Baby food alphabet boxes

As I've been preparing for the upcoming preschool year, I've been looking around my house with brand new eyes. Before I throw or give anything away, I'm asking myself, "Could I use this for some kind of craft or lesson?".

Having twins that are going through baby food at record pace, I was recycling tons of the plastic baby food containers. As I was getting ready to put a couple more in the recycle bin, I had an epiphany. I can use these for some alphabet lessons! This is what I came up with:

Remember those foam letters I got from Michael's a couple weeks back? I decided to use the containers to separate and hold the letters! I used some letter stickers from my scrapbooking stash to put on the outside of each box. I have come up with a few ways that I will be using these to teach Caleb his letters.

• I am planning on focusing on one letter per week, with some weeks in between where we will review the letters we have learned so far. Each week I will put out the box with the letter of the week we are focusing on and Caleb can play with the letters inside and do whatever he finds fun. He tends to be pretty creative, so it will be fun to see what he comes up with.
• I am planning on putting a lower case letter on the lid of each box, so on the weeks where we review our letters, I am thinking about trying out a matching game where he will match the lower case letter lid with the upper case letter box.
• If it seems he is ready for the concept of putting the letters in order, I may also use these for that purpose. I'm not going to push that unless he shows he is ready, though.

I'm sure as I go along I may think of other ways to use these...and so may Caleb!

So, start looking around your house. You never know what items you may be able to re-purpose!

The "School Wall"

My dream house would have a great big play/school room. And a pool. And a movie room. And an indoor laundry room. But I digress.

The only spare room we have in our house is the guest room/office and there is barely enough room for the furniture we have in there already. Luckily, we do have a large, open kitchen that has a big empty wall that will be perfect for school time. There is plenty of wall space to display projects and learning tools. I'm hoping that I can get my very handy husband to build a book shelf like this one I found on 1+1+1=1 that we can put against the wall, as well.

I love the concept of having the books and other activities associated with each week's lessons displayed on the shelves so Caleb can access them at any time. I'm also thinking about having my husband add a fold down table attached to the side that could be an area for Caleb to draw, color, play, etc.

Here is my current blank slate:

This is supposed to be an eat-in kitchen, but we have a front room that was empty and decided to move the dining table in there to re-purpose it as a dining room. I think this space will be perfect.

Just for fun, here are some pictures of our kitchen before, during, and after remodeling it into the big open space we have today. (Note: My husband did all the labor. Told you he was handy!)

A little supply shopping!

I noticed that some back to school deals are starting to come around. I know the big sales are still yet to come, so I'm holding out for those to get the majority of the supplies I need. However, there were a few good deals this week at Michael's, so I decided to take advantage of them. I asked for my dad to come along on the shopping trip because, as you can imagine, shopping with a 3 year old and (almost) 1 year old twins can be a bit taxing and hard to manage. :)

There was a deal going on for teaching supplies where you could buy 2 get 1 free, so I picked up some color and shape posters that I can put up on the wall, construction paper, foam alphabet letters, some different sized paint brushes and sponges, and a craft pack that has pipe cleaners, fuzzy pom poms, and googly eyes.

I still have a few basic things left on my list; safety scissors, glue, tempera paint, stickers, etc. I am also seriously thinking about getting a laminator so that I can reuse some of the things I make for little brother and sister. :)

Now to start getting the school area prepared....

The Curriculum

I did a lot of searching online for a preschool curriculum that I felt would best suit Caleb and his learning styles. My main requirement was that it be something fun that involved lots of hands on learning. I believe, at any age, learning should be fun. You are more likely to retain knowledge when you have fun in the process of learning.

In my searching, I ended up stumbling across the ABC Jesus Loves Me website. I was immediately impressed with how the curriculum was laid out and most of all with the fact that it is Bible based. I had my mom, a retired elementary school teacher, check out the curriculum as well. As soon as it got her stamp of approval, I knew that I had found the right one. The curriculum is completely free, but I decided to pay to have the curriculum sent to me in book form so I could refer to it without having to go online all the time.

The curriculum is broken down into 36 weeks. Each weekly lesson plan covers a Bible story, memory verse, song, a nursery rhyme or poem, a number, a book of the week, a letter, a color/math concept, fine motor skills, and gross motor skills. After reading over the curriculum many times, I decided to mostly follow what was laid out, but to change it a bit to suit how I know Caleb will learn best.

Currently, the 3-year-old curriculum has a book of the week based on the phonetic sound of the letter of the week. Per my mom's advice, and knowing Caleb, I will not be as much focusing on phonics this year, but instead focusing on letter recognition first and foremost. If, during the year, I see that Caleb is showing signs of being ready for phonics, I will start  incorporating that, too. Because of this, I have decided to change the books of the week to fit within a thematic unit and am then going to be choosing activities that will help enforce the other parts of that week's lesson plan within that theme. So while I will still be using many of the ideas and concepts that are part of the ABC Jesus Loves Me, I have completely restructured it to incorporate thematic units.

For instance, the curriculum has the first several weeks learning three colors each week and then later learning 2 shapes each week. I know how easily Caleb can get overwhelmed, so I have chosen to focus on just one color and then one shape each week. I think he will be more likely to retain the information if I take it slower. I have then chosen books and themes for each week that will incorporate those colors/shapes. For example, the week we learn the color yellow we will be doing a duck themed lesson plan and the week we learn red it will be an apple theme.

I currently have planned out the first 12 weeks lesson plans and am still working on the remaining weeks. I still need a few more ideas of possible themes for some weeks. I am really enjoying looking at other homeschool blogs to get ideas of activities to go along with the themes I have chosen. Check out the following blogs I have found that have some really awesome ideas:

Baby Gator University
1+1+1=1
Homeschool Creations
Delightful Learning
I Can Teach My Child!
Lawteedah

I will make sure that as I post about activities that we do that I got from other sites I will give credit where credit is due. :)

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! This blog will be following our adventures as I homeschool our children.

First, let me introduce myself and my family:

I am a wife and mother of three beautiful children and am an accountant turned stay-at-home mom. I am the daughter of a (now retired) elementary school teacher and many of my homeschooling ideas will be inspired by her. I enjoy reading, traveling, cross-stitching, and one of my newer hobbies is saving money through couponing.

My wonderful husband is a manager for a large multi-national corporation. He is an amazing provider and spiritual leader for our family. He is a super handyman who can do practically anything around the house and on our vehicles. He has saved us tons of money on house remodeling projects by doing all the work himself. His new hobby is volunteering for a local railway museum as a conductor and train operator.

Caleb is our 3 year old and will be the guinea pig for my first stab at homeschooling. :) He loves music, trains, playing outdoors, and is addicted to all the Toy Story movies.

Hannah and Joshua are our 11 month old twins. They turn 1 in just a couple weeks! Hannah is very inquisitive and is always taking in her surroundings. Joshua is our laid-back little dude and is quite the cuddler.

I am very excited for this next stage in our family's life and look forward to sharing it with you all. My next posts will tell you a little more about the curriculum and teaching methods I'm planning on using and how I'm getting prepared. School will start August 15th, so it's just around the corner!

The kiddos