Good Books Copywork - at, on, a, it

Here are this week's copywork pages.  If you frequent this blog, you might remember that I am putting together copywork pages for each of the spelling words we are learning this year.  These sheets are a marriage of two resources, The Writing Road to Reading and the 1000 Good Books  list at Classical Christian Homeschooling.  The spelling words are taken in order from the Writing Road to Reading and I have paired each one with a sentence from one of the books on the 1000 Good Books list.

If you missed last week's pack (me, do, and, & go) and would like it, you can download it here.  

The four words in this pack are at, on, a, & it.  You can download the pack here. 

These sheets are a great way practice the daily spelling word, gain greater proficiency in writing letters, and start to learn basic sentence structure (capital letter in the front, lowercase almost everywhere else, punctuation at the end, space between words, etc.)

I have seen great improvement in Trevor over the course of just a week or so.  I'll show you the picture of the first sheet he did and also his most current on so you can see the improvement =)  Keep in mind that this is mostly an independent assignment for him.  We go over the spelling word together and then I read the sentence to him (prompting him to read the words he might know), but after that I pretty much let him do the writing himself.  I try not to hover too much, letting him have the satisfaction of accomplishing the writing himself, and hope that the errors will work themselves out as we copy more and more sentances.

This is the first page he did.  The letters are pretty crazy and definitely not the right size for the lines!

Here is yesterday's page.  I didn't make him do the second line of 'on' because I thought he did so great on the first line!  This time his uppercase letter is the right size and so are his lowercase letters (well, except for that last, backwards 'e')!  And I guess he missed two letters, but I was pleased with his work and the progress he has made in such a short time.

Happy Writing!

Lesson Plan Week 8

                                          (You can click on the image to make it bigger if you are interested)                                                                                            MV = Memory Verse   CB = Chapter Book   CT = Character Trait   FP = Forest People  KNB = Kid's Nature Book

Posts related to this week's lessons:

• Copywork - at, on, a, it
• Estimation Exploration

You may have noticed that we pretty much took last week off of school.  But as many of you know, just because you are not following a lesson plan doesn't mean that you're not learning!   We went to the gymnastics center one morning for 'open gym,' carved a pumpkin, went to a class at church, and of course the normal playing games, reviewing memory verses, and talking about words as he sees signs out the car window.  I enjoyed taking last week a little slower, but I was ready to get back into the saddle this week!

Ray's math is going really well.  It's such a gentle way of teaching math concepts, but I can tell that Trevor is starting to grasp how it all works!  At this stage, it's all hands-on, which is fun for little ones.  Our new science activities are a nice change.  Hopefully I'll get a post up soon about the estimation activity we did yesterday.  Trevor's very favorite thing continues to be writing, so he is always eager to do his copywork page each day.  I'll get this week's copywork pages up soon, so you can print them out for your children if you'd like!


If you want to see the resources I'm using, click here.  This chart really isn't an explanation of what we are doing, so if you want to know anything more specifically, just ask. 


What are you doing this week?  If you have a blog, put a link in the comments, I'd love to check it out!


Happy Learning!

Preschool Science Activity - Making Apple Butter

The beautiful fall view out my living room window.

 Fall is such a beautiful time here in the Midwest!  It may be a little chilly and a little wet, but the stunning colors and the plentiful harvest more than make up for it.  Around here, you can't think about fall without thinking APPLES, so I figured making some apple butter with Trevor would be a great activity!

This activity is suggested in The Kids' Nature Book that we are using and the concept is also used in one of the Sid the Science Kid experiments, so I put the two together, added a little of my own flare, and came up with a great little activity for this fall morning.

First we gathered all of our materials.  I know this is not a precise kind of recipe, but we took the opportunity to get out the food scale and weigh the apples.  We talked about what a scale does and then Trevor watched the numbers as Mackenzie added apples to the bowl on the scale.

I let the kids watch some TV while I sat and cut up the apples.  This is what we were left with after Mackenzie ate about every other one that I put in the pot =)  The lesson learned is to feed your little girl breakfast before you start this activity!  (You may have noticed the kids are still in their PJ's...we started this activity first thing in the morning since it's supposed to cook all day!)

