Ee is for Elephant

Today we starting learning the Letter Ee.  Evan was so excited because 'E' is his letter!  He's recognized the Big E for some time now and we've worked on writing it before.  Whenever you press the Letter Ee on Evan's toy laptop, it says, "Let's celebrate your letter, Evan!"  So throughout the day, we celebrated the Letter Ee by singing, "E chacha chacha V chacha chacha A chacha chacha N!  EVAN!"  I told him that the word 'Evan' was my favorite word in the whole wide world that starts with the Letter E!  He felt pretty special!  He practiced writing the Letter Ee on the board and on his Ee flashcard.  The little e was more difficult for him.  He wasn't as familiar with that one.  He kept wanting to call it a 'c'.  It actually worked out okay though because the way they wanted me to teach him to write it was to make a little c and then draw the line.  He'll get it!


Evan celebrating his letter!  E chacha chacha!



Practice makes perfect!

Then I introduced him to Elizabeth E and we read the mini book, "What Begins With E?"  Of course his first question as soon as we were done reading it was, "Can we play a puppet show with the new one?!"  Good thing I had the pieces ready to go!  He helped assemble Elizabeth E.

 

Let me introduce you to, Elizabeth E.

After we were done with the introduction of the Letter Ee, we moved on to Ee is for Elephant.  We talked about elephants the rest of the day - literally!  He fell asleep on me tonight while sitting on the couch talking about elephants!


Ee is for Elephant!


I had made a little mini book about elephants with several elephant pictures in it.  We looked at that and talked about the features that made elephants so unique.  I then took him to the San Diego Zoo's website where we could watch several elephant videos, see a live Elephant Cam, and play an elephant game. 

Elephant videos:  http://www.elephantodyssey.com/video/
Live Elephant Cam:  http://www.sandiegozoo.org/elephantcam/index.html
Elephant Odyssey Game:  http://www.elephantodyssey.com/game/

Talk about mesmerized...he would have been content to play the elephant game the rest of the day!  We played and played until we conquered the whole thing.  The graphics really were pretty cute.  However, if you were going to play it with an older child that could read, you would have to sit down and explain some things to them because evolutionary concepts were thrown in throughout.  Why do they have to do that?!


"I want to play my elephant game!"

The only way I could get him away from the computer game was to entice him with Play-doh!  It worked!  He was so excited to make Play-doh elephants!  He wanted to start with pink elephants.  (You can only imagine how thrilled Daddy is that pink is his favorite color!)  Nonetheless, pink elephants it was!  We made a whole rainbow of elephants!  By the time we were done, we had 10 Play-doh elephants.  While working on the elephants we sang: "1 jumbo, 2 jumbo, 3 jumbo elephants.  4 jumbo, 5 jumbo, 6 jumbo elephants.  7 jumbo, 8 jumbo, 9 jumbo elephants.  10 jumbo elephants at the circus!"


"I want a pink elephant!"



Evan loved his Play-doh elephants!

1 jumbo, 2 jumbo, 3 jumbo elephants...

After making 10 jumbo elephants for the circus, we read, "Circus Caps For Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina.  We also later read, "Dumbo."  Evan has only been to a circus once but he doesn't really remember it, and it's probably a good thing he doesn't.  [Soap Box Moment:  I honestly don't think that we will ever go back.  First of all, it's way to expensive.  Secondly, the clowns are terrifying.  And more importantly, those people need to put more clothes on.  YIKES!  The immodesty made ME uncomfortable.  I could go on and on, but I'll climb off my soap box now!]  I had some circus themed stickers and Evan made a circus scene with them in his little elephant mini book. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing, 10 jumbo elephants!!!

Evan also got to paint a big picture of an Elephant.  This time, he wanted a blue elephant! 

Proud of his painting!

While his painting dried, it was Show Time!  I gave him an elephant puppet and he was SO excited!  We put on show after show.  He even used his stuffed elephants in his show.  He acted out lots of scenes from the elephant computer game - mostly the scenes from where we died by falling off a cliff or being eaten by a saber tooth tiger (acted by a stuffed lion!).  I think he just liked knocking the stuffed elephants off the puppet stage!
 

Super excited about his elephant puppet!



Elephant puppet with her herd!

After the puppet shows, Evan worked on a couple items to go in his Ee Lapbook.  

Coloring an 'Ee is for Elephant' picture to go in his Lapbook.

While we were waiting for Daddy to get home, he worked on an Elephant Lacing Card.


