How do you spell a great lesson plan? Schoolhouse Spelling!

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Struggling with finding a way to meet the spelling needs of your child?  Are there too many lists and words and you don't know where to start? Schoolhouseteachers.com offers Schoolhouse Spelling to its members with options from Preschool to High School.  

Schoolhouse Spelling offers Preschool Spelling (40 weeks of age-appropriate words), Lower Elementary Spelling (two years of material), Upper Elementary Spelling (four years of material), Middle School Spelling (four years of material), and High School Spelling (four years of material).

My four year old and I have started working through the Preschool Spelling which includes video flash cards of the weekly words and worksheets to practice the words of the week.  It is designed to help students learn letter sounds and form words.

The first week reviews 'at' words such as cat, hat and rat.  We also made other 'at' words including bat, sat, and mat. In week two, words: bat, mat, sat, and fat will be discussed and practiced. 

As my son likes to practice writing, we wrote the words on the white board and on scrap paper for him to practice. During the activity, my daughter also wanted her own list of words and drew her own pictures to go along with her brother.  

The week's activities continue with the student drawing a picture of a cat, a hat, and a rat each day while tracing the word.  

My son's cat.

I found these lessons to be a great introduction to spelling.  Both my four year old son and my two year old daughter can review the words together and practice sounds.  

The other levels will be just as valuable as they meet the needs of more advanced learners.  In the Lower Elementary Grades, students can practice correcting misspelled words and rhyming among other activities. There are also options at the different levels to approach the spelling via a phonics based style or a Charlotte Mason style.  They can be used independently or together (one following the other).  The lessons also approach the course from a Biblical Worldview offering Bible quotations to learn new spelling words. 

Mathematics: Preschool Playground

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Is math necessary? Only if you want to be able to buy, sell, cook, navigate, plan for the future, leave a tip, live frugally, handle home repair, calculate material yardage, know how much carpet you need or whether the couch will fit along the wall, play a board game, take a trip, or do almost anything else. In short, the answer is YES! Whether you need to teach first grade math or high school trigonometry, SchoolhouseTeachers.com has math courses for you. They even have courses to help you teach math such as Finally Conquer Fractions, Hands-On Math Help with Cuisenaire Rods, and How to Teach Elementary Math. Bring some fun into math—for you and your student!

Both my four year old and two year old know their numbers from 1 to 20 and even beyond that to some extant.  My four year old will even sit at the table and 'do math' by creating his own addition worksheets.  Just the other night my two year old daughter surprised me by counting to 20 with only one or two corrections.

As my two littles know their shapes, I decided we would work on lessons from Preschool Playground: Numbers, Patterns, and Cognitive Skills this week in addition to some other activities that we will be doing for the fall.  This way he would practice on his writing skills and my daughter could join in for some fun crafts I added to the lessons.

On Monday, my four year old practiced writing his number one while my daughter played with the Sesame Street pictures I cut out for our second activity.

Worksheets from Preschool Playground

I wrote the number one numerically as "1" and as "one" on the paper along with the name of the character.  I used old wrapping paper for the pictures of the characters which meant that there was an uneven number available.  Surprisingly neither my son nor my daughter were upset that their pictures were different.

We counted out 1 Elmo, 1 Cookie Monster, 1 Big Bird, and so on as we worked.  I then let them draw or color on the paper as they saw fit.

The next day we completed a counting exercise using some Dollar Store erasers and plastic mice.  I created the counting board for a bow activity and we have used it several times for counting Thomas Trains, cars, and milk caps.

My daughter helped count out the smaller numbers. My son did some simple addition and subtraction to figure out how many erasers or mice we need to take from the lower numbers for the numbers in the second row.

This counting activity can be done again with fake leaves, acorns, turkey-shaped erasers, Christmas themed erasers, bows, snowflakes, foam hearts, etc.

On Wednesday, my son and I worked on practicing writing the number two while my daughter drew happy, sad, and angry faces on pumpkins.

Preschool Playground has many ideas including suggestions for using chalk, noodles, pretzels, yarn, shaving cream to learn numbers as well as a variety of worksheets that teach the writing of the numbers, reading clocks and calendars, and positional words.

Even if you are not teaching a preschooler, there are many math lessons at SchoolhouseTeachers.com for you and your child.  If you are teaching an elementary student, they could take Fraction Workshop or Stretching Higher with Third Grade Math. For older students, they also offer such courses as Geometry and Statistics.

Language Arts with a Preschooler

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We have been fortunate enough that our four year old started learning his letters before he turned two. It was most noticeable when he would read the letters off our t-shirts. Our daughter, who is about 2 ½ years old, still struggles to get all her letters correct.  So I felt doing the ABC: What Will I Be? Lessons from SchoolhouseTeachers.com would be fantastic for both of them.  He could work on his writing skills and the more advanced activities and she could join in on the fun.

I would like to highlight “B is for Baker.” I did some of the activities and added my own as well. 

I started by writing the letter “B” and the word “Baker” on our small white board.  We then talked about what bakers do and what items they bake.  My son immediately connected it to Daniel Tiger’s Baker Aker.

After this I introduced the B writing page that is part of the “B is for Baker” pack for my son and the birthday cake coloring page for my daughter. In typical fashion, my daughter grabbed the “B” writing paper and started coloring on it causing my son to get upset.  This provided a perfect opportunity for us to talk about mistakes and forgiveness.

 

Some of the materials provided in the lesson.

After all was settled down, my son continued with tracing the lowercase letter “b” with me saying “down” and “around” to help him trace following the arrows. My daughter colored the cake for my father-in-law’s birthday.

Mixing ingredients. 

We then continued making birthday pictures and talking about other “B” words.  Later on my son and I baked some cookies together using the recipe provided for shortbread.  We read the recipe together and mixed the ingredients.  My only recommendation would be trying out a new recipe before baking with a little one or using one you have used more than once.

A family trip to the library resulted in bringing home a book about baking.  There are several listed in the “B is for Baker” lesson but my littles have started reading Scooby-Doo books. So, we found Scooby-Doo! Snack Snatcher which was about a baking contest.

There are also activities for play dough and math for “B is for Baker.” Each lesson has several activities for a week's worth of projects and introduces your child to 26 different professions in the process. 

Each class offered at SchoolhouseTeachers.com provides a clear and straightforward approach to the subject of Language Arts. Classes include those that introduce pre-reading skills and/or focus upon African American Literature, grammar, and creative writing. Visit now to see what classes are available for your child. 

Resources 

ABC: What Will I Be? Course 

Schoolhouseteachers.com