S is for Snow!

A new year, a new theme and lots of new activities! I am thrilled! I have so much fun putting all this stuff together and the bonus this time is that over the holidays I was able to plan and print everything I needed for the next 3 weeks! So here we are learning about the letter 'S'  and snow and snowmen and winter and million other things! Preschool rocks!

Piper cut out and glued the 'S' objects to the letter poster to display on our wall. You can find this prinatable at Homeschool Creations.

Then Piper worked on some pre writing skills from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter S unit.

Next, she drew a picture of what she likes to do in the snow..."I like to play all by myself in the snow." If you haven't guessed already, my daughter is little Miss Independant! I don't know if you can make it out or not but she drew herself at the bottom of the page, lying in the snow and me at the top watching her. She wishes. If I have to be outside on a cold winters day you better believe I'm going to be right in the snow playing too!

We used water colors and Q-tips to paint a triangle to add to the shape section of our school wall. She also added some leftover Christmas stickers for good measure!

She practiced writing her numbers 1-5. For Christmas I got a Scotch laminator which I was SO excited about! It has come in so handy for activities like these in which we can use a dry erase marker so that the printable can be used over and over again!

Making 'S' with her Do-A-Dot Markers that we bought her for Christmas. These are so much fun! She keeps asking to use them! Also, there are so many online printables specifically for using these!

Here she is using white paint and the eraser of a pencil to paint a snowstorm! There is something about that 'tap, tap' noise when you are making dots that kids LOVE! (And that will eventually drive a parent nutty!)

Piper also combed through her new ABC Letter Box , an idea I found at Spell Outloud. Its filled with alphabet pasta that I dyed using food coloring and vinegar and has objects that start with the letter 'S' hidden in it! Her Mookie and Papa were very helpful in finding objects small enough to fit in it for us and then whenever we come across something in our household that starts with 'S' that could go in the box, we pop it in!



So far we have scissors, a snowman, a packet of salt and a packet if sugar, a starfish puzzle piece, soap, a stick, a snowflake, Santa and several 'S' magnents in it!

Pipe is continuing to work on shapes and I found this cute activity from Itsy Bitsy Printables Frosty Days Pack. She knows most of the basic shapes now so it was nice that 'hexagon' was thrown in there too! It gave opportunity to talk about a new shape!

We also did this Snowflake Letter Fishing exercise from Musings of Me's Snow unit. This was an awesome activity and Piper enjoyed it so much! First, I printed and cut out the snowflakes with the letters on them, then added paper clips to them. We used the magnetic fishing rod from the Melissa and Doug Bug Catching Puzzle Game Taitum recieved for Christmas rather than fashioning our own. She would fish for a snowflake and then go find it on her letter sheet. Once she had found it she marked it off by dabbing it with her Do-A-Dot marker!

Piper also got a coloring calendar for Christmas so we spent some time coloring January's page together. Coloring is something I'm really trying to work on with Piper. She has NO patience for it. She will give a little scribble and be done! So I've been trying to take some time lately to sit and color with her so she can see exactly what the finished product is supposed to be and, hopefully, show her that it can be enjoyable! Its been such a nice thing to do together since we tend to chat the whole time and just really enjoy each other's company!

I've been continuing with the schedule of books that came with the Sonlight P3/4 curriculum since I feel that they are very valuable stories regardles of the fact that they don't match the theme we are doing at the time. This week one of the books was Pete's A Pizza Board Book,

a very cute story about a dad who pretends his son is a pizza as part of some imaginary play in order to cheer him up when he can't go outside to play ball with his friends because of the rain. Of course we then had a real hankering for some pizza so thats just what we made for lunch! piper washed and cut the mushrooms and assembled the mini pizzas herself! (Notice Tait in the back ground, waiting ever so patiently for her lunch!)

Yesterday evening, after supper, Piper and I sat down to play this snowflake memory game from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter S unit. It was a little bit difficult for Piper since snowflakes look alike at first glance! Initially, she tried to match them according to color until I explained that they had to be the same shape too! I thought she was going to give up but then she made a match and the game was on! The great part about this game is that there are only 12 cards so not too terribly hard to find a match once you get the hang of it!

Once we were done the memory game, Piper eyed this S trace printable in my homeschool binder. She absolutely loves doing these so she asked if she could do the new 'S' one. Obviously, I jumped on her desire to practice making a letter and she sat there for a good 20 minutes or so, tracing 'S', erasing and repeating! (This printable is also from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter S unit).

Finally, here is one of the songs we've been singing - "The Snowman Song". I think its probably supposed to be to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot" but we like to mix it up a bit! :) You can find this song and many other winter related songs here. Enjoy!