Sunday, August 25, 2013

Planning for Cycle 2, week 2 and letter B...LOTS of resources!!

Oh my...this is a little overwhelming!  But FUN, too!  My inner teacher is cheering the tired Mommy on, because I know that my kids are going to benefit from all the hard work.  With my PreK guy, I wanted to move on to letter B...going in order is just easier for me.  He seems to be doing well with it, too, and my little class on Mondays did so great last week with letter A.  I hope the trend continues.  The key for me...plan activities in 10 minute or so segments.  That's about the limit for most 3-5 year olds.  When you see the glassy eyes and fidgeting, you know it's time to move on.  So you have to have LOTS of stuff to do, even for a 2 hour or so class time.  I also plan in some show and tell/free play time, just so they don't have to keep sitting down and paying attention.

With my cute little alphabet cards I printed last week, the letter B had "B is for bear", so I thought I'd go with that.  I have a lot of Eric Carle books, and my aunt (who is a wonderful Kindergarten teacher) gave my kids a homemade felt board, the book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," and some felt pieces that matched the book for their birthday one year.  I thought that would be the perfect book for this week and a great way to tell the story.  I started my search (on Pinterest) for activities to go with this book.  There are SO many.  Here are some links to some things I thought would be fun:

*Here is a link to a free Brown Bear printables pack.  I heart freebies!
*This page has individual black and white or color printables for the characters in Brown Bear, Brown Bear.
*Oh, I LOVE this packet this teacher put together.  SO CUTE!  You do have pay for it, though, but it's only $1 on her Teachers Pay Teachers site.  Great deal!  I also got the idea for a retelling necklace on her site, so I was determined to find a freebie to use for it.
*Here is where I found my freebie sheet.  My son can color the picture and cut them out and we'll make a retelling necklace with it!
*Another activity I wanted to do was use the story and do an M&M sort with the colors of the characters, then do a graph.  I got the idea...and the free printables...from here.
*Hubbard's Cupboard has some good ideas to use with this book, too.
*This link is for things that have bears on it...specifically brown bears, but it's not necessarily connected with the book.
*Here's another link to different bear printables including a link for "Brown Bear, Brown Bear"
*Here is a letter B coloring page that has a boy and a barn on it...just to change things up a little bit.
*If you want to do the story, "Going on a Bear Hunt", here is a link to a pack of free printables.

There are SO many more activities out there.  This was just a few I found and liked.  Now on to our Classical Conversations stuff....
I had a little dilemma last week.  In my efforts to save money, I purchased used Classical Conversations materials (foundations guide and audio cd for cycle 2), and they were an older version.  Last year this was not a problem at all.  For Cycle 2, however, there are more changes and it was a little difficult for me to get it straight.  Particularly the Latin.  I've gotten some free Latin resources that I mentioned here, but I was still a little lost.  This video helped me out:



and then I found a few more helpful videos after I found this one.  I thought this video of the timeline song was pretty cool:



We're definitely going to use this!  I also found a video that covers all of the Cycle 2 Grammar stuff for weeks 1-24.  Yes!  This will definitely help me.  And the kids always respond well to visuals and catchy things.



On to William the Conqueror.  The kids really absorbed the stuff about Charlemagne last week.  I was really impressed...and I learned a lot, too!  I have a great set of posters I bought at the school supply store that is all about the Middle Ages.  It has one poster devoted to feudalism, so we'll look at that this week.  Here's the link to a YouTube video about the feudal system. It's very helpful and explains it well. It wouldn't let me embed it, so be sure to check it out.  Here is another great link to information about William the Conqueror and the feudal system with pictures.
More ideas:
*Here's a blog post about how this Mom made a Middle Ages lapbook.  This is the link to her Flicker pages that show all the things she did for the lapbook.  Looks so neat!
*The link to a William the Conqueror video on Youtube.  I haven't watched it yet, so I don't know what age is appropriate.  On the side you can see the links to part 2, part 3, etc.
*This blog post is definitely for grownups or older kids, but it has a good picture of the way the feudal system worked.
*Here is the link to a HUGE, FREE medieval pack of printables...geared towards ages 2-8.  I haven't looked at it yet, but I am!  I'm going to run out of ink SO FAST!
*This page is another great resource!!  Several links to different aspects of life in the Middle Ages...geared towards kids.
*BBC for kids looks like a good resource.  I haven't explored it yet, but the headings look like things that would connect with what we're studying this year.  I'm not sure if there's anything about William the Conqueror.

On to Science.  We're learning about the 3 types of consumers...carnivore, omnivore and herbivore.  Here's a video to go with that:



For English grammar: pronouns.  Here is a picture of a pronoun chart.

I haven't done well with the fine arts.  We're supposed to be studying drawing.  I'm going to try this project with Sophie...how to draw a dandelion.  Looks like something she would enjoy doing.  And I might try this one with Isaac...how to draw a dragon.  But, of course, they can do whichever one they like : ).

And that, my friends, is all this girl has time to put together!  Honestly, this is really helpful for me...sort of an online lesson plan.  I can just go to this during the week and look up stuff and it's all in one place.  Hope it helps you!

God bless~

1 comment:

Edie S. said...

Whew, that makes me tired! Sounds like fun though!