B is for...

Last week we did our first week of "school". After all the work I had done compiling curriculum I was very excited to get started. First thing we did was introduce ourselves to the big B, and the Little b, as well as our "B" Bible verse.

Our verse for the week was Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God ". So in addition to memorizing our verse, we talked about what it meant to be a peace maker. We talked about being kind, helping our friends, giving things up instead of fighting and loving each other.

Then we started work with the B word of the day, butterfly. We matched butterflies of all different colors with the uppercase and lowercase wings. We counted butterflies and matched them with the right number. We worked on writing the letter B, both upper and lowercase, as well as writing all our numbers.

Lastly, we finished off the morning with our handprint butterflies. When I saw this craft, I just knew we had to do it.. My children absolutely love anything with stamp pads, so this was perfect.

Just do 2 handprints of each hand, cut around the handprints and glue them to the body of the butterfly. Add the letter B for the kids to trace, as well as some eyes and antennas. Ta-Da!

The next day, we worked on B is for ballerina. We started with a review of butterflies, with some size sorting exercises. I have to admit that I was extremely impressed when Braxton did this perfectly. (Brookelynne did too, but I expected that). Then we moved on to our awesome ballerina-themed activities.

We did a ballerina number puzzle, some ballerina writing activities (some pre-writing activities for Braxton, with just simple line tracing and some more difficult letter tracing for Brookelynne. ). They both really enjoyed those, since they love using markers, and I place all of their writing activities in a dry erase folder so we can do them over and over without wasting paper.

We followed that up with some ballerina counting, and a ballerina game.

The rest of our weeks activities will be included in another post. (if I ever find the time! Ha!)

Pearson Preschool... The background information.

I absolutely hate that I haven't posted recently, but I just get so busy with the "every day things" that the extraordinary never seems to happen, and the everyday things seem to common to post about. That being said, there are a lot of changes coming for the Pearsons in the latter half of this year, and one of the most exciting ones is our new homeschooling curriculum!!

I've never done any intentional teaching with Brookelynne, but she's learned to recognize and say all her letters and numbers. But in the last few years, Mitch and I have gone back and forth deciding whether or not homeschooling was for us. There was no question that sooner or later I would have to try, and since there is no baby Pearson number three quite yet, this will be my only real chance to teach two without a third around, so we are starting now!

I started doing research several months ago, looking into different curriculums, researching different teaching philosophies, and deciding on how I wanted this school year to go. Anyone here knows me, knows that getting ready for school is my absolute favorite thing to do. Needless to say, I might have gotten carried away. :) and after hours upon hours upon hours, I have researched, downloaded and organizedI have over 4,000 different resources to use with B and B.

The basic premise of Pearson preschool this year is to cover the same material for both kids, in progressive steps. Meaning this, Braxton will be learning his letters, recognizing them and saying them along with their sounds, while Brookelynne is learning to write her letters and putting the sounds together to form words. Braxton will be learning to count to 10, and recognizing those numbers, while Brookelynne is learning to count to 100 and learning to write and add her numbers.

Therefore I needed a lot of curriculum to keep them entertained and on track and I think I have it figured out. I visited 30 or more sites (blogs, publishers, teaching sites, etc.) and found several great resources with packets set up by letter and or number. Even more exciting has been finding those same resources with a Bible verse theme for each week. Unfortunately, I didn't feel comfortable with using any set curriculum from one site. (they either didn't incorporate enough for Brookelynne or it was over Braxton's head to where it wouldn't be very helpful for him) So I have put several different curriculums together and will be doing a ton of fun and exciting things in the coming year so stay tuned for updates and pictures of all that we are learning here!