Homemade Happenings: Recap of the week; September 8-12

Well, this week we didn't quite get to all the lessons I had planned - but that's okay, I'll move what's left to next week. If nothing else, that means less planning on my part for next week!

This week we worked on:

Phonics and writing: The letter "A"

Math: Counting objects and recognizing the numbers 1-8, comparing same/different and big/small etc. (Lessons 11-13 in Number Skills book).

Science: Our five senses

Social Studies: Community helpers

We did get quite a bit accomplished though in my opinion. This week we started using the "ABC Discovery" program for the first time. It starts with "A" and has little characters for each letter. Gigi liked the character for "A", Abigail. Throughout the week we went over recognizing the letter by sight, practicing the sound it makes, finding things that begin with the sound and finally learning to write the letter. I had Gigi practice writing "A" and "a" on paper only once. The other days we practiced using cornstarch, sticks and circles and shaving cream.

When we used the shaving cream, we also incorporated part of our five senses lessons by smelling the shaving cream, describing how it feels etc. Gigi had a blast with this!! This is one of the main reasons some other things didn't get done - but she was enjoying herself, so I let her!

We also talked about our sense of touch, sense of sight and sense of hearing.

When we talked about touch, we used our sensory board, blindfolded to try to match just by feeling the different textures - Gigi did very well!

When we talked about our sense of hearing, we played another matching game, this time with our sound boxes. this was a bit more challenging for Gigi, but she came out on top in the end!
For sight, we just played a simple game of "I spy". We also read a few books about senses.

For math we did lessons 11-13 in our Abeka book. This included a day of "fishing" which was lots of fun! Gigi had to "fish" for construction paper fish with numbers (1-8 only) on them out of a box, when she got one she had to tell me how much it "weighed" by reading the number on it. If she didn't know or got it wrong, that meant the fish got away! It was great to see how excited she got when she caught one!

For social studies we talked about different community helpers. We talked about firefighters and police officers and I also used this an opportunity to go over "stop, drop and roll" and when is the right time to call 9-1-1 and what she should tell the operator. We also talked about farmers and how they grow the food we eat. We have several farms near us, so we drove by those as well. We also watched a few videos on firefighters and farmers and read a few books. Gigi colored some pictures of firefighters, farmers and police officers. She also made a toilet paper craft of a police officer and a farmer and made a foam firetruck.

Well, that pretty much sums up the lessons we did this week. Since we did not get to everything that was planned, we will be continuing with the same themes next week.

Next week I plan to cover: