Would you do me just a quick little favor? Would you mind just filling out this quick little form? I’m contemplating some changes in the future for this little blog of mine, and I’d love your input.

Since my blog “niche” is just a wee bit scattered (uh, ADHD anyone??), I want to know why you are here reading this blog. Are you skipping every few posts, just waiting for the posts you’re most interested in? Or are you loving every single word I write? (Ha ha.)

Filling this out should take you two minutes, max. Unless your kids interrupt you every twenty seven seconds while reading it, then I can’t guarantee anything!

Like its alphabet toy predecessors, this ABC toy is colorful and features all 26 letters of the alphabet. Unlike alphabet toys of the past, it has some cool characters and even piano buttons to make this toy a class all its own! There are three touch buttons along the top of the bus: Learning, Letter Exploration (games), and Music.

Learning
When you touch the Learning star, your child is invited to touch a letter. The first time you touch a letter it says, “H as in hammer,” followed by a sound effect. Touch it again and it says, “H makes the sound huh.” Then finally it reinforces when you touch a third time by saying, “H.” So many toys emphasize the name of the letter, but for toddlers to make the leap (haha, no pun intended, but it’s staying!) into reading, they need to learn the sound of the letter. I love that this serves as a gentle introduction into the sounds letters make!

Letter Exploration
This touch button is in the shape of a ball. When you touch it, the toy asks you to, “Touch a picture that makes the sound…” (then makes the appropriate sound effect, like a ringing telephone for the letter T.” When you do so correctly, it reinforces, “that’s the duck!” and plays the sound effect again. Or it may ask you to touch the letter P. These activities are a fun way to strengthen the connection between the name of the letter and the sound it makes.

Music
My personal favorite part of the toy is the Music note touch button! A friendly voices calls, “Let’s jam!” and asks you to touch a band member. As the song plays, you can add in different notes that each animal plays – the penguin will chime in with his tambourine, for instance. You can press a letter during the sound, which layers in the sounds of the letter, or create your own music on the piano keys.

This toy is a little more sedate than the Rockin’ Guitar was for my children, which doesn’t bother me. It is such a cute introduction to letters for my two year old, Abigail, that I think we’ll be using this throughout the year! It’s a great starting place for a child who is just starting to learn their letters.

Speaking of the Rockin’ Guitar, the video contest is still going strong! Vote daily for a chance to win a $100 prize pack each week from LeapFrog. Enter your own video to win $500 cash!

Disclosure: I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and was given free product by LeapFrog.  The content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Links: www.leapfrog.com; www.clevergirlscollective.com

This month, I’ll be sharing a couple of amazing new LeapFrog products with you. We love LeapFrog! We have everything from the Letter Factory DVD (which taught Nicole all her letter sounds!) to not one but two Leapster Explorers. In our home, LeapFrog is our go-to educational product; perfect for birthdays and Christmas and hey, let’s call it homeschool ‘curriculum,’ okay? ;) Today I’ll be reviewing the LeapFrog Touch Magic: Rockin’ Guitar!

You guys.
{Girls?}
Toys are so high tech now. It’s crazy. They call this product line ‘touch magic’ and it seriously is magic.

 The front of the guitar is a flat slick surface. Your children simply strum their fingers over the guitar ‘strings’ and the guitar starts playing. If you strum slow, the singing and music slow down. If you strum fast? The guitar speeds up as the singer starts singing really fast. It has extra fun buttons for jamming on the guitar – like a slide button, or a drum solo button, and you can even coordinate your own applause!

One thing I really liked about this guitar was that it has ten different songs. With all the customization features like the guitar solo, silly sounds, and a choice of acoustic or electrical guitar, this toy won’t drive you crazy. You know the toys  with poor recording, and they have one song choice? One song choice your child plays over and over and over and over until you start fantasizing about bashing it until a million pieces?
This toy is so not like that. 

The Rockin’ Guitar is totally an active-play toy. The music is so fun and upbeat, my children took turns being the person who played the guitar and the person who danced. Nicole got really into it, as you can see below. I loved how they worked together, and I love the shot (above) of Nicole showing Abigail how to play!

LeapFrog is holding a video contest on their website! Simply upload a photo of your child rocking out on their guitar or an air guitar/paper mache guitar/etc, and spread the word! You could win $500!! You can also vote daily for a weekly chance at winning $100 prize pack of Touch Magic toys. Now go make your own video!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and was given free product by LeapFrog.  The content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Links: www.leapfrog.com; www.clevergirlscollective.com

Figuring out the best way to organize my Walk Beside Me LDS Preschool curriculum was one of the trickier aspects of my homeschool preschool experience. Eventually, I figured out what worked best for me, and I wanted to share that with you.

