Spin and Trace: Alphabet Writing Game for Preschoolers

Last month, I made these tracing and writing sheets for Vito to add some spice in his writing activities.  He loves the salt tray and Montessori sandpaper, but these sheets are so helpful as they require less preparation and no mess.  The activity sheet requires you to create a spinner using a paper clip and a pencil (or a pushpin if you have one).  Colored pencils or markers are also needed.

Hands-on Learning of Geometric Shapes

Vito is currently in the mood for learning geometric shapes.  I guess he was inspired by his older brother who is currently studying basic geometry at home. Vito has passed the stage of basic shapes, the ones you see in children’s puzzles and the like.  He’s been playing with those since he was a toddler, so I decided to introduce him to geometric shapes in the Montessori classroom.  It would have been nice if we own the Geometric Cabinet, but because we can’t afford one and we don’t have space for it, these insets which are basically materials for writing is a good alternative (best to none).  Note that these are not the traditional metal insets, we are using the plastic version.

Writing Practise for Preschoolers

Vito had a sudden interest on tracing and writing letters last week.  I didn’t see it coming.  He knows all his letter sounds, but is not ecstatic over letter (phonics) activities like sorting objects according to beginning letters. So I’m shelving those activities at the moment.  Right now, he just wanted to trace and attempt (or pretend) to write letters.

Worksheets Again

I was doing some "spring cleaning" and was organizing my files the other day and my son saw old worksheets that he's been working on last year.  We stopped doing worksheets because there was a point that he's no longer interested in it and the fact that he doesn't like worksheets.

I was surprised because when he saw these sheets, he excitedly asked me if he can work on it. 

So this is what we're doing when we're taking a break from our Botany lessons.  I don't know how long this will last but as long as he wanted to work on them, I have to include it in our "afterschool" activities (and a good thing to do on rainy day!) . 

On Writing Letters

My son loves to write letters. He’s been doing it since last year. Though I am not sure how did it all started, but he has a thing of putting his thoughts and ideas in a piece of paper.  He might got this from me as I usually love to write and take down notes on pads and stationeries. Here are some of his written notes that I’d like to share:

A letter to Santa last Christmas.  I was surprise to see this in our tree a few weeks before Christmas. 

  This letter is for Maria, a Spanish girl from his class.   It reads “Dear Maria,  I’m your bestfriend forever. Come to my house.”

 

And this one, he made this for me last Friday.  He did this all by himself, I never asked him to make me a Valentines Day greeting but he did it on his own.  What touched me the most is when he wrote “For My Momy”.  I love it :)

 

Now that he is into writing letters, his interest in spelling has greatly increased. That’s why we’ve been having spelling for the past few days.  I’ll talk about it soon on a separate post.

Have a wonderful Valentines Day everyone!

 

Linking to:

Handwriting

How do you practice handwriting?  In my case we do:

Write a story...

               

Trace numbers..

               

Lots of letter trace and copywork.

               

Observations:

1. He doesn’t write within the lines yet.  I still find it hard to explain to him WHY we needed to observe the guides (lines). This is the reason why I try to make him trace my own handwriting so he can practice using the guides.   Any techniques on this one?
2. He LOVES to write in CAPITAL letters. He keeps asking me why he should write in small letters, and I told him that books, newspapers uses small letters that’s why I’m encouraging him to do so.
3. His letter J, S and N are still written in wrong direction (looks like mirror images).  I am not sure whether this is normal for his age but I want to correct it as early as now for it would be hard to correct in the future.

Any more ideas?

Homeschool Wrap-Up (01.16 – 01.20)

Last week’s activities includes:

A unit study on Plants and Flowers

Read about our entire unit here (part 1) and here for part 2.

Practice writing and coloring using worksheets.

I was surprise how much he has improved with coloring even if we haven’t done it for quite a while now. 

Though my son is obsessive with alphabets... tracing letters is not his liking :(

And we also work on some math workbooks (this was given to me by a friend back home).

Linking this to

Update on our Pink Series

We’ve been religiously working on our pink series for the past week.  Thanks to Amy of Wonder Years for posting what I needed to know about Pink Series. 