This is where the science part came in.  As soon as I finished cutting the apples up, I told Trevor to come over and mash them up into apple sauce for me.  He tried and the first thing he said was "They're too hard!"  I asked Trevor to tell me what else he observed about the apples that were in the pot.  He needed a little prompting about what to look for, but he came up with that they apples were kind of yellow, cold, and crunchy.  I told him that we would observe the apples again after they had been cooked.

So we set the slow cooker to cook for a few hours.  After about two hours we observed the apples again.  Very carefully I had Trevor try to mash the apples.  This time they were soft!  Now they were also hot (instead of cold), turning brown (instead of yellow), and mushy (instead of crunchy...but of course he didn't taste them at this point....too hot!)  Then we added some honey and our spices and left the apples to continue cooking.

Then I made up this copywork sheet for him to practice reading and writing the words that he had used to describe this apples.   Fell free to download this to use with your children!

---

Do you love using copywork with your children? Find more at Classical Copywork!

---

Here is the recipe that I ended up using:

Slow Cooker Apple Butter

5 lbs  Apples, peeled and cored
2T     maple syrup
1/2 c  honey (adjust to your liking depending on the type of apples you use)
1T     cinnamon
1t       cloves
pinch  nutmeg

• Cut apples into chunks and place into slow cooker.  Add maple syrup and cook on low for 2 hours (or until apples can be mashed).
• Add honey and spices and mash to combine.
• Stir/mash every hour until desired consistency is obtained (it may take several hours).  Let cook with the lid off if you have excess moisture.
• Use immediately, refrigerate leftovers to be used within a few days, or save in a jar to be frozen or canned for future use or to be given as gifts.

---

Looking for more preschool information?  Visit my All Things Preschool page to find a list of all the preschool posts here at Living and Learning at Home, plus some of my favorite preschool resources!

Homeschool Group - A Trip to the Cider Mill

This past Friday, we had the second meeting of our new homeschool group.  This time we headed out for a field trip, and went to Blake's Orchard and Cider Mill.  Too bad it turned out to be a rainy day, so our activities were limited, but we still had a good time!

First we went inside and watched cider being made.  The kids (and us adults!) were intrigued for quite a while.  You really get to see the whole process at Blake's, which is nice.  Trevor described it to his daddy later that night like this (you can imagine the motions he used while talking =), "they duuuumped, then they went uuuuuuuuup the conveyor belt, then they got mushed up and into the bottle!"

Next we headed to a covered picnic-table-area to do our craft that Miss Debby put together for us.  It was a really neat craft.  She (with her girls) had collected leaves earlier in the week and pressed them so they were dry for us.  Each child laminated a few leaves and cut them out (with some help =).  Then we hole punched them and strung them and tied them onto a branch.  The project turned out great that I think the kids really enjoyed it!

Trevor working diligently trying to cut out his leaves.

All the beautiful girls working on their leaves!

Trevor displaying his finished product (too bad it blends in perfectly with the background so you can't see it, oops!)

All the big kids with their mobiles (well, Trevor calls his a tree).

After we finished our craft, we enjoyed some yummy doughnuts and cider.  I read a book about an apple to the kids, but the people around us were a little loud, our kids were starting to get cold, Mackenzie was crying and both her and Trevor wanted to sit on my lap....so story time was pretty much pointless =) Oh well, we had good intentions!  I was really hoping that we would be able to pick apples, or at least walk around the premises, but the weather just wasn't cooperating, so we went back inside and I bought a bag of apples and let the kids enjoy a caramel apple on the way home.

I'm already looking forward to our meeting next month!  I thank God for these like-minded ladies and their wonderful children (though I am praying to find another mom who would be a good fit to add to the group who has a BOY...did you notice that every single person is a female except Trevor!)

Happy Fall!

I've linked up to:

  

Science Activity - Charting Favorite Fruits

If you happened to read my Lesson Plan Week 7 post earlier this week, you might remember that I decided to switch a few things up regarding Math and Science.  One thing is that I want to start doing one science activity or 'experiment' each week in addition to the one more nature related activity that we have been doing.  