As you may know, homeschooling is a struggle with me because I have ADHD. Any extra planning required on a daily basis equals schooling that doesn’t happen. I wanted my preschool curriculum to be very much open-and-go, without daily (or even weekly!) planning, printing, or coordinating. The system I figured out works to my advantage perfectly. Whether you’re an ADHD mother trying to homeschool, or have several other kids to juggle while homeschooling your preschooler, this is an ideal way to get your homeschool set up!

First, I started with a file box. This is a Sterilite Showoffs File Box. (This is an affiliate link that will take you to a super cute green version, I like it even better than my orange box!) I love these boxes, I have several. In the file box I have 5 hanging file folders, and within those I have 5-6 tabbed folders. The first file folder has a folder for reusable worksheets (more about this later), then it holds a file for each letter of the alphabet. The remaining hanging file folders hold the remaining letters of the alphabet.

Disclosure: The above paragraph contains affiliate links. They are products I’ve used personally in preparing my preschool.

Since the Walk Beside Me LDS preschool schedule uses “preschool pages” (i.e., worksheets from a book or found online), I stick in the Reusable Worksheets file anything that doesn’t belong to a certain letter. If I had pulled out a ‘shapes tracing’ activity from a workbook but used a sheet protector and a dry erase marker, that can be used again and filed. If I didn’t get to it that week and want to pull it out some other time, that can be used again. I won’t remember unless I stick it in that front folder. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about what’s in each folder.

In each file folder, I place everything I will need for school that week. It is all laminated (if I desired to laminate it!) In the image below you can see my preschool schedule, all the worksheets, puzzles pasted onto cardstock that were laminated and cut out, a book of the week, and extra worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler that coordinate with that letter. I had considered laminating the schedule onto the folder itself, but I just didn’t get around to doing that this time. I even cut out all the letters for these fun letter activities and placed all their parts in a baggie. At one point we had our Bob Books stored in each of the folders too, but they’ve since been taken out to be stored in the cute box they came in.

I could have broken my folders even further into days. In this scenario I would have had a hanging file folder for each week (like J pictured above) and then a tabbed folder for each of the three days scheduled. This would have made filling Nicole’s workboxes a breeze. HOWEVER. Flexibility was my friend here. With the system as is with one weekly folder, I easily flipped through each of the worksheets and decided what I wanted to do that day. If we happened to have a lazy busy week, I could combine some extra worksheets and remove extra activities to make a two-day schedule happen. I didn’t want to feel like I was falling behind at any point. That was the deciding factor for making this work for me. If you like the super organized feeling, or don’t want the pressure flexibility of deciding on a whim what printables you’ll be doing on what day, then I would organize your folders just like the schedule outlines with a folder for each day.

This system was perfect for me. I really felt like I had control over how much school we did on a given week, but I never felt like I was ‘behind’ or had any guilt for skipping over activities. The best part of this system was at the end of the week, I just put everything back in the file folder. If you’re good at remembering to refile things, and don’t like the ‘used worksheets’ mixed in with the ‘unused worksheets’ for the week, you could make an extra file for what you’ve already done that week. I didn’t have much of a problem with this, and had a box on my desk for any papers I wanted to keep in her memory binder.

Now you know the key to Slacker Mom homeschooling: have everything prepared beforehand, so you have little excuse for procrastinating! Bonus: I’ve got 90% of preschool prepared for my next daughter, since everything got re-filed!

 How do you organize your preschool or homeschool? Do you think this system would work for you?

It thrills me to no end that we’ve completed the Walk Beside Me LDS Preschool homeschool curriculum. It was a huge goal of mine that I worried (many, many times) I wouldn’t ever accomplish. Hate to brag (ha, right), but I’m so proud of myself for completing it. I’m happy my little girl loved it and learned so much during the year about her ABC’s, as well as wonderful Gospel stories.

My question for you is…
what’s next?

I have many ideas, and hopefully at least one solid idea in the works. I’d like to know though, what would you like to see as a follow up to the Walk Beside Me Preschool? I have toyed with the idea of reformatting the alphabet to include only short sounded vowels, (keep A is for Adam, change E is for Enoch) then make five additional weeks to the curriculum that are focused on the long sounded vowels.
{I’m having trouble coming up with gospel themes for short e, i, o, and u sounds though!}

While I’m happy to do that, provided I can think of some Gospel themes to match those letters (any suggestions?), for the most part, I’d like to move on. My daughter is ready for Kindergarten level work, and I’d like to keep the gospel theme going. Ideally I can incorporate the Gospel into all of our years of homeschool, whether I create the curriculum or not!

