Letter Gg Music

Here is the music we had for the
Letter Gg

For Gg week we sang about our mighty God. I had a copy of the Elementary Praise songs we use at our Christian school for chapel. We sang Our God is A Great Big God and There Is No God like Our God. It's so amazing to be home with my sweet and sassy little Shortcake teaching her that God is far bigger than we can ever imagine. No one and no thing can compare to Him!




My God Is So Big by the Wonderkids is now a new family favorite. Even my almost two year old sings out "BIG" every time!





Frog Street's I Can Spell Green Song fit right in to Gg week! From caterpillars to grasshoppers to

Letter Oo Activities

Here are some of the activities we planned for our two Oo weeks:

ASL (American Sign Language)
We love ASL in our home. We use it all the time. Here are some of the signs we used for the Letter Oo.
-Letter O
-octopus
-orange
-opposite (different)

You can find signs here on my Pinterest board: My 2nd Language 

Bible Connections
This week we talked about obedience briefly and learned Colossians 3:20 (ESV) "Children OBEY your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord." (This is included in my Stored In Your Heart Bible Verse Set.) Of course this is a favorite verse in our house so we didn't need too much work to memorize it.

 

Each week we pick a prayer person to pray for. Shortcake didn't have any friends that started with the Letter O, so we prayed for President Obama both weeks. We briefly talked about what a president is and how President Obama needs God's wisdom to make wise decisions for our country.

Phonics Connections
We focused on octopus, ostrich, and ox over our two weeks. With my third pregnancy we didn't get through everything, but I always like to over plan.
-O Toilet Paper roll painting
-Made a large Ox and cart. We filled the cart with letter O pictures.
-snack: orange juice with mandarin oranges
-went looking for orange leaves around the yard
-orange nailpolish


Ostrich
-coloring page

Octopus
-coloring page
-Octopus craft
-Octopus paper bag puppet


Math Connections
We continued to focus on OPPOSITES and OCTAGON over the Oo weeks. We read several books on opposites (see my list of books for the letter Oo).


We talked about what an octagon looked like.
Then, we made little octagon monsters .

We also reviewed the color orange. We talked about different things that are orange (oranges, Jack o' lanterns, carrots, etc.) We sang about how to spell the color orange. See my song list for the letter Oo. We went on an orange leaf hunt. We even painted our fingernails orange!! I love teaching my little Shortcake!



Here are my Letter Oo lesson plans. Download them for FREE!

Here are the books we read.
Here is the music we sang.

Letter Ll Activities

Here are some of the activities we planned for our two Ll weeks:

ASL (American Sign Language)
We love ASL in our home. We use it all the time. Here are some of the signs we used for the Letter Ll.
-Letter L
-love
-Lord
-leaf
-light

You can find signs here on my Pinterest board: My 2nd Language

We also used the signs for "same" and "different" in our Phonics lesson. I gave her word pairs that were the same or different.

"same"

"different"

Snacks
-ladybug strawberries
-lemonade
-cherry limeade
 
Bible Connections
Our Bible verse for this week was "Love the Lord your God with all your heart." Deuteronomy 6:5a. (This is included in my Stored In Your Heart Bible Verse Set.) My shortcake loved doing some ASL with this verse we did "love" "Lord" "God" "all" "heart" "6" "5". You can find some signs on my Pinterest Board.

Every week we also pick a prayer person to pray for. It just so happened that my daughter has a friend named LeAnna and another friend named Luke. We made them some cards and sent it to them. We cut out a coloring page for a ladybug and a lion and attached it to a construction paper. 

Ladybug Activities
-Ladybug counting rocks
-HUGE collection of Ladybug activities here!
-Egg carton ladybugs
-Ladybug nails

Leaf Activities
-Leaf Fall Garland craft
-1+1+1=1 Tot School Letter Ll
-Sun catcher Tissue Paper Leaves craft


Here are all of my plans for the Letter Ll. You can download them for free!

These are the books we read.
This is the music we listened to.

Letter Ll Books

Here are the books we read for both Ll weeks:

We started the first week focusing on ladybugs. We read Ten Little Ladybugs by Melanie Gerth. This is a cute story that gives a great practice with counting 1-10. My daughter has been counting to ten for a long time, but this was perfect for practicing one-to-one correspondence. (This means that she practiced pointing to each ladybug while she counted.) The other great thing is my little shortcake loved reading it to her little brother! This also went well with several ladybug activities.




