Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day 5

 Happy Memorial Day! Aaron gave me the day off today to get some things done around the house that I've been wanting to do, but not having the time for (like canning raspberry jam!). So he took over for me and did preschool and everything else with the kids. It was a wonderful day, and I think we all enjoyed changing things up a bit. Here's what they did for preschool.

They made Chicka Trees using 1 Pepperridge Farm Pirouette stick, 4 apple slices, 3 Cocoa Puffs, and a handful of Alphabet Cereal. I thought they turned out cute.

They also made a "web of words", which was the last activity I had planned for yesterday. Basically, Lincoln picked 5 letters of the alphabet, and then for each letter they had to come up with 5 words that started with that letter. For this activity, I made this template. Lincoln picked P, O, G, D, and A. And they just stuck the list of five words up on the fridge using the magnets. Aaron had to help Lincoln think of some of the words by giving him clues, but I still thought that was fair.

For the last activity, Lincoln did some counting coconut sheets. Basically, it's pictures of a coconut tree with a number at the top, and Lincoln has to cut out and glue on the correct number of coconuts. (He really likes cutting and pasting, so we do a lot of this type of thing instead of coloring, which he doesn't like as much.) He did about five cards, and then he as tired of it, so we tucked the rest away in his project folder which he can get out to work on later when he needs something to do.

And that's the end of our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom unit. Next we'll be doing Bedtime for Frances. Should be fun.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day 4

Today we split preschool in half, so that we could attend Friday Fun with our home school group. This will be a regular Friday occurrence, so I'm going to have to learn how to schedule what we're doing on Friday so that it will split in half more easily. Although today worked out pretty well, as far as that went, even though I didn't plan it out that way.

It was a beautiful day at the park, and I was glad for the outside time with our friends. 

We started off with all our regular stuff. Chores, read aloud, calendar, Pledge.

Then we read CCBB and afterward talked about the letters. We talked about how we could tell that D, E, and F were hurt when they fell out of the tree, and what looked different about M, N, and O after the fall. We also talked about why the capital letters Z, R, J, and N wrapped themselves around the lowercase ones after they fell out of the tree. Then I asked the boys which letter of the alphabet they would like to be. Lincoln said L and Ivan said I. No surprises there.

I had a different activity planned for today, but Lincoln has been so interested in which letters rhyme, that I made up this chart for him last night, and we did it today instead of what I had originally planned. The book is written around the letters that rhyme with tree. So I thought we'd do the same thing. You can print out the chart I made here. Lincoln really liked doing this. He got a little hung up sometimes, because he wanted to rhyme the sound the letter made with tree, rather than the name of the letter, but overall I think it was a good exercise for him. He cut out and glued the letters all by himself, so we got our fine motor skills practice in for the day too. :)

I had something else planned too, but we didn't get to it, so we'll do it tomorrow.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day 3

We got started late today because I went to WalMart after we dropped off Aaron, instead of going straight home and getting started. I think I'll try to avoid doing that again in the future if possible. The kids really do a lot better if we start school first thing. Today wasn't horrible or anything, but we just went long and ran into lunch time. But now I know, so that's good.

We did the regular routine. Calendar took us a little bit longer today because it was the first day of September, so we had to move all the numbers around, and explain why we were switching the month.

During our reading of CCBB today we watched closely to see when the coconut tree starts to bend from the weight of the letters. We also watched to see when the coconuts fall off the tree, and tried to guess what made them fall. Lincoln decided it was either because the tree was too heavy, or because the letters pushed the coconuts out to make room for them. :) I love his responses to the questions. (By the way, in case you're curious, I get the questions out of the text book. I don't make them up myself. I'm not that cool.)

Next we did a dramatization of the book. Lincoln and Ivan took turns being the coconut tree (complete with sign that said, "I am a coconut tree.") Then we reread the first part of the book and every time a letter was called the one who wasn't the tree would find the letters and put them up in the tree. Then at the end, the tree got to collapse, that was the boys' favorite part.

After that we did a writing activity. We talked about the coconuts in the book, and how they must have felt when all the letters started invading their space in the coconut tree. Then we wrote a letter to the coconuts. I wrote down the ideas that Lincoln and Ivan told me, and modeled a letter for them. Then they got to write their own letters. Ivan colored a picture of him and Lincoln and Uncle Ryan on a rocket ship, and Lincoln and I shortened down the letter I had written and then I told him out loud how to spell the words, and he wrote them down and then colored a picture to go with. It turned out cute.

This letter says, "Dear coconut, I'm climbing up the coconut tree. Did you know coconut starts with C? From Lincoln Aaron Swan." The dark black coconut in the picture is the one falling out of the tree. Lincoln wanted me to write "sorry" to that coconut.

Like I mentioned earlier, we got started late, and so we ran into lunch time. So I made rice while the kids worked on their writing activities, and then while the were eating I played their fun song of the day for them. Today it was "A Spelling Medley" by Sharon, Louis, and Bram. It reminded me of something you'd sing around the campfire at girls camp. We're going to have to save our poem for after nap time.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day 2

Preschool was a little bit more rocky today. My boys were in a poke/pinch/hit/kick mood, and generally not getting along very well. I'm sure due to the fact that yesterday we didn't have naps. Because of that, I ended up cutting a couple things out and having an early nap time today. But the things we did were still fun.

We did the normal routine chores, read aloud, calendar, pledge of allegiance, and then starting into our CCBB stuff.

After reading the book, I asked why they thought the author chose to use the words Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Lincoln's first response was, "because he liked it!" But after thinking about it a little longer decided that it was because boom rhymes with room. (The line in the story goes, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, will there be enough room?") I also asked if he thought the story would have turned out differently if it had been a banana tree instead of a coconut tree. Linc said, it couldn't have been a banana tree, because then the letters would have to stop and eat bananas. :) We talked about how some of the names of letters rhyme with the word tree, and some do not. And I had the idea that I should make a chart where Linc could sort the alphabet into categories according to whether or not they rhyme...we'll see if I have time. We also talked about "tag-along K" and what tagging along means. It was a good day for discussion.

In the book, all the lowercase letter climb up the coconut tree, and when they fall out, "Everybody running to the coconut tree. Mamas and Papas, Uncles and Aunts, (in other words, the capitol letters) hug their little dears, then dust their pants." So we played a matching game. Lincoln had to pick a capital letter out of the box and match it up with the lower case letter on the coconut tree. Ivan and I used some other letters on the front of the fridge and put them in ABC order. I think Lincoln heard us doing this, because he put his letters in order too after he'd matched them. :) I also think it's funny that both of my boys, when they ran out of room, instead of starting a new line chose to go down, and then to the left. I did not tell them to, that's just how they did it.

After letter matching, we made coconut tree art projects. It's my old stand-by, hand print art project, but my kids still loved it. We painted their hands green and their arms brown and stamped it on the paper. We used their thumbs and the extra brown paint to make coconuts. Then using some alphabet stamps and ink pads I got out of the Target dollar bin, we stamped the letters climbing up the trees. There are not as many letters as there might have been because the boys were having a hard time sharing the stamps. When they started throwing them at each other, I had to take them away. This was also the time that I decided it was time to call it quits for lunch and nap time, so we didn't get to do our fun song or our poem. Another day perhaps.

(L) Ivan's (R) Lincoln's

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.