Community

I made a great discovery of a series of DVDs about "My Community". The series is produced by Stone House Publications/Schlessinger Media. It is a series of ten DVDs for pre-kindergarten through second grade. The titles are:

• What is a Community?
• Transportation
• School
• Post Office
• Police Station
• Local Government
• Local Businesses
• Library
• Hospital
• Fire Station

We have watched Community, Post Office, Police Station, and Library and are really enjoying them. From the Community DVD I picked out the explanation of Urban, Suburban, and Rural to expand upon. We found pictures and wrote the appropriate title on them.

From the Library DVD I picked the two kinds of books in the library: Fiction and Nonfiction to expand upon. K. wrote the word and I wrote the definition. I had her go find three books that went in each group and I wrote the book's titles on the page.

Heritage History

I just found out about this website, and I'm so excited I just have to share it. This website has historical books to read -- comprehensive history, military history, biographies, legends, adapted literature, historical fiction, mythology -- that are in the public domain. This will be a great addition to our history courses!

Heritage History -- "Putting the Story back into History, with traditional tales from long-ago."

Police Officers' Job

I borrowed two books from the library about Police Officers. The first was A Day in the Life of a Police Officer by Heather Adamson. This book had great photographs and the information was presented simply, but it was really just a list of facts.

The second book was Policeman Small by Lois Lenski. Policeman Small is a traffic cop who stands in the middle of the street and directs the traffic. It is written as a story, but isn't factual for today -- at least not where we live. However K. did enjoy this book. I had a problem with the story line -- I'm just not sure how the children could go to school at 8:30 in the morning and then be at the circus parade with their parents at 11:00.

If anyone knows of a book that presents the job of a modern day police officer in a story, let me know!

Soon, Annala

This is another picture book that K. enjoyed having read to her again and again. It is about Jewish immigrants who left their two youngest children in Europe with relatives. Annala, the youngest daughter, wants to know when her brothers will be coming to America, but meanwhile she starts school and begins to learn English. After a year her Aunt and Uncle come to America and bring their new baby and her brothers.

At one point when the family is all together again, the Aunt uses a dresser drawer for the baby to sleep in. After we had read the book a few times I saw K. doing the same with her dolls. I did point out that they didn't close the drawer with the baby in it.

Our Address

This week in Social Studies I took a picture of our house, printed it, cut it out and let K. glue it on a large piece of construction paper. I then wrote our address and phone number on it. It makes a nice placemat for her and reinforces our address and phone number.

Our Neighborhood

Last week we finished all the structures that we were making for "Our Neighborhood". We took them in on the living room floor and arranged them in their basic direction from our house. In this first picture you can locate our house (bottom) and get the idea of the main street going past the stables, doctor's office, gas station, and bank.

This picture gives a better view of the gas station and shows the library. We made the grocery store, but it is in the other direction and isn't in these pictures.

K. enjoyed getting out her cars and people and playing. The buildings are made from half gallon juice or milk cartons. I covered them with butcher paper and K. used markers to draw on the windows and doors. Most of the buildings are open on the top so she can put people "in" the building. For the stables we made fences from tongue depressors, stuck them (and glued) into a round styrofoam, and found pictures of horses and glued them on the fences.

The Four Year Old Game Plan

I wanted to do something a bit more scheduled when K. turned 4, but I didn't want to have a whole school day. I decided that 30 minutes a day would be just right. I planned this 'school time' between two other activities so that I couldn't go past the 30 minute limit.

On Mondays we have Social Studies.

• We are learning the names and locations of the states.
• I put a large map of the US on a bulletin board.
• For 26 of the states we have OLD View Master reels. I used yarn to map the trip through these states. We look at the reel and then move our car to that state and add a picture of something we saw in the reel.
• For the last 24 states we will use books from the library to look at pictures about each state.
• We are learning about our world.
• First we learned about the farm. I used Down on the Farm from Teacher Book Bag.
• Now we are learning about our community. I am using Exploring My Neighborhood from Teacher Book Bag.

On Tuesdays we have Science.

• I found the book Science Experiences for the Early Childhood Years (7th edition) at a second hand store. There are 4 to 8 experiments for each topic, plus activities to integrate each topic into math, music, literature, etc.
• It depends on how interested K. is in a subject as to how much we do. I thought she would be very interested in Plants, but she wasn't, however, she was captivated with Water.

On Wednesdays we have Writing.

• I discovered Peggy Kaye's Games for Writing at the library. Part One of the book has eleven activities that teach pencil control and telling well-organized tales. This is the only part of the book we are using until K.'s pencil control is ready for writing letters.

On Thursdays we have Math.

• The math section in Down on the Farm is a country store where K. uses pennies to purchase groceries. She picks her groceries, puts out the number of pennies for each, then counts all the pennies.
• I found more activities at Bringing Learning to Life.
• Part One of Games for Math by Peggy Kaye has games for counting, size, shape, patterns, and more.

On Fridays we have Reading.

• We practiced our phonics. K. enjoyed learning a phonics song. You can find lots of them on You Tube.
• Using clip art I made some worksheets for matching pictures to their beginning letter. (If you'd like these you can e-mail me.)
• Now we are reading three letter words. I made rhyming word lists. A page for each short vowel. As K. sounds out each word we use it in a sentence or talk about what it is because reading isn't just about sounding out groups of letters, but understanding the meaning of those groups of letters.