Mon/Tues... Reese

Rachel here. We've started back with our Rec Center classes, so Tuesdays and Wednesday will be a titch chaotic for a while. Today wasn't too treacherous... Reese did fairly well doing preschool this afternoon, but it's not ideal.

Anywhoodle. Monday and today's letter was /g/. Reese did super great with it. It's really neat to review the letters we've learned so far. If there is a sound she's unsure of, she looks at her wall of art and can figure it out by what she's made. For example... /a/ is kicking her butt for some reason. I showed her the /a/ sandpaper letter, and she looked at me and said "I just not sure." Then she immediately looked at the wall and said "oh! /a/!" It was super cute. She decorated her /g/ with gum drops, and we made ghost footprints. We usually do two art projects, but because we had art class today... I only opted for one.

I've also started a number project for Reese. We read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" for the 985234580239458th time, and turned our own caterpillar into a number chart for her. I found a really cute VHC template online and am using it to create a caterpillar for the numbers 1-20 around the mirror in our dining room/school room. Hopefully Reese will be inspired to use it for reference as she has with her letter sound projects.

This was a great find. While looking for goodie bag treats at Wal-Mart, I stumbled upon these partial word flash cards. This is how it was presented to Reese. She had to put all the pieces together into small three letter word puzzles. She did awesome. Sometimes she would have a card upside out and couldn't figure out how it fit in the word but knew that it did because of the picture.

This week we're using quite a few of Reese's Birthday gifts. Our friends are awesome and provided us with some really nice things. Aly got Reese this awesome "peg game." Reese really enjoyed matching the correct colored pegs to the pictures. She was even REALLY GREAT about sharing it with Emma Grace.

I've always wanted to do this art project! Marble painting!

Thanks to Jackson, Reese was able to practice lacing with something other than a shoe string and card stock. Reese is an awful lacer for the record. ;)

This activity was trying to say the least. Basically it's a basket full of objects that are in groups of 1-10. The idea is to sort all the objects and then place them with the correct flash card to show how many objects are in each group. (From Kathryn Kaye) Reese did well with the sorting, but we had to work together to count and match each of the piles with their coordinating number value. Reese is a really great sport when we're working on something that is harder for her. I've learned not to get frustrated with her... if I want her to learn the information and be able to one day do the tasks on her own, I've got to embrace her learning and really encourage her. Sometimes that's easier said than done, but I'm working very hard at it.

I was talking to Kate (aka Pearl) after Reese's party the other day about paper dolls. When I sat down the day after the party and was going through things for Reese's thank you notes, I really got to look at and figure out what exactly Reese got. She got this really cute magnetic doll from Annabel... much like paper dolls! So cute. Emma Grace LOVES this!!!!

I really wanted Reese to have this set of geometric shapes used to make pictures. Emma Grace got it for her. :)

I have quite a few workbooks that I've collected for Reese, and we've finally begun to dabble in them a bit in hopes to practice some writing skills amongst other things. She did a few pages in them this afternoon... I can't tell yet if she digs them or not.

You can barely see her markings... she writes very lightly... still learning to hold and control the pencil.

Brett got Reese these awesome wipe boards. They are so super cute and prompted me to try to get Reese to learn to write the letters in her name.

We first practiced on the chalkboard on the easel my dad and Kate got her. Very useful! Hers are OBVIOUSLY the backwards ones. :)

When she was practicing on the wipe boards though, she was able to do them facing the correct way. I've never taught anyone this young who is such a blank slate, so it's pretty interesting to me the things that she does.

Her idea of writing her name. :)

Today we practiced the letter E. She can't do the lower case one but was somewhat successful with the upper case... I guess I'll go back and try to teach her the upper case R tomorrow... try to get something fluid.

ART CLASS! We worked on a few projects today, but a couple of them are staying in class to dry, so we'll show them off next week. :)

We poured globs of paint onto a sheet of paper, covered it with plastic wrap, and then Reese rubbed the paint around with a rolling pin. It was cute.

Reese also made an American flag with ripped paper.

Tomorrow we have our first bouncy class... Emma Grace is also a student... so cute!