Preschool Week of 12/3

Hurray, we had another productive week! Here's a quick summary:

Math: We started working on skip counting by 10's. Crumpet picked this up pretty quickly. However, it has come to my attention that he actually can't count from 1 to 100. He gets stuck at the 10s, so we're working on this the same way we worked on the alphabet. He walks along saying numbers and turning over index cards. For each 10 he gets right, he gets an M&M. He can get to 60 now - chocolate is a huge motivator around here!

Reading: For a change of pace, we printed out a series of stories from Progressive Phonics. We're working through that, in addition to our usual reading work.

Science: We completed the McRuffy unit on special attributes. This unit was about the things all living things need to survive, special adaptations animals have to help them survive, and food chains. Conveniently, one of our Magic School Bus books was about food chains.
Also, we have been watching the series of documentaries called Life, which was narrated by Oprah Winfrey. These have some phenomenal video footage, and show some amazing adaptations that plants and animals have developed to survive. Crumpet loves these shows and talks about them all the time. You should be warned that there are some scenes with animals eating other animals, and some mating scenes (which so far have looked like animals fighting...). I spend some of the time fast forwarding past scenes which show carnivores being carnivores for my vegetarian son. But overall, GREAT shows, and we're learning a lot.

Handwriting: I have laminated a lot of simple Kumon mazes for Crumpet, and he enjoys doing a few at a time. This week, I gave him a new book of the mazes and he went wild. He did 22 mazes in one sitting - it must be something about the feel of a real book in his hands?

History: A friend gave us several Magic Tree House audiobooks, and we've been listening to them while we go on our Meals on Wheels routes. Crumpet LOVES these. He won't get out of the car at home until the CDs are finished. And he re-enacts the stories over and over. I have reserved more from the library and can't wait for them to arrive, because we know our 3 discs word for word now...

Religion/Culture: We learned about Hanukkah this week. We read the book This is the Dreidel by Abby Levine. I found this at a book sale and I wouldn't really recommend it, but I couldn't find anything better... It does cover the basics of Hanukkah in a sort of poem form, and it tells about the history of the holiday at the back of the book. I made a paper dreidel from a template I found at Enchanted Learning. We played the game for a little while, but Crumpet got bored before we finished. We learned about the menorah, and we ate latkes. I love them; Crumpet tolerated them.
For Christmas preparation, we made a chain of Hershey's kisses to help us count down the days til Christmas. I saw advent calendars at our military grocery store in October, and foolishly didn't buy them. I have not been able to find any since. Fortunately, I saw this cute idea here at my friend Debbie's blog, Hallelujah Harvest.


Nature: We did some hiking and swimming, and we discovered these amazing flowers, which smell like ginger. I don't think I'll ever stop being awed by Hawaiian plants...



For more preschool posts, visit Homeschool Creations! Have a great week!