Franklin and the Tooth Fairy - Week 1 (Sept. 2-6)

Franklin and the Tooth Fairy – Day 1

Letter writing

Receiving a letter – The night before I had written each child a letter, addressed it and placed it in an envelope. They were super excited to get a letter that they could open. I read their letter to them which was a great way of introducing the following lesson in a way that held their attention.

- We talked about who we can write letters to. That envelopes hold letters and, when we use an address, the postman can find the person we want and deliver the letter.

EXERCISE:

- Each child ‘wrote a letter’ to their best friends. Writing a letter on the first day of kindergarten meant, for my preschooler, drawing a picture and for my K, drawing a picture with some names, symbols and a few copied words on it.

BIBLE:

Luke 2 – Jesus in the Temple

- We talked about Jesus being a boy like them and even… getting in trouble from his parents!

We talked about what things Jesus might have felt as a boy:

Did he scrape his knee?

Have a problem his parents helped him with?

Cry when his feelings were hurt?

Jesus was a real boy with real emotions and he remembers exactly what it feels like to be a little kid so he can relate with all of their problems.

Memory verse review

DAILY REFLECTION:

Celebrations – It was a bit chaotic but we did it! Was it as smooth as I had hoped? Absolutely not! I’d turn around to get one activity together and turned around again seconds later to find the markers were already strewn everywhere and my one ‘student’ was rolling around on the floor and my 2 year old daughter was scribbling pink ‘flowers’ on her bare legs…AWESOME! It was pretty much as I expected and it was fun

Challenges -

WORKBOOKS: I had both Math pages and Explode the Code pages on my list of things to do for the day but an hour and half in… the kids were fading fast. Snack time was upon us.

Franklin and the Tooth Fairy - Day 2

We started the Day by talking about Johnny Appleseed and how God helped a man do something BIG with something small, an apple seed.

HISTORY and MISSIONS

WATCH:

To introduce our story of Johnny Appleseed we watched this Disney Youtube video for free. The kids loved it!

APPLE UNIT:

Johnny Appleseed – Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IASrP1-DulU

Johnny Appleseed – Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GflhkSDAaK8

FAMILY FOCUS (Social Studies)

We talked about the story of Franklin and the Tooth Fairy. How Franklin had a problem. He told his parents about the problem. He also tried to solve the problem himself. By telling his parents his problem Franklin’s parents could help him feel better.

BRAINSTORMING – We brain stormed problems that children can tell their parents about. We talked about what would happen if they didn’t talk to Mom or Dad about those specific problems.

JOURNALLING (Language Arts – Creative Writing)

Using our story journals, the boys had to draw a picture of Mom or Dad helping them.

End result – both of them drew pictures of their families including the family dog …. Uh…sure why not. I helped them caption their picture.

‘My family helps me solve my problems.’

PRINTING PRACTICE

My K – kid, Liam had to practice copying that sentence out again my preschooler went on to draw with marker on his face so he could pretend he was scar from the Lion King.

LOWER CASE LETTER AND NUMBER RECOGNITION REVIEW

I’m noticing that even though most planned learning we’ve done uses capital letters and Liam recognizes them very well, he is completely lost when it comes to lower case letters and also mixes them up with numbers.

I did a quick test today writing out all of the lowercase letters. There were about 10 that he could identify correctly. I’m finding that alphabet visuals and books that place upper and lower case letters together (which they almost all do) are confusing! Children focus on the uppercase letters that they know and ignore the others. I wasn’t in a hurry to teach to the lowercase alphabet but there is kind of no way around it. All our readers that we are starting to use are made up of primarily lowercase words. It’s a key step to reading!

Numeric characters is something that I haven’t got to yet and a review of numeric characters and counting is going to be important before we can really start working through any math workbooks.

Suffix ‘less’ – Language arts

Less and Less exercise in CSBM

I did the exercise placing words such as tooth, job, penni, child on cards and explained that by placing the suffix ‘less’ after each word we say that we have none of that thing. If we are childless we have no children etc.

Liam was happy to place the suffix less after each word but do I think he really understood it?? – no. Just one example of activities in CSBM that should be scrapped if they are not at the child’s age level. I don’t know maybe it sunk in and we can try to introduce these words in everyday talking with each other this week but this exercise was probably a year ahead of where we will be this year.

