This week did not go at all as planned. I literally scratched through and rewrote my plan countless times. Here are some of the problems we encountered: I had much more of an unflexible “schedule” for work this week that moved and pushed when we could do school; I was also trying to shove our normal week into four days; Cricket had an unusually grouchy and problematic day; followed by a sick day (ah-ha); and with all of these other things going on I was being quick tempered and impatient.

To fit school in on Tuesday (our grouchy and busy day) it ended up being done at our dining room table while I also tried to cook dinner. Let’s just say this was not my proudest moment. I was almost in tears when hubby got home. He stepped in though and patiently worked with Cricket on writing her letter b’s. He actually got her to hold her pencil correctly, or at least a lot closer to correct!

Our letter this week was “Bb”. Our focus was bears, but just like last week we also incorporated lots of other b words into our studies and activities. We did our hooked on phonics book, talked about the b sound, traced it, wrote it, and made it.

Her favorite activity by far was playing with shaving cream. We wrote a couple of letter b’s in there, but primarily she just played. TIP: We got the shaving cream out initially to clean up a mess from another project. Did you know it would do that? Our bingo markers bled through onto our table, so I just sprayed out the shaving cream and rubbed it around. TA DA clean table followed by fun. It also got out some random marker and crayon marks!

We attended our first library story time on Tuesday of this week. The librarian read The Little Engine That Could, and the kids got to make a train after wards. I was amazed at how many people were in that little room (it only made me slightly claustrophobic). Cricket seemed to enjoy herself though, and we found some great books for the week. They actually had the books I was looking for this time too! I picked up We’re Going on a Bear Hunt: Anniversary Edition of a Modern Classic and Bear Snores On  for our bear theme. We loved, loved, loved Bear Snores On!

I also prepared a lapbook for Brown Bear Brown Bear that covered sequencing, the alphabet, matching, and numbers. I get the resources for this lapbook at 1+1+1=1. We read this book and did these activities through out the week.

I also found an Alphabet Bingo game at Target’s Dollar Spot (one of my favorite places). It was age rated 5 and up, but I assumed correctly that I could gear it down. I just drew out one of the clues and read it. Then I’d answer it if Cricket couldn’t (she actually got a few), and she would check her card to see if she had the letter. She could do this independently since it showed upper and lower case.

Cricket is already very familiar with the number one, but I wanted to spend some time on writing it better. Cricket also did dot art with and outline of the number one. She called it a caterpillar =)

We primarily talked about the concept of zero though, and I happened to have some more zero or one worksheets that helped.

We also started working on ordinal numbers. I will be doing this as we learn 1-10 since Cricket can already count to ten and read those number. I am using the awesome resources from the member only site at 1+1+1=1 for this! Cricket really enjoyed the powerpoint, and we are using the print outs too. Cricket also did the shape sort from this site.

I happened upon the book Math Fables at the library. I enjoyed reading this book to Cricket, and I think I will do more with it next week. I would love to do a version of a five in a row. I will see what I can come up with and share it!

We did a mini color mixing experiment, which came about from my explorers interest. She wanted to play with water. So we did pouring, funneling, and then color mixing. Crickets favorite part was when I first dropped a color in and it swirled with what was already in the cup before we mixed them.

We also started trying to grow a plant and we will be observing it as it goes. I have a black thumb though, so I can only hope the plant will actually grow!

I got out her ball pit balls and blocks this week. We talked about how these started with the letter b and just had fun playing! Day 2 of having the ball pit out, Cricket spent at least an hour saying “to infinity and beyond” and then running and jumping/diving into the pit. She is in love with Toy Story at the moment!

Little People were once again a hit. I think Cricket spent most of our “sick day” playing and making up stories with her little people.

Cricket also worked with stickers and stamps. This particular sticker sheet was done during a car trip, and in addition to fine motor I used it to discuss color, expression, and facial features.

Check out what others are doing at these amazing sites:

Cricket was so excited to be in her new school room, not to say that everything went well though (see Raising Rockstars). She even wore her special first day of school dress, and let me take some pretty pictures. She was also initially very excited about her prize, silly bands, but they turned out to be a flop with my kiddo. I also pretty quickly modified her seat by adding a booster, so she could work at a more comfortable level. 

I added a couple of things to our daily routine. We added a song about our letter (this week was the ants go marching), and we started our 100 days of school count down. Cricket decided she wanted to x through the numbers as we go, and this works as well as anything else would have. She cracks me up trying to do this though, her little tongue almost always sticks out as she concentrates on getting the x just right!

We started our letter of the week studies with the letter a. My intent was to do a is for apple, but I quickly realized focusing on one a thing was not my style. I did use all the apple things I had planned, but I also ended up incorporating other a words. 

This included adding “a is for Auburn”. We had an Auburn day when she wore her Auburn University cheerleader dress, colored worksheets, and worked on our WAR EAGLE! I found this worksheet that let’s you change the word, so instead of cheerleader or football you can type in your team name.

We are continuing with Hooked on Phonics and completed the workbooks pages on lower case a, “a” sound, and writing the letter Aa. Other letter activities were tracing, printing, and finding the letter in her name. Cricket also learned the sign for the letter a, and we practiced some of the signs we had stopped using (please and thank you). 

Our major art project was also letter of the week. I had printed the large letter A with the intent of getting her to do a collage, and I wanted to do an apple print painting. Our time was running short though, so I combined the two! I thought she would fill in the A with apple prints, but that’s not what she wanted. So Cricket made apple prints around the A and then painted the A with another color. 

I will say I had to convince her that using the apple to paint would be fun, and that there would be more apples to eat.

Our number for the week was zero. I think by the end of the week Cricket had finally grasped this concept. The 0 or 1 worksheet really seemed to help! She also did a printing sheet, but as you can see she digressed into coloring them in. 

For science, Cricket did this great animal sort game. She did great with identifying the ocean animals, but had a little trouble with farm versus zoo. I understood some of the confusion though since we have seen “farm animals” at zoos before.  For those animals I explained that they could be at either place, but also why they would be on a farm. 

This week we discussed Alabama and Alaska. We spent more time on Alabama then I plan to spend on the other states, because this is where we live. Cricket did coloring sheets for each state, and we identified them on our map. We read the book Rookie Read About Geography: Alabama. It did cover some of the things I needed it to, but let’s just say I was disappointed. I also got out Cricket’s Alabama map, but she decided this would be a good play mat!

Since Cricket is starting a new harder gymnastics class this week, I wanted to work on her gymnastic terminology. This week we talked about arabesques.  Her first class went great by the way: only four kids in the class; we love her teacher; Cricket tried hard; and her only “issue” was with doing flips on the bar.

Cricket had great fun with her cutting activity. Downside was she didn’t want to stop cutting. I finally had to do a countdown, and then there was still pouting. 

Cricket also worked on lots of puzzles, coloring, and stickers. She also has a new fascination with making tents and hiding in them!