Samantha: 29 Months, Week 2 {Preschool, Trunk or Treat, and Groundhog Spotting}

I have decided to take on something new.  The teacher in me is coming out, and I have decided to start preschool with Samantha.  She is so much of a sponge lately, I figured I might as well be teaching her something more productive and geared towards learning basic number and letter concepts.  My plan is to do preschool with her three days a week or so, on days we don't have anything going on and aren't watching Sadie.  I decided to pick a letter a week and concentrate on certain mathematical concepts like numbers or shapes.  I may have gone a little over the top in my planning, but there is so much out there on the internet and I found a great blog done for stay at home moms with TONS of fairly simple activities you can do at home with your toddler/preschooler.  I know this may be a bit nerdy of me, but I actually typed up lesson plans.  (I know, you can't take the teacher planner out of me.)  Just in case any of you are interested in what I came up with, here are my first week's plans:

Week 1: The Letter A and Counting 1 to 5

Day 1:

Books: Apples, Apples, Apples by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

Song:  Sing “Way Up High in the Apple Tree.”  Have red, yellow, or green socks rolled up.  Pretend to be the apple tree and hold the apples (socks) up in the air.  Then say the finger play: “Way up high in the apple tree, two little apples smile at me. (I smile).  I shook that tree as hard as I could. (She shakes the tree (my arm).)  Down came the apples, mm mm good! (Drop the apples).  Let her be the apple tree.

Craft: Do Apple Printing.  Follow directions in Apples, Apples, Apples book, using core of apple, paint, and paper or paper plates.  Read this story while you do craft: Once there was a little boy who went to visit his Grandmother. He was getting restless, so his Grandmother told him to go out on her farm and find a little house with no windows, and no doors, and a star inside. The little boy met his cousin. "Do you know where I can find a little house with no windows and no doors, and a star inside?" "No," said his cousin. "Maybe farmer Jones will know." The little boy continued to walk, he so enjoyed the country side. He looked all around him, but still could not discover what he was looking for. "Hello, farmer Jones, do you know where I can find a little house with no windows and no doors and a star inside?" "Sorry, son, I don't know, maybe if you walk into the orchard over there, you may meet my wife and she may know." "Thank you sir," said the little boy. He skipped merrily into the orchard. He didn't see the farmer's wife. But, he heard the wind blowing. Hooooo.....hooooo! Just then an apple fell at his feet. Out of the apple came a little tiny worm. The cutest, smallest little worm that he ever saw! "Hmmm...." thought the boy. "This apple is the little worm's home. I don't see any windows or doors, but I don't see a star either!" Well, he picked up the apple and went home to Grandma." Could this be the little house with no windows and no doors?" "Why yes, it is honey. Good job." The little boy looked sad. "But Gram there is no star!" Grandma (teacher) cuts the apple, and reveals the star. How amazing! ----Author Unknown.

Letter Activity: Discuss how the letter A has 3 sounds, practice those 3 sounds.

Familiarity with name activity: 1) Tape a piece of paper to the table. 2) Say the letters of her name as I write them on the paper. 3) Let her practice writing and coloring on her name.  Do the same thing with the letter A, writing “A” and “a” on the paper in a few places and having her color on the paper.

Snack:  Apples dipped in peanut butter.

Gross Motor: Play Worm Through the Apple.  Line up dining room chairs and cover with blanket.  She will pretend to be the worm and crawl through the apple (the chairs).  Have her go straight through and even weave in and out.  Hide the sock apples and have her find them in the "dirt."

Number Activity: Write numbers 1-5 on a paper plate as a number symbol, number word, and circles to show each amount represented by each number.  Have her fill in circles (use Cheerios) on each plate with item to show how many each number represented.

Fine Motor: Color Stickers Sort: Divide a paper into 4 sections, writing the color word using their respective color marker.  Hand one sticker at a time to her and have her say the color name, then have her match the sticker to its corresponding place on the paper and stick it down.

Day 2:

Craft: Homemade Apple Trees using toilet paper roll for trunk and pipe cleaners for branches, leaves, and apples.

Number Activity: Cut 5 sheets of construction paper in half width-wise.  Write one number symbol on each piece and write the number under each symbol.  Attach the paper to the floor in order with tape.  While holding her hand, step together onto 1 and say 1, then 2, and so on.

Letter Activity: Review the sounds that make A.  Have her color the A pages from her alphabet book, and write any words we can think of on the back that begin with the letter A.

