Apple Preschool Corner

M is 3.5 years old

We started school up again this week and M (3.5) is now doing preschool exclusively.  We will have a theme each week and will alternate our daily themed activities with literacy lessons.

Start of the Year Assesment
M know all basic concepts (shapes, colors, letters, numbers, etc.).  She's great at sorting, categorizing, matching, and other similar skills.  She knows her beginning letter sounds and can generally count up to 20 with no prompting, and up to 100 if we prompt her (20, 30, 40, etc).  She is so close to reading.  I'm going to spend our first 8 or 9 weeks reviewing letter and beginning letter sounds and then we'll move into advanced phonics work from there.  This year I'd also like to work with her on her writing skills.  She is turning out to be left handed so that's a bit of a challenge for me as far as teaching goes.  I'd also like to work more on her fine motor skills and practical life skills.  We're expecting a new baby in February, so I'd love to have her more capable of doing tasks around the house to help out by then.

Preschool Skills Printables
We used some printables from A Heart For Home, including the dominoes, color by number, apple basket puzzle, patterning, sequencing, and memory pages.

Art and Sensory
I punched holes in a strip of paper and M practiced her fine motor skills in finger painting each hole. Then we added green stems on our little apples. Source: No Time for Flashcards.

I cut apples in half and M painted with them. I cut little scores in the sides so it was easier for her to hold.

We bought several different types of apples and had a taste test one day as our snack.  This was amazing to me because M has never liked apples, but she ate several slices of each type!  Her favorites were Golden Delicious (which she said was very sweet) and Fuji (which she called "refreshing").  I've been trying to encourage her to use more adjectives, so this was the perfect activity for that.

We played with apple scented play dough. She practiced making letters as well. Recipe: My Montessori Journey.

Preschool Trays

Stringing Apple Cheerios on a pipe cleaner

Using tweezers to pick up fake apples by their stems and place them in the egg tray

Literacy
We reviewed letters A, B, C this week.  I used some printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler - the do-a-dot, tracing, poke, and letter hunt pages.  I also made up some beginning letter sound printables as a supplement.  Again, I'm not going into too much detail with the letters here because she knows them so well already.  I just want to do a quick review after our lazy summer before I get into more advanced reading lessons.

That's all for this week!  To see what other preschoolers are learning this week, check out the official Preschool Corner website!