Preschool - Cows

Recently, someone in a homeschool group I belong to asked for recommendations for preschool curriculum.  There were a lot of great suggestions and I loved looking them up.  Most of them either cost a lot of money, or were very structured however.  I knew I wanted to do something with Little Miss this coming year because she was showing interest and already picked up a lot of her ABC's and was starting to count to 10 already, but I didn't want it to be forced or very structured yet since she is still just two years old.

I almost didn't didn't look at Letter of the Week thinking it was what it said it was.  I didn't want a huge focus on just letters and sounds yet.  But I sure am glad I looked because they have a preparatory curriculum that focuses on themes for different weeks.  It includes shapes, colors, numbers, letters, and a fun theme. The first week is cows.  We decided to dive right into right now since we weren't really doing anything for school at the moment and Green Bubbles would benefit from the review.

Week one starts with the theme of cows, something near and dear to my little girl's heart right now.  We jumped on it and made it our own, although we took two weeks to complete it due to the holiday week and our nature study days. We checked out a lot of cow themed books from the library, colored in a large letter A, made square shaped cookies, and are talking about the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle and read some of the other rhymes from the website.  We made a cow out of squares, our shape of the week.  Although perhaps the favoriate of the kids was playing pretend as if we were cows.  There were many moos from all of us until I ended up being climbed on and turned into a horse!

Here's some pictures of the cows Little Miss and Green Bubbles made from a lot of squares.

Many of the books suggested by the website were not available at our library so I thought I would share a list of the books we were able to check out. (Links are affiliate).

 Little Calf by Kim Lewis - This book is a very simple story perfect for my 2 year old.  It is about a little calf learning to walk, nursing from her mother, and making friends with a little girl.  Little Miss really loved this book and it was her favoraite of the bunch.  The thought of a baby, human or animal, just excits her.  She kept giving the calf kisses on each page.  I really liked that we were able to introduce a new vocabulary word for her too, calf.

When Cows Come Home by David L. Harrison - This is a cute book about cows who play when the farmer is looking away.  Little Miss loved dancing around when I read this book because the cows swayed and twirled.  It's a very silly book with a lot of catchy, rhyming phrases.

Cows Can't Fly - Another silly book with a good message.  A little boy draws a picture of cows flying and when the cows discover it, silly things ensure.  Little Miss didn't like this book as much as Green Bubbles did. 

The Cow That Went OINK - Little Miss loved this silly book about a cow who didn't know how to say moo.  A great book to teach about animal noises and how being different can be a good thing.  It was a great follow up to the game that we played earlier pretending to be cows too!

THE STORY OF FERDINAND by Munro Leaf - If you haven't read this book you need too!  It's a great classic story that I've read to Green Bubbles many times.  While technically this book is about a bull, I still think it counts as our cow theme.  We also already owned this one!

Kiss the Cow! by Phyllis Root - Another silly story about a magic cow and a kiss.  Green Bubbles and Little Miss were both giggling over this book and the thought of kissing a cow.