Update on Summer "Schedule" & Our Summer Reading

I always like hearing updates or longer term reflection on all these great ideas people have online - whether it be discipline, shore charts, allowance, and so on. I figured someone might be interested in a little update on how my proposed summer "schedule" with the kiddos has gone.

First of all, despite all of my intentions to not make a "to do" list, we did. In order to not feel the pressue of getting it all done by school starts, I'm thinking of the term summer very loosely. We've had a few fails (one that is a double fail - once this year and once last. I will post about it though!), but we are slowly chugging along.

As for the morning routine I shared that we had started? Well, that has sort of died a little. They still have to make their beds and get dressed right away, but the morning exercise (preferably a walk) has all but vanished. I really liked that though, so I'm going to try and start again. 

 The morning jobs need adjusting as I think the cats were being overfed and the potted flowers died (between being over-watered and then not watered at all while we were out of town).

The learning segment of the day is less restricted to mornings, but still has been happening. We have done the very best with the writing journals. I can't tell you how much I love them! The workbooks we aren't doing as well on, but also still working on. The reading has changed from my original want of 15-20 minutes a day. Let me tell you how!

I decided to just focus on each boy passing off a book from their reading list to me. Like I said in my other post, my 6 year old got a list from his teacher of recommended books at his reading level. For my 5 year old, I just use our beginner books and found a chart of them online to check off as we go.

The boys know right on the where to find their book that are specifically for "reading time" versus just to look at and read if desired. The 5 year old's are in a basket.

The 6 year old's are next to that basket (and pretty much all from the library - we reserve 10 at a time and when they are done get 10 more).

After they have passed a book off with me, they write the title of the book down on a list, I date it and then check it off on the main list of books I have for each boy. The lists are on just the shelf right above the reading books.

Once a book is checked off, it goes in the return to library pile, or in a bag of completed books -ready to go back into storage until little sis is big enough to start  reading.

I have liked this system way better than a minute requirement each day because I figure - it's summer. I am having them do enough learning things that their brains won't turn to mush and this works really well for us. 

As for the other things I had planned for our routine (art and nature), they are also just sort of going so-so for us. We have a local bird chart and have been watching in the neighborhood, but haven't ventured out in real pursuit yet. We have hiked and been in the outdoors, so that is still great. And, when we went on a road trip earlier this month, we saw a bear along the highway, so that was a great nature sighting! 

 We also saw the drama unfold of a deer almost getting hit by a logger truck, then darting up a hill too steep to climb, then back out into the road and finally to safety in a field. (Not the greatest pictures, I know, but we were mostly watching with out eyes, not through the camera.)

We've only done the van Gogh project for art still, and I'm okay with that. It's another thing I don't mind stretching beyond summer.

One last thing I've added though is learning more about the US, but in a very brief format. I requested from friends and family all over the country to send us postcards (an idea I from Kids Activities Blog) and we're loving them showing up in the mailbox each day. What we do once we get them will be saved for another post! :)

Theme of the Week: Fairy Tales

My girls don't go to formal preschool, but I like to create a sort of preschool-like routine at home. We have what we call "Theme of the Week". Here is how our "Theme of the Week" works.

So each week we have a topic we focus on in addition to a letter, number, working on shapes, colors, talking about weather and the calendar, etc. So this week the theme is:

FAIRY TALES

  

The nice thing about this theme is there is no shortage of books about the topic. In fact, because there are SO many books and ideas that go along with this theme, we actually have Fairy Tales be our theme two times a year. Here are a few of the books I have on the topic. Most of the stories we read over the week were from the "Once Upon a Time" book, which is just a generic fairy tales book.

 

I don't pretend to be an artist, but here is coloring page I drew for my girls to color with this theme.

We read Jack and the Beanstalk, which is sort of fun for any kids that have recently seen the "Puss in Boots" movie because they reference it there.

Here are the directions to the first activity we did (I think the idea came from a Mailbox magazine but I got it a long time ago and am not sure).

Supplies:

-Jack template

-Long piece of green butcher paper (ours was about 5' tall)

-Crayons/Markers/Colored Pencils

-Scissors 

-Tape

-Yarn that is twice as long as your butcher paper

-Single hole paper punch

Here is the Jack template that  I had my girls color.

Cut Jack out (which was great for all those fine-motor skills we have been working on)

Take a piece of yard that is twice as long as your paper and tape your Jack right in the middle of the yarn length.

I drew the beanstalk on the paper, punched a hole at the top and bottom of the paper, and threaded the yarn through the top and bottom hole and tied a knot where they met in the back of the paper so you have the yarn in one big circle. You can see I made my yarn a little too long, so it was sagging, but it still worked. Also, we had to make two Jacks just to avoid any fighting. I then taped the butcher paper to a shelf. You want to make sure that you tape it pretty well because the kids will be pulling on the yarn and if the tape isn't secure it will just pull the butcher paper down.

