A Week Of Preschool With Vanna

A Week Of Preschool With Vanna

I thought I'd give you a glimpse of an average week in our homeschool. Starting with Vanna who is 4 and is doing her first year of preschool.

Let us start with the subjects we do every day - Monday to Thursday (our Fridays are different).


Everyday


Morning Work

We start every morning with singing, this gets everyone woken up, shaken up and ready to do school. 

We sing a variety of good morning songs, a lot of them are from Barney, as well as the alphabet, counting to 100 song and we have a phonetic letter sounds song as well. We sing a few of these every morning. 

Sometimes we bring out our instrument box and the kids get to make some extra noise. It's a nice opportunity to include some rhythm work, and a little talk about the different kinds of instruments. Shaking instruments versus percussion for instance.



Then we check out our calendar, every now and then we sing about the months and the days of the week to change things up a bit. We also chat about the weather.

Savanna then has to write her name. At the moment she can write her first name by herself and she follows the dots to do her middle name and surname.

We also take the opportunity to do a bit of memory work here. 

She has to tell me her full name, age and birthday as well as our address and my cell phone number. 

We have also been talking about South Africa and she has to recite a bunch of facts about our home country; the National bird, flower, animal, etc.





Then she does a few morning worksheets. 
Normally we focus on the letter of the week and she will have to find the letter and learn to write it. We also do random worksheets that I find for free on Pinterest focusing on coloring, number and letter recognition, beginning sounds and basic math as well.

This worksheet is from Over The Big Moon

This week we were doing a bit of a Winter Theme and so all her worksheets were from the Frozen Pack by Over The Big Moon.

Handwriting

Handwriting for Vanna involves using various mediums to form letters, numbers or shapes.

For instance we could use a salt tray, chalk board, white board or paper. We also work on scissor skills and we sometimes use worksheets. 

She works on handwriting everyday.

Reading and Story Time

Then we read. We read everyday.

Vanna doesn't read on a Monday because she hasn't been taught her reader yet, so she listens to sister read (one of her fav things to do). 

On the other days she reads her readers from her Literacy class.

I read next and then we have a chat about the story, this is our Comprehension lesson.

This year we have been learning all about the parts of a book, story sequencing, answering questions about the story and finding the message in the story. 

I like for the girls to give their opinions about the story as well.







This week I was reading Fables to the girls and they were trying to figure out the moral of the story.

Literacy

Literacy happens every day.

Savanna is doing This Reading Mama's 'Learn The Alphabet' curriculum (which is what I used with Kesia at this age), we love this curriculum.

It is basically a letter of the week kind of deal, with tons of worksheets that you can pick and choose from. 

There are fun activities as well like syllable clapping, building sentences and even some number work - like the game where Vanna must roll two dice, add the numbers together and then cover the total number on the worksheet.

There is also a sight word of the week and the most wonderful readers - they are great for learning to read and progress slowly while building confidence.


We boost our reading by also using the readers from The Measured Mom which work alongside the 'Learn The Alphabet' readers.



We also do some extra activities like our sight word shark game, Letterland books and flashcards, or some hands-on letter and letter sound matching. 

Vanna also has to read "Mrs Caterpillar" everyday as well, this is her sight word caterpillar, we add her new word on every Monday.

Math

We do Math everyday. We use Singapore Math and it is amazing!

Singapore Math uses a three step learning process: concrete, pictorial and abstract. 

We really enjoy the hand-on learning experience using concrete objects that you can find around your home. It is working really well for both of my girls.

Vanna is doing the K1 curriculum and she loves the colorful workbooks and the hands on activities. This week we were working on patterns.





We do a bit of extra work for Math as well, we have really focused on writing numbers, and lately we have been doing some addition and subtraction. Vanna loves our Maze workbook and fun games like the Shape Monster.

Monday and Wednesday

These are the additional subjects we do on Monday and Wednesday.


Sign Language

We do Sign Language twice a week. 

In Sign Language we review our alphabet and numbers, and we have been working on basic signs using the ASL Kids App on my phone. This is one of the girls favorite classes, they really enjoy learning the signs. 

It's funny because we just kind of fell into doing sign language, I hadn't planned to include it in our schooling at all. Last year Kesia was doing the Brainline Grade R curriculum and they randomly had a letter of the week in sign language and in braille. The braille never worked out but my girls loved the signs and so this year I decided to do it as a subject.


Spanish

Spanish lessons happen twice a week, but I am trying to remember to implement it more into our everyday life. 

I do not speak Spanish and so I guess it was very ambitious to think I could teach it to the girls, but we are learning it together and that is something special. 

