Name recognition

Zelda is good at knowing her name in writing anywhere. Zorro knows how to tell which is his name and which is Zelda's. I have been teaching then their names written properly but am learning that it is important for them to know both the capital and lowercase because Zelda wants to type her name and the keyboard is all caps. So... Today I gave them a paper with both ways and asked them to coulor and then trace on the other side. Zorro didn't really have the attention span but he did draw a bunch of o's 

Number 5

Today I was reading a book about Chasing God while Chasing the kids. And in it it had a challange about managing time to do the things that mattered to you. It also quoted the verse saying that we should count our days to gain wisdom. I only have one year till Zelda starts school. That's not very many days left. I need to remember that. So today I took a few moments to think about "preschool" I found all the numbers 0-9 in our magnetic letters and put them in a bucket. Zelda picked out (without looking) the number 5. So here is what we did...

1) Ran outside and did five jumping jacks, big steps, normal jumps, and ran to five poles/trees. They are both able to count to 20. Zelda can get to 30ish. But they are not good at count to a specific number they always go past. So it was good practice to pay attention to what the are saying instead of just saying something memorized. 

2) Pick 5 Dandillions. Zelda did this with no problem and was done in 10 seconds. Zorro brought me three. Zelda went and got two more for him and he helped me count them.

3) Decorate the number 5 with markers and glitter. Since it is nice outside and I really don't like glitter we took the little table outside and did it on the porch. 

*Zelda was working on colouring her 5 in and Zorro traced the number over 3ish times. Zelda didn't finish colouring because Zorro took out his glitter and that is just far more fun than markers :) 

I had hoped to get them to pick the 5 out of a group of numbers but they were done with me telling them what to do by then so I let them get back to playing. 

Hopefully I will get to the other Numbers in the next few weeks. We shall see what I think of. I like to keep things simple, moving, and short. 

Books!

This morning we went to the library for the second time. We had a great time reading and looking at all the books. I let them both pick two books and I picked two non-fiction ones for preschool. Since Zelda has been asking why we have blood and why we drink/eat, I found two in a How Your Body Works series. Hopefully they can explain it better than me :)

The last few days (or so..) Zelda has been asking to do "pre-school". I think it is stemming from people asking her if she is in pre-school/kindergarten almost everywhere we go. It seems to be expected of kids her age. I just don't see the point for us. She already knows so many of the things that are expected of kids entering school and I have another year and a half to work on the rest. They both get to play with other kids at Kid Spot (unstructured) and local programs like Rock and Read (structured).  So, because of her interest we did a quick impromptu pre-school lesson on counting and number recognition. Things tend to work a lot better with her if she is the one who asks for it. I have tried to do pre-school type activities before and she always stops after a few minuets. I'm hoping this is the start of more regular lesson times.

What we did:

I drew numbers in boxes on a paper and gave them some stickers to count. Prep time about 2 minuets (including locating paper and marker)

Zelda got impatient with the stickers so she used cereal instead. She counted out the cereal correctly on her own till the number 7. By 8 she had lost interest in being careful but I reminded her that when she goes to school her teacher will expect her to finish activities even if she doesn't really like them. With that motivation she finished with some help and encouragement from me. Zorro was happy practicing his fine motor skills with his stickers. Which up until recently he really didn't like to play with cause they were to sticky :p 

Later we made cookies, I packed them during quiet time, and then brought them to a few of our neighbours. We were thankful for the short break in FREEZING (-25) weather! Even though most people weren't home we still had a lot of fun. 

Puzzle

Zorro had a late nap so me and Zelda had some learning time together. I laid out all the puzzlepieces and we worked through the alphabet together. She can recognize most of the letters on her own but if she got stuck I told her to look at the pictures on the pieces and told her whatsound the letters made. From that should could figure out which one it was. Once the puzzlewas together she wanted to take pictures of me stepping on each one. To get me to moveto the next letter she had to tell me where to go. It was good for teaching and took no preparation. 

ABC

Today Zelda asked to do some home preschool like Hanna (her second cousin). Yesterday we had looked at their blog and saw pictures of Hanna doing some school work.

So... Today I had to think of something without doing a lot of prep work. We started working in her preschool colouring activity book practicing writing skills but her attention span for those type of activities is very limited. I then tried to have them "write" in some colour rice but that was also short lived. So I promised her we would do something after quiet time. 

We ended up taking our foam letter puzzle and putting it on the kitchen floor (which we spent the morning trying to clean) and I asked her to walk along the puzzle and tell me what she was standing on. I was trying to figure out how many of them she already knew. I was surprised at the amount she did. I would have loved to write down the ones she knew but things like that are harder when you have a little brother trying to "help" I think she knows about 2/3s of her Capital letters. 

Over all we had a fun spontaneous preschool lesson. 

thoughts on the ABC's

I wrote in my post about a possible schedule (I deleted that post because schedules just don't fit me) and doing one letter per week but when I think about it and look at different ideas on Pinterest I don't think that I want to do that. I remember learning my sign alphabet and when I learned it the first time (in grade school) I learned it in the correct order ABCDE.... and I could never spell anything quickly. Latter when I was trying to learn it again to use in real life (we had a neighbour who was deaf) I learned by spelling things around me such as, signs on a road trip. This way taught me to remember the letters without going through the entire alphabet. I would like to do our ABC learning as a whole instead of one letter at a time. It is how we have been learning till now and Zelda (3.5) is recognizing about 1/3 or the alphabet (my guess) And Zorro (2) knows O. This is without sitting down with the purpose of learning letters. I have been trying to spell out their names at different time such as in the sand when camping, or on pictures that they make.
The ABC games that I am interested in tend to use more then just one letter. I will be teaching both my 3.5 year old daughter and my 2 year old son at the same time so I need games that both of them can play and learn from at their own speed.
Ideas I found and like:
-Tape a letter on the floor and have them "trace" it by walking along the tape.
-Use foam letters from those puzzle mats. Call out a letter and have them jump on it.
-Hide small objects with letters on them around the room and have them find them. Talk about the letters they find and play with them when they have them all.
-Hang letters on a string with clothes pins. Do it together and talk about the letters you see. Could do Upper and Lower Case letters so that they can match them together.
-Have the letters of their names on paper, blocks, stones ect and have them put them in the correct order.
-Drawing letters in sensory materials

Most of these involve movement. I won't do all of our learning running around but with a 2 year old boy it is a pretty important part of learning... I hope to do some of the sitting down and learning activities with Zelda as well but they will not be the main focus of our time. Zorro will most likely just colour during those times.