His first Calvert lessons have him reviewing basic skills he is solid in, so we aren’t spending much time there right now. We are spending a majority of our time focusing on our You Can Read printables, which is challenging him at a perfect level. We are doing many other additional activities also and having a blast! Here’s a bit of the literacy fun we have had recently…
We worked with unit 3 from You Can Read, for about 2 weeks, which seems to be what our plan for now will be. I want him to have plenty of time to explore the words fully before adding more. 
Here colored his sight word color by # words…
Word puzzles, which he really does not like so I will give him a break from these for awhile!
Play Dough Words, he really likes these now that I made our own play dough!
Funny fonts…
Tracing…
Finding words he knows in the sentences…
I created the first add-on to the You Can Read program {base printables are free once they are released on the blog, add-ons will only be in the ad-free section}. He enjoyed these more than I thought he would The first day they frustrated him, but once he really grasped what the boxes were for, he liked the challenge. I laminated mine and cut them into strips and plan to put them on a ring for future practice.
Word Play is a BIG component to our Kindergarten learning. Here are a few of the active things we did recently with his new words…
We use our cubes a LOT! If you don’t have an Education Cubes membership, I highly recommend it! Jenn created specific word cards for the You Can Read program and they are a perfect addition! I add in his new words and keep his old ones so he is constantly reviewing. We have 4 cubes so after we fill those up, I will begin removing the words he is most solid with.
One day we took a cube outside and water painted the word he rolled!
After he colors his sight words, I cut off the end and laminate the cards. Now that we have 12 words we are able to make sentences! We also pull in objects for our sentences. Here he was reading “It is my cat.”
For a review, I pulled off all of his word wall words and put them in his workbox. He had to read each one and then put it under the proper letter on his word wall.
He continues to LOVE our easy readers, we are using First Little Readers, and Sight Word Readers.
This week we introduced “My Bear” and “ Animals” {Sight Word Readers}, and “I Like School” and “What Is For Supper?” {First Little Readers}. He really enjoyed these little books a LOT. He gets so excited when we complete a new book and he adds it to his reading basket! Each day that we add a new book, he also chooses an old book to read again to me. We are using Guided Reading strategies during this time, which you can read about here.
We also do phonics work and still use Bob Books for this. Calvert has an intense phonics portion to their Kindergarten, he is just not there yet in the lessons so we are supplementing. Here he was reading one of his Bob Books…
We wrote the words one sound at a time on his Batman board and practiced before reading the book. He still struggles a bit, so we are in no rush.
After reading we played a word game. I drew a 3 part box for him and said a 3 letter word {mat, bus, web, mat} and had him isolate the 3 sounds and write them in the boxes. He did really well with this.
His math lessons have continued to be fairly “easy” for him. We continue to just follow the Calvert workbook and he enjoys the simple worksheets for the most part. He reviewed sorting, and shapes during this time period. Honestly we fly right through math at this point, which is fine. We do calendar almost everyday and will begin doing more math focused work once the skills introduced become a bit more difficult.
Hands on, learning toys, games, computer, themes, and more. This is where I plan to share everything else he has been up to that I happen to capture! These are the “extra” things we do in addition to his direct instruction which you will see above.
We had fun with a few of the Bird Printables, here he was matching his 3-part cards. A few of you have asked about this and what these are, they are a Montessori method of teaching, often referred to as Nomenclature Cards-I think that word is way to big, so I don’t use it, but that’s what they are! Here is a post I found that explains the concept well. He really enjoys doing his card work in our small pocket chart.
Working on warm and cool colors as he colored his birdhouses…
Helping the bird get to the bird house…
He LOVED, and I mean LOVED the Flap, Flap, & Fly Game from Mama Jenn!
We enjoyed some deck Play Dough time, which the boys loved!
We got some new Leapfrog movies thanks to Netflix!!! His favorites are Numbers Ahoy and Math to the Moon!
A few items we used…
Visit Preschool Corner {& 5K too} for more fun learning ideas!
