W Is For Wheels And Wreath

 Our schedule was seriously thrown off this week because of a nasty stomach bug.  We ended up hosting school on a day Red Fish was home and she was thrilled to get to join in on the fun.  We did our calendar, paraded around the house with instruments, sang our Christmas songs at the tops of our lungs and played with the parachute.  We talked about the letter W and the nursery rhyme Wee Willie Winkie.  We read books about pilots, garage owners, race car drivers and train conductors and talked about wheels.  We made the letter W out of tin foil and drove cars around our W roads.  I found a bunch of free printables to use this week and made a whole bunch of laminated file folders and games for us to play with.

For our fine motor skill we traced lines to connect airplanes to clouds.  It was one of the first writing preparation activities I have been able to interest New Fish in.  We did a whole bunch of sorting, sequencing, matching and counting activities.

 I taught them about patterns for the first time and we played with a variety of AB patterns using street signs, Christmas erasers and file folder games.  We reviewed short and long, wide and thin etc with different transportation pictures.  We practiced putting numbers in order behind a train.  We counted animal passengers on plane mats.  We started learning left and right and tried doing some sorting.  We spent a large chunk of our time at the kitchen table using the laminated games.  We don't usually spend much time at the table so I think they actually thought it was novel and fun.

Next we cut wreath shapes out of paper and drove cars through paint on them.  We ended the day by playing on our car mat with all of our cars and a train toy.  We actually ran out of time for the sensory bin and a couple of the file folders but since this was our last preschool for the year, my kids will need activities for the next few weeks to keep them busy anyway.  We are nearly at the halfway point for our little homeschool experiment.  I am actually really enjoying teaching the kids.  Red Fish and I have our own little program we are doing as well although I haven't blogged about it much.  I should.  It's harder to blog about her stuff as I'm not making as much of it up as I go.  I enjoy the organization of the little homeschool program we have going.  I enjoy feeling like I am actually teaching the kids all of the things I want to.  I don't always enjoy all of the prep work or feel like hosting but I'm always glad I did it.  I think I will always be glad I did this.