bored with me asking and just started looking for buses as fast as she could. How I wish I could have gotten it on video!
At the grocery store today I tested her to see if she still had the concept. We went to the produce section and I handed Littlest a bag and an apple. I told Miss M that I wanted four apples and we had one, so how many more did she need to give her sister to put in the bag? She knew the answer, had a blast picking apples and Littlest loved putting them in our bag. I think it is vitally important that our children learn to use academic principles in the real world, not just in the classroom, on a worksheet or a test form. I try to be conscientious about pointing things out during our daily routines without getting into the habit of constantly quizzing.
The other super fun game we played was a variation of the one in the Teacher Guide. I made the girls their own fly swatters using a folding square of construction paper with a straw taped to the middle. I used the upper and lower case letter cards from our June theme, laid out the lowercase letters on the floor and then held up the upper case version. The girls took turns swatting the correct letter, then practiced the sound the letter made. They had a blast. This would be a fun game for an older child to practice sight words, color or number words (hold up the color/number, they find the label or vice versa), math facts, etc. I would recommend buying dollar store fly swatters if you do this a lot because our little homemade ones would not stand up to prolong swatting.
The mirrors were fun for both the big girls to make. Littlest just wanted to work on her fine motor skills so she dumped out the jewels on the table and painstakingly put them back in a jar (quite contentedly, I might add). See, there is always something for every age!
Aside from talking about feelings and how we show them, we also played some fun games. One game involved drawing concepts on the bottom of paper cups and hiding the colored buses from this month's manipulatives bag. The child was supposed to identify the concept (a letter, number or shape) and then look for the bus. Miss M knew all the ones I put on the cups so I started introducing the concept of subtraction. I held up my fingers to show that there were five buses and said "There are five buses. You have two (put down two fingers) so there are three still hiding." She loved this game and we probably played at least a dozen times. About the fifth time through I asked her how many were still hiding and she said "Three!" correctly. I will admit I was completely floored that she got it that quickly. She continued to subtract correctly until she got bored with me asking and just started looking for buses as fast as she could. How I wish I could have gotten it on video!
The other super fun game we played was a variation of the one in the Teacher Guide. I made the girls their own fly swatters using a folding square of construction paper with a straw taped to the middle. I used the upper and lower case letter cards from our June theme, laid out the lowercase letters on the floor and then held up the upper case version. The girls took turns swatting the correct letter, then practiced the sound the letter made. They had a blast. This would be a fun game for an older child to practice sight words, color or number words (hold up the color/number, they find the label or vice versa), math facts, etc. I would recommend buying dollar store fly swatters if you do this a lot because our little homemade ones would not stand up to prolong swatting.
The mirrors were fun for both the big girls to make. Littlest just wanted to work on her fine motor skills so she dumped out the jewels on the table and painstakingly put them back in a jar (quite contentedly, I might add). See, there is always something for every age!
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