On Your Mark...Get Set...GO!!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: Day 1

We started our first unit study today. Mostly because I asked Lincoln what he wanted to do today and he said preschool stuff, and because I was pretty much all ready to go with this unit. Put the two together and today seemed like the perfect day to start.

So we took Aaron to work, and read our scriptures along the way as usual. When we got home, I set the timer for 20 minutes and told Lincoln it was chore time. I did dishes and rolled a ball back and forth with Adelia for those 20 minutes.

Then it was read aloud time. I told the kids to pick out some books they wanted to read while I set the timer again, for 30 minutes this time. (Can you tell we love our timer? Lincoln especially does.) And we read for 30 minutes, Lincoln and Ivan took turns picking out which book to read next. About 25 minutes in Adelia was loosing it, so I took a small break to put her down for a nap. Then came back and read for 5 more minutes. It was a lot easier to read out loud for 30 minutes straight than I thought it would be, and the kids could have gone a lot longer. Things of note: Lincoln sounded out the word bug all by himself without any help or prompting from me while we were reading The Alphabet Tree.

Next I told the boys that they needed to help pick up all the books while I got things together for our next activities. They did without too much complaining. Yay!

I taught them a days of the week song. It goes like this, sung to the tune of Adam's family.

Days of the week *snap, snap*
Days of the week *snap, snap*
Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week *snap, snap*

There's Sunday and there's Monday
There's Tuesday and there's Wednesday
There's Thursday and there's Friday
And then there's Saturday

Days of the week *snap, snap*
Days of the week *snap, snap*
Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week *snap, snap*

We sang it two or three times, so they could get the hang of it. We'll continue to sing it every day before doing the calendar until we get the days down. Meanwhile, I'm looking for a months of the year song to take it's place eventually.

This is the preschool calendar we have hanging on our preschool wall. It's magnetic, which Lincoln loves. So from now on we'll go over the calendar every day. We talk about what day of the week/month of the year/date/season it is, and what the weather outside is like, and put everything in it's appropriate place. (Note: the seasons and days of the week, do not come with their own magnets, so we just use a circular magnet that we can move around from one season/day to the other. This one probably the best cheap choice for calendars that I could fine, it was around $11. Some were up around the $50 range, they were nicer, but in my opinion not worth the price.)

After the calendar, we did the Pledge of Allegiance. I have a little flag hanging on our preschool wall, so we faced that, put our hands over our hearts, and the boys repeated after me. When they get familiar enough with it, hopefully we'll just be able to say it all together.

Then we did our first reading of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (CCBB). We talked about what the front cover of the book looked like, and who the author and illustrator were. I asked them a few questions, but they seemed mostly unsure why we were spending so much time talking about the front of the book. I'm hoping as we get more familiar with our method that they'll do a little bit more critical thinking, but for now I'm just happy that they were good. :) We also talked a little about the title page. Then we read the book. The boys seemed to enjoy it. Which is good, because we'll be reading it a lot of times this week. :)

Next we made our coconut tree. I had made the separate pieces out of construction paper and laminated them last week, so they kids and I just had to put the pieces together today. We taped it up to the side of the fridge. It looks so cute. (Here is my pattern).

We reread the story, but during this reading I had them put magnetic letters up in the coconut tree as we read about that letter.. The boys thought this was a great game. We have the wooden magnetic letters from Melissa and Doug, which I love because they are safe to have around Adelia (as opposed to the plastic ones with the little tiny magnetic pieces in the back that fall out easily and become a chocking hazard), but you could use any kind, or even make your own out of paper. I chose to use magnetic ones because the side of our fridge is in a handy place. Of course, when we got to the end of the story, we knocked all the letters off the fridge. Then we lined them up in alphabetical order on the kitchen floor, and then put them back up in the tree.

After that it was time for wiggling. I played them the song Alphabet Medley by Louis and Bram Sharon, on their album Sing A to Z. It's kind of a goofy version that mixes the regular ABCs with some nursery rhymes. It was a song they suggested in the Peak With Books textbook, I couldn't find it at the library, but I found it on itunes.

For our last thing we read the poem Our Tree by Marchette Chute. I explained that we'd been talking about a coconut tree in CCBB, but that there are lots of different kinds of trees. This poem is about an apple tree.

When spring comes round, our apple tree
  Is very full of flowers,
And when a bird sits on a branch
  The petals fall in showers.


When summer comes, our apple tree
  Is very full of green,
And everywhere you look in it
  There is a leafy screen.


When autumn comes, our apple tree
  Is full of things to eat.
The apples hang from every branch
  To tumble at our feet. 


When winter comes, our apple tree
  Is full of snow and ice
And rabbits come to visit it...
  We think our tree is nice.

I read the poem to them and we talked about the seasons. Then I had them repeat the poem after me. I think I'm going to print it out and hang it up on our bulletin board. If I get really ambitious, I might make a picture of an apple tree in each season so that we can hold them up as props while we recite our poem. I think that would be fun.

But anyways, I think we'll call day 1 a success. Here's to the rest.