Books: If You Give a Dog a Doughnut by Laura Numeroff

Song: Sing this to London Bridges: Stand holding arms above your head like branches.  Move arms up and down.  Encourage her to wiggle fingers as they move. “See the apples falling down, falling down, falling down.  See the apples falling down, down to the ground. (Then squat and pretend to pick up the apples, throwing them into the air.)  Pick the apples, throw them up, throw them up, throw them up.  Pick the apples, throw them up, up to the sky!”

Snack: Applesauce in a cup, then crackers, continue until cup is full.

Gross Motor: Hide different color paper apples around the room (red, green, and yellow).  Have a basket for each color apple.  Have her find an apple and put it the correct basket.

Fine Motor: If you Give a Dog a Doughnut Detangle.  Make a kite out of paper and use sticks to give it stability on the back.  Tap a string to the bottom of the kite and tangle the string around the tree made during craft time.  Have her figure out how to detangle the kite from the tree.

Day 3:

Craft: Paint her palm and fingers with brown paint and have her press her hand on construction paper to make tree branches.  Then, she can dip her finger in red or yellow paint and dot on branches to make apples.

Number Activity & Letter Activity: Review the sounds that A make.  Draw A and a, as well as numbers 1-5 on paper and put paper into a Ziploc bag so that she can place shave cream to form the letters and numbers.  Put bag on top of cookie sheet.  Write her name on the cookie sheet and have her erase it with her hands by moving the shave cream around.

Books: Books requested from the library: Curious George: Apple Harvest by H.A. Rey, Ducking for Apples by Lynne Berry, Johnny Appleseed by Eric Blair, Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer, The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons, and Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins.

Song: Johnny Appleseed Song: “Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun, and the rain, and the apple seed, The Lord is good to me. Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen!”

Snack: Make apple pie following the recipe in the book The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree.

Gross Motor: Line a few pillows on the floor, and show her how to step on the pillows to walk along them.  Count each pillow as you walk all the way to the end.  Add pillows to increase the challenge. (Also can do Apple Toss, throwing “apples” (bean bags) into laundry basket, starting close and getting farther away.  Practice balancing bean bags on head.)

Fine Motor: Use a muffin tin to sort the pom pom "apples" by color, matching them to the correct place.

So, last Monday morning, we started preschool, and Samantha was really excited.  At first, she was a little confused, thinking that we were going to be going somewhere for preschool, but once we started the first activity and learned that I was going to be her teacher and had lots of fun activities planned, she figured out what was going on.  Here are some pictures from our first morning of preschool.

These first pictures are of Samantha doing apple printing during craft time.

Here is Samantha doing the letter activity where she is coloring on her name and the letter A, for familiarity purposes.

Then, we had a delicious snack of apples dipped in peanut butter.  Samantha has had plenty of apples, but she has never dipped them in peanut butter before.  We have tried giving her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but she never has liked them.  Apparently it's just the jelly she doesn't like because she devoured this snack.

Her favorite activity of the morning, by far, was pretending to be a worm crawling through the dirt looking for apples.  She could have done this the rest of the morning, and even requested to do it again the next time we did preschool.

We then did the number activity with Cheerios, but this one was a bit tricky.  My student just wanted to keep eating the Cheerios instead of putting them in the circles on the plates. :) Eventually, I convinced her to do it if that meant she could eat all the Cheerios at the end of the activity.  Here are pictures of the finished activity, with Samantha already eating Cheerios off of the plate for five.

And then we did the color sticker sort activity, which was another of Samantha's favorite.  Anything with stickers is a good idea in her book.

Our preschool activities lasted for about an hour and forty-five minutes on Monday morning, giving us the perfect amount of time to go play outside before lunch.  I felt like our morning went so well together.  I enjoyed spending time at home with her, not always feeling like we have to go out somewhere, and it was much better having a purpose in our activities, preventing Samantha from wandering around like a bored, uninterested, lost child which she tends to do after being cooped up with nothing in particular to do.  I am excited to keep this up with Samantha and to use my teaching abilities to teach the most important student in the world to me, my daughter.

Monday evening I caught a cute video of Samantha reading with her Daddy.  They were looking at a book full of pictures with words.  She would point to a picture and say, "Can you point to the bear, Daddy?"  Daddy would often pretend that he didn't know where the item was that she was asking for, and she would say, "No Daddy, it's right here!"  It's a pretty cute video.

It was nice spending the morning with Samantha on Monday because the rest of the week was pretty busy with watching Sadie, giving piano lessons, attending BSF, and going to Mom's REST Stop on Thursday morning.  However, doing these things are so nice because I actually have the freedom to do them.  I feel like I missed out on so many opportunities when I was working, opportunities to better myself as a Christian and a mom, and opportunities to be more involved in my daughter's life, what she's learning, and how she's being raised.

