Letter O, bats, owls, and snakes

We started the letter O this week. J is excited because she knows when we finish the alphabet, we will be traveling to 'Merica. O week actually started with bats. Why bats, you ask? Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was surfing the crafty sites and she noticed a little boy who had bat wings. She asked me to make her bat wings too. This past weekend, we went to the store so I could get 1 meter of black felt and the bat wings were born. It was an easy project that I began before church and finished most of the sewing. I completed them this morning before school by sewing on the elastic. The project and free pattern can be found here. I did not have black elastic or black sewing machine thread so I had to make do with the white kind. Still cute, though.

Well, she wore them for a whole 2 minutes and then, put them away. I figured as much but something funny happened later in the day....We started our letter O and talked about all of the words that began with the letter O. We talked about owls and she proceeded to show me how owls hunted for their food. But she said, "Mom, I don't have any wings..." I suggested she use her bat wings to be an owl (light bulb).

Here she is being an owl.

She is on her nest, sitting on her eggs.

And catching her prey (her poor dog) with her talons (her foot) to feed her owlets.

We used some shelves in our bookshelf and set up a grocery store. We set up food and she played for some time, buying and restocking the shelves. She has begged me to keep the store up for awhile. Maybe, we will make some signs and learn about counting money.

We read about snowy owls and colored an owl page.

We made an owl pocket for some O words that she colored and cut apart. This owl is a snowy owl. We also made a pipe cleaner O to hang with our owl. The alphabet pockets are at  makinglearningfun.

We stamped the letter O with otters.

She covered the letter O with pattern blocks found at makinglearningfun..

J has been fascinated with snakes since our Jeff Corwin days (we are still watching these DVDs). She has asked if we could do some snake activities in our school. I tried to convince her to wait until the letter S but she didn't want to wait. So this week, we are working on snakes as well. Here, she is using play dough and making snakes to cover shapes.

She covered all of the shapes with her snakes.

This weekend, I found some yarn on sale and a pom pom maker (nice find, I didn't know they had those here and I just stumbled on it). I made some spring pom poms. J played with them by throwing them up in the air and Kaleb thought that was the funniest thing! Here Kaleb is with some of them, I thought it would be a different texture for him to check out. He was fine until he put one in his mouth! Isn't he a cutie!

We ended the day in the kitchen. It seems my days always end up there, more than I would like them too! J helped make bread sticks (all most Olive Garden quality - according to my daughter Keke) and she cut up all of the fruit for Kaleb's baby food (pear and apple puree). She liked kneading the dough. I am truly getting spring fever here. It was warm enough to open our windows for some fresh air for alittle bit. J is chomping at the bit to play in water on the balcony but I keep telling her that she will have to wait until it is warmer. Here's to spring days!