Plugging Away At Preschool

So we are two months into 2013 and our Midwest winter weather has afforded my little sweeties and I a lot of indoor time at home.  We have been plugging away at our pre-school lessons, but it has been awhile since we've done a Before Five in a Row unit (as much as we LOVE doing them).  I have several more BFIAR books on our shelf that I hope to go through with Lucy and Collin before the school year is up, but after Christmas, I was looking at all the gifts the kids received for Christmas as well as the MANY wonderful educational games, books (not BFIAR), iPad apps and preschool materials that we have collected over time.  I realized that while I was scouring the internet every week for printable materials to go with BFIAR lessons, I wasn't making the best use of what we already had at our fingertips. So, during the past couple of months we have taken a less formal approach for our learning times by simply pulling things from our school room shelves and our iPad and enjoying them together.

Here is a smattering of SOME of our favorite things that we have recently enjoyed together:

1. ABCs of God app for iPhone and iPad.  We have had this sweet little iPad app for several months now, and I just adore it.  It addresses letter recognition, writing, upper case and lower cases and highlights a different attribute of God for each letter.  Lucy has mastered letter recognition and sounds, but my Collin is still working on these concepts, so I have him play with this app a lot and he really enjoys it!

2. Gakken Let's Create preschool workbook.  If you are a fan of the Kumon preschool work books, then you will love this Gakken preschool workbook, "Let's Create".  It includes tracing, cutting, pasting, and coloring.  The illustrations are engaging and cute and it includes stickers to put on each completed sheet as a reward.  It is a hit with both my kids.  My only wish is that the sheets were perforated especially for the pasting activities, but we still love it.

3. Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game. I can't express how much preschoolers learn through playing board games!  Aside from the academic component of educational games, I love the opportunities to teach social skills such as waiting for your turn and learning to win and lose graciously.  Lucy and Collin request to play the Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game all the time.  It is very similar to "Hi-Ho-Cherry-O" with the added step of grasping the pieces (in this case, acorns) with tongs, which is a great fine motor  skill practive.

4. Over the Rainbow Game.  This is another great board game that my kiddos love.  I am very impressed with the quality of the cardboard pieces and illustrations.  It addresses color recognition and helps to build vocabulary.

5. Eloise Wilkin Stories In the beginning of this school year, I was considering using Sonlight's Pre K 3-4 Core with Lucy and Collin.  While I didn't go with the full set, I did purchase some of the individual books from the reading list, and the Eloise Wilkin Stories treasury book has been such a big, big hit.  I love and recognize many of these stories from my childhood and they have obviously stood the test of time because Lucy and Collin have become quite attached and seem to have made friends with several of the characters even though they are obviously from a different era.  The first morning that I read "We Help Mommy" to them, they were practically begging me to give them some household chores to do.  Score!

6. Bug Games app for iPhone and iPad.  Here is another pre-school iPad app that we love.  It includes phonics, visual-spatial awareness, counting/number recognition and music activities in a bright and simple bug-related games.  Lucy and Collin particularly enjoy putting virtual stickers on the giant leaf every time they complete three activities in a row.

7. The Book of Children's Classics.  I think I picked up this book treasury at Half-Price Books years ago before I even had children.  I bought it because it contained so many beloved children's books from my own childhood that I had to have it and save it for "when I had kids someday".  The included stories that have been the biggest hits in our home are: Corduroy by Don Freeman, Ferdinand the Bull by Munro Leaf, and Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans.  These books have been a particularly big hit with Collin, and he loves to retell them in his own words, which is such a great learning practice, especially championed by the Charlotte Mason educational methods.

8. Preschool Lotto Game by Eeboo.  This is yet another high-quality game that Lucy and Collin keep requesting to play over and over again. It is also a great vocabulary-builder, especially for kids like Lucy who need extra help with speech-language development. If you haven't discovered Eeboo products yet, then you are in for a treat.  Their games, puzzles and craft kits are so fun, creative and engaging.  I have a feeling that this game is just the first of many Eeboo products to enter our home.

Another exciting development in our family that pertains to our preschool endeavors, is that Miss Lucy has begun sounding out words!  I have been so proud of her dedication to learning to read simple words and I can't express how wonderful of a feeling it was for me to be present for the first word that she sounded out independently.  To keep her little mind stimulated, I created a couple of sight words file folder games.  She brings them to me all the time requesting to "work on her words".  I thought it would be fun to share the two games that I created as free printables, in hopes that they will be fun early-reading activities for others to enjoy with their little ones.  I am totally new to this whole PDF-document-making and uploading thing, so if anyone would be so kind as to test these links out and let me know if you were able to successfully download them, I would love to know if they work or not!

Sight Words File Folder Game

Sight Words File Folder Game 2

We sure have been enjoying our laid-back learning here at home in the past few months.  I hope that these "reviews" are helpful and give good ideas to other parents who desire to have meaningful learning opportunities at home with their preschoolers!

xoxo,