Welcome to Preschool Kicked Up A Notch! BAM! As we’re going through the Letter of the Week activities, I wanted to add in some more handwriting now that we’ve done all the pre-writing practice, and here they are for you too! Download the A-Z Handwriting Worksheets Each sheet contains some pre-writing practice for the letter along with capital and lowercase writing practice. Click here to get the rest of my Letter of the Week activities The download contains pages for the letters I have more than one subject selection for as well. These activities are part of my K4 level expansion to my Letter of the Week Curriculum, click on the images below to see more activities. The K4 curriculum isn’t quite finished yet, so until I get it packaged all nice and purdy you can download from my posts! … [Read more...]
TOS Review ~ Peterson Directed Handwriting
Peterson Directed Handwriting is a computer based method for teaching print and cursive handwriting. If you have a Wacom pen tablet you can practice right on the computer screen and print or save your pages for record keeping. What’s the cost of the PDF By Hand Program: PDF By Hand Print OR Cursive $75 PDF By Hand Print/Cursive Combo $125 I tried this with my 1st grader and he did better once I scrapped the Wacom tablet and printed the pages instead. It was difficult for him to maneuver the pen on the screen, though I think it’s good hand/eye coordination practice. I actually found that my own handwriting was messy on the pen tablet as well! So I think that would take some practice for sure, maybe it would be better suited towards older students. Here you can see the top section was done on the pen tablet, then I printed it and had him complete the bottom section using a marker. Clearly he can write a straight line but doing so on the tablet was difficult. The program … [Read more...]
Discovering God’s Animals Wall
I know some of you were probably wondering what I meant when I said to make an animal wall for the Discovering God’s Animals study! Well, here is what I came up with. I purchased some blue butcher paper from a local teacher supply store along with a jungle animals border and some sticky letters. I simply {ya right} found some blank wall space in our homeschool room and since we don’t allow blank wall space, I covered it up! Okay, fine I tore something else down, moved it to a new location so we had room for our animals. And voila! Presenting our new animal wall: I’ll be using wall safe tape to put up the animal cards just so they can be taken down & re-used without being damaged. As we study each animal we’ll add them to the wall. If you missed the original post, the Expedition Earth: Discovering God’s Animals is a FREE animal unit study that is designed to go with my Expedition Earth: A Journey Through God’s World geography curriculum! … [Read more...]
A-Z Tracing Worksheets
Click here to download the A-Z Tracing Worksheets!I’m adding some additional handwriting practice to my Letter of the Week curriculum this year just to kick it up a notch for my 4yr old. This is a tracing worksheet for her, I included a blank page for extra practice once she has the formation down pretty well. You can either let them trace with pencil, or laminate and use with a dry-erase marker for multiple uses. I think both are beneficial, just to get used to the feel of different writing instruments.Stick around for Tuesday when I'll have the printable practice pages for each letter! … [Read more...]
2010 August Garden Update
I’m so excited to see all this green! We’ve been enjoying tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, onions, carrots, cauliflower (well only 1, but it was good!), squash, cucumbers and corn. (In case you’ve been missing the teeny tiny tot, don’t worry, she’s still here and will be making a come back soon…you can see her lurking in the photos) We found a little baby bunny who dug a nice little hole next to our carrots. He probably thought he’d died and gone to heaven with a protected little bed and nice fluffy green carrot tops to munch on. Unfortunately, we had to usher him out. I felt a little sad. For some reason our corn didn’t do as well this year, the stocks didn’t get very tall and the corn itself was miniature, but it was super yummy! If anyone has corn expertise, I’d love some advice. If you’re looking for more, click here to see our garden posts! … [Read more...]
September 2010 Meal Plan Revised!
Hi everyone, I was so excited to have a Meal Plan for September that I decided to add in snacks to help myself a tad more! I also color coded the meals so it was easier to read. And just ‘cuz I know ya’ll won’t like all my meals I added in an edible editable MS Word version so you can change it to your liking :o) Download September 2010 Meal Plan – PDF Download September 2010 – MS Word (editable version) And let's just get one thing clear, I realize that I have meals scheduled for each day, and some of you may think that I don't have intentions to slack off and eat out! Let me just assure you that is not the case! I'll take a dinner out anytime my husband offers! I also plan to skip a meal and add in a "left-over" day whenever needed, but if you don't know me yet, at least know this: I am a planner. And my motto is "better to have a plan and not follow it, then have no plan at all". Plus I’m hoping this will keep me from standing in front of my pantry at 5:00 pm wondering … [Read more...]
Mouse Paint Art Lesson
We read this sweet little color mixing book called “Mouse Paint” by Ellen Stoll Walsh. It was a great lead in to a color mixing stART project!What’s stART? Simply put: A Story + Art = A Great stART! For the art portion of this project we made a painted mouse color wheel. Click here to download the Mouse Paint ART SheetFirst we read the story, its super cute, and easy to read as well.Next we got our colors ready and since I have 3 kids doing this, each one mixed a color combo:Next we painted, starting with the primary colored mice, then the secondary colored mice in between. And voila, we have a mouse color wheel!If you haven’t gotten involved yet, Visit A Mommy’s Adventures for more info! Each Thursday Michelle puts up her stART project for everyone to link up to and share ideas. For more stART projects, be sure to click the button below! … [Read more...]
Number & Color Word Tiles
A friend of mine on the TOS Review Crew requested that I provide black and white letter tiles to go with my Number Word and Color Words activities for more of a challenge. I’ve added them to my downloads and just wanted to share them with anyone who would like them. {The original letter tiles were color coded to help out my preschooler when trying to spell her words, and this is a great addition to the ‘Kickin-it-up-a-notch” activities for our upcoming pre-k year! BAM!} Number Word cards: This download comes with the letters in the boxes like below and for more of a challenge I also added blank cards for each color word as well. Your child can match up letter tiles to each number word card. The letter tiles are included in the download as well, but you could use any letter manipulatives you want to spell the words. Includes 1-10 number words. The word tiles come color coded to help younger children, for more of a challenge you can download my black and white letter tiles. … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth Giveaway!
Remember to visit Mama Jenn’s blog, she’s doing a giveaway of my Expedition Earth Curriculum! Yay! Hurry, the contest ends 8/27/10. And just to double your chances head over see Maureen at Spell Out Loud, she is also hosting a giveaway! Her contest ends 9/1/10. Click here if you don’t know what Expedition Earth is. And as an added bonus, just cuz’ I’m just nice like that, if you’ve already bought the curriculum, go enter to win anyway and I’ll refund you! Good Luck! … [Read more...]
Easy Lunch Box Giveaway Winner!
I want to thank everyone who entered to win the Easy Lunch Boxes giveaway we had 607 entries! Wow, I would love to give one to all of you, but I didn’t think the rep at Easy Lunch Boxes would go for it, so I picked one and we have a winner! Congratulations to Lindsay at Bytes of Memory! And if you aren’t Lindsay, visit Easy Lunch Boxes and check out their great lunch ideas and maybe grab a set of lunch boxes for yourself, I promise you won’t be disappointed! … [Read more...]
