Homeschool Wrap Up....Bears

This week in Bible, we read about Jesus' baptism.  We outlined Jie Jie's hand to make doves. It didn't turn out that well, but she understood that it was a bird. 

We continued with the theme of Winter and looked at bears. We read Sleepy Bear by Lydia Dabcovich.  I liked this book because it was simply one sentence per page and it showed how the bear slept during the winter, hibernating in his cozy cave. Then when spring came he looked a bit grouchy, but remembered honey and followed the bees.  Jie Jie loved the illustrations.  After we read the book we made a bear puppet using a paper bag.  We used DLTK's pattern. You can choose to print it out in color or in B/W and color it yourself. I let Jie Jie color herself.  Click here for the pattern.

The finished puppet.

Jie Jie gluing on the pieces after she colored them.

She LOVED this. I think next time I'll do a sock type puppet with
her so it will last longer than ten minutes. =)

I wrote last week that I'd post some resources that I've used for numbers.  I got all of these from Musings of Me, which I printed out and laminated. They are cute and so easy and fun to use.

Matching cards. The site has them up to 20, we only use 1-5. I've
printed and laminated all of them because I think Mei Mei can
also use these to practice her numbers as well. The pink piece is
Velcro that I attached to both pieces.  

This is counting the stars on the snowman and
matching the correct hat.  Again, I've used Velcro
so that Jie Jie can attach them and I don't loose pieces.

This last set of cards, I've used two different ways.
First, we attach clothespins to the card. This helps
with fine motor skills and with counting.

  Here she is learning the concept of "2".
 I've made two marks on laminated paper.
 After she attaches a clothespin she erases one
of the marks. When the lines are gone, she
doesn't need to add anymore clothespins. Then we
count them together to make sure it is correct. 

This is the other way I use these cards. She builds Lego towers.
These cards I glued onto construction paper before I laminated
to help make it a bit more sturdy.

Okay, that pretty much sums up what we've been doing. Next week I'll post some resources that I've used in letter recognition and how we are starting to write letters.