An Inventory of Preschool Skills

I love doing preschool activities with my granddaughters.  It's a passion in me.  I think I get more enjoyment planning lessons and making the crafts than the girls enjoy doing them.

I follow many preschool blogs and I have been so inspired by creative ideas on teaching little ones.  One of the blogs I follow is called I Can Teach My Child.  On February 8, 2013, the author, Jenae, published a blog that was titled, "Homeschool Preschool".  She writes about why some parents would choose homeschooling a preschooler rather than sending a child to a public preschool.  Reasons vary, of course, but I would say the main reason would be the cost.  It's very expensive to send a child to  public preschool (not to mention if there is a sibling preschooler). Other reasons may be a child with special needs, or parents wanting to ensure that the family's values are instilled in their child.  Homeschooling can be a wonderful experience for both you and your preschooler, but it comes with responsibility and some worry.  Will I be able to teach my child everything he will need to know for kindergarten?  Will he be prepared?  What skills will he need to have mastered?  Jenae has put together an "Inventory List of Skills" for preschoolers before they enter kindergarten. 

Public preschools definitely have their benefits - socialization comes to my mind first.  The blogger addresses some of the positives of public preschool and gives suggestions on how a parent can incorporate them into their homeschooling experience.

I enjoyed this blog post so much and thought it was important to share with whomever would like to read it.  Here is the link to the blog:  www.icanteachmychild.com/2013/02/homeschool-preschool/
Scroll down the page till you get to the paragraph starting with Use The Internet and you will find an "Inventory of Preschool Skills" typed in red.  Click on that to bring up the list of skills a child needs before starting kindergarten.  CAUTION:  This list may freak you out.  The list is meant for informational purposes only.  Not every child will posses every one of these skills.  Heck, I know adults who don't have all of these skills.  The list is meant to be a guide. 

I hope you find Jenae's I Can Teach My Child blog post informative.  You can also find Jenae on Pinterest - and on that note I better start planning for this week's lessons :) 

Down on the Farm

It was another Full and Fun week with the girls.  Three of the days were focused on the letter F and then Thursday we celebrated Valentine's Day.  The items in our alphabet box were: farm, fish and foot. 

We started our farm day by using our Farm Felt pieces and talking about the different kinds of farms, who lives on a farm, what is a barn and silo and what is stored in them, etc.  Then I just let the girls play with the felt pieces.  Lyla enjoyed this more than Stella.

 

 

Stella also worked on a farm puzzle and then the girls watched Mickey & Donald Have A Farm.

 

 

 

 

Our next farm activity was to listen and sing "The Farmer in the Del" song.  I made stick puppets that go along with the song.  This was a free printout from DLTK-kids.com.  Stick puppets may sound a little hokey and old-school, but little ones love them.  The girls held up their puppets and danced around the living room.  So cute.  I had a hard time getting a picture that wasn't blurry due to all the dancing.

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon, Papa and I took the girls on a little field trip to DeJong's Diary.  A diary farm.  The girls saw all kinds of animals and got to go inside the barn where a lot of the food for the animals was stored. 

 

 

 

I think Stella is doing her "chicken dance" in the next pic.

 

 

 

Stella was quick to make friends with a little girl visiting the farm with her mother.  These two little girls ran around the farm holding hands. Very sweet.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday was our "Fish" day.  We started out reading Rainbow Fish and then went right into the sport of fishing :)  Stella thought this was great.   I printed out plain fish on card stock paper and then colored them and added glitter glue to make them sparkle.  I slipped on a large paper clip at one end of the fish.  Stella already had a magnetic fishing puzzle with a magnet pole, so we used the pole for this activity.  I spread out a blue bed sheet for the ocean and voila!  This activity was good for an eye/hand coordination exercise.

 

 

 

Stella also decorated her own fish.  She had a difficult time squeezing the glitter glue tube.  Her little hands are not very strong and she needed some help.  This was a good craft for strengthening her fine motor skills.

 

 

Other fish activities included measuring fish using Goldfish crackers. Yum!  Also, a fish puzzle.

 

 

 

On Wednesday, we read Dr. Seuss's The Foot Book.  After reading, I showed Stella how to trace around our feet.  She practiced tracing around mine, Lyla and her daddy's feet.  Sorry, no pictures.

 

Other activities for this week included a hide-n-seek outdoor alphabet puzzle A thru F, scissor practice and some math pages.

