February Activities

This month I chose to focus a bit on Valentine's Day and a little on firemen. Jacob is loving firemen right now so I wanted to use his interest to infuse some of the skills I am trying to build. Many of the activities I planned for this month were found on Homeschoolcreations.com and 1plus1plus1equals1.com. These websites are great resources.

I had planned to start Letter of the Week last month but we did not get started. Look for the start of a Letter of the Week this month! I am going to be adding Letter of the Week activities for about a half hour a day. Our Structured Play time has stretched to about an hour a day and now I want to cut that in half. We will do our Monthly Theme activities for a half and hour and Letter of the Week activities for a half and hour a day.

I want to reiterate a few points before the download:
1. My plans are not meant to be completed in any specific order. Each day is different and Structured Play time should be a fun learning experience. Pick an activity or activities that fit the mood of your child for that day.
2. Practice activities more than once because repetition is key to gaining new skills.
3. READ, READ, READ- Read everyday and reread stories to allows your child to 'read' the books themselves. This is the first step in literacy.
4. Walk Away- Try to keep Structured Play time FUN. If things get frustrating to you or your child, walk away and pick up where you left off the next day. Remember it is Structured PLAY, you are not preparing for SAT Exams. Enjoy every minute!

February Monthly Plans

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Play to Write- Week 3

We participating in a Wednesday Play Group called Play to Write over at Cherrios and Lattes . This is week 3- Write/Spell Your Name. We started this week's practice with some name tracing. Cherrios and Lattes provides the printable for some dotted letters. She suggested doing rainbow writing with this sheet. I showed Jacob but he was more interested in writing all the Jacobs. I started by modeling on the first name. Then I held his hand and we did it together. Finally I let him do the last three on his own with only my verbal prompts. He took this very seriously and was very proud of himself! I was surprised at how much he liked doing this activity. He has a long way to go but he did pretty well! One thing I had to repeat was not to go around the o and a more than once. He wanted to go around and around. This is an activity that I think he will want to do again! The next activity was Missing Letter Name Practice. We started by singing a little song I sing for Jak

Name Writing Practice

Jacob did a little name writing practice today. He was asked to trace the dotted lines to write letters for his name. This is good practice with spelling as well. I had him say each letter as he wrote the letter. As you can see he is very choppy and not exactly on the dotted lines. His motor skills are not quite sharp enough yet to be able to hold the crayon and he especially loses control as he works on towards the end. We also did a Missing Letter Name Practice. Both of these ideas came from Cherrios and Lattes ' Play to Write, Write to Read. These are good ways to practice names and writing. He gets very angry if he thinks he made a mistake. See the scribbling. I have to reinforce that it is ok to make a mistake and that everyone makes mistakes but we just keep trying. Practice is the only way to get better. When this happens I cannot help but think of my former students that did the very same thing and proceeded to throw fits and give up. I hope to help Jacob ge

Building Good Readers

"Your boys are such good readers! I wish mine loved to read like yours do! How did you do that?" Can parents build good readers? How do parents build good readers? This might seem like a daunting question, a task too difficult to tackle. But truly, it does not have to be. As our children grow and become readers on their own accord they often feel that they do not need or want parents to read to them. It is very common for this to happen, but as their parents, it is our job to push back. Readers are not born, they are made. We must find times to read to our children. That might mean reading aloud looks different as they get older. Maybe instead of before bed; you are reading at the dinner table, as they are playing, or during snack time. The point is to share books that will pique their interest and hold their attention. You might have to choose books you might not otherwise choose. The key to reading aloud is to m odel reading for them and to show them th

Structured Play

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