Also, for an update on napping, things have still been going extremely well.  She has not thrown her blankie out at all and is even going to sleep faster than she normally has in the past.  We are pleased and glad that we seem to have moved past that issue.

On Friday, since we had no plans to go anywhere out of the house, Samantha and I had another preschool day.  We followed the plans for day two, and Samantha was really excited to do preschool again.  She said, "Mommy, you're my teacher!"

We started by reading If You Give a Dog a Doughnut, made trees out of toilet paper rolls and pipe cleaners, and then made a kite to demonstrate the part of the book where the kite gets stuck in the apple tree.

Samantha really liked the number activity where she could jump from number to number.  She knows her numbers and can count all the way to twelve if you don't ask her to or if she is counting when you are not paying attention to her, but it's always good to reinforce the numbers with her in a different way.

Samantha loves to have books read to her.  She will sit next to you for over a half an hour any time of day to listen to books.  We go to the library every week for story time and always come home with more books.  Well, she was excited to read the apple books I requested from the library for our A theme this week.  I was reading one to her on Friday about applesauce, since that's what we were having for a snack, and she saw that I had one more apple book that I hadn't read yet.  I was going to save it for the next day's preschool activities because it went with that day better, but she got so upset that I wouldn't read it to her right then.  So upset that she actually started crying!  There's no reason to cry over when to read a book, so I went ahead and read it to her. I hope her love for reading continues throughout her entire life.  A love of reading makes so many other things come easier when you get to your elementary school years.

Reading one of our apple books, The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree, inspired us in an activity we could do with Daddy when he got home from campus that afternoon.  There was a recipe for apple pie in the book, and Samantha wanted to make it.  When Daddy got home, he was in charge of peeling and cutting the apples given to us from Grandma Toll's apple tree.  I made the pie crust, and Samantha helped us place the apples in the pie crust and roll out the top crust for the pie.  She was so excited to eat it that she could hardly wait for it to come out of the oven.  We had plans to eat our apple pie with some yummy vanilla ice cream for dessert that night.

The whole time Samantha was eating her pie, she kept saying, "Mmmm, this is good Mommy and Daddy."  There's nothing better than a pie made completely from scratch with fresh apples as the filling.

On Saturday morning, we took a family trip to Chick-fil-a to use up some free breakfast sandwich gift cards that were about to expire soon.  We had a great breakfast, and Samantha had some fun climbing around on the indoor playground.  (She was the only kid there playing on the playground.  I guess it was 9:30 a.m.)  Daddy went to a conference at our church, and Samantha and I went to the Farmer's Market together to buy some apples and broccoli, went grocery shopping, and then walked around the toy section at Target for awhile until we could go back and pick up Daddy.  She's such a fun little girl to hang out with.  We love her so much.

Saturday night, we decided to go to a local church for a Trunk or Treat celebration.  The forecast for Halloween looked pretty rainy, so we figured if Samantha will get a chance to go trick or treating, this night would be our best opportunity.  Samantha chose to dress up as Belle and was so excited to carry her little pumpkin around collecting candy.  The funniest thing was right when we got there because she spotted a little girl dressed up as Ariel with a red wig on her head, and Samantha made a beeline for this girl wanting to say hi and look at her dress.  She loves looking at anyone dressed up like a princess, just like her.

 It was a bit difficult to get any good pictures of her because she didn't stay still for too long.  However, she had a great time trick or treating and being called Belle by all the nice people handing out the candy.

And last but not least, Sunday evening we decided to go on a little family outing to a local park because the weather was actually nice for the first time all week.  We went to a park that we pass by all the time, but have never visited.  This park had a long bridge, giving us the opportunity to play a nice family game of "Red Light, Green Light."  Samantha had never played this game before and thought it was pretty fun.

We decided to get hamburgers and fries at Five Guys, which definitely hit the spot for my pregnancy cravings that night.  And on our way back home, we passed our church and Samantha said, "We are going to go into ECC (the name of our church), and I will go into my classroom and play, and you guys can just leave, okay?"  She makes us laugh.  We are just glad that she loves our church and is comfortable there.

As we pulled down the frontage road that leads to our apartment complex, we saw the best surprise of the day.  Over the last few weeks, we have noticed a groundhog that will come up from the reeds out onto the grass by the road to eat, and now, every time we pass, Samantha asks if the groundhog is out or not.  Occasionally, I have seen it and try to pull over so Samantha can see it out her window, but it always runs away.  Well, on Sunday night we spotted it again, slowly pulled the car over into a driveway near the grass and spent the next several minutes just sitting there watching the groundhog.  Samantha was so happy she finally got to see it.  It just made her day.  It's the little things. :)