lesson plans

This was a brand-new movie. The French was very fast. I’m not sure I’d recommend it for the future, but Pegasus says he understood everything. He also took out toys immediately following the movie and had them re-enact most of the movie, so I’m guessing that he understood most of it.

Dance

I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted. (repeated from last week)

Music

He has been diligent about practising his scales and doing the exercise from the book. He also says out loud what the scale letters are as he plays them. My mom noticed that he’s been popping his elbows out, so he’s actively trying to keep them tucked.

Crochet

I helped him do several blocks of stitches… probably about 4 inches.

Basic Information

We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). He sang along unprompted. The days of the week song that we’ve been listening to has BEEN REMOVED and I don’t know who made it so we can’t look it up with the wayback machine! Pegasus is very upset about this (as am I). I’ve reached out to Dragon’s Kindergarten teacher in hopes that she has the link, but I haven’t heard back yet.

Printing words

He has been improving slowly. I like that I don’t have to fight him to get him to do it. He is very pleased with himself for completing them, and usually writes more words than I ask him to do (I split them up over a couple days because he was overwhelmed that first week).

Counting objects/math-type activities

I tried to let him count on his own this week, and he got very angry and didn’t want to do it. It’s frustrating when he’s used to doing it one way and doesn’t want to change things up.

Storytime

We got new mini French books on Monday. I am getting him to read the small words that he knows, like ‘le’ and ‘la’, and I’m trying to get him to read the bigger words that show up multiple times in the same book.

Activity

Draw a monster mask (web templates) – Dragon used this one, Pegasus used this one
I had forgotten that Dragon hadn’t cut very close to the line when she did this activity, and was surprised when Pegasus did the same thing. (I didn’t know it was the same thing until a few days later.) He really didn’t want to cut the paper close to the tabs (for threading the yarn that would tie his mask to his head), and kept resisting finishing his mask until he came up with the suggestion of cutting the tabs off entirely and putting the mask on a popsicle stick. I am very impressed with his problem solving.

Spooky handprint – do NOT use construction paper for this activity! It doesn’t work! Regular printer paper works perfectly, and both kids enjoyed making their handprint and then painting over it.

Cheesecloth ghosts – VERY messy, definitely take the advice of putting down a plastic bag/sheet! (at least it’s just glue and water, but still…it gets everywhere. Also, I suggest you have two people to do the laying of the cheesecloth over the balloon, because it’s really hard to do with only one pair of hands. It also requires two layers of cheesecloth, and needs to dry overnight, so don’t forget to account for that!

Moana is a favourite in our house, so he’s very familiar with both the dialogue and the story. He says he understood a lot of it, but I’m not sure how much he’s remembering.

Dance

I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted. (repeated from last week)

Music

This week, he was given an exercise from the first piano book. He is ridiculously excited about this. He is still practising the scale that he was taught as well.

Crochet

I helped him do several blocks of stitches… probably about 6 inches. He’s excited to be able to wear it, but there’s still so much left to do. In this vein, I have asked his permission to work on it when he’s not there, so that it actually gets completed before the end of the year. The first stripe is complete.

Basic Information

We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). He sang along unprompted.

Printing words

He has been improving slowly. I like that I don’t have to fight him to get him to do it. He is very pleased with himself for completing them, and usually writes more words than I ask him to do (I split them up over a couple days because he was overwhelmed that first week).

Counting objects/math-type activities

I tried a different method of helping him count, by having him write the number in each box. This won’t work every time, but he seemed to like it this week.

Storytime

We read the mini French books during the week. I am getting him to read the small words that he knows, like ‘le’ and ‘la’. He is very proud of himself for reading them.

Activity

Objects floating in water experiment – I had forgotten just how many skills this experiment teaches; cutting with scissors, forming a hypothesis, and then writing down the results. He did a great job cutting, he had no trouble formulating the hypotheses (although I’m not sure that he thought very hard about it), and then remembered what the results were in order to mark them down on the paper. He was a little upset that he got so many of them wrong, but I told him that experiments are more often about getting the wrong answer and then explaining why. That helped.

Star gazing – We learned about the planets (he is very enthusiastic about telling everyone that there are four gas giants in the solar system) and he coloured them in (sort of) to make a book. (He cut the pages using my paper cutter because it is SO MUCH FASTER than using scissors.) We chose to use the telescope on Saturday (the benefits of not being constrained to school hours). We went out to the park nearby our house because the moon was too low to look at from our house. We tried to find Saturn, and managed it, but when we tried to magnify, we lost sight of it. Pegasus and Dragon were both very excited to see the moon through the telescope, but they were very bored of how long it took to fiddle with it in order to see the moon properly.

Bake with coconut – He didn’t want to get his hands dirty, but we talked about fractions in cups, and he was very excited about the idea nad seemed to catch on at the end that a quarter cup would fit twice into a half cup and two half cups would fit twice into a whole cup. He really enjoys dumping things and measuring things, but not so much touching things with his hands, so he did a lot of the chocolate dunking with a fork and it worked well.

I was a little nervous about this week. I hadn’t watched the French version of this movie before, plus Pegasus had said that he didn”t like any of the previous activities on Saturday (but then he did on Sunday, so…) Anyways, the week went very well.

Dance

I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted.

