Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Preschool 2012-2013

We used the ABC Jesus Loves Me curriculum this year. I would definitely recommend this program. Two thumbs up from us! Z learned how to write his name, address, and phone number. He learned how to dial and answer the phone and call 911. We did many gross motor and fine motor activities. Some favorites were the memory obstacle course, the memory verse maze, the letter formation maze, and finding "buried treasure" in play-doh. I don't have pictures of everything we did, but I tried to include as many as I could in this post!

Here is the best part. I started each day reading a Psalm or the weekly Bible story with my little guy. He learned so many Bible stories and lessons and "Bible time" is just part of our routine. I loved that character formation was a big part of this program, and it is interwoven into the crafts, games, and songs. It was good for ME to learn easy, clear definitions of self-control, patience, and kindness. As I look back over the past school year, the thing that really stands out to me about ABCJLM is the focus on character traits. Three- and four-year-olds are learning character at this age anyway -- for better or for worse. It's a pivotal, foundational time for character. This gave us great opportunities to talk about character qualities, how we struggle with them, and pray together for help with them. There are so many situations that naturally come up when you are four years old that are blatantly about character. What choice are you going to make right now? A good one or a bad one? These situations are so simple that this age is the perfect time to put a name on these choices. Example: Are we going to use self-control and choose not to whine? Let's look at how Jesus used self-control when faced with temptation. Are we going to obey dad right away, with a happy heart? Let's look at what happened when Jonah disobeyed God. You get the idea. We are always growing in character, but preschool is the perfect time to talk about it plainly because the character choices that preschoolers face are so uncomplicated.

I liked that the activities were not too long/complicated and we could move at Z's pace. We could take breaks whenever we wanted to just play, visit friends, eat, or do housework.

One of my favorite aspects of ABCJLM was the way you teach writing. Before learning the skill of holding and writing with a pencil, the letter and number formations are taught with tactile sandpaper letters they can trace with their finger. And they are taught in a sequence of how the characters are built. So instead of alphabetical order, the first letter taught is lowercase "l" and all the "straight line characters." Then they learn angled line characters, circle characters, bubble characters, and so on. This made it not overwhelming to learn new characters, because Z was just building on what he already knew.

The following are photos of a lot of (but not all of) what Z did and made. They are not in chronological order, and some are not right-side-up. :-) This is for our personal keepsake, for anyone considering the ABCJLM curriculum, or for anyone wanting preschool ideas. Enjoy. :-)


Made a Ten Commandment Train for memorization


Ten Commandment Train


Ten Commandment Train


Learning the Calendar, days of the week, months of the year


Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz stick puppets
Learning about Goodness
(We had a Bible story theme for each week.
By the end of the week, Z was able to tell me the story.)


Jesus and Peter walking on the water stick puppet
Learning Faith and Trust


Binoculars for keeping our eyes on Jesus
Learning Faith and Trust


Boat - learning opposites sink and float


Connect the Dots


Sheep for playing "Find the Lost Sheep"
Learning about Forgiveness


Joseph Forgives His Brothers
Learning that sins are bad choices and make our hearts dirty.
But when we ask Jesus to Forgive us, he takes the sins away
and makes our hearts clean!


Puffy Ball Jar
Rewarding good choices
(We also use an "If-Then" Picture Chart for bad choice consequences)


Naaman is Healed
Learning Thankfulness


Story of the Ten Lepers
The thankful one stood out to Jesus


Thankful Watch
Learning to be Thankful at all times


The week of Thanksgiving we used this box to
physically place things we are thankful for inside.
At the end of the day we would thank God for those things
as we emptied the box.


Hand-and-Foot turkey
Thanksgiving


Drawing our family several times
(those are teeth, if you're wondering)
Fine Motor


The "manna" was all over the living room floor
when Z came down in the morning.
He got to collect enough for the day and put it in his basket.
Learning Self-Control and that God provides food.


Temptations of Jesus chart
Cutting and pasting, sequencing
Learning Self-Control


"Waffle" :)


Painting with Q-tips
Fine Motor


Parable of the Talents
Learning to be Responsible with what God gives us


The Widow's Offering
Learning about Giving


The Lord is my Shepherd
Learning about Gentleness from Jesus




Psalm 23
Learning to be a sheep and trust our Gentle Shepherd


Jesus Heals the Lame Man who was lowered through the roof
Learning to be Kind to our friends


Cain and Abel
Learning about Peace


Field trip to "A Day Out with Thomas"
Dictated and "wrote" a story about it.
Sequencing


Christmas
Learning about Love


Robot - cutting shapes and gluing
Fine Motor


Connect the Dots
Fine Motor
Learning about Love


Crown
Little King Josiah story
Learning to be Attentive


Cutting lines and shapes
Fine Motor


Tactile letters and numbers for finger-tracing
Learning letter formations
Loved this part. So easy to remember.
We also used these with the Memory Maze.
I did the work of making them from sandpaper,
but glad I did because they made learning the formations so easy.


