Our Week with the Letter E

Our Week with the Letter E

 Ever have those days where you find yourself stopping in the middle of doing something and saying a prayer for a little extra patience and energy? That pretty much sums up the week. My built in gym (aka-Dominic) has kept me running and chasing extra hard this week! My three year old has pulled out the three year old tricks in full force (extra sassy, whinny, and nothing we make is good enough to eat). In addition Lilly has also started visiting her mother two times a week, Ava started a church school program on Thursday mornings, we had a home visit from the foster agency, and had several little errands to get done that involved loading and unloading everyone into the car at times they really would have been happier not errand running. Phew! It's Friday is all I can say!

In the midst of an off feeling week, I did come to see the perks of home schooling. First, Monday (a normal school day for us), everyone was up early. We switched around our plans and spent the morning playing at the McDonald's play place. It was a nice change of pace and I got a morning off from making breakfast! On Tuesday, I knew I was tired enough to not have patience to chase Dominic around our school room trying to retrieve the white board markers or convincing Lilly that the pattern pieces on the calendar were not for taking down and eating. Since Ava was the first one up, we did a portion of school before breakfast and worked more after the other two woke up. Since we skipped our normally scheduled Monday morning school time we quite simply finished up our week's work today. A crazy week, yes. But there was still some fun learning that went on. Having the flexibility of homeschooling, I was able to work around any bumps in the road so that tiredness, grumpiness, stubbornness,  and must run errands didn't get in the way of some good learning time!

Tuesday: E is for Eyes and Ears 

Books: Ears By: Cynthia Klingle and Robert B. Noyes

My Eyes By: Lloyd G. Douglas

Arthur's Eyes By: Marc Brown

Song: Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

Ava decorated the capital and lower case E with googly eyes! Since glue and googly eyes are her two favorite craft supplies at the moment, she was all about this project. 

In the sensory table I added cornmeal with plastic eggs, a sifter, and mini buckets. The sensory table stays out all week, It is always a good transition from our art time. When the kids finish up their art, they move over to the sensory table while I clean up. 

For one of our math activities, I used painters tape to make the numbers 0-10 on the living room floor. When the music played, the kids had to dance. When it stopped, I yelled out a number and they had to run to that number on the floor. 

We used the same numbers on the floor and made a new game. Ava was given cards with pictures (all that started with the letter E). She had to count the number of pictures on each card and place the card on the corresponding number on the floor. 

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Wednesday: E is for Eggs!

Stories: What's in that Egg? By: Becky Baines
The Odd Egg By: Emily Gravett

Finger puppet song: Humpty Dumpty

Each of the kids and myself had Humpty Dumpty finger puppets (free printable found at http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/humpty/fingerpuppets.html). We brought these out a few times this week. Dominic got really into the nursery rhyme.

Ava's friend joined us today. I gave them each an egg cutout and a variety of  art supplies. They went to town creating their own Humpty Dumpty art! 

I gave Ava an egg carton with each egg spot numbered with numerals 1-12. Using beans, she had to count the correct amount of beans in each numbered spot! 

She did it!

Friday: E is for Elephant

Books: African Elephants By: Kirsten Hall
Elmer and the Rainbow By: David McKee

Finger play: There was a request for some more Humpty Dumpty!

After reading about Elmer the Elephant, the kids created there own patchwork elephant puppets. This brought up a great conversation about fiction vs. non fiction stories. We read a non fiction story about elephants and a fictitious elephant story. We talked about what made the Elmer story fictitious. 

It was fun watching Dominic work on his project. 

There is something about kids' art that just makes me smile! 

I am sure we will be having lots of elephant puppet shows going in the coming days!

This was a really fun sound matching activity. Kyle and I put rice, cheerios, pennies, and beans , (I am drawing a blank on the last object) in sealed Easter eggs.  We left one set empty, but sealed it anyway so it looked like the rest. The kids had to shake each egg and find another egg that made the same sound. Some sounded very similar and needed a little extra listening. 

When a match was found, Ava put the eggs back in the carton.  I found this activity  at
http://familysponge.com/create/kidsart/re-use-plastic-eggs-musical-sound-shakers/ 

We practice our rhyming skills with an activity I was able to dig out from a college class! Ava was given a picture and had to find words that rhymed with her picture using a set of other pictures. 

Ava loves paper and pencil tasks. "Mommy I need some school work!" is commonly heard during the day. Today she worked on  tracing capital and lower case Es and created the next page to her alphabet book.