When I told my husband what we are doing, he said it sounded like too much effort for what I was going to get out of it, but even he had to admit he was wrong later when my girls LOVED this!! They played with it over and over again, pulling the string above Jack and below Jack to make him go down and up the beanstalk. It really was a pretty fun activity. My kids requested we leave it up for a few days so they could keep playing with it.

Next we read The Three Little Pigs.

 

As I read the story, I acted it out with this puppet I made a long time ago. I don't have a template for it, but it would be easy to make your own. I used felt, googley eyes, and a tiny bit of ribbon. I cut each shape, glued it together and then put a square of velcro on the back of each character and the wolf's breath/wind to be able to take them off and on the glove as the story went. I had the opposite piece of velcro on each finger tip and the palm.

We then used this picture to make the three pigs houses.

We used string/yarn for straw (you can use raffia if you have some), toothpicks for sticks, and legos for brinks.

They also thought this was a fun one and super easy activity to put together for them to do.

We didn't use glue, it was just fun to build onto of each house.

My sister, Natalie, make these finger puppet for us which can be used to tell Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Three Pigs.

My girls took turns retelling The Three Pigs story with the finger puppets and the three houses they had built.

Next we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears with them acting out the parts with the finger puppets.

It is also important to eat porridge (Malt O Meal in our case) for breakfast to be like the three bears. :)

 

Then we read The Elves and the Shoemaker

I put together this picture of a few different types of shoes for us to "make" after having read the story.

I printed the above picture on red paper, laminated it, and then used a single hole punch along the shoe.

We then used a couple different colored shoe laces to "make" the shoes like the elves did.

As you can see, again, this is another GREAT fine-motor skills activity.

 

Here are some instructions for a fun princess hat for fairy tale fun from "Artstarts for Little Hands" book.

If you are feeling extra ambitious, here are some instructions about how to make a castle out of styrofoam food trays.

 

There is a lot of love for princesses and dressing up at our house, so playing make believe being princesses, etc. was also a key part of our week. Watching "Shrek" is a fun way to view many fairy tales all mushed together.  There really are so many fairy tale themed activities out there that we really just touched on a few stories. 

Begining Reading

This summer my boys got library cards and joined the reading program offered. It was a nice addition to something we were already doing at our house to encourage them to read. They could earn prizes and one library (we use both the city and county system) gave them bi-lingual books just for signing up.

 Our reading program at home I set up with a dual purpose. I wanted them to get started on reading, 1, because reading is awesome, and 2, because my 5.5 year old just started Kindergarten. It's not pretty, but I made a chart where each boy could put stickers for his own work. (Just ignore those side boxes. They have nothing to do with reading. Those were for jobs they could do, mainly making their beds, to earn fun character t-shirts they picked out at the store.)

 

To try to create camaraderie, I made it so that each prize could not be given out until both boys had reached the goal mark. My hope was that this would help them to encourage each other. I think it worked.

If you notice on the chart, they could earn stickers for reading or doing a "learning game." The learning games are things I will have to go into detail more later, hopefully giving you some ideas of things that can help your child with reading that don't even involved looking at words. We used two different colors of stickers for the different method earned and they could only earn up to 2 stickers a day, even if they went beyond the 15 minutes.

There are tons of different beginner books and systems. Rachel has mentioned the BOB Books in her "Books and Reading" theme of the week. These are super basic and a great starter set. As your child gets better at reading, truthfully, they become a bit boring (for everyone, not just mom & dad) and the drawings are not the best.

Another set that I am sure you have heard of is from "Hooked on Phonics." I luckily happened to pick up the kindergarten set at the thrift store for about $1 for about 20 books. (Score!) These have also been nice. They have 2 books (1 standard and one "companion") for each sort of sound set you are working on, which is good to break up the monotony of working with the same words.

A freebie I got from my sister Natalie was a little packet they had left over at her daughter's school one year. They are based on the books you can read on Starfall.com (which Rachel has also mentioned a couple of times). My boys have really enjoyed them. Ours are the most flimsy of them all (they were cut-your-own and staple books), but now there are proper versions of them available online. Actually, our library had the nicer bigger versions of these too, so check your library. And that leads me to the last set I have had experience with.

These are my favorites. It is the Steck-Vaughan phonics readers. I checked them out at the library and renewed as many times as I could. They are still pretty simple, though not as basic as the sentences like "Sam sat." in the BOB books. They feel like real stories. I think they are meant to be used as sets at schools because when I tried to find my own to buy, all I could see were sets of like 35 of each individual book being sold. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share sort of what we have done to encourage reading around here and what books we have liked for new readers. We would love to hear what methods and books you like and if we find other things that work for us, we will be sure to share.

Bob Books, Set 1: Beginning Readers

Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Kindergarten Edition

Learn to Read by Starfall Team