July/August Pre K with Katie

I'm a bad blogger!  I let my Pre K with Katie posts slide over the summer!  Here we are, catching up.  Pretend it's not September, okay?  (I certainly am!)

Okay, first up, one of the biggest things Katie has learned the last couple of months is how to defend herself!  Sort of.  We're still working on it, actually.  See, Katie was "the baby" in her foster group at the orphanage.  And since Luke never snagged a toy or swatted anybody, she was the baby here in many ways, too.  So when we brought home tiny terrors who walked up to her and grabbed what she was playing with, she would just stand there like, "What the heck?"  I had to tell her it was okay not to let them take things from her, and that she could tell them NO.  Katie has a fairly tiny little voice and a holler.  There's pretty much no in-between with her.  We learned that the whispered no is not very effective, so she's trying harder to use her big voice no with them.

Fortunately, after I explained to her that all our toys would be staying here when the toddlers leave, she's been really great about sharing.  But sharing refers to letting them play with some of the many toys she's NOT currently using.  She shouldn't have to let them have what she's actually playing with at the moment.

We worked on folding over the summer.  I had this book left over from Jack's preschool years, so Katie has done a few pages from it.

Since the toddlers' arrival, I've been a slacker mom in terms of intentional homeschooling.  Fortunately, it was summer, which is all about play and relaxing and hanging out with older sibs who are usually at school, anyway, right?  And the girls ask to play with the "educational" stuff quite often, so I tell myself I get some credit for that.

In fact, summer play is about board games, too.  I love that we have a household big enough that my kids have someone to play games with them.  Because, um, I'm not very good about it.

Summer is also a time for vacations, such as our trip to Nevada, where this picture was taken with the massive dump truck from the gold mine.

I have to include this because these dresses are complicated to put on.  Neither one of the girls was able to manage it.  So, this became a "learning to help each other" teachable moment.  These dresses really should be ironed, though, so I'm not sure you'll be seeing them again.

I have to say, I'm loving the Pinterest idea of sticking a metal pan to the wall at kid height.  I used Command Strips to attach it, and it makes the perfect surface for Katie's Leap Frog magnet set.  She's really picked up a lot of letter sounds!  (Although, today, I asked her what letter made the first sound in BANANA and she said Y, so it appears we have a way to go yet.)  I'm planning to surprise her with different magnet sets as we go along, to keep things interesting.  There are animal magnets that would be great for our current study of classification; magnets to go with Very Hungry Caterpillar; magnets for our nutrition studies; and I think even the teens would give these cool magnets a whirl!

Speaking of magnets, we have our Fundanoodle magnets upstairs, for learning how to build letters.

We've gotten plenty of fresh air this summer, whether in our own back yard...

...or at our many local parks, which is great for the gross motor skills development.

In fact, I have a hankering to get to the park soon.  If it wasn't going to be over 100* the rest of the week, I'd be planning a park day.

I think I've mentioned our continent book here before, but I seriously love this one.  Not a review item, just a great book for the most basic of geography introduction.  I wanted to teach Katie the continents.  This book is perfect for that.  Honestly, I don't even read all the words to her yet.  We skip the animals altogether at this point (which means, when we add them in, the book will be "new" all over again) and just work on continent names.

And books lead to snuggling.  We sent this picture to Daddy at work one day because he texted us while we were reading.

It's a lousy picture because of the shadows on the patio, but I love that she's showing off a treasure she found outside.  In our homeschool right now, we're learning about explorers.  And exploring and learning go hand in hand, be it the New World, or simply the great outdoors.  I'm so grateful to be a part of Katie's adventures.  It's fun to watch, and it's an honor to get to be the one the girls come to with their questions about what and how and why.


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