I've always wanted to learn Spanish and this is a good way to make sure that I take it seriously.


Our first lesson this week focused on los colores, los numeros, saludos and la familia.



The second lesson reviewed some 'doing words' and worked on la comida, por favor, gracias and de nada.

Ballet

After Spanish we have lunch and then the girls go to ballet. 
Ballet is twice a week.

Ballet has been so good for them, they get to socialise with some other little girls and have learned some basic social rules like raising their hand when they want to speak, obeying instructions of the teacher and group work skills. 

The dance and exercise they get from the lessons are also great for them. 

Vanna loves to dress up for ballet.









Tuesday and Thursday

Social Studies

On a Tuesday we do Social Studies. 

This is really Kesia's lesson but as Vanna doesn't have anywhere else to be, she does it with us.

This is a curriculum that I designed myself and it is a combination of Life-skills, History and Geography. We cycle through the different subjects as we go through the topics. 

The topic we have been working on most lately is a Good Citizen unit.

We learned about our community (different kinds of communities, community helpers) and how to be a good citizen. 







This week we came up with a list of Good Deeds that we want to work on over the next month or so. We also got started making some thank you notes and little letters to tell our loved one's that we love them. 

We also crossed off 'buy a coffee for a stranger' when we went out to my nail appointment, we got a coffee for the car guard as it was super cold outside.


Science

Science is on a Thursday.


It is Kesia's science curriculum that I had a ton of fun designing for her, but Vanna loves it too, and why not.

I am a science mom and the girls and I love doing science together.

At the moment we are working on Forces and Motion. This week we looked at the forces of magnetism and gravity. 





We did a hands on magnetism experiment using our magnetic wands to determine if the objects provided were magnetic or not. And then we graphed our results.
We also discussed gravity and used a ball in demonstration.


Music

This week we worked on keeping rhythm using various instruments and clapping. We also have been working on 'note value' so I clap out a note and the girls march in time to it. So the whole notes 'Big Daddy' are a very slow march and the eighth notes 'The Twins' are super fast.

We also do keyboard. 

Vanna's fingers are still really small and so she battles, but she can find her cats, dogs, etc along the keyboard, play low and high notes, play her chop sticks and do a few different finger exercises too.














Ball Skills

Our exercise and ball skills class that we squeeze in on days when we are not doing any extra actives, such as ballet or swimming.

I believe in tiring the kids out so bedtime is an easier process.

This week we did a bit of kid yoga on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.








Computers

After Music we do Computers twice a week. 

This one is also mostly for Kesia who is learning typing skills. 
Vanna likes to play the games though. We use free games on abcya.com and they help get the kids used to working on the computer and develop mouse handling skills as well.


Educational Play

We are supposed to do this in the morning but because this weeks activities were all super messy, we did them after all our other school was done. It was Winter Themed.

Rescue The Frozen Snowmen - we tried salt and warm water to free the snowmen.

Cloud Dough Sensory Play - Vanna got to help make the cloud dough using flour, baby oil and glitter, and then the girls did some imaginative play with the cloud dough and their frozen toys. It was super messy.

Ice Cube Painting - I froze some food coloring and water in a cute heart shaped ice tray and the girls used these to paint.

It took a bit of convincing to get them comfortable holding them and not to worry about staining their hands but once they got started they had a blast. 

Friday

Friday is our easy breezy day. 

We use Friday to catch up any lessons we may not have managed to get around to during the week or if we didn't finish everything we needed to.

Otherwise all we do on a Friday is reading, ball skills and art.


Art

I love our art curriculum and it was the first one that I designed last year when I started working on Kesia's First Grade curricula. I was very much inspired by Art is Basic with my curriculum.

We have been working on a very fun project lately - a Hundertwasser versus Van Gogh Flower project. 

In our last lesson we had made two different types of flowers out of paper and this week we made two different types of flowers out of paint. 

We did a fun and colorful Hundertwasser inspired abstract flower and a more realistic sunflower in a Van Gogh style.

Next week we will be putting all of these flowers together to end off our project.





I spend the rest of Friday doing prep for the next school week and while I do that the girls get Movie Time. It's a win-win!


Saturday

On a Saturday morning the girl have tennis lessons. 

I have done an earlier blog post about how much we love tennis - check it our here if you want: Why I Think Tennis Is Terrific For Kids



And that is that!
Another week done and dusted!

Hope you enjoyed this look into our lives, I will be working on a week with Kesia in First Grade within the next few weeks.

With Love,
Chelsea