Sharks, A, and January 1st

My new idea for this year's curriculum, unlike last year's which was totally unstructered, is to plan things out with monthly and bi-weekly themes. I think I tried to do this last year, but what I really ended up doing was pick a topic, get a few books at the library, maybe get a coinciding movie, come up with a few activities, and go some place.  That was pretty good. And then I got pregnant, sick, busy, tired, worn out, we packed, moved, unpacked, still sick and tired, and then I did my best with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (I may have overdone Christmas :)

Anyway, even though I know I'm having a baby in 3 to 5 weeks (3 please!!) I've come up with a new strategy, which is only slightly different than the last, but I think will greatly ease my "planning time."  Here is how it is going... and I think you will get the idea of the "schedule" as I describe the first week of January and our upcoming events.

Calendar - so excited to start this. I know I could have bought a cute one, but I made this myself and I like it just as much. Every morning we move the snowflake to the next day. This month we don't have too much going on, eventwise, but in months following I will have other markers for birthdays, holidays, special events, vacations, etc. For instance, I am going to laminate a little photo of Grandma and Grandpa and stick it on the day in February when they are coming to visit. You get the idea. It's nothing new, just new to us.

Sharks - Joshua picked out this topic last month, but there was so much to do with Christmas, that we didn't do a whole lot but pick out books at the library, some of which we read. Now we have actually read the books, watched the movies, colored the coloring pages, and dressed up as sharks and hunted for little fishies to eat. We have also identified the parts of a shark, and practiced drawing and labeling them on our shark papers. Joshua is a self proclaimed Weiser Hai (great white shark) and he has determined Abigail is a Blauhai (blue shark).

 (Joshua's sharks always have EXTRA breathing capacity, as indicated by the gills running all down it's body)

(this one is Abby's, can you tell?)

We already know a lot about sharks, but we do have more activities planned. We are going to make Hammerhai Hute - Hammerhead shark hats (pretend there's an umlaut on that "u") and swim around with our Ruckenflossen (another imaginary "u" umlaut), we have two more shark snacks - blue jello with suspended fruit snack shark and fish, and crackers with blue cream cheese and fishy crackers on top (idea from my friend Rachel about a year ago!).  We've got more coloring sheets, and we still have our books - I'll post our favorite books next time. I might come up with a few more activities, but for now this seems adequate. If anybody knows a song about sharks in German, let me know! If I can get it, we'll watch "Finding Nemo" because I really like Bruce the Shark.

Ok, the letter "A." We have a couple of picture dictionarys in German that I used to introduce A, and then we went around thinking of words that start with A. We made up a little chant that goes "Ananas fangt mit A an" "Apfel fangt mit A an" "Arbeit fangt mit A an," and so forth (Pineapple starts with A, Apple starts with A, work starts with A) wherein we accentuate the A so it sounds more like AAAAAHHHHHH. I bought writing paper and Joshua (and Abigail) have started practicing writing their As. (Nach oben, nach unten, Strich in der Mitte) I even have little apple stickers to praise their very best As. They love love loved this activity and continue to write As everwhere.  They look for As everywhere also, which is exactly what I wanted to accomplish. Joshua is 3 and he's a boy - I don't care if his A looks weird when he writes it, but he knows what it is, he gets the idea, and he can find and recognize it. We have had Apples and Ananas (pineapple) for our A snacks. And Joshua drew 2 Apatosaurus and 2 Allosaurus to hang on our A door. Goodness, has it really only been one week?

Our color for the month was supposed to be blue, however I have yet to really do a whole lot with that. This was to include Abigail a little more so she would be learning something more at her level - I don't see her booming enthusiam when we draw all the fins on a shark like I do with Joshua. But I do have a few ideas that we'll hopefully get to later.

For the future - I already mentioned our calendar and how we will keep that updated and in future months have more to show. For February the color is red, so Februar is spelled out in red and the marker is a heart. March is green and the marker is a shamrock. B will be introduced after this week. Our big B activity will be baking banana bread (which wonderfully has all the same Bs in English as it does in German - Bananabrot backen.) I had some other German B foods picked out but can't remember them at the moment. I think C will only take one week since there aren't many German words in C and it's not that hard to write anyway. Basically you've got Cowboy and Clown, which aren't really German anyway. I think we'll focus on the Cowboy. And not that I don't just adore Dinosaurs as much as Joshua, but don't blame me if I do NOT focuse entirely on Dinosuars when we move on to D - despite the fact that Joshua is now drawing Dromeosaurus. I don't even know which one that is, but undoubtedly he is a meat eater. Next Month's theme will be Love and Family, which fits perfectly as we will get to celebrate Valentines Day, introduce a new baby into the family, and my parents will come to visit - they are family we don't see as often. A lot of the activities will be hands on with the new baby. We'll do our usual books, maybe a video, and coloring sheets. My kids always like that. Febraury wont be as intense, but I'm going to keep things going as much as possible.  I was thinking for March we would start on plants, but now I'm thinking that is too early. We'll see. I've got time to think about it. Maybe we'll do Farms or something like that.

And that is how I'm going to do homeschool preschool this year. Eventually we will add in more field trips, but I've wisely decided I can't take all that on right now. Hopefully we'll get to story time at the library and play group before the new baby comes.

I'm excited for this year. I feel like it has taken me 8 months to figure out how I want to do preschool. And i'm sure it will keep changing. I'll keep you posted.