Lacing cards are great for Hand-Eye coordination.

 He could hardly wait for Daddy to get home, because he knew Daddy was bringing something special!  We had read, "Horton Hears a Who" by Dr. Suess, and Daddy was bringing home the movie version.  He was so excited to watch it!  (Plus, I had told him that Daddy might let him eat some popcorn while he watched it!)  I'm not really sure which he was more excited about.  :)  I had a meeting to go to, so Daddy watched the movie with the boys - twice!  I told Adam that when the movie was over, I wanted Evan to compare and contrast the book and movie version and then decide which he liked best.  So when I got home from my meeting, I asked Adam how it went.  When he asked Evan which one he liked better, Evan said, "The elephant game.  When the elephant fell in the hole and got eaten by a lion!"  HA!  Gotta love that little guy!  From the moment I stepped in the door, Evan was asking if we could play it again! 

"Angus Lost" by Marjorie Flack

To complement our study of the Letter Dd, we have been reading, "Angus Lost" by Marjorie Flack.  We completed its Lapbook today.  Evan has really enjoyed this book and the activities associated with it.


Front and Back Cover



Inside of the "Angus Lost" Lapbook.



Dd is for...Dolls, Dog, Dinosaur, and Door.



Angus outside of the Cave.



Angus inside of the Cave.



Inside the "Angus Lost" Lapbook with the flap opened.



Sorting game - dogs with long legs and short legs.



Dog Matching Game.

Templates for the "Angus Lost" Lapbook can be downloaded from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/.

Letter Dd Lapbook

We finished our review of the Letter Dd and completed the Letter Dd Lapbook.



Front and Back Cover



Inside of the Letter Dd Lapbook.



Showing the 'Words that Begin with the Letter Dd' Pinwheel, the Dancing Dogs Puzzle Pieces, and the Little Donkey book.



Letter Dd Manipulatives - Doctor Doggy and Dolphin.

Templates for the materials seen above can be downloaded from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ and http://www.dltk-teach.com/.

The Tower of Babel and Review of the Letter Dd

Today's Bible Story was about the Tower of Babel.  Natually, both of the boys then wanted to play with blocks and build towers!  Evan would build a tower and Alan would attempt to put a piece on and more often than not, he would accidentally knock it over.  Evan was patient with him...at first, but then he didn't want Alan 'helping' anymore!  So he decided to get his Number Bucket and build a tower out of that on the table, where Alan couldn't reach as easy.  He would build it and then knock it over and build it again.  (It's okay if it falls, as long as he was the one that knocked it over!)  But then he decided his tower wasn't high enough.  He kept saying, "Build it as high as the walls, Mommy!"  So I added a few blocks to it and went as high as I could.  Both boys thought this was amazing!  While building our towers, we sang a song that I made up.  It's to the tune of "The B-I-B-L-E".  It goes:  "The B-A-B-E-L, the B-A-B-E-L, the people built the Tower of Babel, B-A-B-E-L."  We sang it enough that Evan could sing along with me.  Both Evan and Alan recognized the tune, and after one time we sang "The B-A-B-E-L", Evan starting singing "The B-I-B-L-E".  So then everytime we sang the Babel version, we went ahead and sang the Bible version too. 



Alan 'helping' Evan build his tower.



Evan building an even bigger tower on the table.

 

Evan wanted a tower as high as the walls!

After everyone was tired of building towers, we reviewed the Letter Dd.  We read, "Angus Lost" and looked through Evan's lapbook that he had made.  We put a few finishing touches on it and played the different games in it.  Evan loves the Dog Matching Game.  We played it over and over.  Then I wrote the word 'dog' on the board and we talked about the letters in it.  Evan wanted to write it too.  He did a great job!  His 'g' looked like a 'q', but I was still really impressed.  We haven't talked about the Letter Gg yet and he had never attempted to write it before, so all things considered, he did GREAT!

Evan's first attempt at writing the word 'dog'.  TERRIFIC!

Alan loves playing with the Letter Flashcards.  So we matched the big cards to the small cards.  Alan loves cats, so he always wants to the hold the Cc Flashcard.  He looks at it and meows!  Here lately, he has been talking cat a lot.  He just walks around meowing!  He sleeps with a cat too and when I put him to bed, he lays there and talks and meows to his cat.  It's hilarious!  Sometimes, when I say a word and ask what letter it starts with, I emphasize the starting sound.  For example, I might say, "B B Bumblebee."  Today, while holding the Letter Cc flashcard, Alan looks at me and says, "B B Cat!"  He's so precious!  Evan thought it was hilarious!


