Homeschool Week(s) in Review--Preschool Comes to a Close

I posted on Friday about Gabriella's last weeks of kindergarten and now I have to bring myself to write about my little Bubba's last weeks of preschool.  

Must I really admit that they are growing up so?

I suppose I don't have a choice.*insertwistfulsighhere*

Aron has thoroughly enjoyed this year using Teach Me Joy's Animal Play program.  He was sad that he wasn't going to continue to use it, but I'm sure he is going to enjoy what we've got planned for this upcoming year.  

To close out our time with Animal Play, we did a ton of review of all the letters and sounds and also learned about the themes/animals that went along with the letters U-Z.

Matching animals to the letter they begin with

Placing block groups of ten on a giant number ten on the floor

We made an Umbrella bird puppet

Umbrella U

Aron's Viny V and Vulture V handwriting practice sheet

Vinny the Vulture

The whale we made using a paper bag, Wiry W, and Whale handwriting practice

X-X-X-ray fish!  I can see your bones!

Painting bones on his x-ray X

Making another puppet...

Meet Yolanda Yak!

Zebras!

Yellow yarn Y and Zebra striped Z

Zippy Zebra

After we finished the letter Z, we reviewed the entire alphabet by making an Animal Train.  I used paper and plastic cups and taped on these train printables from Free Printable Fun.  I wrote each letter of the alphabet on a train car and we used the clipart provided in the curriculum to choose one animal per letter to color, cut out, and place in each car.

I made two spare cups and used those as the engine and the caboose.

If we were putting Aron in public or private school, his birthday wouldn't meet the cut off criteria to enter kindergarten this fall, but since he's had two complete years of preschool, I feel like he's ready for kindergarten level work, so that's what he'll be doing during this next school year.

I'm not placing him in Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory for his K year like Gabriella did because he's not quite ready for the amount of reading aloud that is done in that program.  I plan on holding off and using it with him next year.

We're taking the next two weeks off to recoup and enjoy time with each other.  I'm going to pull my house back in order and attempt to begin potty training Lyddiebug (pray for me!) and we'll kickstart our new year on September 4th!