In the car after walking group today I was talking to C and A about the letter B and what sound it makes and what words begin with B. After listing several C asked me "what about teeth?"
"No, teeth starts with T".
Then he asked "what about shoe?",
"no shoe starts with S"
then baby girl asked "what about pink shoe?",
"no that starts with P".
C-"what about no light",
me-"no starts with N, light starts with L".
C-"but what about no light, does that start with B?"
...I think I just answered that, clearly we have some work to do today!
After dropping off a Box at the post office we Balanced on Bricks back to the car. We sang "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee", which is A's favorite song anyway. We mixed up some Bread dough for Baking. While it was rising we practiced writing letter Bb, while listening to the Backstreet Boys. We must keep everyone well rounded right? Then we read some Dr. Suess books, "Ten Apples Up On Top", "Mr. Brown can Moo! Can you?", and "Dr.Suess's ABC". Next we put the Bread into the oven. C was quite a helper making the dough. I think he may blossom while big brother is in school this year. Now it is after lunch and A is napping and C is playing with his superhero toys. When baby girl wakes up we'll do a craft making Buses out of Popsicle sticks.
So for the past 7 years I've been babysitting in some form or another. I usually worked on alphabet and counting and crafts with my group of kids. My middle child C never enjoyed being part of the group and usually went off and did his own thing. Now we find ourselves in Houston Texas, at least 17 hours away from our home and family in Arizona. My oldest J just started 1st grade this morning. So it's just me and C who's 4 and A who's 2. My hubby is here too, in his office working. Another change to our lives that we're enjoying adjusting to. I've explored several preschool options and decided that homeschool is the best option for C and A, so here we go!
Day one- We met up with our new walking group at 8:30, after dropping big brother off to school. (There were definitely tears, I'm going to miss that sweet boy!) after a vigorous walk and weight lifting my kids and I headed to the park to find acorns. Acorns! Its so nice to have oak trees! Houston is gorgeous! We gathered acorns and discussed many words that start with the letter "A" and the different sounds it can make. We got home and learned how to write the letter "A". I was pleasantly surprised that C may have been paying attention to previous preschool lessons, because he wrote several beautiful "A"'s and "a"'s without my assistance! We read "If you give a cat a cupcake" by Laura Numeroff, "Amelia Bedelia's first Apple Pie" by Herman Parish and my favorite alphabet book "From Apple to Zipper" by Noah Cohen. I have a kids rug with the (nine) planets in our solar system, to practice our numerals we each hopped from each numbered planet while shouting out the number we were standing on. I have found that children often enjoy preschool more if you encourage them to shout from time to time. For our craft we created alligators from the letter A. C did a very neat job with the glue and scissors. Baby girl required a lot more help. After class Daddy rewarded us by taking us to lunch at Chick-fil-a!