What would you like to see as a follow up to Walk Beside Me Preschool? Would you be interested in a long vowels addition, or are you ready to move on too? What about a ‘tot school’ version of Walk Beside Me? Leave a comment and vote for one of these options, or even better, suggest your own!

If you’re new here and want to learn more about my LDS-based Gospel curriculum for preschoolers, go to the FAQ page here, the Introduction page here, or A is for Adam here!

Thank you all so much. I’m so excited to hear what you have to say about this! 

She then asked if she could invite her next door neighbor.
Um, yes?
And her cousin who was also graduating?
Uh… sure.
And the sisters of her cousin?

You see where this is going, right? Pretty soon I agreed to inviting all the four year olds Nicole knows! So we did a simple extremely low budget (think dollar store!) graduation party to celebrate the finishing of our Walk Beside Me Preschool!

I invited all the moms via evite. Then I shopped in mid-May at the dollar store and spent about $5 on little decorations. I threw together some simple allergy friendly party favors using Smarties and Dum Dums. I designed a treat bag topper for the preschool graduation, and stapled it to a little treat bag. For good measure, I sprinkled some confetti in the treat bag too. Click the image to download your own treat toppers!

Digital scrap products from Sweet Shoppe Designs by Design by Dani.

The day of the party I panicked because the weather was a little iffy for the park gathering I had planned. Not wanting to clean my house, and knowing one of our allergy buddies couldn’t be in my house with our Stupid Shedding Dog, I got permission to throw our party at our church. (Okay, this involved last minute phone tag and total panic on my part… but it all worked out okay!)

At our super simple party, we made our own graduation hats for a craft using supplies I already had at home.

These required some construction paper, scissors, a glue stick, and a stapler. You can get a full tutorial on making graduation caps, (we skipped the tassels) but you can see how easily it was to construct…

They weren’t perfect. ;) But how cute are these little models?

Then we played a game I made up the night before. I called it,
“Preschool, Preschool, KINDERGARTEN.”

You might know it as “duck, duck, goose.”
Yeah, I felt pretty clever.

Then we passed out the treat bags and we were DONE.

Party decorations: $5
Party treats: $5
My preschooler knowing I’m proud of her?
Priceless.

EEEEEEKK!!!
Or should I say ZZZZZZZEEEEEEK??

Okay, that was lame. But I can’t believe it. I honestly can’t believe it. We made it! We made it to the letter Z! (Can you believe? I can’t.) I really never thought I’d still be even blogging to post the letter Z; I certainly never would have thought I’d have the ability to finish such a massive undertaking!!

Ladies and… well, gentleman? Assuming there’s one out there? I present to you the
Walk Beside Me LDS Preschool Curriculum: Z is for Zion Printables!

EEEEEEEKKK!!
{Sorry, I couldn’t help it.}

I confess, I had a hard time knowing exactly what to say about this one. I’ve already done E is for Enoch; but I wanted to bring up the principle of Zion being the pure in heart. It’s a hard concept to explain to a four year old, and perhaps one day I will go back and combine the E & Z printables into Z is for Zion, and make a whole new set of printables for E. But don’t hold your breath.

You could, of course, talk about Zion’s Camp after watching the Doctrine and Covenants Stories called “Zion’s Camp.” There is also this live action video, detailing some of the events of Zion’s Camp. However, what I felt was most appropriate for my daughter was the video called “The Second Coming of Jesus Christ.” While the events of Christ’s Coming may at times feel scary and uncertain, I think it’s important for your child to know this part of God’s plan. Express your love for the Savior and your excitement at His coming one day. Make sure your child knows we don’t know when the Savior will come, but we need to live the best life we can so Jesus will be happy with us! (For an in depth lesson on Zion, refer to this amazing lesson by The Red Headed Hostess!)

If your child feels apprehensive after watching the video “The Second Coming of Christ,” you can read this reassuring scripture from 1 Nephi 13:37. You can use this lesson to talk about preparedness and food storage and all that. Pack a 72 hour kit with your child! I didn’t. But you could. :)

Oh, and since this curriculum is officially COMPLETE, your download also comes with a preschool diploma. We had a lot of fun inviting friends and neighbors over (we got permission to use the ward house, since the weather was iffy) for a “graduation party!” Check back tomorrow* for more details on our little graduation party!
*by tomorrow, I mean soonish.

Don’t forget to check over the lesson schedule for the week you learn the letter Z for lots of fun ideas! The Walk Beside Me Store (an Amazon affiliate store) has lots of goodies for your preschool, and helps fund this huge project! If you’re new to this curriculum, check out the Intro page as well as the FAQ.

I sincerely hope and pray this curriculum has answered a prayer in your heart for an LDS preschool curriculum! If you have loved and appreciated it (and ahem, it’s freeness), please consider purchasing my family home evening packets, called FHE Made Easy, for only $10!

