Be Peacemakers - Pre K Weekly Wrap Up ~ Learn Play Imagine

JZ is currently 4.75 years old.

This week we studied:
Unit 18 of RRSP

Unit 7 - You Can Read

-All printouts are from RRSP or You Can Read unless otherwise noted.-

Theme - Be Peacemakers

Letter: Bb

Number: 18

Shape: square

Color: brown

Sight Words:

play

find

run

JM's Tot School post is HERE.

Here is a glance at his drawers for the week:

I mentioned in last week's post that I am slowly adding to our daily routine to be prepared for starting JZ's kindergarten curriculum. This week we started working on learning to tell time with an analog clock. The Melissa and Doug Wooden Shape Sorting Clock makes the perfect tool for learning time. JZ already knew that when the "little hand" points to a number, and the "big hand" points to twelve that is the time. I taught him that the big hand is the minute hand, and the little hand is the hour hand. I introduced the term "o'clock". Then we practiced making the clock the right time.

On Wednesday I introduced half hours to him. Each school day (3 days per week) we worked with the clock. I positioned the hands, and he told me what time I made. I instructed him to make specific times, and then he made different times for me to guess. It came very easily to him.

The theme verse for the week from the RRSP curriculum and My ABC Bible Verses was "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Matthew 5:9. We spent the week focusing on sharing, taking turns, being kind, and keeping peace. Yes these are virtues we work on every week, but this week I put more emphasis on them. It blesses me to watch the boys play together, look out for one another, and take turns. All of the photos I show of them doing school work together are 100% child led. I don't force or even encourage them to work together. They choose to. I love watching their relationship develop.

Meaningful Mama has a plethora of ideas for character development in children. I enjoy reading the daily activities she does with her little ones while sipping my morning coffee. The school work and intellectual learning is great, but without a Godly character it is all worthless.

Like JM, JZ loved playing with the Tall Stacker Pegs Building Set.

I gave him a lot of free play with them, but we also did some specific exercises.

He continued patterns I started.

I introduced skip counting but didn't push much. My goal was to do a basic introduction and keep it fun.

Both older boys and I played a dice butterfly game from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

I just happened to have the butterflies that I purchased from Dollar Tree for our Bird's Nest Sensory Bin. They made fun place markers.

JZ did a few pages in his Kumon Drawing Workbook. He is really taking off with drawing. I don't want the book to be a chore or something I force. I bought it with the intention of helping him understand how to use angles and shadows to show dimension, but ultimately I want his drawings to be his own.

JZ showed him what to draw, LOL.

From his Sight Word Notebook JZ chose the following:

Color by words.

He kindly let JM help color in the last book.

Sight word tracing.

Connect the dots.

I put a cut and paste project from Confessions of a Homeschooler in one of his drawers.

JZ loves cutting and does well with scissors. He often cuts paper on his own.

He doesn't care for cutting on lines, though.

As we approach kindergarten there are certain skills I want to be sure he can do, so I strongly encouraged him to finish. He got a bit frustrated and cried when he cut the head off the butterfly's body. I hugged him and showed him how to glue the body in a way that didn't show it had been cut. When Mike got home that evening he proudly showed off his masterpiece. To be honest, I wasn't sure if pushing him to finish was the right decision or not, but once I saw the look of accomplishment on his face, I felt confident that I had made the right decision.

JZ sorted capital and lowercase B's. (COAH)

Actually, if you asked him, his "bug" sorted them. One day he had his "bug" with him the entire time we worked and talked to him all day. I love watching his imagination.

He read his easy reader. We only did a reading lesson once this week. He didn't seem too interested, so we focused on other areas.

The boys loved playing with craft sand in a sensory bin on the light box.

To read about sensory bins and why they are included in our play every single week (even when I don't blog about the specifics), be sure and check out the first post in my new series, Child's Play 101.