Reagan's Summer School

I started this summer real gung-ho about doing a little summer school program with Reagan.  

I took Reagan out of his preschool for the summer to save my parents some $$. (As you know they are the most generous people ever.  They offered to pay for Reagan's preschool last year and until I start getting some pay checks again!) 

So anywho. I decided I would schedule in some "Reagan / Mommy school time" for the summer.  That lasted all of 1 week before other summer activities started.  First Reagan had Fine Arts Camp and then Vacation Bible School plus swimming lessons and play dates.  After these activities the last thing him or I wanted to do was sit down and do school work.

I thought I'd share with what we did that first week and what I have planned for the rest of summer.  Unfortunately I don't think it's going to be as structured as I had planned, but I will try and do things here and there to make sure he is learning.

(1)

Pre-Assessments

First thing I did was give Reagan some pre-assessments I found online. I had an idea of what he knew but wanted some data (ok- teacher nerd) to know where I should start.

I used these from The Polka Dot Patch.

Math

Reading

I saw that Reagan knew all of his letters and almost all of his sounds. He only knew (a) and (I) for sight words.  He struggled with rhyming and blending.  As for math I saw that he could count to 16 but then got confused.  He could identify numbers through 10. He knew all shapes except for trapezoid  and knew his days of the week but not his months of the week.  This was a jumping off point.  

(2)

First thing  I set up a school box so all of my materials were in one spot.  I had packets made for the week which included handwriting practice pages, letter activities, dot markers, crayons, flashcards, word cards, letter and number magnets, construction paper, etc.

(3)

The first week I set up a scheduled time for school and we got a lot done. Here is what we did.

During our packet-work he would practice his handwriting.  I used this website to create name practice pages for him.  Another easy thing for you to do is write your child's name with a highlighter and have him/her write over it.

We also did dot art markers to identify various letters.

You can find those pages here.

Reagan also really liked making various letters using the dot art markers. 

You can find those pages here.

I found this awesome chart thingy from Costco a couple of years ago with lots of learning pages. It has a page about months of year so we've been practicing those.

I chose a couple of sight words each day and put them on index cards.  We would practice together and then I hung them up for him to "play school". He loved this.

I also took the words and put them on a piece of chart paper along with other reading things and we would work on it throughout the day.  The charts that he has mastered have gone up in his playroom for continued practice.  

Here is a video of Reagan teaching his Mimi this chart.

We practice our number cards as well as putting them in order.

We also practice tracing and drawing shapes as well as letters.

We've also done letter circle maps like this one. This isn't ours but ours is very similar. 

(4)

Reagan is done taking naps (tear) but I am still having him do "quiet time" in his bedroom.  I have created a quiet time box that I change out activities in every day.  They are things that he can do in his room independently.  

This particular box had library books, a sequencing activity, a tracing activity, picture/word flashcards, and toy cars.  Other things that I have put in there are Aqua Doodle, Tag Junior, InnoTab, Magna Doodle, blocks, animals, etc.

Here are some things we haven't had a chance to do yet, but I am planning on:

(1) Having an ABC scavenger hunt. (Looking for things around the house for each letter.)

(2) Math activities 

(3) great ideas

(4) math puzzles

If you want more ideas for things to do at home, please follow my Pinterest page "Ideas for Reagan at Home".   

I will check back with more things we've been doing again before summer is over! Hope this helps anyone needing ideas! Also, thanks for those of you who have been voting for me over at Circle of Moms.  I really appreciate.  Remember , you can vote once a day!