Preschool at Home: Week 16 & 17!

Week 16 - Navigating Numbers!

Week 16 of Preschool at Home was all about "Navigating Numbers"!

'N' was our letter of the week, and as I'm sure you can guess from the title, our focus was numbers! We counted to 40, and worked on simple addition and subtraction. I also found some great number match worksheets in a kindergarten readiness workbook that Cupcake really enjoyed completing, so I will look to include skill activities like those in the future.

Our craft for the week was a 'N is for Nest' letter activity:

Our learning board:

And I especially loved using this Fisher Price Market toy, to play a checkout game with Cupcake to do some simple addition and subtraction - it worked great!

Week 17 - Happy Home Week!

For Week 17, our theme was "Happy Home" week, Earth Day was on Monday of this week... so we did a few Earth Day activities, talking about recycling and doing a recycling sorting worksheet. The letter of the week was 'H" and since we were a bit under the weather in various ways (colds, allergies, you name it...) we did our basic activities and had a handful of special events that were in our schedule as well, so it was a light week for our preschool activities.

Our craft for the week was a 'H is for Horse' activity:

Next up! Dress-up week... which I'm sure will be a hit with the girls!

Preschool at Home: Week 15 - Growing Grammar!

For Week 15 we talked about "Growing Grammar" and the letter 'G'!

We had a special play date planned that worked perfectly with our theme, where we painted some garden pots to plant flowers and vegetables in to watch them grow this summer.

Also, we completed some worksheets on the letter 'G', nouns (the part of grammar we were focusing on for the week), and did a 'G is for Giraffe' craft! Since giraffes are a particular weak spot of mine, I had a slight obsession with them while I was pregnant with Cupcake - and decorated the nursery with a jungle animal theme centering around giraffes - we did a "Mommy & baby" giraffe theme craft. I colored the spots on the mommy giraffe and had Cupcake help me glue it together, she colored the spots on the baby giraffe.

I thought they turned out great!

Preschool at Home: Week 14 - Fantastic Feelings!

Week 14 of Preschool at Home was 'Fantastic Feelings!' week, where we talked about different feelings and emotions, since Cupcake has started to show interest in talking more about feelings. I had recently found a number of books to add to our collection on feelings, so we focused on those over the week and also did some feelings worksheets as well.

The letter of the week was 'F' and we did an 'F is for Fox' craft project!

I also incorporated feelings in an upcoming busy bag exchange that we are taking part in, and I will share that project in a future post - but the exchange happened to be the following week so it didn't line up exactly timing-wise with feelings week. We will continue to talk about feelings off and on in the future though, since Cupcake more interested in understanding what different feelings mean.

Pre-School at Home: Week 13 - Egg-cellent Easter Week!

Week 13 of preschool at home was Egg-cellent Easter Week!

We did some fun "letter E" craft activities:

And had some fun Easter events like an egg hunt, as well!

These were the girls' Easter egg baskets - and you can check out what was inside in the video below!

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Easter!

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Pre-School at Home: Week 12 - Beautiful Butterflies

Week 12 of preschool at home was in celebration of Spring - "Beautiful Butterflies"! To talk about all of the wonderful things we could look forward to in the Spring (albeit, no warmer weather where we lived yet) including more animals showing up in our outside environment, warmer weather, and green on the trees!

The letter craft for 'B' was an adorable little bear! Cupcake had a great time putting this one together!

Our Easter parties began this week, so we did have a craft playdate at a friend's house where we did some Easter crafts. The girls also had their pictures taken by our friend and had a great time posing with their stuffed Easter friends!

(Thanks to our favorite crafty mommy for taking these photos for us!)

Be sure to follow me on at the places below, to follow our Pre-School at Home activities and see what inspires me at Pinterest!

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For week 13 of "Pre-School at Home" we will be celebrating Easter with "Egg-cellent Easter Week"!

Pre-School at Home: Week 11 - Telling Time

Week 11 of preschool at home was all about "Telling Time"! In honor of the "Spring forward" time change that we had this week in the United States, we talked a bit about the clock and what the time change would mean for us.

Our art activity was a "T is for Tree" letter activity:

She was also very into painting this week, so I had her paint the back of a paper plate green... and we made a turtle out of it!

We also had a clock that Cupcake decorated and we practiced moving the hands around. (Since she is still only 2 years old, I focused more on the general concept of telling time... rather than an explicit instruction of it.) We counted up to twelve and talked out our schedule, and how telling time helps us be places... on time!

Here's how our letter wall is shaping up!

Be sure to follow me on at the places below, to follow our Pre-School at Home activities and see what inspires me at Pinterest!

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Pre-School at Home: Week 10 - Rainbow of Reading!

Week 10 was another fun week about reading! We'll be focusing more on numbers in week 11 since we've been talking a lot about reading, but since we had so much fun during Dr. Seuss week (see our previous blog post) - we decided to keep the colorful, imaginative reading fun going with "Rainbow of Reading" week!

We focused on reading again this week and had fun reading some of our favorite bright colorful books, like "Rumble in the Jungle" by Giles Andraea.

Our crafts included making a fun circle rainbow, shamrock snake, and "R is Rabbit" art!

Pre-School at Home: Week 8 & 9

The weeks have been flying by and we've been keeping busy with play dates, lessons, and more! It is shaping up to be a busy Spring for us!

We've continued Pre-School at Home, even through our busiest weeks. Here's an update on the last few weeks of preschool at home.

Week 8

Week 8 was the final week in February and all about "Outstanding Opposites"!