Matching the flashcards.

We practiced writing the Letter Dd on the flashcard and then got out our Letter Dd puppets - Doctor Doggy and Dolphin.  We put on puppet shows for each other.  We had a few things to glue into the Letter Dd Lapbook and a few pictures to color.  So we finished that up and Alan helped Evan color the pictures.   

Writing the Letter Dd.



Evan putting on a puppet show with Doctor Doggy and Dolphin.

The boys put some finishing touches on the Letter Dd Lapbook.



Colors

Both boys have just loved playing with the pop blocks (which I discovered are really called snap cubes - I like my name better!).  They have been perfect for sorting and sequence exercises with Evan and color recognition with Alan.



I guess Alan wanted Tigris to help him sort the colors!  Or maybe he just wanted to tackle her!



Alan made a snake!

Evan wanted to make Adam and Eve out of the pop blocks!  I did my best, and he LOVED them!

When we started playing school today, Evan got out a book called, "My Colors."  He couldn't wait to read it!  So I decided we would go ahead and have a color day.  We talked about the different letters in the word color.  According to Evan, you spell the word 'color' (this is what he said as I pointed to each letter), "C - O - #1 - circle - say it with me!"  As mentioned in a previous post, Evan says, "say it with me," when he is unsure or doesn't know the answer.  I wrote the word 'Color' on the board and he copied it.  I was really impressed!  He did a great job!



"C - O - #1 - circle - say it with me!"

After we read "My Colors," I thought it would be fun to paint a picture.  At the front of this book, it has a picture of a set of watercolors and paint blobs for each color.  Evan had fun trying to copy the picture.  When he was done, he wanted me to paint a picture of Thomas and Percy. 


My little artist.

 We used the bucket of Transportation counters to do some sorting and sequencing exercises.  Old egg flats work great for this sort of thing!  


Evan sorted them all by color.

I was going to do a simple pattern exercise by making a train out of constuction paper and putting circle stickers on it, but then I couldn't find my circle stickers.  Our Bible story for the day was about Noah's ark, so instead of circle stickers, we put animal stickers (2 by 2) on the freight cars.  Evan has a computer game where James transports animals to the zoo.  He uses 3 freight cars to help him.  So our little exercise turned into the perfect opportunity to act out his computer game!
 

Cutting out his freight cars.



Putting animals on his train.

Since I couldn't find my circle stickers, I thought we would just do some sticker games from a sticker book. 

Matching the stickers to the right color.

Pop Blocks

We didn't have a lot of time to play school today, but Evan loved the little bit that we did!  I have a bag of a bunch of Math manipulatives in the cabinet and Evan kept seeing them and wanting to get them out.  He thought it was a game.  Since I wanted to review numbers today, I thought it would be perfect to get out a 'Math game' to play. 

We reviewed the number flashcards and did some counting exercises.  In the process he practiced drawing several shapes and we would count them.  His favorite thing to draw right now is Mike (the little green monster off Monsters, Inc - the one with 1 eye.)  Drawing circles ended up drawing Mike.  I didn't get a picture of it before he scribbled all over it, but it really was pretty good! 

We practiced writing the Number 1 and 2 and then got out the Pop Blocks.  I'm sure these have a real, much more official name, but Pop Blocks work for us!  Evan thought they were awesome.  They come in a set of 10 little blocks per color that all pop together.  We played several sequencing games, and then just had fun building different things with them.  Evan first wanted to build a snake, then a train, a house, and we ended with a couple of dogs.  He had so much fun and did not want to put them away.  We had some things we had to go do this evening and the second we got back home and through the door, he was begging to go play school some more.  He just wanted to play with the Pop Blocks!  Who says school has to be boring?!  The Orr Homeschool Adventures sure aren't!  We have a lot of fun, and he doesn't even realize that he is learning a lot!  That's what it's all about.



Evan told me that #1 was his favorite number!



An old egg carton made the perfect base for our game.

 

Evan had fun making snakes and would have them 'slither' off the table!

Building a train using sequencing skills.

Evan loved making dogs with the Pop Blocks.

"The Red Carpet" by Rex Parkin

Today, we finished "The Red Carpet" Lapbook by Rex Parkin.

  

The front cover.



The inside.



The inside with the flaps open.



Close up view of the 'What is Red' fold up.



Close up view of the town map covered with 'red carpet'.

Templates for "The Red Carpet" Lapbook can be downloaded at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/.