More Preschool

This week was a busy week with Westley's preschool. In Math, he worked more with pattern blocks and teddy bear counters. We also made a graph of boys and girls in our family. He even included Snoopy and Eliza in the graph. He learned that there are more boys than girls in our family. He has also enjoyed playing with the pattern blocks at other times of the day, and Caleb has played with them some as well.

In Reading, we worked more on memorizing the alphabet. He's almost got it down perfectly, he just gets confused in the L-P part (because it's so fast in the song), and he gets S and X mixed up. I think we will do one more week focusing on the whole alphabet and then we will start individual letters for the week and concentrate on their sounds.

In Science, we studied insects. We talked about what makes an insect an insect (six legs, three-part body, antennae). We studied ants and butterflies in more depth (mostly because I already had access to papers about ants and butterflies that we could use). When we talked about ants, we looked in the encyclopedia at lots of color photos of ants, close-ups. Then we went on an "Ant March", looking for ants outside, but pest control had come on Monday so we didn't find any. When we studied butterflies, we looked in the encyclopedia at the colorful pictures again and we talked about the life cycle of a butterfly. We will probably touch on butterflies again in the spring when I can get a kit and actually watch Painted Lady butterflies grow from caterpillars. We also talked about the differences between moths and butterflies, and I had a worksheet that I used in second grade where you identify which ones are moths and which are butterflies based on the criteria. After explaining the differences to Westley, he was able to identify all the butterflies and moths on the paper!

Other activities we did include talking about the difference between night and day. Westley just gets the terminology mixed up. Sometimes he says it's naptime when it's bedtime and sometimes he says that he wants to stay up all night when it's naptime. So we are trying to get him to remember what is what. The next thing we need to work on is time in general. Often he talks about doing something "last night" when it's something we did six months or a year ago.

We also had fun with some hidden picture activities. This past year, we've subscribed to a Highlights for Children book set of Hidden Pictures books. Westley has really enjoyed those. One of the last things I purchased before cancelling the subscription was a set of four Hidden Pictures books that contain masters for hidden picture activities. I copied three of those for this week and we used them in conjunction with the lessons about night/day and insects.

Sometimes the teaching is frustrating because Westley really wants to do his own thing and doesn't follow directions, but we are working on it. He is a very bright little boy, with a mind eager for knowledge. I hope to be able to channel that in the right direction, at least for now. I'm sure the public schools will whip that lust for learning right out of him...