Buh-buh Boat went off without a hitch! My goal for this year is letter and sound awareness - not mastery. And it's a good thing because Sadey insisted that B said "aaaaah" for most of the week and is now convinced that the letter is actually called "buh buh beeeeeee". It's a good thing she's cute.
I've kind of abandoned Heart of Dakota and am doing my own thing. I wasn't overly thrilled with the way the program is put together for this age group. I've heard good things about the other programs, but this one just wasn't a good fit for us. I do love the Singing Through the Bible cd that came with it. I believe that's available through Focus on the Family - but haven't checked into it. I think we'll just keep reading through the preschool Bible and listening to the cds and I'll pull my own craft and activity projects together to round things out for her.
I was also planning to use HOD with my co op class, but it's just too hard to condense 5 day's worth of activities into 1 two-hour class. Live and learn.
This week in co op, however, we were working on the letter B and the color red. We began the day with a Bible story about Noah and his ark (a very big boat). The kids did an awesome job of coming up with lots of B words like bananas, bugs, baby and buggy. We also read a Veggie Tales book about colors. The kids all seemed to know that Bob (the tomato) was "very red." After story time we got out the paints. This is by far the messiest part of our day, but who doesn't like to fingerpaint with 14 three year olds?!? After fingerpainting we made our butterfly craft. I'll have to post a picture later because they turned out sooooo cute. Then we had our snack time and took a nature walk. It was pretty hot outside, but the kids had fun. They were so excited to have spotted a lizard as we were first exiting the building. We went on to listen to the wind, feel the rough rocks, find a stream behind the building, a butterfly perched on a flower and a spider making a web. Talk about a great walk! We'll definitely be doing those more often - only maybe we'll focus on finding "letter of the week" things as much as possible.
I'm so grateful for the opportunity to teach this group of preschoolers. It's a lot of work, but a good reinforcment for Sadey since we are going over the same letter we are learning here at home. The kids are so much fun (most of the time LOL) and it's nice to see Sadey playing with some kids her own age. It's a win-win kinda' thing.