In a nutshell here are the activities we should do:

Art in Letters

My son has difficulty writing lowercase letters.  He loves to write, and every time he does, he uses uppercase letters and wouldn’t want to write the lowercase.  Somehow, he isn’t confident writing it as he gets confused with all the curves and twirls lowercase letters make.

So my target as of this moment is to give him  A LOT of penmanship exercises of lowercase letters aside from our usual Kumon Write and Wipe.  I know that kids his age gets bored of using materials over and over again... so I try to vary my approach so to preserve his interest.  I discovered this from Adventures of Bear...  and as Julie would describe it “the child traces the outline over and over each time with a different color until the template is filled.”

Here’s my son doing letter a to g.  We’re doing one letter at a time, but he keeps asking for more that’s why we reached letter g.  I plan to give 2-3 letters each day if he asks for it.

 

The colors would have been apparent if we used his Crayola Pipsqueaks instead of Crayola crayons  like what we did a few months ago (old blog).  But anyway he enjoyed practicing and we’ll be doing this till we reach letter z.

B4FIAR: Blueberries for Sal

Mavi is 37 months old.

We’ve been reading this book along side Bear Hunt but I decided that we should separate the unit studies for each book.

Here are the activities we did in line with Blueberries for Sal.

LANGUAGE.  Determining beginning sounds of pictures from the clipcards which I downloaded from the B4FIAR packs. 

Read, build and spell of words based from the books.  This is currently his favorite activity. 

 

I love it that would read the word using their phonic sounds :)

 

PRACTICAL LIFE.  Sorting blueberries (blue pompoms) and other berries hehe using a clamp.

MATH. We did an introductory lesson on addition using blue pompoms as blueberries.

 

After combining the orange containers, here he is counting the number of blueberries after adding 2 plus 2.  Will provide a separate post on this.

 

Tracing lines.

         

I observed that on the end part of the line, his trace becomes a little jagged.  He must be tired.

 

Doing the worksheet from First School.

Later on I found him reading the words again. 

ARTS.  We made bushes with lots of blueberries and added tree stump.  I cut all the necessary stuff, then I taught him how to make mini balls of cottons and glue them on the bushes.  He made all the cotton balls here and asked him to put blue paints to make it look like blueberries.

We seldom have crafts activities and I was glad that we did this because he truly enjoyed the activity.  It’s his first time to work on cotton balls and he was amused.  He did this activity while I was doing the dishes, with less supervision he was able to do what I wanted him to accomplish.  By the time he finished his work, he was so happy and he immediately displayed it in his room.

This is his finish product.

Montessori Wrap-Up

Mavi is 37 months old.

September 26 to October 2, 2011.

Pink Series

Practice CVC words using our pink series sets 1 to 4. 

He loves our reading activities and I was surprise that he reads using their sounds not through memorization.

Then we worked with our ‘rambitg’ alphabets and try to build CVC words from it. I really would like to instill in him that using letters, we can form words!  This also increased his vocabulary for he learned some new words like: rib, tab, bar, fig etc.

 

We made trees using oil pastels.

 

Phonics

I talked about it here.

  

Math

Read about our math lessons here.

Since it was also raining, I made use of our size ordering cards which I downloaded from Confessions of a Homeschooler two years ago. He’s learning sizes here and using “smallest” “biggest” and “bigger” words.

         

Art

Attempting to do a Kadinsky painting.  It was a lovely day so I took him out on the balcony to paint. 

Too bad, the paper we used were not made for watercolor :(

Here’s my version. I was also painting with him so I can show him what to do and describe the mechanics.

Drawing and Writing

These activities were his favorite this week.  He kept on making drawings and describing them with words that he alone can understand.  I ask him “what is it?” and he would say something like “it’s a blurg”.  Still I admire it in front of him and telling him that he did a great job.

This is a table.

Practice writing his name.

         

Practical Life

 

His favorite practical life activity:  cutting.  Aside from this, he kept helping me with the laundry.

Botany: Trees

A wonderful week of studying trees! Read about it here.