Before Five in a Row...

Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets

We celebrated two things this week: the first day of SPRING and our dog, Mona's, 7th birthday!! It was a splendid week filled with lots of fun activities! We read "Play With Me" each day. This is a cute classic book, however, it's not necessarily one of my children's favorites. It's very predictable, repetitive, and honestly not very exciting. But it's about animals and enjoying their presence, and both Isaac and Naomi are animal lovers, so that's what holds their attention the most.

Some of our activities this week included...

{learning about DEW, and feeling it for ourselves}

They weren't crazy about this dewy experience. They complained about their feet being cold and wet, and didn't enjoy it very much. Isaac asked some good questions, though. Like, "Does the dew help the plants grow?" Do you know? Does it??

{learning about the life cycle of frogs}

(Isaac found these letters on his own to spell the word, FROG!)

 {working on spelling and sounding out words}

 {playing a "Who am I?" animal guessing game}

{cutting practice to help prepare the game}

{matching upper and lower case letters}

They both REALLY enjoy working with these little cards that I made. I start by laying out all of the upper case letters. Then I let them take turns naming the lower case letter in my hand. If they get it right, then they get to take that card and match it to it's upper case partner. There are still a few lower case letters that trip them up (like b, d, p, and q). But overall, I was pleased with how well they BOTH did.

{going on a field trip to a local park that had a POND!}

We didn't find any live animals (probably because it's just now Spring), but we did find some of the animals from the book sculpted into the rocks at the playground! SO fun!! :)

{we had fun throwing rocks and sticks into the pond}

{he balanced across the entire log without falling off!}

{we found a big rock to sit on and enjoy our snack}

{sitting as quiet as can be to see if any animals would come by}

 {reading lessons}

We have done three lessons in this book so far. It's super simple and easy. Isaac is more than capable and certainly seems ready to begin learning how to read, especially given that he's already reading simple 3 or 4-letter words. One problem, though: He is totally and completely UNinterested in it right now. So we are going to take a break and walk away from this structured type of learning. And just continue doing the day-to-day style of learning. An example of that would be when he asks for a cup, I stop and say, "Cup? Hmmmm...I wonder what that starts with?" To which he'll say, "C!" I'll prompt him through the rest of the word, and there you have it, he just spelled the word "CUP!" :) Very simple and very easily incorporated throughout our days. He JUST turned four, so I'm not in any hurry to push him to begin reading. He's just getting it so easily, and I get excited for him.

We also celebrated the first day of SPRING by going out for ice cream, playing at a new park, enjoying a new game, and making flower photo crafts...

{springing bunnies game}

{butterfly stained glass window art}

(SO simple! Just used contact paper, tissue paper, scissors, and a marker)

{spring flower pictures}

 

 {enjoying some ice cream at the park}

This was a FUN week!! One thing that I am still planning to do, is getting (or perhaps making) a bird feeder and having the kids help me put it up so we can enjoy watching some local birds enjoy a little snack. :)