A Monstrous Way to Learn

This week my son has been jumping at the bit to do extra school activities.  It all started with this movie, which in turn led to non-stop chatter about writing a sequel to it.  From there it was pretty easy to determine I needed to create some fun monster activities.

This monstrous theme was a huge hit.  Here’s a few pics.

	Tracing Monster University Names Getting my son to do any writing activities usually requires “pulling teeth.”  However, he was begging for me to print this sheet off for him.  (From K Extension Pack)
	Monster Skip Counting Puzzles I printed this activity 4 pages to a sheet to save some paper.  I cut the puzzles apart and he glued them all to the same piece of construction paper. He used the skip counting mats (not shown here) to make sure he was gluing down the right strip. This activity worked on skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. (K Extension Pack)
	Monster Graphing I think he did this activity at least 3 times in the same day.  We just put our sheet in the Crayola Dry-Erase Activity.  He rolled the die down the stairs for a little more exercise. *wink*  (K Extension Pack)
	Monster Pre-Writing As I mentioned before, my boy hates writing practice, but he was all over this activity.  He even added some kids behind the doors for the monsters to scare. (From Preschool Pack)
	Labeling Parts of a Monster This was another activity that we pulled out of the preschool pack.  He actually cut out all the words by himself!  He is getting so much better at cutting.  All our practice is paying off!

We have a few more we haven’t gotten to yet, including some from Disney’s Family Pack.  If you want to grab this fun kindergartner monster theme pack and/or a tot or preschooler pack head to 2 Teaching Mommies.


I’m linking up to Preschool Corner.

There are affiliate links, so if you purchase anything through an affiliate link, you give back a percentage to our family…thanks!

Schooling Through the Summer

Last Fall I started doing Kindergarten with Lil’Man 2 days a week. He was 4.5. My goal was to provide a bit of a challenge for him, while giving myself some grace.   I was 6 months pregnant at the time and didn’t know how everything would go if I waited to start after Lil’Bro arrived.  This gave me 2 years to finish Kindergarten and learn to adjust to having a little babe running around, while homeschooling.

Unfortunately, things changed a little more than expected when Lil’Bro arrived.  Needless to say, school was put on hold.  I decided last month to jump back in, but with a limited focus.  We are only doing bible, math, handwriting and scissors skills.  We are also reading lots of books for our library Summer reading program and if the boy requests, some theme activity packs.

For math we are using Saxon K, which is a pretty easy for Lil’Man.  I wish I would have seen this placement test prior to purchasing it.  Saxon 1 would have been a better fit, but he still enjoys doing the activities.

Here’s a look at what we did this week in math.

	Saxon K Les 39: Identify/Count Pennies One area in math that is new to him is coins.  This week we learned all about pennies.  He knew its name, but didn’t know its value.  However, the other coins were a little more difficult for him.  I plan to make a Coin Observation printable to help him retain the info a little bit better.
	Saxon K Les 40: Naming Attributes This activity had Lil’Man laying the pieces out into a matrix based on attributes. When he finished I pointed and said this is a matrix. In which he quickly asked “What’s a matrix?” “This.” Yeah, didn’t work the second time either. I searched the term to find an easy way to explain it to him. Does anyone else find it hard to simplify things?
	Saxon K Les 41: Making a Pictograph Lil’Man has been working with graphs for quite a while.  We had to call our cousins and Meme to get a few more eye colors for our graph.  I think that was his favorite part.  Instead of creating the graph out of construction paper I went ahead and created a printable.  It took a lot less prep time.

Overall, our summer set up is pretty laid back and we can get it done before Lil’Bro wakes up from his morning nap.  Hopefully, it will stay that way.

There are affiliate links, so if you purchase anything through an affiliate link, you give back a percentage to our family…thanks!