Our Week in Review - Finishing Preschool!

Well, it has finally happened and I have terribly mixed feelings about it. After 13 years we no longer have a preschooler in the house. Yes, Little Man has officially graduated from the ranks of preschool, and will start kindergarten with me in the fall!

I will admit a piece of my heart is sad. The preschool years are SO sweet, so tiring, so busy, so in need of lots of patience, so full of hugs and kisses, and did I say sweet? But most of my heart is just full of gratitude for the privilege of watching Little Man grow and mature and learn, and for the added privilege I have of spending all day every day with him. I have treasured every moment of his preschool years, and I look forward to treasuring every moment of his kindergarten year as well!

In language arts, we worked on learning to write his name well, learning the sounds each letter makes, and learning to match upper and lower case letters together.





In math we worked on counting (not just saying the numbers, but one to one correspondence, touching objects as he counted) , grouping, and learning to recognize written numbers.



In history and science he insisted on doing everything his older siblings did! Here he is making a fish life cycle wheel.


We had recess every day!



And of course, lots of snuggle time and stories with mom.

I *loved* having him home for preschool and wouldn't have traded this year for anything.

Thank you Lord!

Z is for Zoo, part 2

As the culmination of the young 5's alphabet class this year, our entire co-op went to the zoo! It was such a fun field trip. It was hot, but not crowded, and we had a great time!


BFF's

Inside the butterfly house, we had butterflies clinging to our hair,


shirts,


and shorts.





A bird's eye view (or maybe a prairie dog's view?) of the prairie dog display.







Polar Bear paw prints. These were imbedded in real, actual ICE, and boy did it feel good!!



What secret do you think he's whispering?

14 students


and 4 moms


As we say goodbye to this school year, each of our families are so grateful for the fantastic co-op experience we had together. Thank you Lord!

Z is for Zoo, part 1

The last letter of the alphabet. It's just amazing to me how quickly this year sped by! At least it felt like that with our co-op! One minute we were talking about applesauce, and the next we were talking about the zoo. Wow.

First we read some books about zoo animals, and then we talked about which animals we might see at the zoo, and which animals we wouldn't. Here Little Man is explaining to us what "extinct" means, and that is why we wouldn't see a dinosaur at the zoo. He needed absolutely no prompting from me!


Then we began building our zoo. We had birds.



And some forest creatures (we debated for awhile whether or not forest animals would be at the zoo, but we decided to put them in ours).


We had a house for insects.


We had to really work hard at sharing and working together as a team.....


But we did it! Ta-da! Here is our zoo.


After this we made edible zebras for snack by painting melted white chocolate chips onto cookies.








What a great year it has been, learning from A to Z!

X is for "X marks the spot" and Y is for Yolk

I bet you have been wondering what we were going to do for the letter X, right? I have a pet peeve that most books and alphabet games say that "x is for xylophone". That word doesn't sound like X at all! Confusing to young learners. So we talked about lots of words that have the x sound at the end (fox, box, ox, ax) so they could really hear the sound, and then made pirates with big X's on their chests. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here is the writer's class down in Angela's new basement schoolroom. This picture doesn't do the room justice, it is really, really nice!! They are putting in a bathroom down there too, so there were construction items sitting around and a few of them you can see in this pic. Such a beautiful new room for learning, and lots of storage!



Up at the kitchen table, the young 5's worked on their pirates. This was quite popular with the boys!



Here is a finished pirate with yarn hair and a big X on his chest.

Next we boiled some eggs and then opened them up to see the yolks.




From the yolks we made deviled eggs, and most of the children really liked them! (the moms did too!)

I can't believe we are at the end of the alphabet and only have one more letter to learn about! Z will be really fun, as we are learning about the ZOO!!

W is for Whales and Waffles!

On "W" day, Angela was having some work done in her basement, so the writers got to have class in a TENT outside!! Is that fun, or what??!



While they were busy sharing their compositions and learning new writing techniques, the young 5's were busy reading about whales and making whales out of brown paper lunch sacks.


We did explain to them that the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a "big fish", but we took liberties and pretended it was a whale. Here Sally is demonstrating the whale swallowing Jonah.





After playing with Jonah and the Whale for a while, we made waffles for snack. Yum!





Another great day at co-op!