Letter H and I

We are catching up on out letters we are doing I this week but there are some activities that we did not do with the H last week. Mr. Wheels is using the pattern block so the letter I. I got theses sheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler. 

He enjoys doing this. I have to make sure that I give him a small amount of the blocks. He gets overwhelmed and then won't do anything. If I give him a small amount then add more as he goes he has a great time.

Tangrams and Mighty Magnets

Mr. Wheels needs or be kept busy. He wants to be a part of school while I am teaching Tessa. He likes to do these activities. He gets board fast so I have other items in the bin to keep him busy. When he finishes his items in his bin he gets to play and watch something on the IPad. He seems to enjoy it all.

Letter F

This week we studied the letter F. This is just a few of he the fun activities we did. 

Letter E

This week we studies the letter E. I downloaded these letter pages from Confessions of a Homeschooler. This is one of the items we did this week. He gets overwelmed if I have him do this all by himself I have to put out only a few of the pattern blocks and ask him where they go. I know that in time he will be able to do this without much help. This is only one of the activities we did this week.

Letter B

This week Mr. Wheels learned the letter B. He loves to pant and glue. So for the art letter he glued small pieces of paper to the capital letter print out and painted the lower case letter. At the end of the week we made cookies. we made bar cookies because they are faster to make than individual cookies. we wanted to have chocolate chip cookies, these can't be rolled out and cut with the cookie cutters. So we cut them out just before we ate them. They tasted great! The top picture is him learning how to write the letter on our Letter School iPad app. I think this is the greatest app. He has fun and has learned many of them by himself. I don't work much with hand writing. I think he is to young, but this app does not feel like handwriting to him. After he masters the letter he places a sticky letter on his letter poster on the wall and then gets a star sticker on it. If he does the lower case letter he gets another star. If he then does the same letter again in my phone he gets another letter sticker.

Letter of the week cookies

This week Mr. Wheels study the A. Each Friday we are going to make cookies of the letter this week we started with peanut butter cookies. We found a gluten free vegan cookie recipe on the Internet. We were so excited because we didn't use any flour we could use garbanzo beans from a can. As you can see in step four to five of the picture my initial goal was to make cookies so that we can roll out and use letter cookie cutters that I have. Gluten-free cookie dough is usually quite pasty and it's more difficult to roll out. We decided to make regular cookie thenn use the cutter just before we eat them. I love making vegan cookies with my kids because they can actually eat the dough and I don't have to worry about them getting sick from the eggs. You can see how Mr. wheels is doing that in step eight. The kids had fun watching the cookies you can see this in step ten. Next time we add a little bit more maple syrup to the recipe. I also had a friend tell me to put them in the refergerator for a while then roll them out and cut them. I will have to try that too.

Letter A

We studied the letter A this week. He he's a bin for each day of the week. The top picture he built the letter out of Alphabuild letters. The bottom picture he matched letters on the word Adam, the first man in the Bible.

Learning Numbers

Today Mr. Wheels was matching his refrigerator magnet numbers on the number sheets. I am always amazed at what he can do.

Dogs Day 2

Well I made the magnet pom poms but Mr. Wheels loves the marker thing better. He went and got out the marker bag. I did add refrigerator magnet numbers to the story each time Dog gets a spot. He does like it. After I made all the stuff I looked online and someone had the same idea before me. Here is a bunch of ideas at Making Learning Fun.

Painting

Mr. Wheels loves to paint. Today I just pulled out a marker and made a 3x3 grid on the paper at the easel. He picked the color he wanted to use I wrote the word in a square and he painted it. He didn't didn't always stay in the lines, but that is OK. He knows his colors pretty well because of an IPad app that I found: Shapes Toddler Preschool. He can also learn his letters, numbers, and shapes. The shapes portion is free, but you can add colors, numbers, and letters for about $0.99.

At first my goal for this activity was to keep him busy while his sister did her school work, but I realized this was a good activity for a lot of reasons. He was developing his fine motor skills, decision making, word differentiation, wow lots of cool stuff.

Dogs Colorful Day

I have a desire to have my kids love books and a way that I encourage that is by finding ways to interact with the story. I have a copy of the book Dogs Colorful Day by Emma Dodd. I printed a page and laminated it. Then as I tell the story Mr. Wheels makes a mark on Dog with his marker with the color that corresponds to what is happening to him in the story. Mr. Wheels loves it. Then when it comes time for Dog to have a bath we use a wet paper towel as wash dog. He loves it and brings me the book to do again and again. I want to make pom pom magnets and magnet numbers next.

