First of all, I’m not going to be blogging in detail every week of Ready-Made Preschool. I don’t want to give all the activities away by posting about them all. Plus, I do find it distracting to teaching to be taking a picture of every single activity in action! However, I did decide to post in detail about the first two weeks for anyone considering purchasing this program. I thought seeing two weeks of lessons would help you to see if this preschool program will be a good fit for your child.

~Day 1~

The Letter of the Week is introduced by the Mystery Box! I put a little bag of blueberries in there. Little Bug had to search for the Mystery Box (I told her it was in the living room) and then she opened it and saw there were blueberries in there. I asked her what “blueberries” start with and she said, “B”. I told her that is our Letter of the Week!

We went to our workboxes for this week and in the first workbox there was Leap Frog with the Letter B! We listened to the B song several times and talked about the sound B makes.

Then we read our book of the week together! We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is SO CUTE! It has lots of repetitious lines, which preschoolers love! There are also some hand motions we could do as we read. We will do that later on in the week.

Little Bug painted the letter b blue!

While her letter b was drying, we played a game. She happened to choose Boggle, which starts with the letter B! I found B words for her to spell using the letter cubes. She spelled “boat” and “ball”.

After the blue paint had some time to dry a little Little Bug finished her letter b craft. She had buttons to put on her letter b. She ended up splitting the buttons up in half. I am not sure if this was intentional or not, but she realized on her own she had an equal amount of buttons on each side. We added the buttons together for a total of 10 buttons on her letter b! I even said, “What are two groups of five?”. That was the first time she has been introduced to the concept of multiplication! I LOVE how Ready-Made Preschool integrates math into these lessons in such fun ways!

Her finished letter b craft.

~Day 2~

We started with a Letter Hunt. Little Bug had a capital B and lowercase b and she walked around the house to find things that start with the letter Bb! She found a banana and blocks and taped the letter Bb on!

Then we read the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. This time while we read we did motions to go along with the story.

Next was a Bear craft activity. She got to decorate the bear with markers, a pink ribbon and some buttons.

Her bear turned out so cute!

And then it was time for a Letter Formation activity. Little Bug got to write Bb’s in shaving cream! This was our first time writing in shaving cream and I learned a few lessons. Next time, I will only let her put 1 finger in the shaving cream (while we are letter writing – after we are done writing letters, she can get crazy) and I won’t put near as much shaving cream on the cookie sheet as I did this time! I might also try this activity sitting at the kitchen table instead of going outside. At the table, I could just put the shaving cream right onto the table and then clean up would kill two birds with one stone since Little Bug’s spot at the table can always use a good cleaning!

~Day 3~

We started with a Bear Hunt Map. This was a sequence of events activity. The family goes through grass, a river, mud, a forest, a snowstorm and a cave to find the bear. Little Bug put the story events in order. She knew the first three from memory and then used the book to figure out the last three.

RMPK’s plan had the child using stickers and drawing pictures but I knew Little Bug wouldn’t be able to draw some of the pictures. So I found a printable from Homeschool Creations and printed those pictures for her to use to glue onto her map. Then I laid the words out in front of her and using the beginning sound of each word, she was able to match them to the picture all by herself!

Then Little Bug worked on her Letter Formation activity which was the Do-A-Dot Letter B! She wanted to make a pattern with blue and purple.

Little Bug worked on her ABC Book and cut pictures out of magazines of things that start with the Letter Bb! She actually attempted to cut some pictures out all by herself. It will be interesting to watch her scissor skills improve as the year goes on and she continues to work on her ABC Book.

This day we did our Learning Time at Grams and Gramps’ house. I love how RMPK is so portable as well. Since everything was already ready to go in the workbox, I just grabbed the workbox for that day’s lesson and took it with us to Grams and Gramps’ house!

~Day 4~

We went on a Bear Hunt in our living room! I hid 7 stuffed animal bears around and the girls had fun searching for them all!

They found them all!

We had a Bear Tea Party/Picnic! I love that RMPK incorporates simple play into the lessons. Little Bug enjoyed this so much and so did I!

I sat right there with her on the blanket and we played for a good long while. So precious.

We did a Counting Bear Hunt. I was supposed to hide these bears around for Little Bug to hunt, but I decided we had hunted enough and we spent so much time playing tea party that I just put them on the table and told her to put them in order. She ordered the bears from 10-15.

We had a Letter Formation activity and it was to make the Letter B with play-doh! Little Bug needs practice with fine motor skills and this is a good activity for that too.

This was a big hit! While we worked we talked about the sound letter Bb makes.

We had a special outing this week! It was actually with our Homeschool group but it tied in perfect to the theme of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt! We went to a nature preserve in town. Little Bug and Sweet Pea got to see live animals, feed goats, walk through the museum area and go on a nature trail!

Sweet Pea did NOT want to touch the animals as they came by. She would fold her arms and just observe. Little Bug wanted to touch them all. She got to touch an opossum, baby alligator and a huge snake!

It was the perfect end to our week all about bears!

- Elaine