Saturday, October 15, 2011

Circus Fun

Last week we headed down to Dwellingup for a little break and to help out with a group of Sudanese refugees on a special camp. Their theme for the children's group was the circus so Paul went to help out with some circus skills and I chased Samuel around!!

The kids had a great time camping (pretend camping in a chalet) and joining in the fun activities. They even got to perform in the concert. Liam was a little(ok a lot) stage shy but he eventually got up and did some tricks with his Dad which is huge for him.






Liana as usual had no problem getting up and performing. Plus she got to get her face painted by the awesome Morris Jacobs!





The highlight of our holiday for Liam had to be the train. We were staying right near the Hotham Valley Steam Trains. We got there just after the train finished for the day, but we got to check out the train and have a play with the points and other technical thingies that I have no idea about. Good thing Paul knows what he is talking aboout!



Monday, October 10, 2011

Tot School - Red

Tot School
Samuel is 20.5 months

After a looong break from totschool we are back! For the next few weeks we are learning about colours. Last week we did red. Here are some of the things Samuel did.

We went on a red treasure hunt and collected as many red things as we could find in the toy room.

We threaded red pasta onto red pipecleaners.

We used our dot markers to paint a page of red things,

and we painted our RED page.

We did a contact paper collage of red materials.

Samuel coloured in his red minit. book.


And we used our red pom pom magnets to play with the do a dot page.

The older two are learning about the rainforest so Samuel decided to join in and help paint a box for their rainforest model. Not red, but good fun anyway!!

Nothing like sitting in the weeds ahh, flowers for some morning tea.


And my favourite photo of the week, My two little cheeky boys!

To see what others are up to this week head over to 1+1+1=1

Monday, June 13, 2011

Tot School

Tot School
Samuel is 16.5 months

We continued with our farm theme again. I am planning on doing a different theme each month simply because I just don't have the time to change Samuel's activities each week and organise the big kids. Samuel doesn't mind so we are all happy!! That being said, I don't have many photos to share as Samuel has been sick all week and mighty grumpy so there was not much Totschooling happening this week.

We played with our Old McDonalds Farm set made from egg cartons and toilet rolls. We put the toilet rolls on and off the middles of the egg carton and sang old McDonald a hundred times!! We also used them to identify the different farm animals.



We spent a lot of time playing with the musical instruments. He loves music, especially when we get the instruments out.


He loved playing the boat that Liam and Liana made for him and wouldn't get out even after they tired of pushing him around the house!



We did do a few other things like lots of reading and a few jigsaw puzzles but I don't have any other photos unfortunately. However, my favourite of the week was his first taste of a jam donut - yum!!



To see what others have done this week head over to 1+1+1=1

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Learning With Liam





We are still working on the same reading unit with Liam. I find he needs lots of repetition of the same thing to really grasp it. If I move on too soon he forgets everything. He enjoys really mastering something and thankfully doesn't tire of doing the same thing over and over again.

So we worked again on the short a vowel sound. He really started to take off with sounding out cvc words as opposed to just the cv sounds we have been practicing. Yay!! Finally some progress. I am not really worried but it is hard not to compare his progress to how his sister progressed at that age, and as I mentioned last week, they are totally different in their learning styles.

So here are some pictures of what we worked on with our reading this week.

"a" word slides

Matching cvc words to pictures

Puppy dog file folder game. I made up an activity to sort "a" words to the right dog depending on what it started with ie ca, ba, fa,etc. He found this really easy as he just sorted them by initial sound. Hmmm, would work better with the same initial sound but different vowel sound, ie ba,be,bo etc. Will have to remake this one later on!

I also pulled out our montessori word drawers that I made when Liana was this age and we worked on the first 2 drawers, matching cvc words to pictures.



For maths we are still working on learning our teens. He seemed to have a much better grasp of it this week than last week. We continued to use our number family charts and MUS blocks to make and identify each number. We are still having a bit of trouble remembering 11 and 12 but he can identify them as oneteen and and twoteen thanks to MUS so we will probably work one more week on the teens and then move onto the 20 family. I don't have many photos as we played lots of games and didn't get a chance to photograph most of them.



For Bible we are learning the Bible Verses and songs from Seeds Family Worship. We love, love, love these cds and can't recommend them highly enough. For each song there are some awesome printables available from here . Each week we sing the songs, colour the picture, do the copy work, make the minibook and then recite the verse and song to Daddy on Fridays. I only have a few photos this week but will try and get some more action shots for next week.






To see what others are doing this week head over to Preschool Corner {and 5K too} and Teach Me To Read Thursdays

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Tot School

Tot School
Samuel is 16 months old

This month our theme is Farms to match our sensory box. We attempted lots of farm themed activities. I say attempted because Samuel is still little and not interested in anything too structured so it was very hit and miss, which is fine. As long as he is happy I am happy!!

So these are the things that worked.

Painting Farm pictures




Matching farm animals to picture cards. This worked well for about 2 minutes before he got bored of it!



Playing with the Farm Mega Blocks





The Farm sensory bin which was a huge hit and played with daily.




Lots of reading



And my favourite, playing in the rubbish bin! The bin was new and clean :) He must have palyed in it for at least half and hour and then spent the rest of the afternoon dragging it around the toy room.




To see what others are doing this week head on over to 1+1+1=1