]]> http://confessionsofaslackermom.com/lds-fun/walk-beside-me-lds-preschool-z-is-for-zion/feed/ 10 http://confessionsofaslackermom.com/preschool-curriculum/y-is-for-alma-the-younger/ http://confessionsofaslackermom.com/preschool-curriculum/y-is-for-alma-the-younger/#comments Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:27:20 +0000 theslackermom http://confessionsofaslackermom.com/?p=2195 The second to last letter of the alphabet! *Squeal!* Today’s packet for the Walk Beside Me LDS Preschool Curriculum is called, drum roll please,

Y is for Alma the Younger!

Like our last packet, this is a bit of the stretch using the ‘y’ from Younger, but whatever works, right? This is such a cool story that can be really fun to act out. Alma’s story is a great story about repentance. After all, he was the ultimate Bad Guy: son of the prophet, going around with his crew The Sons of Mosiah, telling everyone the gospel wasn’t true! Then, ground shaking moment, an angel appears and tell him to knock it off! Everyone is knocked over by shock, then The Sons of Mosiah drag poor unconscious Alma the Younger back to Daddy (who is Alma the Prophet).

As usual, I like to start out by sharing a gospel story by using the Book of Mormon Stories videos. Then you can retell the stories using the adorable paper dolls from the lovely Red Headed Hostess. This is wonderful because after you tell it, your children can narrate the story back to you! (She doesn’t have any official angel garb, but get creative!)

As you may have gathered yesterday, I’m feeling under the weather this week. I’m going to keep this short and sweet.

Got questions? Read our FAQ.
Getting started? Check out the introduction.
Want a weekly schedule? There’s a schedule here!
Want to buy things for your preschool and support this blog? Just go to the store! 

 In fact, I’m jealous. Is it weird that I’m sad I own every single Signing Time because this means I can’t take advantage of this deal? Hmm… except for Potty Time…!

Completely unrelated to what I’m doing on the computer, Nicole is playing with our Signing Time flashcards right now. Signing Time movies (and flashcards and books!) are perfect for preschoolers learning their ABCs. All fifty thousand of them. We have a stack of Signing Time DVDs 2 inches thick next to our DVD player in our bedroom. We take the books to church. In a pinch, we used the ‘stop’ and ‘go’ flashcards for music time at church when the music leader forgot her signs for the singing game! We have even met Rachel, Alex, Leah, and Hopkins!

Yeah… we’re pretty die hard Signing Time fans around here!

For your convenience, we’ve bundles together some of our most popular DVDs for this sale. Click an image below to add these DVD sets to your cart at the special sale price.

Offer starts June 5 12:01 AM MST and ends June 6, 2012 11:59 PM MST. Offer valid at signingtime.com,babysigningtime.com and pottytime.com only. Offer applies to single DVDs only – does not apply to digital downloads at Signing Time on Demand, non-DVD items, product bundles, or gift cards. No coupon code is required. Discount automatically applied at checkout. Promotion pricing cannot be applied to previous orders. Offer not valid with other promotions, coupon codes, or discounts. For details, visit http://www.signingtime.com/dvd-sale-details.

So today’s segment of the Walk Beside Me LDS Preschool is

X is for Ammon’s eXample!

Alphabetic liberties aside, this is such a fun little packet! I’ve thrown in a few printables we haven’t seen in awhile, like a coloring page and a size sort activity. These hands on activities will help your child work on manual dexterity (important for learning to write letters).

This week you’ll be teaching your child about the story of Ammon. Ammon is one of my favorite scripture heroes; I even gave a talk about him as a teen. I love Ammon because not only is he just cool with his brute force in scaring off the mean robbers, but he’s also thoughtful. When the other servants of the king ran off to tell the king what Ammon had done, the king asked where Ammon was. Awkwardly, the servants confess that he’s taking care of the horses they failed to put away!

The song of the week is the classic “Book of Mormon Stories.” There are actually many verses to this song, it would be so fun to teach your child the verse about Ammon. Little boys (and hey, little girls too) will love watching the movie of Ammon from the Book of Mormon Stories. In telling the story of Ammon, you could cut out these figures. I always like to laminate and place magnet strips on the back, then I use a cookie sheet like a flannel board.

To find the best way to implement this curriculum into a full weekly preschool, check out the Preschool Schedule. If you’re new here, start with the Introduction Page or the FAQ. I also have a Walk Beside Me Store. The store is an Amazon affliate store, I get paid per purchase you make through the store, so please check it out before you leave.

I hope you enjoy this LDS homeschool or preschool at home resource. Whichever you prefer. :)