Preschool Week of 3/11

So, the big excitement here this week was that I created my first lapbook! I'm embarrassed to say that I'm from the Dark Ages, and I don't know how all of you wonderful ladies make your beautiful computer graphics printables (Who wants to come teach me?? Anyone?), so most of mine are done by hand. It's a pretty basic little book, but hey, it's my first one, and Crumpet liked it! He saw me working on it beforehand, and nearly lost his mind waiting for it to be finished.

Of course, it's a pirate lapbook because that's all we talk about these days:
Here's the inside:

And the back. It's a clock with swords for hands. Crumpet pulls out a little card with the time written on it and sets the hands to the correct time. I can also set the clock and ask him what time it is.

More inside details:

There is a laminated pirate with a treasure chest. On the front of their storage pocket, I have a list of positional words. I read them to Crumpet, who then positions the pirate around the treasure chest as directed. He knows this already, but I thought he'd enjoy the game, and he does.

There is a treasure chest full of gold coins. Crumpet pulls a number from the pocket below and hands me the correct number of coins. There are also addition, subtraction, and equals symbols in the pocket, so we can work on more advanced math skills soon.

I drew a pirate ship out of shapes, and Crumpet has to find the hidden shapes. I was surprised at how much difficulty he had with this. Apparently, I'm pretty tricky!

And I made tracing cards spelling the word "PIRATE" so Crumpet could work on his writing skills.

In other news:

Phonics:
We've been playing a game I found in How to Get Your Child off the Refrigerator and on to Learning by Carol Barnier, which is my new favorite book in the world. The game is called "Roadblock". I actually don't know if I'm supposed to talk about it, since it's published material... So, I'll just say that Crumpet drives his little car around the map identifying letters and sounds, and if he gets one wrong, I put up a roadblock. He has to start again, and when he gets the letter correct, he gets to crash through the roadblock. The author of the book used this game to teach her son to read by modifying it slightly, and I'm hoping it works with Crumpet, because getting him to concentrate and work with me any other way I've thought of so far does NOT work. Focus is non-existent here these days.

Math:

We played our beanbag game and practiced counting to 20 by throwing the bag back and forth and taking turns saying the number that comes next.

I scattered numbers around the living room and had Crumpet find the numbers and walk to them in order. This turned into a dance show and didn't last long...

We played a game (ok, half a game) of Life. This was good for number recognition, counting, following rules (or not), and sorting the money by color to put it away at the end of the game. He loves this game and calls it the 'car game' because you drive little cars around. In the end, he decided we were racing the cars and the sheriff kept giving us tickets...

Creative Writing:

Crumpet was interested in making up stories this week, and he told me several. I write them down in our storytelling notebook, and he illustrates. Most of the stories this week were about witches and bears, which was a change from his usual giraffe and elephant stories.

Exercise:

Crumpet has been asking to go bowling, so we went this weekend. We had so much fun! He loved the game, and particularly loved the fact that he could slide around in the shoes. He put on quite a show for everyone. My husband works nights, and it had been a very long time since we'd had a family outing. It was really, really great for all of us!

Karate has taken a turn for the better at last. For 2 months, he wouldn't even get on the mat. If he did, he walked around hunched up like Quasimodo and refused to participate. He was scared to death of all the kids. But, for some reason, the last 4 classes have been great. He participates, and has fun, and now, the instructors can't get him to stop talking during class... So that's good (I think?)! It's so nice to see him open up at last. It's awful that we'll be moving and starting again soon, with new teachers and classmates, but at least he'll have the memory of enjoying karate to motivate him.

Have a great week!