BFIAR: Yellow Ball

Last week James and I read Yellow Ball by Molly Bang.  It's a simple story of a forgotten ball that drifts out to sea and has an adventure, then is found again by the little boy who lost it and taken back home.  At one point there is a thunderstorm and the ball tosses and turns dramatically on the waves.  James is simultaneously fascinated and terrified of thunderstorms right now, so I checked out a couple of books on thunderstorms from the library.  We read them along with Yellow Ball and he loved them!  All week he requested the thunderstorm books at naptime and bedtime.

It turned out to be a pretty busy week, so we had to squeeze things in here and there.  I introduced paint for the first time, which was a huge hit!  On Tuesday we read Yellow Ball and the books about thunderstorms.  We talked about storm clouds and painted thunderheads.  The first time we painted them I wasn't thinking and we used white paper.  White clouds on white paper = a very uninteresting painting!

He pretty much requested to paint thunderheads every day, so the next time we used blue paper.

Our letter for the week was Y, so he practiced tracing and also did a dot Y.

Love the look for concentration on his face!

In the book they show the ball from high and low and above and below.  We talked about what these terms mean and then practiced putting the yellow ball in those places.

We also practiced size sequencing with pictures of yarn balls.  He can easily identify the biggest and smallest, but needs a little help with the middle ones.  I gave him two at a time and let him pick which one was bigger.

That night at bedtime we read the story of Jesus in the storm in his storybook bible.  We talked about how the disciples got so scared, but Jesus stayed calm and he told the storm to be quiet.  Then we talked about how we don't ever need to be scared because Jesus is always with us and he promises he will help us.  

Wednesday we had BSF, so we didn't have much time to do anything.  When he woke up from his nap in the afternoon we got out our big yellow ball and played catch.  He uses the word catch for both throwing and catching, so we talked about the different terms.  He practiced with daddy.

Then he played with this paper version of throwing and catching.  It was a little hard to manipulate the ball on the string, so he wasn't very interested in it.

Thursday was interesting because Ethan didn't take a morning nap and was in the mix while we were trying to do our activities.  He kept himself occupied for a short while... and I mean short!  

He can be a bit of a monster when he doesn't get what he wants, but he sure is a cute monster!

James did some yellow ball prints with a small yellow sponge ball and yellow paint.  

We also got out the sensory bin.  Both boys loved this!  I dyed some rice yellow and threw in a couple of yellow toys.  It was a hit!

It didn't take long though for Ethan to start throwing all of the rice all over the foyer.  And then we put it away!

On Friday we worked on coloring, which James didn't have much of an interest in doing.  After painting, crayons were so unexciting!

He wanted to do playdoh, so I got out the yellow playdoh and some of his letter cookie cutters.  We made some "Y's" and then he just did his own thing.  Playdoh can keep him busy for quite a while!

He played in his sensory bin again.  

Later in the day he helped me make sugar cookies, which we called our "yellow ball" cookies.  We iced them with yellow icing and had a snack of yellow ball cookies and lemonade.  

This face sums it up. Totes delightful!

That was our week with Yellow Ball.  I loved this book and will look forward to doing it again with Ethan!

BFIAR Preschool: Week 1

This week James and I started "preschool" using a curriculum called Before Five in a Row.  Each week focuses on one children's book and gives you ideas for incorporating different disciplines through fun activities meant to engage thoughtfulness and creativity as well as work on developing motor skills and mastery of colors, shapes, basic counting, sorting, sequencing, matching and awareness of uppercase and lowercase letters.

Our first book to row was Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy Carlstrom and illustrated by Bruce Degen.  It is a sweet book of rhyme and rhythm that travels through the day of Jesse Bear as he wakes and dresses, eats and plays and is lovingly cared for by his mom and dad.

Our bible verses for the week are Proverbs 17:22 - A cheerful heart makes good medicine; and Proverbs 15:13 - A happy heart makes the face cheerful

Monday we read the book, which James loved and colored the title page for our lapbook.

I read him a poem by A.A. Milne and taught him the fingerplay "Ten Fingers".  He wouldn't join in and do it with me, but we will keep learning it throughout the week.

