Good morning! I thought I’d do another update on the Teeny Tot for you all today. She’s reviewing some of her favorite Letter of the Week activities, and we’re slowly adding in more of the K4 Kindergarten activities to her day as well.
This week she mostly worked on the Letter E games.
Here she is with her completed elephant lacing card. I’ve had a lot of questions about laminating and printing on cardstock. And unless you’re going to re-use your materials with future children, there’s not much need to laminate and print everything on cardstock. But for the lacing card, it is important that it’s somewhat durable. So if you’re not reusing materials, I would say at least laminate this card if nothing else.
She knows her colors quite well, but still enjoys doing these color matching puzzles.
These are the elephant counting cards. She put them in numerical order, then counted out the correct amount of beads to go on each card. You can use anything you have on hand for this activity.
Here is a K4 activity, it’s called the Letter Hunt worksheet. And her job is to find and mark all of the capital and lowercase letter “E’s”. She used a do-a-dot marker for this activity, but you can also use a highlighter, or just have them circle the letters with a pencil.
We also add in handwriting sheets whenever possible to work on her fine-motor skills. These are the A-Z Handwriting Worksheets, and are free to download from my website.
She still enjoys the puzzles from the Letter of the Week as well though honestly they’re way too easy for her at this point! But there is no harm in doing them and she still gets a sense of accomplishment.
Here is the pre-writing tracing cards for the Letter E. These are laminated and she’s using a dry-erase marker to practice her writing on them.
We’re still working on patterning activities, and she’s getting better doing these independently.
We found a fun new alphabet app called Bob and Larry’s ABC’s that she’s enjoying. It’s a book they can either read to themselves, or have read to them. It’s just a fun book and she enjoys going through the letters with the characters.
She’s also working on my Kindergarten Number Writing worksheets now and doing a great job!
Here she’s working on the Beginning Math Cards that come in my K4 Kindergarten curriculum. She counts the items on the card then places a mini-clothes pin on the correct answer.
Another fun ipad app she’s working with now is the Hot Dot’s Jr. iPad App. this one helps her review letters, sounds, colors, numbers, pattern, and a bunch more.
And finally, she did some Number Worksheets today. She counts the number of images on the card, then fills in the dots to match. Today she used stickers, but we’ve also used do-a-dot markers, cheerios, magnets, and anything else we can get our hands on!
And that’s it. The Teeny Tot has been doing a mix of my Letter of the Week and k4 Kindergarten curriculum lately. I’ve been adding in things from the K4 Kindergarten as she’s ready, but I don’t have a set lesson plan that I’m following. I just try to mix her activities together so she’s working on a nice variety of skills each day.
What is your preschooler or kindergartener working on now? Leave a comment below!
The activities in this post can be found in my Letter of the Week Preschool Curriculum.
Is the Letter of the Week too easy for your student? Are you ready for something a little more challenging? Then the K4 Curriculum is for you! The K4 Curriculum is geared towards kids ages 4-5 who are kindergarten ready and want a fun hands-on kindergarten curriculum. All of the items you see in this post, plus a ton of extras including lesson plans are included in the K4 Kindergarten curriculum.
I love it! I have on 5 year old this year (just turned five) so, although she’s not ‘school age’ according to the state, she still has been doing school all year. Her current obsession is finding as many numbers as she can and adding them all together 🙂 That, and learning to read 🙂 Thanks for such a cute update!
I have an almost 5 year old and a Kindergartener that I teach together. We’ve been doing Math Addition Drills, subtraction, clocks, and number writing practice for Math. We also do handwriting practice and they are doing well on the reading books from the library. Any suggestions for teaching the how to write sentences or sound out words? Thanks for all you do.
Hi,
As far as reading and phonics goes, my K4 and Letter of the Week curriculum have that included: http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/k4-curriculum http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/letter-of-the-week
I don’t have any grammar type worksheets at this time, though I’m sure there are a ton out there!
Hi Erica,
I just bought your K4 curriculum and I’m loving it. Thank you very much for making it available. My little girl will be 5 in August, and today she will be working with addition, analog clock (full hours and half hours only), those “sight word search” from your curriculum.
Have a great day!
Thanks to you, my son is working on many of the same activities as your Teeny Tot! Thank you for making these products available to us… you are a blessing!
Teeny Tot is not so teeny anymore. 🙂
I know you use Abeka a lot, why did choose to do this approach as opposed to do the Abeka k4 or k5 curriculum? Just curious as reasoning, because I can’t decide what do, since we use Abeka for my 2nd grader!
Hi Leeanna,
I’m using my K4 Kindergarten for this year since she’s between kindergarten and preschool, then she’ll move to Abeka k5 next year as a more formal curriculum. My K4 kindergarten is really a full kindergarten, but the Teeny Tot turned 5 at the end of Nov. last year and wasn’t ready to do full kindergarten so we did a mix this year of my K4 and Letter of the Week.
Then like I said next year we’ll do Abeka K5 with her. I use my own k4 because I think it’s a little more hands on and fun, the Abeka K4 isn’t that exciting and it’s pretty bland. They have a workbook and a few readers, but that was about it, so I made something we could use that would cover more and be a little more exciting ;o)
Do you feel after completing your K4 that a child would be ready for Abeka 1? I am not sure if I could use this as a kindergarten curriculum and have my child ready for 1st grade afterwards. What are your thoughts?
Hi Jennifer,
Yes, I think they would be, there is a bit more reading in Abeka’s Kindergarten than in mine, so you might want to add in a little bit more reading towards the end. But K4 is a full kindergarten curriculum.
Great! Thank you so much! It looks like something my son would really enjoy. I just wanted to make sure it would be sufficient. I’ll be sure to add in more reading. Thanks again!
I have been following you on and off for two years now and your blog made me make the choice to quit my full-time job to homeschool my daughter. This August I will have a 5 year old and a 4 year old to add to be apart of the homeschool world. I was one of those mom’s that just seemed like it was hard to juggle all the roles as a mom, wife, teacher, and pastor’s wife and organization was not a priority until now, We do Abeka curriculum with the dvds with our 2nd grader, but my other two daughters are VERY hands on learners and want more fun and adventure. Which one of the packages should I purchase that will be for both of the younger ones? I love the organization you have and I am using this summer to put all my focus on that and give my sweet babies the best adventure of learning as I possibly can. I do not fully understand about the three different packages for both curriculum of yours. So for two children, Which one should I choose?
Hi Brandi, I currently offer a preschool Letter of the Week program that is a full 26 week preschool course designed to give your student a head-start on preparing for kindergarten. I normally recommend this for 3-4 year olds. It focuses on the letter recognition, sounds, number recognition, counting, basic math skills, pre-writing practice, and all the necessary fine-motor skills that will be required for your preschooler to be ready for kindergarten! Included are weekly lesson plans that cover all the subjects a preschooler needs.
Following the Letter of the Week program I also have a K4 Kindergarten level curriculum. The K4 Curriculum is great for kids age 4-5 who are ready for Kindergarten. The curriculum introduces beginning reading, math and handwriting skills that will give your student a huge advantage as they proceed through their elementary years.
Upon completion of this program, students will have a basic understanding of simple addition and subtraction, place value, basic 1 and 2 vowel words, and beginning reading skills, logical thinking and much more! With this curriculum you also receive 34 weeks worth of daily lesson plans to help guide you through a full year kindergarten skilled activities.
If your 4 year old is ready, I would probably try the K4 Kindergarten with your 4 & 5 year old, if not you could print some of my free Letter of the Week activities to supplement the K4 activities for her.