Celebrations – I loved the family focus and journaling exercise in todays’ lesson. Watching my boys express their love of family is always a joy.

Challenges – My morning was off to a slower start. We started school at 10 am rather than our 8:30 schedule time. I had some work emails and phone calls come in this morning that needed my attention. Getting interrupted in the morning is frustrating for me but Sept. is a busy season in every sense of the word. I could have saved the work for the afternoon but my afternoons were PACKED TOO!

I’m also finding I’m over-planning for some of the days. Which is fine cause when I split the CSBM (Come Sit By Me) activities into my week even with a shorter week, it seemed like not enough. I’m now seeing that one to two activities a day is plenty especially if there is going to be any time for seat work.

I’d also love to have more time for set up in our school room so that activities are more interesting, visual and flow better but the reality this week is I’m doing desk work all afternoon, making supper, having family time and then Dad is putting the kids to bed and I’m back at my desk again doing bookwork. It’s a full day!

Victory – We got to school anyways and still put in a good hour and a half, which is not bad for second day of little boys still not into sitting still.

Franklin and the Tooth Fairy - Day 3

BIBLE

Read David and Goliath picture book.

Deciduous Teeth - We talked about how our jaw grows but teeth don't. We talked teeth are made up of enamel, dentin and pulp and a tooth is the hardest part of our bodies.

Animal Teeth - Using the Internet we observed teeth of various species and talked about how God made teeth perfect for each animal and what they ate.

We talked about Carnivores, herbivores and omnivores and what those words mean and that people are omnivores.

Dental Health

http://www.sesamestreet.org/parents/topicsandactivities/toolkits/teeth

This site is a great resource for this section on dental health

DENTAL CHART/ TIMELINE – Math and Science

BOOK OF ME - I didn’t record when any of the children’s teeth came in and no one has lost any teeth yet, so this exercise in CSBM will have to be revised. I notice that through out the curriculum there are several ‘growing up’ or ‘about me’ type of activities. Rather than just have these activities all be separate or on their own. I purchased a binder for each child that will become their ‘Book of Me’ for the year. Any growth charts, tooth – loss charts, hand prints, foot prints, family trees etc. will be placed in this binder and kept together creating a log for year of their growth and development. A scrap book would also work great for this.

Dental chart that we colored and placed in our Book of Me binder:

http://www.happygreenmama.com/blogimages/blog-baby-tooth-chart-print.pdf

Dental Care – HEALTH

Ok so Sesame street is fun and all but I wanted to kids to be introduced to proper brushing techniques. Ideally I was going to schedule a trip to the dentist this week so a hygienist could teach them. That wasn’t going to happen this week. I was looking for a fun but really good instructional video on how to brush teeth. I couldn’t find one I liked so I purchased tooth brushes, kids dental floss wands and indicating rinse (this is a rinse that shows kids where all the residue and bacteria is in their mouth so that they can focus on those areas. It’s not something I would use all the time, but it’s a good one time teaching tool.

Dental care chart – we hung a morning and night dental care chart in our bathroom to help us remember to brush twice a day. Something Liam already does…(he likes clean teeth)

We used this chart

http://www.sesamestreet.org/cms_services/services?action=download&uid=9276c11d-1ee9-4e7a-a73b-c5eea570378a

MATH – counting teeth

Using  a mirror have each child count the teeth in their mouth.

ART – fun activities – sponge paint apple cut outs.

Franklin and the Tooth Fairy - Day 4

FUN DAY

We’ve been packing a lot into these mornings and it’s only the first week so I wanted to end the week on a high note. NO book work – just fun stuff.

BIBLE

Watch Phil Vischer – What’s in the Bible

Tooth fairy pouches – which is an activity for the week in CSBM

- I will sew these pouches onto embroidered tooth fairy pillows so they are ready for our first loose tooth!

Decorate our apple tree – I’d like to use the apples we paint to put up on a burlap tree in our school room. We can use this tree throughout the year as a visual for the seasons:

- Apples in September

- Colored leaves in October to mid-Nov

- Naked branches until first snow fall or maybe a dusting of frost

- snow filled branches in Winter

- Leaves and blossoms in Spring

- Green in Summer

NOTES: Especially since we skipped formal preschool, I’d like to add a calendar where we can review our months, days of the week seasons of the year as well as observe the weather each day. I’ll have to hunt one down!