Best Books is my series of posts that highlights books we find during our book challenge!
These are our finds from week 25.
(Note: We try to read a minimum of 28 books a week. The books we list here are our favorites that we found in each week, not necessarily our favorites overall. Some weeks we find some fantastic books, other weeks we read a lot of fluff.)
I love this series of pattern books! This particular book was about patterns found on farms. I have been trying to get him to recognize patterns, so it was perfect! It had some great pictures. Xander loved pointing to the things he recognized in the pictures like fences, tractors, and animals. Mommy's Favorites:
Must be a farm themed week! Xander and I both enjoyed this reader. It had great pictures of animals and clear words in a very appealing layout. I like that on many of the pages, they had little side boxes with pictures of the words. For example, the goose and her goslings, has two little side boxes with pictures for "bill" and "wings."
I added an Amazon Store to the blog. In it I included a shop for our favorite books and will be adding the books from the Best Books posts to it. I hope having them in one place will make it easier when looking for book suggestions.
This is one of those posts I have been meaning to do forever! I had the pictures on the camera, just never did anything with them. Anyway, we decided to do some sidewalk painting! The recipe was super easy, equal parts cornstarch and water, with a few drops of food coloring. At first the colors looked really dull, but I was impressed by how vibrant they were after they dried. Xander had a blast! Unfortunately, we learned that the paints don't keep very well. They kind of got funky and moldy between uses, so we threw them out. Only make enough for what you plan on using!
Last week I wrote about organizing our school area. Well that same organizing urge also made me want to attack our books.
I started with four boxes of books. I have been collecting books for Xander since before he was born. I have had some great luck at garage sales and consignment shops and gotten some great deals. Anyway, I kept most of them packed from when we moved, except books on one shelf in the living room and another couple of shelves in our room.
As you can see, I had done a half hearted attempt at organizing in one of the boxes (mostly into holidays), but it was far from being functional.
So I started sorting....
and sorting. I finally got them into what I considered workable categories. Some categories that didn't have enough books had to share a bin. I only ended up with two bins labeled "stories" for books that didn't really fit well anywhere else.
Each category got a box (these from IKEA, I already need more). I printed some cute little labels and am very happy with the result! The middle shelf has a lot of our leveled readers, our phonics readers, our Preschool Prep readers, and our Your Baby Can books.
In order to help me remember which of our books we have already read for our book challenge, I took all of the books we have read out and put them back in the big boxes. What is left ion the shelf are the books we have not read. I decided that as we complete a category, I will put a page marker on the box and put the books we have already read back in. Maybe not the most efficient way to do it, but it will work for this year.
Since I switched shelves, I no longer am using the regular trays I had been using. Most of the things that used to be on trays are now in boxes. Things like the puzzles or other educational activities go on the shelves. Due to the switch, I decided to start calling this series of posts Brain Building Boxes (BBBs).
These are the boxes from last week, so they happened during our Cross Week and our Service Vehicle Theme. I try to have the activities link in when I can, but don't feel constrained by making them fit. I don't intend all of the activities to be done independently. Most requiring scaffolding from me.
Pattern Matching
This activity was from the Service Vehicle Tot Pack. There were two pattern templates to match and little vehicles to go with. I only showed him one at a time to make it simpler. He did a good selecting the vehicle correct vehicle, but hasn't fully grasped the concept of a pattern yet. We will get there!
Parking Garages
This box used the parking garages I made and the vehicles from a Melissa and Doug Set. He loved driving the vehicles in, but did not really understand the concept of which one went where. If I had it to do again, I would probably color code them.
English Spanish Puzzles
This box had some English/Spanish puzzles. There are only two pieces so I was hoping he would be able to put them together. While he could match them just fine, he wasn't quite able (didn't have the patience) to fit the two sides together. Mommy helped.
Ambulance Template
This box had another activity from our Tot Pack. I had all of the shapes to make up an ambulance and a template to follow. This activity ended up being way over his head, but he liked watching me assemble the ambulance and we talked about the shapes together.
Cutting Food
This box had his cutting food, which is always well loved when I get it out. I had little pieces of food all over the room this week!
Puzzle of the Week
This week we had two puzzles (thank you new shelves). To go with the Service Vehicle Theme , this week's puzzle was the boat from his Melissa and Doug Beginner Pattern Blocks. Our emergency vehicle puzzle also fit in perfectly (and was a huge hit).
Brain Building Linky
Since I am always looking for new ideas for our boxes, I decided to start a Linky. Have you posted about any sort of brain buidling work boxes, tot trays, busy bags, etc? Feel free to link up! All I ask is that you add the Brain Building Lynky button (in the sidebar) somewhere on your post. Thanks!
We are currently working on shapes, devoting one week to each while also reviewing those already learned. The themes just add a fun element to the shapes lessons, plus some extra vocabulary. I added a page to gather all of the Shape Posts and Printables to make them easier to find. For our overall Tot School goals for our shape units, see my Goals post.
Shape Activities
The theme this week was Service Vehicles, which was a big hit. Our shape was the rectangle. We used our shape cards. We also used some pocket chart phrases from our Cross Printables. The concepts on these cards are pretty advanced, but he has been exposed to all of them on his Your Baby Can Discover movies. I believe the vocabulary and and reading practice certainly can't hurt.
As usual, I made a tracing page (Cross Printables) and put it in his Dry Erase Activity Center. He wasn't all that into tracing this week, so he just scribbled instead. He is still completely inconsistent with his grasp, but he has plenty of time to correct it, so I am not at all worried.
Our coloring sheet. This is what we were doing when I found out Xander could read (blog post here).
Playing with the Highway Shape card from Making Learning Fun.
I took our shape cards and some of the shapes from the Tupperware Shape Sorter for him to match up.
"Mom, I am trying to work here and you keep taking pictures!"
Playing with our magnetic shape book.
"Snow Painting" a cross.
He doesn't even need to look at what he is painting... the kid has skills.
He grabbed a book, got into a chair, and "read" to himself. I love listening to him "read" his books. I want to capture these moments forever!
As I wrote in yesterday's blog post, I learned that Xander could read his colors this week. Just for the heck of it I got out some shape word flashcards (printed fromLittle Reader) and the shapes from one of his shape sorters. Before I could even take the picture of the flashcards, he ran over put the star in the correct spot. (Star is BY FAR his favorite shape. He always has to do the star first in whatever shape activity we are doing). He matched them all up perfectly except triangle, which he got on the second try. Now that I know he is absorbing the words, I need to make more of an effort to do this type of activity!
I set out some of the service vehicle flashcards I made (also with Little Reader) to see if he could match the puzzles to them. He absolutely loves the Service Vehicle lesson I made for him on Little Reader and has been watching it multiple times a day (he would watch it again and again if I let him). Unfortunately, I forgot to print ambulance, so we only got some of the vehicles. He did a good job matching them to the correct card, but couldn't line the photos up.
This was the song for this theme. Xander got a huge kick out of the actions... particularly the "ding, ding, ding, ding, ding."
Reading and Math:
We are still using Little Reader to work on reading skills and Little Math for math skills. My goal is two Little Reader lessons and one Little Math lesson daily. He absolutely loves Little Reader, but only likes Little Math on some days. I also made aLittle Readerlesson to go with the Service Vehicles Theme. Find ithere.
This Week's Books:
Check back on Wednesday to see this week's Tot Trays!
Book Store:
