Week H

This is a picture of our pond mural. We have ducks, frogs, fish, and cattails. This week we will add some dragonflies that we created and lily pads. It is starting to look like a pond. We have a couple more weeks to add some turtles, snakes, and possibly an alligator.

We worked on our alphabet this week. It was H week. J is putting together a puzzle of the alphabet. I am constantly amazed at how she is recognizing letters everywhere, even ones that we haven't worked on.

H is for...brown? Nah, J just seems to focus on one color when she is coloring. I am always reminding her to change colors. Today we had to throw away her beloved pink marker. That was her favorite and she hated to throw it away but it no longer worked. Now, she is forced to pick other colors since pink is unavailable.

H is for heart. We made a Valentine's rug for the door. These rugs are relatively cheap at IKEA, less than 4 TL. I needed a new one for the bathroom, so I washed the old one and we painted it. We stamped flowers and hearts on it. I think it turned out cute. The paint I used isn't permanent fabric paint so I don't imagine it will last long but it should last long enough for Valentine's Day. Maybe I will just wash it, see if it comes out, and we will paint it again for another holiday.

We have been practicing writing our letters so I made a book to practice our numbers. Each number has a cute saying to help her write the number. I laminated them to make them reusable. Here is where you can find the printable number book.

J is doing a alphabet dot to dot. This will help with hand eye coordination as well as recognition of her letters.

We are working on recognizing patterns. What comes next? This is a Valentine's pattern activity that I printed out to use for the next month. She has to determine what comes next. This is a new concept so we will be working on it for awhile using different items. The patterns get harder as you go. Right now we are working on ABAB patterns as well ABBABB patterns. You can find the Valentine's printables here.

Here is one of our dragonflies that we made for our pond. We colored coffee filters with markers, sprayed them with water to blend the colors, and waited for them to dry. We then glued them to popsicle sticks and added eyes.

Here is my smiling Kaleb. He joined us for school today.

Our Week

We finally have Internet...yay! It has been one week without Internet and you don't really know how much you use it until you lose it. This has been our week...

G is for giraffe, we made a giraffe growth chart and put it up on the wall to measure how tall J is. The funny thing about this was about 3 days after we hung it up, J asked me to measure her again to see if she grew alot more!

I made some homemade finger paints and J finger painted fish for our pond. The pond finally is looking like a pond.

I found this dry erasable mat at Target and here J is practicing writing her alphabet. I am now seeing her write more and more letters when she draws her pictures. It is pretty neat to see that.

Here we are playing a froggy game using plastic frogs as markers. I laminated this game sheet and on the back (always trying to have a 2 for 1 deal because I don't want to waste laminating materials) there is a dog game. Since it is laminated, I can write letters or math problems and we can play this over and over again. This fits with our pond unit.

We are working on shapes and patterns. J is using her pattern blocks to make the shape of a dragonfly.

I found these great printable scissor skill worksheets. These will help J learn to cut with her scissors. She has to follow and cut on the lines. We will be doing this more often to help build up her hand muscles.

This is a handwriting practice sheet. By doing these, J will be able to write her letters smoothly. I didn't laminate this one, instead I placed the sheet into a page protector and gave J a dry erase marker. The page protector allows the marker to erase and you will be able to reuse the worksheet. I found these here.

Here J is painting her family. I just love the long legs!

Keke has been learning how to make balloon animals and face painting. Don't sit still here at my house or she will paint your face! She wants to practice because she has joined a high school group who will be doing balloon animals and face painting for different functions. In fact, next week she will be face painting refugee children here in the city to bring alittle fun for them. She is looking forward to it and she is getting very good. You should see her detailed face painting. The mustache was J's idea.

This week, Kaleb got a new high chair and is learning how to eat from a spoon. This was only his second time but he seems to be getting the hang of it. The high chair was pricey but I know he will get some good use out of it. And J loves it because he become her audience with no where for him to go. He is at her mercy at whatever she wants to play. Yesterday, she brought out the hand puppets and started a little show. He doesn't mind though, he loves her and is always smiling at her.

This week, we will be working on the letter H, our pond unit, finishing up our mitten unit. Keke will be taking mid term exams and Kaleb will be working with the spoon. Hopefully, we will have Internet all week but we are getting around to changing our Internet and phone accounts which may mean no Internet until they decided to hook it up. Smile:)

F is for Fire (no...really)

This is just going to be a quick post with no pictures. Today, while making dinner, my doorbell rang. Now, ordinarily, unless I need something from the store, I don't answer. Well, I didn't answer, then about 10 minutes later, it rings again. This time I go to the door thinking that it is my DH coming home from work. Not so. There was alot of commotion in the hallway. People running up and down the stairs with buckets of water. And then I heard the T word for fire and I saw the smoke. There was a fire on our roof caused from the roof repairs and who knows? Maybe the man with the flame thrower who was melting the tar paper on there today. I proceeded to yell upstairs at Keke to get out of bed (she came home sick today) and start running around trying to turn off the stove and lights. We get J's boots and jacket on and I pick up the baby from the crib. We give the men what water we had, not sure it helped though, and we leave. As we end up downstairs, a family from the school (who had called during this commotion and informed me my roof was on fire) met us at the elevator and took us to their house. Their house just happens to be in the other building, opposite from ours, and we were able to watch the fire fighters come to put out the all-most-extinguished fire. It was after I left that I thought of a million things I should have taken - like the passports and birth certificates but I ultimately got the items that mean the most to me - my children. That was all I was thinking about, getting them out safely. After, about one hour or so, the fire fighters left and we were able to go back into our apartment. I was concerned I would see water in the apartment but the only problem it looks like we are going to have is in the upstairs bathroom. It seems the foam/water has leaked onto the ceiling. I hope it dries and won't get moldy. We have a problem with that here and the new roof was supposed to fix that. What can I say-life is an adventure here, never a dull moment. The ironic thing about this is that we are working on the letter F and I had planned on discussing fire safety with J. Now, we had experienced it first hand. Won't that be a memorable lesson?

And Finally Some School....

We are finally getting back to doing "school" after the holidays and the sickness. This is what we have done so far.

We are working on the letter F. So, here J is cutting pink hearts for a pink Flamingo that we are making.

J is stamping the letter F for her alphabet book. She is stamping little fish and frogs on it.

F is for family. I made these family handwriting practice cards for J. I used a worksheet that had the lines, added our family member names, and a picture. Then, I laminated them using my handy dandy laminator that my Parents bought me for Christmas. I love that thing. Because the cards are laminated, J can practice writing all of the names over and over again, then just erase. She worked through the whole family (including Sammy-our  Grandpa's dog), tracing all of the letters then erasing.

Here is a closer view of the Family cards that I made.

We are still working on our Mitten unit and what is cold weather without hot chocolate? This is a number game that I printed off (and laminated :) I am in laminator heaven - ha ha). J would pick a number and add "marshmallows" to the mug of hot chocolate. Now, you are supposed to use real ones but since the real marshmallows didn't survive the holidays (you can't get them here), we used pompoms. Because I am trying to be thrifty with my laminating sleeves, since I won't be able to get any more until I return to America, we can flip this number game over and play Winter Tic Tac Toe.

J likes this game. The game pieces are mice and hats for our Mitten Unit. She is learning how to block three in a row and how to win. I also laminated the smaller game pieces and cut them out to be able to reuse them later.

And we finally added some ducks to our pond. I have had this pond hanging up in my stairway since the beginning of December, long enough for a T friend to ask if it was an abstract piece of art! It is just green poster board and blue plastic wrap. I am happy now to have added paper plate ducks that J painted yellow. We are hoping for some finger painted fish (still on the letter f) and a green frog to be added later this week to keep our lonely ducks company.

And lastly, still learning about the pond, we made a pond using a plastic container. J had some fish, turtles, lizards, and frogs that she added to the water. And I made some lily pads from green foam sheets. I was going to add some blue food coloring to the water for a real water effect but since she is wearing her favorite outfit (white flower shirt and pink tutu - thanks gramma), I decided not to. The reason - J informed me that I haven't been doing a good job with the laundry. She put her princess undershirt on the other day and found a stain on it. It is her favorite undershirt. It was, of course, my fault that the stain was there and not the fact that she was eating in her undershirt and dropped some kind of food on it! ha ha I love having a four year old teenager!

This Week

This week has started off slow and the reason being is J is sick. She woke up on Monday with a fever and has been fighting a cold ever since. So far, this is what we have done.....

J sleeping on her unicorn pillow/toy that she received from her Grandma for Christmas. Hopefully she will be feeling better soon.

Christmas is Officially Over

This week, I said goodbye to the last of my family that was here for Christmas, my DS Josh. Christmas is officially over here at the S-household and it is pretty sad. I know it couldn't last forever and we were definitely blessed to have my Mom and Dad visiting as well as my son from college. I hated saying goodbye to any of them, it made a depressing week. But I have the hope (and prayer) that I will be able to see them again this summer. Jadyn is already talking about packing her bag for the plane and what items she will bring (mostly toys and stuffed animals). I keep trying to tell her the trip won't be for awhile but she is still planning and talking about it. We had a great Christmas, with plenty of visitors, and even ham (what a nice surprise!). I am alittle late in posting these 3 month pics but may you still enjoy them.

We are now getting back to the swing of things - we started back to doing "school." We began a unit on The Mitten by Jan Brett and we are continuing our work on the letters of the alphabet. I will post soon about our school week. I have also been working on some new projects for the house. I began a table runner for my buffet, some mini Eric Carle quilts for the kids' bedroom, a new valance as well, and some barbie clothes (much to my dismay). Jadyn was excited about the barbie clothes and is anxiously awaiting a matching shirt. We will see... I will post about these soon.

Juicy

That's the word - juicy. We had some friends over for Christmas and one exclaimed, when she saw Kaleb, "I just love juicy babies!" Juicy, never really thought of babies as juicy but I guess it fits him. He is a big baby, by no means will you break him when picking him up. He is healthy and lovable, smiling more everyday as well as laughing. It has been fun watching him grow and learn new things. I am so glad I can be a part of it. And, well, if you want to call him "juicy," it is okay by me.

One of my favorites - Josh and Kaleb. Josh is here for just a few more days and I am enjoying having him home.