Delk Saturday School

One of the problems at the Delk house is that there is no set place to put mail. It has not caused too many late payments on anything, but it did cause a scuffle with Joe and I the other day.

You see, a few days ago I found a cute yellow envelope addressed to me! I love getting mail! Since this was the first I had seen of it, I naturally assumed that Joe had placed it there the day before since he was the one to get the mail. Inside the envelope was this...



A cute summery card. And inside the card was this...



Clippings for Isaac's ABC chart sent from Grammy Delk!! I got excited, Isaac got excited, it was an exciting time in the house. When Joe got home that night I shared with him our bounty, and he said, "Yeah, that card has been here for a while. I thought you just didn't want to open it."

WHAT?!? Are you kidding me?! To which I replied, "Great, Joe. Now your mom is going to think I hate her or something because we haven't done anything with the clippings yet and I haven't updated the blog with the kids' work." Geez.

All that to say- Grammy Delk, Thank you for the card and the clippings! The kids were so excited to get a card from Grammy, they thought it was your birthday and started singing. (I was bad and didn't get video of that, but believe me it happened!) The reason we haven't done anything before now is because 1. Your middle son is terrible about letting me know when I have mail and 2. I had to wait til the weekend because week nights are busy.

So, here is Day 1 of Delk Saturday School. Isaac used all the clippings and added them ot the ABC chart.



Andy didn't help with the chart, but he wanted to have a picture too.



Abby had the option of getting her picture made, but she wouldn't stop throwing a fit, so she was told to go upstairs instead.

After ABC, we worked on math. I bought a CD of Pre-K curriculum last year and I printed off some of the activities for Isaac to use. This was a fruit number sort. Andy helped.







Great job, boys!!



I'm sure you can hear Abby being annoying in the background.

But wait, we aren't done yet!
Yesterday when I picked the kids up from daycare Ms. Patty (the twins' teacher) told me that Abby made an observation about her shirt. (Ms. Patty's shirt was from the beach- it had a palm tree on it) Abby went up to Patty , pointed to her shirt, and said, "That's a Chicka-Boom-Boom shirt!" Which inspired Patty to get out the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and read it to the class. What a smart daughter I have!

So, we made Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees today for our art/ writing activity. We used construction paper, sticky sided foam board, apples that doubled as coconuts, and markers.
Isaac and Andy got to do the activity first since Abby was in time-out upstairs.



Isaac and Andy adding their letters to their trees.



Isaac and his finished Chicka Boom Boom tree. I didn't get a pic of Andy with his. They are all on my fridge, so feel free to stop by to see them. :)

By the time Abby finished her tantrum and returned to the dining room there were only scraps left for her tree. I can just hear Grammy Pat now, "Oh Jocelyn, couldn't you find another piece for Abby?" Well, no. No I couldn't. If she wanted a full piece she should have sucked up her tantrum earlier.

In all honesty, she didn't seem to notice. I did make her new leaves for the tree, no scraps there.



She was very proud of her work, and so was I. She insisted on getting 2 pictures made, but I am only putting one on here.



What smart children I have! Unless something happens and we are out of town, I really want Delk Saturday School to continue. The Pre-K CD I bought has a years worth of lessons and games, so we'll have plenty to do!

Day 8- Revisiting the ABCs

We got the ABC picture charts back out today. I decided that Isaac was the only one that really needed to be working on it. He is the one that knows his letters and letter sounds, so he got the chart.

But never fear! The twins were not left out! Each of them got a piece of construction paper and a stack of pictures. They didn't have to tell me the beginning sound of the pictures, but they did have to identify the picture before I let them glue it to their page.

Since no one was having to wait a long time for their turn, we got to work for a lot longer than we did previously. Andy enjoyed himself and didn't drop out as early as he usually does. These kids love to glue!



Abby working on her pretty yellow paper. She was picky about what pictures she allowed on her page. Only the pretty pictures for Abby!



Andy on his black paper. He was funny to watch. As I gave him more pictures, he focused more on making sure there were no holes between pictures than on identifying the pictures. No blank space for Andy!



Isaac did a great job! He didn't get tired of it and was interesting in his naming of the pictures. In some cases he didn't choose the picture I cut out, he turned the picture over and used what was on the back.

After a while he started to notice that some pictures were similar (snowy day, snowman, snowflakes) and he automatically went to the page that matched the pictures. Connections!

Believe it or not, we still have lots more pictures to go! Here are the not-so-finished products!











After they got tired gluing, we got out the picture cards and working on making sentences. They identified the picture and had to tell me about it, then we would make a complete sentence with what they told me and they had to repeat the sentence. Here's how they did..

Isaac- Fabulous! He was able to tell me animal sounds, where we could find different objects and animals in the house, or in the outdoors. The biggest problem we found was his constant use of the work 'on' instead of 'in'. Example: The horse was on the barn. We worked on that a lot. But I was very impressed!

Abby- She didn't want to stop with a sentence. Surprise, surprise. "I see the tree in the grass. A bird is in the tree too! Do you see it, Mommy? Look, it's out there!" I see a lot of creative writing in her future.

Andy- picture identification- check! Sentence repeating-nope! However, he did repeat the beat I used with the sentences I made. I used rhythms when I said the sentences to help them find a 'flow' for when they repeated it. Example: The cat... is on... the mat. (tap with the words) Andy might not have said the sentence, but he got his taps!

All in all; today was a success!