Preschool: Letter A, Apples, and Adam & Eve

Littlemiss asks me every day to do Mommy School with her, and it delights me!

Letter: Aa

Theme: Apples

Biblical Story: Adam & Eve

We are still following God's Little Explorer's curriculum with supplemental activities and learning experiences that I have linked within this post. We started every morning reading the story of Adam & Eve, signing songs, and reciting our memory verse.

This was our memory verse for the week. It was short, so Littlemiss quickly memorized it. It is music to my ears to hear her repeating and memorizing scripture. My prayer is that it will not only be memorized, but pierce her heart one day!

We made apple cards that I laminated, so I could write our verse on. God's Little Explorer's curriculum has a lot of other learning ideas for these apple cards we didn't get to this week. Like "picking" them off a tree, numbering them, and using them to make patterns.

As one of our activities to explain sin, we thought of different "no nos" we do that disobey God, and with a white crayon I wrote them on a piece of paper. Then explained that we may try to hide our sins from God, but he sees everything we do. Then we water colored over the words so they appeared. Littlemiss had a hard time grasping what it means to sin. She understood that there are things that are "no nos," but hadn't heard of them as sins. It was a great to begin to explain sin and obedience to God. 

These are some of the books we read over and over this week that related to our Apple theme.

Learning Center:

A few Aa objects sitting out on top of her Learning Center.

The life cycle of the apple. Found on the Montessori for Everyone website for free.

We went back to this everyday and by the end of the week she was arranging them independently and calling out the different stages.

I cut out the different parts of the apple and let Littlemiss first compare the parts of the paper apple with the real apple. I found it on the First Grader...at Last! blog.

We reviewed this a few times over the week and by the end of the week she could name the parts of the apple and assemble it herself. I helped her label the words with the corresponding parts.

Still loving our Cuisinart Rods alphabet sheets. First assembling the A with the appropriate sized rods.

Then building an A with varied sizes. She tried different sizes a few times, and is definitely challenged by this activity.

Spelling out the word "apple" with all uppercase and then all lowercase letters by matching the letters up. From Confessions of a Homeschooler A is for Apple printables.

Starting to introduce simple addition. I started out by asking her without the symbols, "If you have two apples and then add one more, how many apples do you have together?" She can do that simple math, but I'm not sure what is the best way to build on this. Do I then introduce symbols? Ideas???

Matching beginning sounds of various fruit. She can do this independently now. Exciting! I printed these off of 1+1+1=1 blog, which has other themed Clip & Learn Wheels.

I held the paper while she cut these lines out. This has been an area of much frustration in the past, so I'm so glad she's pushing through and making improvements!

Building the letters with play dough.

Practicing her writing skills.

We did a counting project that spanned a few days. First I cut apart grocery bags, and then cut them in half and glued them together. I printed the apple buckets off of The First Grade Parade blog. There are other printables with varied activities for varied levels of math.

First we put the numbers in order and pasted them on the paper (grocery bags). She counted through the numbers to remember the next number to paste.

The next day she started counting out apples with a Dot Marker for each bucket. Ideally the apples would sit above the buckets, but for the sake of child-led learning, they are below :) I also thought about having her paste on circles to represent the apples, but for the sake of keeping her attention she used the Dot Marker to count the apples.

By the third day she completed the project.

So proud of her completed project!

Recounting her apples :)

Letter a Craft:

I encouraged her to dab dots for apples on the "a," but she wanted to fill it in and trace it.

Apple Activities:

Stamping apples onto the back side of grocery bags.

Some apples had chunks missing, BooBoo lacks apple self-control :), so they were a tad off looking, but Littlemiss didn't seem to mind. I cut out and laminated these apple stamps to use throughout the week.

Making an "apple pie" with play dough. I used The Imagination Tree's non-cook play dough recipe, which worked really well. The "apples" are from a Hi-Ho Cherrio Game. I gave her cinnamon to add to her "apple pie" play dough. I would have let her mix in dry oatmeal, but I couldn't find any on hand.

 Mixing in the cinnamon. She played with this for a good while!

Observing three different kinds of apples. First we counted all the seeds.

Then we paired them up the matching sides.

We taste tested them and used various describing words: crunchy, sour, sweet, etc. Then we compared them.

Artist Study- Claude Monet:

With the God's Little Explorer's curriculum, Claude Monet is the first artist studied for a month. We checked out these books from the local book store and have been reading them for a month. "The Magical Garden of Claude Monet" by Laurence Anholt is fabulous!

I set up a page out of "The Magical Garden of Claude Monet" and some watercolors for Littlemiss to create her own waterlilies inspired painting.

Her color choices mirror  Monet's waterlilies paintings. It was a great way to end the week!

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