Next we got out our letter "Bb" sheets from our Tot School Notebook that I made last year and worked on tracing and sounding the letter "B".  We have a long way to go on learning the proper pinch for holding a writing instrument!  He still just likes to scribble.

Next we did a Do a Dot activity with the letter "B".  I asked him to do the dots on the balls pictured on the letter and he did very well with this.  He loves dot paint!

Next we worked on our "Jesse Bear Wears" coloring book.  He colored Jesse's shirt red and his pants blue.

The last activity we did for the day was talking about Jesse Bear's healthy lunch.  Then we pasted his lunch onto the plate.  This was his first time using a glue stick and he loved it!  He did very well controlling the glue stick and getting the right amount onto the small piece of paper without getting it everywhere and he loved pounding it onto the paper.  

Tuesday we worked on his pinch again and tracing the letter B.  The dry erase marker on a sheet protector is a great idea!  He can use it over and over!

He is already doing a teeny bit better with his pinch.

Then we did an activity called "What Should I Wear?" and talked about the kinds of clothes we put on when it's hot and cold.  He colored the pictures and glued them into the book.

Then we did a really fun exercise of "What Should Jesse Bear Wear?" He loved this!  He didn't quite get the concept at first, but seemed to catch on by the end.

Here he was pretending it was thundering and raining.  He is simultaneously fascinated and terrified of thunderstorms right now.

The last activity we did before playing a game was talking about family.  We talked about who was in Jesse Bear's family and how he was so loved by his mommy and daddy.  We looked at the illustrations in the book that showed the affection his parents had for him as they lovingly cared for him.  Then we talked about our family.  We talked about how much he is loved by his mommy and daddy and his brothers.  Then we pasted pictures of Jesse Bear's family and our family into a book.

The last thing we did was play "Find the Bears", which he totally did not get.  I hid six small laminated bears in the playroom and let him try to find them.  They were in very obvious places!  He saw them, but didn't want to pick them up.  Then when I asked him if he wanted to hide them from me, he said yes and then flipped out when I left the room.  I guess we will have to play hide and seek more often!

We skipped Wednesday because it was our first day of BSF!  I can't believe how old he looks in this picture!

Ethan didn't go with us the first week because Pop volunteered to come over and stay with him so he wouldn't miss his morning nap.  Then the little stinker didn't sleep.  Go figure.

James had a great morning, but by the time we came home he needed to big time decompress, so we skipped what I had planned and just read Jesse Bear at nap time.

Thursday was our final day on the book.  I thought it would be fun to have bear shaped pancakes for breakfast and he got a real kick out of that!

Not bad if I do say so myself!

He worked on his tracing sheets again.  Then we got out the scissors for the first time.  Whoa!  I had no idea this would be such a challenging thing to try to teach.  My first week of doing this is already showing me how many "basic" things James needs to learn first and how frustrating it is to watch them slowly figure things out.  Lets just say that cutting is going to take a while!  He colored some pictures of things that start with the letter B and then we I cut them and pasted them into a B shaped book.

We talked about different types of bears and I showed him these animal classification cards.  

I think he'll have these down by next week... LOL!  He liked looking at the different types of bears though.

Then we did rhyming words and a game of matching.  He mostly just wanted to put the cards in a line.  He loves to line things up!

We talked about what a rhyme is and I had him try to pick out the words that went together.  He didn't really get it.  After a few tries we moved on to matching.  He is pretty good at this!

The last activity was working on drawing a line from left to right.  This was the outcome...

Oh well.  He had fun with it! 

He was pretty over it at this point so we decided to play in the sandbox like Jesse Bear does in the book.

And so ends our first week of BFIAR preschool.  Whew!  It was a lot of prep for a short period of activity each day.  I have to say it was fun getting it all ready though.  He really enjoyed most of the things we did and I am trying to focus on his enjoyment and keeping a laid back attitude about the process.  I am hoping to post what we do regularly so that I will be able to "re-do" it with little man in another year or so.  We'll see if I can keep up!