The Connett Connection

We have been very sporadic with our lessons the last 2 weeks due to family being in town and sickness running though our home, so this post will cover what we have done since our last post! My daughter has been enjoying learning how to count money!  These activities, which focus on introducing and counting pennies were some we used the first day.  The piggy bank page is a free download from Tweet Resources and the booklet is a free download from Klassy Kinders! We also explored our pennies and had fun looking for Abraham Lincoln on the back of the penny! Someone has a birthday soon!  She, on her own, decided to make a countdown chart where she will cut off one number each day until she gets to the end, then it will be her birthday! We have bee learning about Mexico the last few weeks and we did this yarn art after looking at pictures of traditional yarn paintings of the Huichol people of Mexico! My 3 year old son is also finally beginning his sch...

We have had some relaxed weeks the last two weeks and this upcoming week will be less as well.  It is spring break week for the public schools and we are planning a trip to the aquarium for the kids big birthday present.  My next weeks post will focus on that trip! This flower is just one in a part of a series of craftivities we have been working through.  This one is for the am family. My daughter still loves these puzzles, so I have begun making more to go along with the next word families we are working with. Continuing our transportation theme, we did this land, sea and air sort. In math, we have been working on making shapes with pattern blocks.  This has been a nice change to the addition and subtraction lessons we had been doing.  It is also the last lesson from our math curriculum.  I still have more math planned, but it is all extra! MORE WAYS TO CONNECT Teachers Pay Teachers Store Boom Store Facebook Page Hands on Activiti...

So you have been saving those tops from applesauce or baby food pouches, because, lets face it, you are a teacher and you do not throw ANYTHING away if it MIGHT be useful... right?  So now you have a little collection started and you are wondering, "What in the world can I do with all these colorful pouch tops?!"  This post strives to give you several fun and engaging ideas to use these tops in your classroom. Counters These pouch tops make excellent counters for math, especially when learning to count or recognize numbers 1-20.  ( Counting Mats 1-10 and Counting Mats 11-20 ) Patterns Create patterns or use pattern cards to complete patterns with these pouch tops!  You can get a set of pattern cards for FREE here ---> Pouch Top Printables Building A Pyramid Build A Tower Color Sorting Give students different colored tops and have them sort the tops according to color.  You can let them group the tops on their own or give the...

We had a very productive week last week, despite a 3 day sickness with the youngest and several doctor's visits. We continued our week with more transportation activities.  She drew this picture of a mom driving a car with her kid in the back seat.  They were going to spend the night at a friends's house... hence the suit case in the back.  She had a whole story to tell for her picture! We also continued our word family activities with our AG word family puzzles . We also did a transportation themed science activity called Sink the Boat ! We used a plastic container and tried to fill it with various objects to sink it! We used this recording sheet to predict how many of each item we thought we would need and then we tested our predictions. We found we needed 10 rocks to sink the boat, which was more than we predicted.  My daughter under predicted every category! We made this rainbow craft this week by finding colored pages from magazin...

So I did not make a weekly post like week, simply because we went through the whole week and did not take one single picture of anything we did!  I just did not even think to grab my camera! We started off this week with a celebration.  My youngest turned 1!   He would NOT touch his cake.  He wanted to know what kind of torture we were putting him under... My daughter started learning subtraction.  She had a little more difficulty picking it up, but once she remembered the subtraction sign could mean take away, the concept clicked in her head. My daughter does things like this with her sight word papers ALL THE TIME.  She is very artistic and at first it drove me nuts that it wasn't completely done correctly, but I now accept her creativity and as long as I know she knows the word/concept we are practicing, I let the artistic flare slide. We have been working a while on CVC words, especially isolating the beginning, middle and ending so...

This week started off great, but ended with two little boys with viruses.  I hate when the little ones are sick.  We did complete 3 days of school. We are continuing to learn and practice our addition facts!  We did sums of 6, 7, and 8 this week. My two year old was watching his sister do her math and he was so eager to "do school like sissy."  When she finished her math, I drew a large letter B (what his name starts with) and told him to color his letter!  He had so much fun, though he really did not focus on coloring the letter, but all over the board! My daughter has come a long way in writing.  We did this snowman writing page where she had to lists the things that she needed to build a snowman, then she got to draw a picture of her snowman! We also made this cute tree topper for our Christmas tree!  It took us two days to get it done (because she wanted to take a break and we forgot to finish it the first day). Here is...

So the last two weeks have been very unconventional in our home school journey.  For week 14, we were out of town at my grandmother's house.  I told my daughter I would only take a few days of school since we were already 8 days behind, but that I would not make her have school lessons everyday since we were technically on vacation. I love the way my daughter will sometimes do her writing in artistic ways.  She loves to be cutesy and loves art, so I do not correct her when she does things like the above writing.  She did what I asked in a way that was fun for her.  The fact that she thought to make her letters this way was impressive to me as I've never modeled letters looking like this nor have I ever seen her make them this way before.  Everyday we do school work, I have her write the date as the first thing we do.  We talk about the days of the week, month of the year and the number of the day during this time as well! We did another guid...

Another week has ended!  A new one is about to begin!  We had a lot of fun this week, especially with our big project and a new writing plan! We are finishing up a study on the grasslands !  Just a few more days left and then it is one to studying the forest! We had fun using these clip cards to figure out what type of grassland each of these animals lived in. Part of testing her knowledge of the grasslands was doing this writing paper .  I ask her to draw a grassland and then two animals that live in the grassland. Our big project this week was making this grasslands box .  We did a small portion of the project each day this week and on Friday we added our animals and the kids got to play with it.  My 2 year old was so excited to add animals to the box.  He came running over with his favorite animal, his shark.  He got a lesson on why sharks do not belong in the grasslands! Someone posted this idea for writing rubrics on Fac...