We read a fun poem called Ladybug, Ladybug from Ladybug, Ladybug and Other Favorite Poems from Cricket Books that I found at our local library. I love incorporating poems when I can.





We read Mary Had A Little Lamb nursery rhyme. I used this print off to read it! I had planned a little lamb craft too!




During week 2 we switched our focus from ladybugs to leaves. We read Zero Is The Leaves On The Tree by Betsy Franco. This was a cute story that talked about many things during the Fall that show us the number zero, including leaves that are no longer on the tree.








As we continued to focus on leaves, we read Leaves, Leaves, Leaves by Nancy E. Wallace. It was a cute story about a little cub who goes on a leaf walk with his Mom during all of the seasons. This was a great introduction to fall time. It was a longer book for a preschooler so it could be split into several different reading times. My shortcake didn't seem to mind sitting still for this one.







Another great leaf book is Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert. The pictures are really nice in this book. We had read this last year and we ran out of time, so we skipped this book.













We finished out the two weeks of the Letter Ll by reading Is Your Mama a Llama by Deborah Guarino. This story is about a little baby who is looking to find her mama.











Don't forget to check out activities that went along with these stories and the music we listened to. Thanks for stopping by!

Starting with Phonics

My daughter is 4 now so we are starting to home school a little more intentionally. The nice thing is that she knows all of her alphabet and sounds, so there is less pressure for us to move through a curriculum...which is really nice since I am nearly 7 mos. pregnant with number 3.

Here is where we were last year:
Our Starting Point

When I taught Kindergarten and First Grade, our school used a curriculum called Saxon Phonics. Many of you may have heard of Saxon Math curriculum which is known for its repetition. I had experience with the First Grade Saxon Math and I was not a real fan. It seemed that many of the kids did not think critically going through the curriculum which is so important for Mathematics. However, I LOVE the Saxon Phonics program.

When I was growing up I learned to read with the whole word method, so phonics was never a part of my "tool box". Luckily I was good at memorizing, but I hated to read and I always struggled with new words. I had no idea how to sound them out. When I started teaching this curriculum I really learned a lot.  I like how simple this curriculum is for the teacher too :)

Here is the Saxon Phonics & Spelling classroom package

I LOVE their readers, decoding, and progression through material. My kindergartners would start reading by week 3 of the curriculum!!!! All of my students were so successful with this curriculum. The only down side for me are their worksheets. I'm not a big worksheet fan anyways, especially since we can just do some board work while homeschooling. I will be using a pre-cursive handwriting system with her and adding some creative writing as we get further along.

I purchased the Homeschooling version K-2 off of eBay as I found deals and I have to say I wasn't as impressed. It needs a little updating. I think my versions might just be older. So...I've searched Amazon and eBay for their classroom readers and some of their flash cards to use with my homeschooling curriculum.

Decodable reader

This is a first grade decodable reader from  the teacher/school version of Saxon. These are available for each grade. They are great because the go along with what you are learning each week including any sight words and letter/ digraph/ dipthong/combination. I also love that it includes all the things they have learned up until that point too. It really gives kids confidence when they know they can pick up the book and tackle it. These black and white copies are great for allowing them to highlight sight words or find letters in the story too! LOVE LOVE LOVE THESE!


Here is another homeschooling Mom's review of Saxon.

This is the homeschooling version of Saxon Phonics K.

We just moved into our new house, so I am hoping to have our homeschooling area set up by this weekend, but I may be pushing it :)

We will be starting with the letter Ll (when we are settled) and focusing on each letter for 2 weeks. You may be wondering why we are starting with the letter Ll. I know many may think, wouldn't you just start with A and work through Z? Saxon Phonics starts with Ll, Oo and Gg. Ll and Oo are a great place to start because they make up the basic parts of all the letters with the straight line and the circle. Also, it is great because the first word you read is "log". Then, when you add Hh, you have "log" and "hog".

We are spending 2 weeks on each letter because I want to have time to be able to plan and have lots of fun with letter activities. As I find letter activities, I will be updating my Pinterest board "Now I Know My ABC's" so feel free to look around. I will also post some of my favorites for each letter!!

So...here's to getting started with a true homeschooling year!