Camping!

These are pictures from our Camping Theme. This first one here is of C. eating a "lightning bug" that Grandma Mc. gave him. The little pinchers light up when you squeeze the gummy bug (like a gummy worm). o.k. cute I thought.

A few people ask me what i use for "Curriculum." At this point I'm not using a specific curriculum from a publisher. I do have a little workbook that Carter uses (you could pick it up at Meijers probably or a bookstore or something...it lets him practice circling, tracing numbers, choosing letter sounds, etc.). So, we do some of that, but for each week I have chosen a theme. It will either be something of interest to him (dinosaurs, etc.) or something I think will be of interest to him (e.g. camping--which was a HUGE hit I might add). Then I build around that theme by getting books from the library (ours has "theme kits" you can check out). I also frequent several web pages. My favorite is www.preschoolexpress.com You will definitely want to check that out! I also like www.abcteach.com, www.kinderplans.com, and www.starfall.com to name a few. There are tons of resources on the internet. So, like I said I try to build around the theme. For this week it is stars (to follow the camping theme). We counted the points and sides on a star, we thought of words that end in the "ar" sound (o.k. i came up w/tar, etc. while C. says, "Mom, guitar!" I hate it when he's smarter than me! :) j/k. Last week for camping we made s'mores, made a tent to read in, went for a walk at night w/a flashlight, read tons of great books on camping (which btw, reading is THE greatest way you can teach your child) and OH! b/f I forget, I try to always start our time w/a Bible story and prayer b/c after all, I want my son to know that we don't learn just for knowledge's sake but b/c we want to use what we learn for God's glory! I will apologize also for my posts not being extremely organized. I'm thinking right now that iIm doing good just getting a blog going! ha ha! :) o.k. so, back to camping...we made twig frames, thought of words that start w/the hard "k" sound like c in camping (also, side note: the best way to teach phonics is to point it out in real life instead of memorizing a bunch of sounds. Just weave it into everyday life. For example, "Oh, I like that word! What sound does that start with? What letter makes that sound?" etc.. A game we played for camping was "The Hungry Bear". I laid out our play food for C. to see, then had him run out of the room. While gone, I chose a piece and had him come back and tell me which piece was missing.
For our unit we also talked about the layers of a forest (bottom, middle, top), what animals live in the forest, why trees are important. We also sing a lot and do a lot of fingerplays.

We made a tent in our LR so we could read around our "fire" (made out of paper towel tubes and tissue paper). We also read a great book from Usborne Books called Camping Out.
I try to decorate his preschool area w/anything that goes w/our theme to set the tone. :)
This is where C. does his preschool. Aunt Annie made him that cool table and she made C2 the cool rocking chair. What a good auntie! :)