Trevor loves watching Sid the Science Kid on PBS.  The kids are slightly crazy on the show =) but I think that the 'experiments' that they do are really solid for beginning little scientists!  So, I was excited to find that on PBS Parents they have a list of each episode and instructions for how to do the experiment that they did on the show!  I went through the list and picked a few that I thought would be age-appropriate and interesting for Trevor.

We did our first one this week and it was about making a chart.  The purpose of this activity is to collect data and display it in a way that we can analyze it (on a chart!)

They suggested making a chart about people's favorite fruits.  We recorded our favorite fruits, asked daddy and Mackenzie, and called all three sets of grandparents to see what their favorites were.  I wrote the names of the people, and put pictures of the people for names he was unfamiliar with reading (sorry, I couldn't find my picture of Grandma and Grandpa Berry!)  Then I wrote the name of the favorite fruit and Trevor drew a picture (his drawing skills still need some honing =)

We practiced reading the chart (very basic..."What was Grandma Schoonover's favorite fruit?")  Then I asked him some more difficult questions so he could analyze the data ("How many people liked bananas?"  "Did more people like apples or grapes?")  It was great for early science skills as well as early math skills (and reading if you count sounding out names).  Here is what our chart ended up looking like...

(Mackenzie decided to be an artist at the bottom with a pencil =)

This was a good, fun challenge for him!  Also, it was very simple and required really no prep on my part.  I am looking forward to doing more of these types of activities in the future!  I definitely don't think that science needs to be started with preschoolers, but this kind of activity is fun.  If you do science with your little ones, I'd love to hear what you do or what resources you use.

Happy Charting!

I'm linked up at:


            

Lesson Plan Week 7

                                                   (You can click on the image to make it bigger if you are interested)                                                                                            MV = Memory Verse   CB = Chapter Book   CT = Character Trait   FP = Forest People  KNB = Kid's Nature Book

Posts showing in more detail some of the items above:

• Copywork Pages
• Sid the Science Kid experiment - charts
• Cider Mill with our homeschool group (too rainy to pick apples!)
• Making Apple Butter

If you follow these lesson plan posts, you'll notice that I changed a few things up this week.  First, we are starting spelling words and copywork that goes with each word.  I wrote a detailed post on it yesterday where you can download the copywork for your own use, so check it out!

Also, we are officially getting to Ray's math book lessons.  Trevor gets the idea of how numbers work up to 100, so I think it's time to start these lessons.  We will do official math two times a week, while purposing to play a game or do something that works on math skills the other three days of the week.  Each math day we will review reading numbers on flashcards and also do a lesson from Ray's.  These lessons are very simple, they really just encourage manipulating objects to come up with the answers to simple questions.  I hope to have a post up about Ray's math in the coming week.

Science has also seen a change this week (and hopefully for the weeks to come!)  We are now going to do a science activity from www.pbskids.org on Mondays, read a story from Among the Forest People on Wednesdays, and do a nature activity on Fridays. 

If you want to see the resources I'm using, click here.  This chart really isn't an explanation of what we are doing, so if you want to know anything more specifically, just ask. 


What are you doing this week?  If you have a blog, put a link in the comments, I'd love to check it out!


Happy Learning!

I've linked up at:

Good Books Copywork - me, do, and, go

I have put together copywork pages that I will be using with Trevor this year.  Now that he has learned how to pronounce each letter plus phonograms 1-45 in The Writing Road to Reading and also is familiar with how to write each letter (uppercase much better than lowercase), we are moving onto spelling.  These sheets are a great way practice the daily spelling word, gain greater proficiency in writing letters, and start to learn basic sentence structure (capital letter in the front, lowercase almost everywhere else, punctuation at the end, space between words, etc.)

These sheets are a marriage of two resources, The Writing Road to Reading and the 1000 Good Books  list at Classical Christian Homeschooling.  The spelling words are taken in order from the Writing Road to Reading and I have paired each one with a sentence from one of the books on the 1000 Good Books list.

