How are we already here gearing up for Kindergarten? April is going to fly by! We are going on a week-long beach vacation mid-month for my 30th birthday and then when we get home it will be May and we only have a few weeks of “school” in May before summer camps begin and then straight path to Kindergarten! Yikes! I’ll do a whole post about our Preschool journey. It has been so special. I won’t go on and on about that here, because that is going to be a really long post.
So for April we are doing things a bit different with Morning Basket and school. We are still on our bug unit and the girls are both loving it! They play with their bug shelf daily and have learned so much already. We will keep that out for the month of April.
Morning Basket will remain the same in one way, we will start with Bible, fairytale and then poetry. That never changes because those are all things I want to give them each day and we have a routine over here now. April will be our 11th month of doing Morning Basket continuously – only taking days off from it for vacations or sick days. The girls wake up, head straight to the table to get ready for Morning Basket as I get my coffee and their breakfast. Then we sit down and dive in.
The only difference this month is that instead of what I usually add in to our basket after those main 3, I have added “preschool” to our Morning Basket. Once they sit down and I start reading the Bible, I will check the clock. Lilly Belle and I will stay at the table for one hour from that time. After that, no more school the rest of the day except any hands on things we do together or the Bug Shelf. I won’t have her doing any reading, writing or math for the remainder of the day. I think this will work really well for us! Once I am done reading the Bible, poetry and fairy tale, Lucy is usually done with breakfast and that is when she gets down from the table to play independently for the rest of the hour then. Our bug shelf is next to the kitchen table so that will work out well.
Each morning I will have Lilly Belle do The Good and The Beautiful after Bible, Poetry and Fairy Tale – but after that, she can choose whatever she would like from the basket.
April’s Morning Basket and Preschool Resources
BIBLE: This month we will continue reading from our My First Bible and Prayers. I don’t love it as much as I do the Jesus Storybook Bible, but the prayers at the end are so precious and there are even some poems in there. Some of the stories seem to be a bit too long for the girls (especially Lucy) but it’s still great for their age.
POETRY: For poetry we are going back to Where the Sidewalk Ends because Lilly Belle asks for it daily. She is now wanting to memorize poems from the book and it’s pretty cute to listen to her reciting them. Lucy is even starting to giggle at them now too.
FAIRY TALE: I got out our Usborne Fairy Tales for Bedtime this month. It is one of our family favorites and the girls both really love it. We haven’t read through it in quite a few months so Lilly Belle was really excited to see I added it this month.
The Good and The Beautiful Level K Primer: Lilly Belle is starting the month on Lesson 20 and there are 34 lessons in this curriculum. It takes her anywhere from 10-20 minutes to complete each of the lessons. We will always do this first until she has completed this book. We will not be starting on the Kindergarten curriculum until August. We will take a short break from it until then. I have a feeling that when she starts in August she will be assessing out of some of the Kindergarten lessons in the beginning of that curriculum.
Moffatt Girls Math Made Fun: Lilly Belle is on Unit 2 of this curriculum. We have been going slow and not doing it consistently as she isn’t technically in Kindergarten yet. Unit 2 is on numbers 11-20. She flew through the first unit which was numbers 1-10. She loves this math curriculum! She usually does 1-2 worksheets at a time. I do not have her doing the centers for Unit 2 because it is a lot of ink and she was flying through them so quickly. We will start up with Unit 3 in August and will be following Annie’s lesson plans and doing it the way it is meant to be done.
Kindergarten Toolkit: We are using the last few pages of the book for Uppercase, Lowercase and Numbers 1-20 recognition. I will call out a letter or number and she has to point to it or place a button on it. She loves doing this.
Dash Into Reading (Book 4): Lilly Belle loves the Dash books! I have talked about them often on here. She is so pumped to be starting on Book 4 this month. I have a feeling I will be printing out Book 5 this month as well as she has really taken off with reading.
Usborne Lift-the-Flap Shapes: I realized the other day that I have not done a great job of teaching Lilly Belle all of her shapes. We will go through this book together to review and learn the ones she doesn’t know.
Ready2Read: Lilly Belle has been loving this! She did Unit 1 in a week so I got all the units printed out and ready for her. The activities are fun and hands on and she has really enjoyed it. I think she will get through Level 1 pretty quickly though as she has already got CVC and most sight words down now. She has even started to be able to look at CVC words and read them without sounding them out sometimes!
Emergent Readers: We recently got these out for Lilly Belle and she loves reading them to us and to Lucy! She especially loves that on the front you check a box each time you read them.
My Picture Story Book: Lilly Belle has had this for almost a year now and loves it! I love it! She draws a picture on top and then tells me what to write under. I write every other line and then she copies my writing on the line under. We now have a whole book showing her sweet drawings and handwriting progress. I love it so much!
Usborne Wipe-Clean Books: I credit these for her wonderful handwriting. She really loves these and have helped her a ton with her writing. We are using Capital Letters, Common Words to Copy and Writing Numbers this month.
Bitty Beginnings Dolch Sight Word Pack: I have a sight word pack in our shop, but Lilly Belle is bored with it right now because she was doing it for a while. I got our Bitty Beginnings Sight Word pack out for this month and she’s going to love it! There are maybe 15-20 words she still needs to learn and I feel like she’s going to get them all this month. Lately everything with reading has just been really clicking…because she’s ready!
My First School Tracing Pages: These are from our My First School Toddler Curriculum. She loves tracing them in rainbow colors with thick Crayola markers.
Let’s Play School Handwriting Set: These have been a huge hit. She likes to grab her writing box and go sit down and write on her cards. They are pretty to look at and I’ve made her a little box for them with pretty colored dry erase markers.
Ikea Abacus: This is what she has been playing with a lot lately to count to 100. She just pushes each bead over as she counts. She likes to get all the way to 100 and can do it now with very little help from me, if any at all.
Melissa and Doug Shoe Tying Practice: She loves this thing! Like obsessed. I wasn’t going to add it in for this month but she saw me putting it away, grabbed it from me and put it back on the shelf. So…I guess we are doing this for another month 😉
Sewing Kit: I have a little bag in our basket filled with embroidery floss and a plastic sewing canvas and dull needle so that if she finishes her breakfast early, she can sew while I am reading at the beginning of our hour.
So that’s everything! Its a LOT! I am excited to see what she will choose each morning. It will make it fun for both of us 🙂