Music

This week, we’ve been focussing mostly on him practising his scales on the piano. He needs to build up his finger strength, especially in his baby fingers, before my mom can teach him properly. He also needs to be more familiar with the names of the keys, which I continued teaching him, both forward and backward. (repeated from last week)

Crochet

I helped him do several blocks of stitches… probably about 4 inches. He’s excited to be able to wear it, but there’s still so much left to do.

Basic Information

We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). He sang along unprompted.

Printing words

He has been improving slowly. I like that I don’t have to fight him to get him to do it.

Counting objects/math-type activities

He wanted me to move the pencil, but was willing to try a different direction for the movement. He needs work on remembering that sept comes after six.

Storytime

We read the mini French books during the week.

Activity

Sewing a button – this was the activity he was most excited about, which I found strange until he mentioned that they use Dragon’s sewn button as a buzzer in their games. So now he has one too. He did very well. (I held the button so that he wouldn’t stab himself.)

Play charades – I was a little concerned about this one, because he can’t read yet. But I had a thought the night before and it worked perfectly. I pulled up a random animal generator on my phone that did 8 animals at a time. I told him to scroll through them until he found one that he knew, and then act it out. He keeps asking to do it again, so I’m going to call this one a win, especially once he caught on that he couldn’t switch his animal to be whatever I said first lol

Nature walk – We did this on Friday, which was a PD Day, so Dragon accompanied us. She also let Pegasus borrow her camera, which worked well. The only problem was that he was more interested in looking around and walking than in taking pictures. I did manage to convince him to take a couple. We took a very similar route to the one I did for Dragon, but I had a little surprise for them, leading them onto Carlington Hill. The climb was worth it.

Pegasus’s pictures:

Despite my struggles at the beginning of the week (con-drain is all too real), this week went well.

Dance

I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted.

Music

This week, we’ve been focussing mostly on him practising his scales on the piano. He needs to build up his finger strength, especially in his baby fingers, before my mom can teach him properly. He also needs to be more familiar with the names of the keys, which I continued teaching him, both forward and backward.

Crochet

I helped him do several blocks of stitches… probably about 6 inches. He’s excited to be able to wear it, but there’s still so much left to do.

Basic Information

We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). I suggested he sing along, which he was happy to attempt.

Printing words

The pencil grip is helping immensely, especially now that I’ve noticed that it was on the pencil upside down. He didn’t struggle with the printing words and I’m very proud of him for trying so hard.

Counting objects/math-type activities

He moved the pencil himself, but he kept losing track of what number he was on (Monday). On Wednesday when he did the second sheet, he wanted me to move the pencil.

Storytime

We went to the library on Monday and picked up 3 mini French books, which we read during the week.

Activity

Bake bread – I’m going to call this a complete success. We used this bread-in-a-bag recipe, and it worked perfectly. Everyone wanted a second piece. Pegasus wasn’t really strong enough to knead it, but he had fun punching it.

Make butterfly (akuma) bookmarks – we used construction paper, which is a little thicker than what is recommended, but still functions quite well. I liked this activity, because even though he needed to refold several times, or he didn’t quite get the fold in the right place, it still turned out looking like what it was supposed to.

Design a superhero costume and kwami – I was hoping that he would slow down and really think about what he wanted to design for his superhero costume, but he really didn’t. He always thinks of colouring and drawing as if it’s a race against time and it makes me sad.

This second week was much better for both Pegasus and I. We have come to an agreement that he is not allowed to say “I can’t”, because he is capable of more than he realizes. He is allowed to ask for help or for a break, obviously. I am more than happy to allow him those. We have discovered that the mouse we have currently is too big for his hands, and we are going to try one of the smaller mice next week.

Dance

I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted.

Music

This week, we’ve been focussing mostly on him practising his scales on the piano. We have one this time around, and it’s a wonderful activity to distract him with because he enjoys it.

I continued working with him on the names of the keys. We practised both forward and backward.

Crochet

We didn’t work on his shawl this week because I was working on Comiccon projects all week. We’ll pick this up again next week.

Basic Information

We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). For the first few weeks, I’m just letting him listen and passively absorb the information. He attempted singing both songs this week, and needed a lot of assistance, which is a little earlier than I thought he’d want to try.

Printing words

The pencil grip is helping immensely. He didn’t struggle with the printing words and I’m very proud of him for trying so hard.

Counting objects/math-type activities

The colours printed well! Using a pencil to cover up the lines that he hadn’t gotten to yet worked well again. I’ll see if next week, he’s willing to try moving the pencil himself.

He’s very good at writing 4’s.

Storytime

Not much French read this week, as it was such a short week (holiday Monday and comic con on Friday).

Activity

Baking – cookies. Pegasus made multi-chip cookies, with Papa supervising. He did a great job and they taste delicious.

Painting – free-style with Crayola washable paint on paper. We did this outside on possibly the hottest day imaginable and I hated every second of it lol!

Make a paper lantern – need paper bag, stencil (in download material), cardboard, paper towel folded in fourths, and screwdriver (instructions are Number 11). Put the paper bag over the cardboard box, and slide the folded paper towel in between the box and the bag. Place the stencil overtop of the bag/paper towel. Use the screwdriver to punch holes in the stencil/paper bag. Be careful not to move the stencil, or you will mess up your design.

So we used a pushpin instead of a mini screwdriver, and it worked, but the holes are VERY TINY. I forgot the paper towel, so that might have something to do with it? He’s happy with it, and that’s all that matters, right?

We held the stencil down with clips, which worked perfectly.