Look What I found

I was on the internet looking for inexpensive lacing beads and I found them at Oriental Trading Company. I didn't know they had educational stuff. I was excited to get them and get started using them. I first ordered the wooden lacing beads and then I saw the letter beads and the Bible cards and I couldn't resist. I plan on using the lacing beads for Mr. Wheels to lace and sort by color and shape. They come in the same colors as the counting bears so I can use the same cups. Mr. Wheels will not use the letter beads too much. The upper case and lower case letters are together on each block, this will be nice for Kit to use for spelling. I plan to put the Bible cards in our church bag to keep them busy during church.

Wooden Lacing Beads

Wooden Alphabet Beads

Bible Lacing Cards

Baby Danced

I have reading time with Mr. Wheels most week days and back in November  2012 we had been reading Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont. He was able to finish the end of many of the sentences. We all know that our memory is not good so I decided to video me reading the book to him.  I propped the IPad down the hall from our reading place and turned it on before we started our reading time. If he knew I was recording it would have never even got started, because he would have wanted to see it before we recorded anything. I then thought that it will not mean much if you can see the book, so I edited the video to include the pages. Since I am a busy home school mom and video editing takes a while I am just getting this done. I love it and wanted to share.

Matching

Today he matched all the colored dots with his counting bears. He was so proud.

Magnet Letters

I have these magnet letters and I wanted to use them for something other than cluttering up my refrigerator. So I made these pages and laminated them. The font was a but difficult to find. I had to have a different font for some of the letters. I wanted them to match the magnets pretty close. the letter I was difficult. He now matched the letters. He doesn't stick with it long. He looses interest, but he is able to match them quite well. I want to add a magnet wall so that he can do this standing up.

Keeping Him Busy

Most of the time we do math on the floor in the living room. I bring out the manipulative bin, my IPad, and pencil with paper.  If I don't find ways to keep Mr. Wheels busy he gets into all of the math manipulative. Today I brought out the bin of blocks and it kept him busy for a whild. Here he is building a high block tower. He got it pretty high. The trick is to keep Kit from getting distracted by him.

Tweezers

When I got the package of large kids tweezers in the mail and my husband asked what are these for. I told him they were for Mr. Wheels to learn to grip and squeeze. When I brought them out and he used them. I took a video so I could text it to my husband to show him what use them for. Here is the production. Here is the full size video

Matching Letters

During our music time I have letters on the floor in alphabetical order.  We listen to songs while we dance and step on the letters. Kit is learning them in spanish and Mr. Wheels is learning them for the first time. I have been concentrating on A, B, C, & D only because I didn't want to overwelm him, but this day I started using all of them. I have 2 sets of the foam letters. One set is on the floor and I hand him another one for him to match. Days before I did this and he had some trouble finding the match, but today he did much better. I give him a letter and he walks around and looks at his letter and compares it with the letter on the floor. I was quite impressed. The picture below is him with letter R and U. I think it is cute that he was impressed with himself when he matched the U. He has a big smile.

Math Game

Today for math we played a math game. We use RightStart math and they have a corners game. The math game is like dominoes but to match the numbers they have to add to multiples of 5. This is a review from last year. Kit has a score sheet in front of her. She keeps her own score. She has gotten very good at this game. Today's game was more fun that previous games because she is getting better at it and there is not as much frustration.  Today I won by only 15 points. This was a very close game. She was disappointed.




While Kit and I do math Mr. Wheels must have something to do. As you can imagine he would be into everything if he didn't have something to do. I have made some things for him to do. Today he played with his blocks and puzzles. I intended for him to stack the blocks on the letter, but he just wanted to stack them. After he was done with the blocks, I brought out the puzzles. I am very happy with his ability to put a puzzle to together. The video below was the 3rd attempt. He had trouble with the pieces with the same color. He put them in the wrong place. He decide to do the puzzle over and over. When I watch the video it makes me smile to see how excited he gets when he is successful.

Cheerio Book

I have received a Cheerio book for Mr. Wheels. It has pictures with Cheerio's as part of the illustration and kids are supposed to put their own Cheerios into the missing parts of the pages. Here are pictures of Mr. Wheels doing so. You will notice that he is putting them in his mouth too. When he did get the idea that he was supposed to put them on the page he clapped for himself.