We started with our first spelling word and copywork sheet today.  This is what it looked like when he was finished =)

Like I said earlier, we have spent most of our time on uppercase letters, so I am excited for him to have these opportunities to practice his lowercase writing.  The first two 'me' words that he wrote were with his left hand (oops!) so they look especially rough =)  Then daddy took over supervising (while I had to change a diaper) the last word, and it got a little off track...oh well =)

If you would like to download these pages for your own use, please feel free!  I just have the first four pages available now and I will add the rest each week as we get to them.  The words in this pack are me, do, and, & go.  Click here to download.  Like my last download, GoogleDocs seems to be changing the font, but once you actually download the PDF to your computer, it should come up right.  If not, please send me an email and I will get the sheets to you!

Happy Writing!

I'm linked up at:

            

Lesson Plan Week 6

                                                 (You can click on the image to make it bigger if you are interested)                                                                                            MV = Memory Verse   CB = Chapter Book   CT = Character Trait   FP = Forest People  KNB = Kid's Nature Book

This week we are taking a break from our daily math and science.  We are enjoying reading from Among the Forest People but I really want to start doing some more hands-on type science with Trevor and there just isn't time or energy to add more to our schedule, so I'm going to rework the Math and Science lessons so that we do either/or each day (does that make sense?)  Hopefully I'll have that ready for next week.

This week we are finishing up learning the phonograms for the year and also finishing learning how to write each letter, so next week we are going to start with our first official spelling lessons!  I'm excited and have been working hard creating copywork pages for each new word that also highlights a sentence from a children's literature book.  I'll be sharing those with you as we go along!

If you want to see the resources I'm using, click here.  This chart really isn't an explanation of what we are doing, so if you want to know anything more specifically, just ask. 


What are you doing this week?  If you have a blog, put a link in the comments, I'd love to check it out!


Happy Learning!

Preschool Science Activity - Fall Leaves

This morning the kids and I went on a nature walk, this time looking for leaves that had fallen off of trees.  The kids always love nature walks, so this was a big hit!  We just went up and down the street and stopped whenever we saw a tree that had lost some of it's leaves.  We noticed that we mostly were collecting three different kinds of leaves (with a couple of odd-ball extras).  I tried to explain that if two trees have the same shape leaves, then they are the same kind of tree.

When we got home, we put all the leaves on the kitchen floor and I had Trevor sort them by shape.  This was a challenge, because his first instinct each time was to match up colors, but by the end I could see him correcting himself when he started to put a leaf in the wrong pile.  We ended up with three main piles of leaves.

Next, I showed him a page that I had made up earlier with a silhouette of a leaf on it and had him match it up which pile would go with that picture (and then again for the other two leaf types).  Here is what we came up with...

I don't think that our birch leaves are right, but I'm pretty sure we got the elm and maple right!

Next we sounded out each word and he was excited to be able to read them with just a little coaching!  It really amazes he how reading is just clicking since he has learned most of the phonograms.  (I highly recommend curriculum like  Writing Road to Reading , Spell to Write and Read, All About Reading/Spelling, and just teaching phonograms in general!)

After that we did copywork and practiced writing in lowercase letters.  In our writing this year so far we have only focused on uppercase letters, so there are many lowercase letters he has never even tried to write.  I want to see if he can learn those by just doing copywork instead of taking one letter at a time.

Last we made rubbings of the leaves by placing a couple of the leaves under a white piece of paper and coloring over them with the long side of an unwrapped crayon.  I was happy with how easy this was for Trevor to do on his own.   I expected that I would have to help to actually get the images to show up, but other than holding the paper in place, he was able to do it on his own!

I loved this lesson because it was many subjects all in one!  It included science, math (sorting), reading, writing, and art.

If you would like to do something like this with you child, you can download the pages I created for your own use.  Of course, it will only work if you have the same kind of trees in your area that I do =)

(maple, oak, birch, elm)

For some reason, the writing lines do not show up when you click the link to view the pages, but when you download them it should appear correctly.  Please let me know if it's not showing up right for you!

---

Looking for more preschool information?  Visit my All Things Preschool page to find a list of all the preschool posts here at Living and Learning at Home, plus some of my favorite preschool resources!