We had a lot of additional activities, so we used week 8 as a reinforcement week for a concept that Cupcake had already been introduced to. We talking about opposites, read books about opposites, and also did an adorable "O is for Owl" craft!

Week 9

Week 9 was a celebration of Dr. Seuss! One of our favorite children's authors around our house! Dr. Seuss' birthday was March 2nd. Week 9 was "Incredible Imagination" and also appropriately... Seuss Week!

We had lots of fun reading all kinds of books by Dr. Seuss, making Seuss crafts, and even sharing some of our favorite Seuss quotes!

Some of our favorite Seuss books:

The Truffula Tree craft was one of my favorites!

The "Thing 1 & Thing 2" crafts with pictures of the girls' faces were also quite adorable! (Their hand prints are the hair! Check out our video blog above for details on how to do the crafts!)

And our letter art of the week was "I is for Ice Cream"!

Following the crafts we're completing and more at Pinterest:

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Pre-School at Home Weekly Themes - A to Z

While working on our "Pre-School at Home" project, I started coming up with a number of theme ideas to have for each week. Some weeks, like "Perfectly Polar", I came up with a fun word pair that started with the same letter - and others it is just a fun play on the letter. We are not going through them in A through Z order and have opted for a random order for the themes to be introduced instead, but it would be a fun idea to share our theme ideas in order.

A - Amazing Alphabet
B - Bold Bears
C - Captivating Colors
D - Dashing Dinosaurs
    - Dramatic Dress-up
E - Enormous Elephants
    - Excellent Earth Week
F - Friendly Farm Animals
   - Fun with Frogs
   - Fabulous Fairy Tales
G - Great Grammar
H - Happy at Home
I - Incredible Imagination (Fits with Dr. Seuss week)
J - Jungle Animals
K - Kaleidoscopic of Kindness
L - Lots of Love (Valentine's Day week theme)
M - Marvelous Music
N - All about Numbers
O - Outstanding Opposites
P - Perfectly Polar
Q - Quirky questions
R - Ready to Read
    - Realistic Reading
S - Super Shapes
T - Terrific Trains
U - Under the Sea
V - Vegetables
W - Wonderful Weather 
    - Winter Fun (S)
X - eXtra special, eXtraordinary week
Y - Yo ho, it's a Pirates life for me! (Pirates week)
Z - Zany Zebras

Some weeks we are also planning on having a focus on some of our favorite authors, including Dr. Suess and Eric Carle.

** Weekly Themes in purple signify themes we have already completed as a part of the pre-school at home program.

Pre-School at Home: Week 7

Week 7 was all about... Lots of Love!!

It was Valentine's Day week and we focused on love, hearts, and lots of pink! The letter of the week was "L" and appropriately, the number of the week was 14!

For an art project, we completed the "L is for Lion" alphabet project:

And we also had lots of Valentine's Day themed decorations on our bulletin board!

It was a busy week for us, with lots of play dates, classes, and even a birthday party that we attended - so our preschool schedule was fairly light. We still had a lot of fun participating in Valentine's Day activities and doing some festive projects.

Pre-School at Home Week 6: Marvelous Music!

We had a great time with "Marvelous Music" week around our house! We made instruments, danced to music, and talked about basic music concepts like music symbols.

Making a music book was one of the best parts of the week for me, because it combined the weekly theme with an art project. I think this will definitely be a concept we do in future weeks as well and will serve as a great reference when we revisit the subject in future weeks as well.

For our letter art project, we did "M is for Mouse" based on templates I found on Pinterest.

We also enjoyed reading music related books, talking about instruments, and doing a few worksheets as well. It was a week of music and fun!

Pre-School at Home: Week 6 Lesson Plan

Our lesson plan for Week 6 of Pre-School at Home!

Our theme is:

Letter of the Week is "M"
Number of the Week is 4

Check out our full weekly lesson plan on google documents: Pre-School at Home Week 6

Download the weekly theme header HERE

Pre-School at Home: Week 5 Lesson Plan

Our lesson plan for Week 5 of Pre-School at Home!

Our theme is:

Letter of the Week is "W"
Number of the Week is 8

Check out our full weekly lesson plan on google documents: Pre-School at Home Week 5

Download the weekly theme header HERE

Pre-School at Home Vlog: Week 4

For Week 4 of Pre-School at Home, we had an "Amazing Alphabet" theme! It was a fun week, that involved lots of talking about the letters, singing of the alphabet song, and reading books.

Since Cupcake already knows the 26 letters and order, I focused more on words and what the alphabet can become rather than learning individual letters. We did focus on "A" words, and made an "A is for Alligator craft" and added the "A" words "alligator" and "away" to our board. If I was doing this week with Peanut (who is only 14 months and taking part in activities in a less hands on way, around 18 months I will begin more hands on activities with her as well), I would focus on learning individual letters and alphabet order since she does not know them yet.

We also did a B for Bee and Butterfly craft, since we had the toilet paper rolls available and Cupcake was particularly curious about these:

Craft ideas came from Pinterest, follow my PreSchool Boards on Pinterest:

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This week, we also added to our word focus the idea of thinking about the Dolch list of sight words for preschool, which is described more on this KidZone website and the Dolch Word website. Basically these are some of the most used words in the English language, and great sight words to begin with in early reading.

Our worksheets included writing the letter "A" and working on circles again this week.

Exciting things this week... we added a second learning bulletin board to our learning space! This was great because we have more opportunity to put visual items up like the words and going forward in the future - one board will be more rapidly changing while the other will hold the calendar and weather activities.

Stay tuned for next week, when we introduce Wonderful Weather! And talking about weather elements  will become a part of our weekly routine!