Sunday, January 16, 2011

January: Week 2

I'm kind of bored with Sharks. I'm also running out of Shark activities. What I have learned from this is that 4 weeks on a topic as broad/narrow as "Sharks" is way too long for me. At the end of this post I will outline my new idea as to be implimented in March.

So... what did we do? Here is our Shark snack... (credits to Rachel, except my husband ate all the Ritz so we had to use graham crackers, easy sacrifice)




Here are our Shark cards. We focused on the fastest, biggest, smallest, and weirdest or most noteworthy sharks, 7 in all. I also made cards of the parts of the shark that we had learned, just as review.


Here is what we ended up doing with all our shark coloring pages... both kids colored, Joshua "helped" with the cutting and Abigail "helped" with the glueing.

We also got Finding Nemo from the library - which has less to do with sharks and more with fish, but with a topic like sharks, you kind of have to stray a little bit (well, I do) in order to stay within a reasonable theme. There aren't a whole lot of kid friendly shark movies out there that I've seen.

We also learned a song IN GERMAN (Yea!) about Sharks (fish). Thank you Jessica. Actually, many of you might know the song "slippery fish" from pre-school but I had never heard it. Jessica speaks German to her little boy and she translated the song into German for him, so I snagged the words off her blog. My kids, however, skip the middle of the song and only sing about the kleiner Fisch and then the grosser Hai who eats him. good enough. They got the point. (Today Joshua took the tune and sang about Abigail and Joshua swimming in the bathtub after which the big shark came and ate them!)

With A we continuted our "chant" (Abigail faengt mit A an, etc.) and then Joshua found a bunch of A's in some old magazines I got from my Dr.s office (I did ask permission before stuffing them in the daiper bag) and we glued them on a blue piece of paper to hang up on the A door. I also had Joshua and Abby practice writing their A's on schreibpapier just one more time. Joshua's As are looking awesome, and Abby can make a really good point, hopefully someday she will want to put a cross on it and call it an A. All in good time.



And my kids took it upon themselves to study up on the letter A. You can't tell from these photos, but they are researching words that start with A in a German/English picture dictionary, a German/Polish picture dictionary, a Duden A-Z book, and a Duden shapes book.


(mostly I just think the photos are cute)

Other than that, we actually made it to playgroup this week AND found the local library and enjoyed Music and Movement time for 1-3 year olds. Very fun. I'm going to try and make that a weekly thing... you know, for 3 more weeks after which I might not leave my house for a while.

I think that's about it. I have one more Shark snack and one more Shark activity up my sleeve, but that's really all I've got on sharks. It's been kind of hard to spread things out so much, I could have finished all of my planned activities in 2 weeks, instead of four, which leads me to my new plan. Each month is going to have a theme, but each week is going to have a sub-theme. We can cover a lot more territory this way and always have a list of fun things to do. If I don't get to all my planned activities, who cares. I'm still going to use 2 weeks for each letter we learn, except ones like C and J. German doesn't give you a whole lot to work with there. Basicaly you've got Cowboy, Clown, and Joghurt, none of which are actually German words anyway.  Those letters only get 1 week.

For more my record keeping purposes than anything else (as in I don't think anybody will be interested in the following) here is my basic outlined lesson schedule through July. I have specific projects written down in my folders for each sub theme and I am really really excited!! A very good sign that I might actually go through with all of this.

Febraury - not following the subtheme formula, but we are working on love in our Family and love for and from Heavenly Father.
March - Transportation (thanks for all your ideas, this one came to me in the middle of the night while I couldn't sleep) with subthemes car, boat, plane, and train (other transportation inserted where appropriate.
April - Growing things. subthemes - plants, flowers, trees, and Easter
May - Farm. subthemes, horses, cows, chickens, and pigs (and I might throw in a sheep, they are kind of fun)
June - health. subthemes, germs and hygeine, nutrition, and sports and our bodies (we did our bodies in more depth, like anatomy 101 for 3 year olds last year, find the blog post it was really interesting, so this time instead of talking about the anatomy specifically, we will spend two weeks or so talking about different kinds of sports and outdoor/indoor activities that keep our bodies healthy, and what part of our bodies are getting healthier.
July (haven't picked a color yet) - Our Heritage. subthemes, United States (4th of July, duh) Switzerland (my kids are 1/4 Swiss), Norway (my kids are 1/8 Norwegian which is a big deal to me, although I admit that is kind of a small fraction), and I think Utah - to go with the 24th which is Pioneer Day here. On the Mock and Berwick side we have Pioneer stock and very recent/semi recent immigrant stock, so it might be kind of fun to learn about both. this is also a good month to talk more in depth about the temple.

One more thing, as if this post/all my posts weren't long enough already, how do you guys incorporate your littler ones into the learning activities for your bigger ones? I've got the color thing going on for Abigail, which I haven't done a whole lot with yet, because honestly she is kind of getting all her colors on her own anyway so why make up elaborate lessons for something she is already figuring out on her own? But she isn't really developed enough to write her letters, although she can recognize them when we learn about them. I involve her in everything and I know she likes being included, but half the time if we work on a project she stays with us for a few minutes, and then she is done. It's just too "old" for her. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I know she's benefiting, but I wonder if she is benefiting as much as Joshua.

3 comments:

  1. Perhaps with Abigail, don't worry so much if she's not getting as much out of it. Let her be included when she wants to be, and let her run away and do her own thing when she wants to (unless her running away make Joshua want to run away... such is the case in my house, which is why we do MOST learning activities when Joss is sleeping...)

    I think she is probably benefiting as much as Joshua - just in a different way. Even practicing her letters is helping her learn to write, even if she's not writing actual letters yet. But really, who cares if your not-quite-2-yr-old is writing letters yet!? ;) She'll get it, in time.

    I wanted to start with the themes and calendar this week, but due to some personal issues (which I'm sure I'll talk to you about soon) I am lucky to be functioning at all. Life slowed down for us, and then WHAM, I remembered some things I forgot about when life got crazy... soo... yeah, working through that stuff. I'm spending the night tomorrow in Salem at my in-laws, and then I'll be visiting some friends in Springville in the afternoon. Just so you know, so that if you decide to come up to West Jordan one of those days, you won't be surprised that I am actually in the Utah valley ;)

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  2. hmmmm... well. I will have to call you then.

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  3. Sounds like a good answer to me. I think she probably benifits from just being included in the activities. Also much of her learning right now will happen simply though playing and observing what is going on.

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