Learning to write with letter formations
Start on green dots
Stop on red dots
We used all of these with page protectors and dry erase markers.


Learning to write with letter formations
Start on green dots
Stop on red dots
Trace and copy



Learning to write with letter formations
Start on green dots
Stop on red dots
Trace and copy


Learning to write with number formations
Start on green dots
Stop on red dots
Trace and copy


Letter of the Week / Phonics


Ants
(Fingerprints)


Blue, Brown, Black
(paint)


Clouds
(marker, cotton)


Diamonds
(construction paper)


Elephants
(crayon, stickers)


Feathers


Green and Gold Glitter Glue


Holes
(hole punch)


Instruments
(stickers)


Jelly Beans


Kites
(construction paper, marker, string)


Leaves


Markers
(stickers, obviously)


Newspaper


Orange, CheeriOs


Pink, Purple, Peach Paint


Quilt
(fabric)


Rainbow, Red Rectangles
(construction paper)


Seeds


Triangles
(those colored foam sheets you can cut)


Umbrellas
(paper, glue)


Vegetables
(paper, glue)


Wiry Wiggly Worms
(pipe cleaners, tape)


Painting over white Xs so they show up
(white crayon, paint)
I know this is lame, but Z thinks it's SO funny that X is for "X." :)


Yellow Yarn


 Zebra
(construction paper)



Number posters
(stickers)


Learning the Seasons
A great visual for learning the cycle
and key attributes of each.
I printed off the trees, snowflakes, leaves, and apples.
Z cut them out and pasted additional pictures from magazines.
He did a "seasons presentation" several times with it.
Information


Drawing and painting shapes
Fine Motor
Visual perception


Spring Garden
Cutting and pasting
Fine motor


Weekly Memory Verses that correlate with the Bible story/character trait
We reviewed and briefly talked about these each day after Bible time.


Memory Verse Maze
The rule is you can't go off of the yarn.
You follow the yarn until you come to a verse.
You have to say the verse from memory before you can move on to the next verse.
Memory verses were boring until this. Z LOVED this.
We also used this with the sandpaper letters
for memorizing the letter and number formations.





Memory Verse Maze


U.S. Map Floor Puzzle
I'm including this because Z just loves it and has to do it at least once a day.


Making music
He likes to play the bongos while I play piano
and sing the song/hymn of the week.




Building stuff


Learning to read
We started this in February in addition to ABCJLM and it has been just right.
It makes sense, it's easy, and it works.
My kid can read!


Learning to count to 100;
stars for each of the 100 Reading Lessons


Lots of books.
LOTS!
I appreciated the book of the week suggestions from ABCJLM.


Star = symbol of God's Promise to Abraham:
As many descendants as stars in the sky.
Learning about Patience


Joseph in Jail
Learning to be Patient



Our "textbooks"
The Bible, The Beginner's Bible, Big Thoughts for Little People,
Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing, The Jesus Storybook Bible


Helping Hand Poster
Learning about Jesus the Servant-King
Jesus Washes the Disciples' Feet
Whenever we caught each other serving, we gave that person a sticker


Jonah and the big fish puppet
Learning about Obedience


Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
Fire Painting
Learning to trust and Obey God no matter what,
because God is always able to save us.


Wocket Pocket
From the book "There's A Wocket in My Pocket"


Using words to express feelings


Tracking
Visual perception - left to right


Color tracking, Copying, Visual perception


Learning food groups, Painting with vegetables, Easter eggs
Information


Painting with watercolors
Fine Motor


Painting
Learning about Honesty and that we can't hide anything from God.
The paint covers up the word "lie" in white crayon, which was supposed to show through the paint but it didn't.
This photo is sideways but instead it looked like there was a cross in the middle when it was right-side-up.
God's grace covers even lying, right? ;)


We did other activities and learned about other things too like responsibilities around the home, mazes, crafts, careers, field trips, left and right, opposites, tying shoelaces, memorized the books of the Bible, lots of gross motor activities and playing outside with Daddy, Operation Christmas Child, etc. I will add to this post as we finish up the year.

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

Wow...that is a lot of pictures!:-) But seriously...that is outstanding, Kati. Great job with Zeke this year! I'm gonna look up that book on reading too!

Kati Potratz said...

Thank you! Yes, it is a lot of pictures! :) I'm sure they have much more meaning to us than to anyone else who reads this. What a fun and meaningful year.