 

 

 

 

I told you it was a full week!  Oh yes, Thursday was Valentine's Day.  We couldn't forget celebrating that.  I put all of our Valentine's Day activities on my All The Buzz At Grandma's facebook page.  Please stop by to check it out, and while you're there, please "like" my page.

 

Thank you so much for allowing me to share my precious girls with you.  We have so much fun and I love sharing our week with whoever wishes to stop in and look. 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Eggs and Ham, Anyone?

I had a difficult time finding items that started with the letter E, so this was not a very Egg-citing week. The items in the Alphabet box were: elephant, eggs and elves. Books that accompanied our list of "E" items were: Babar, Green Eggs and Ham, and The Elves and the Shoemaker.

Two of our elephant activities were an elephant puzzle and a pre-writing exercise printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 

 

 

We had lots of fun with egg day.  We first read Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham.  Stella just loved this book and asked me to read it over and over.  We talked about rhyming words like fox-box, house-mouse. Then we set out to crack some eggs.  I numbered the eggs in the egg carton 1-6 and we counted them.

 

 

 

Next, I "scrambled" the numbers up (did not get a picture, sorry) and called out the number of the egg I wanted Stella to crack.

 

 

 

 

 

Next, Stella added green food coloring and whisked up the eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stella will not eat eggs, so we didn't attempt to cook these.  Instead, we made a kid-friendly version of green eggs using pudding.

 

 

 

 

 

Voila!  Here is our finished project.  Green pudding with a Vanilla Wafer for a yoke and some sprinkles just for a touch of fun.

 

 

 

At the end of our "egg time", I gave Stella a hard boiled egg and we talked about how Nana had cooked the egg on the stove in very hot water.  Then I asked her to try to crack it.  She was a little puzzled.  I explained that cooking the egg made it become solid and hard (probably over her head, but it's an introduction into liquid/solid)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she finally got to the yoke part, she said (Ewww - poo-poo) I'm guessing she didn't like it :)

 

 

 

And that was our "Egg Day". 

 

 For Elves day, I made two stick puppet elves and let Stella play with them while I read, The Elves and the Shoemaker. No pictures here. 

 

Thank you for letting me share our short "E" week with you.

Dinosaur Hunting

 

 

Such fun stuff to do on "D" week.  In our alphabet box was: Dog, Donut, Dentist, and Dinosaur.  We started the week with the "D" word dog and read If You Give A Dog A Donut.  This book did double duty for dog and donut days.  On the donut day, we made homemade donuts.  Yum!!!  I chose the word Dentist hoping to take Stella to her first dental appointment, but I think she is still a little too young and would not be too cooperative.  I did find a great book titled First Time Dentist published by Child's Play.  It explains to toddlers why we go to the dentist and what happens in the dentist's chair.  It's a good book to familiarize children to the dentist before they take their first visit.  On dentist day, we made a silly apple slice and marshmallow teeth craft.  I got this craft idea from Pinterest.  It's a little weird and I hope it doesn't creep anyone out:)  Our final "D" day was Dinosaur.  We read Dinosaurs Love Underpants and then went on our "dinosaur hunt".  The girls were outfitted with safari hats and binoculars to spy out any Dino's that were lerking in the backyard.  Thankfully, all dinosaurs were accounted for and were carefully secured.  Next came a dinosaur bone dig!  I placed Rigatoni noodles in one of those under-the-bed storage containers and then poured a little sand over them.  I set out plastic spoons and tongs for the girls to dig for Dino bones.  Lyla really enjoyed this activity. 

 

So that was our week.  Please let me share a few pictures from our "D" activities.

 

 

Frosting our homemade donuts.

 

 

Our apple and marshmallow "Dentist" day craft.

 

 

All geared up for a great Dino Hunt.

 

 

Lyla finds the first Dino.

 

 

Diggin for those Dino Bones

 

 

The girls did a good job finding all the bones.

 

 

Sorry!  A little bit out-of-order, but I couldn't leave this pic out.  Lyla diggin for Dino bones.

 

 

With all the Dino activities done, it was time for play.  The girls really enjoyed their dinosaur hunt and I had a great time watching the fun.

 

Thanks for sharing our week with us.  By the way, it was mentioned to me that my blog was difficult to read on a mobile phone, so I switched up my background.  Let me know if you find it easier to read.  Thanks.