"My Idea Box" ... AND Letter Gg is for Garden!

    Well, my organized planning seems to be off to a good start!! I find that I am very Theme oriented and like to plan activities around a theme. And since there are a TON of ideas out there for the more popular Pre-K themes, it can all get a bit overwhelming.

    So I already thought of a way to organize materials at home (which I shared in my last post and now I think I found a way to organize my activity ideas!! I created a document that I call "My Idea Box", where I scribble down all the different ideas that I have and activities that I come across that can fit in the theme we are (or will be) working with. I have 6 different columns for my "Idea Box": Letters, Letters/Sounds, Math, Science, Art, and Books & Literacy. These areas match the work baskets that I started. 

    Whenever I come across an idea, I scribble it in a box and then keep an eye out for materials that I may need. I think this will also help me to organize my ideas and I can immediately reference back to my "Idea Box" if I am looking for fun ideas! And if the activities don't get done, I call always use them another time! 

    For the next few weeks, my little one and I are going to be learning about the letters Gg, Ff, Ss and Rr. I chose these letters to revolve around a Gardening Theme.

   We started with the Letter Gg and I pulled out her ABC Basket and we read her little Gg book, from a set of Alphabet Readers, compliments of the bonus points I earned through Scholastic! And then we worked with the Letter Gg sounds in her Sound Train game from Lakeshore.

Sh also on a letter Gg Search using the Alphabet Identification Sheets by Pam over at Miss Pam's Room.

    Since my little munchkin loves art, I always have to make sure that I have plenty of art materials and ideas on hand! 

    We decided to create a Garden! 

She painted green cardstock paper with brown paint and then used a garden rake tool to make fun lines in the paint. 

Once it dried, she scrunched up colorful tissue paper to create flowers and glued them on to make a cute garden!

   She did some Number Order work with Numbered Flowers that she found in her Math Basket when she searched her baskets mid-week.

  

    Overall, it seems like we actually have some organization and independent work going on with our Learning Fun at Home!!  And she seems happily surprised when she finds new, fun activities that she can do on her own! 

    I wish I could say that much for all the end of the year madness that is about to be in FULL effect in about a week!! BUT I must say that now that one of my more difficult children has been moved to Home Based Services, things have run fairly smoothly this week and the stress level was definitely low in the classroom -- for myself and the rest of the children!