Letter C

This week was complete with struggles to get baby Kaleb to sleep longer than 20 minutes in one sitting. He had his shot on Monday and the rest of the week, he no longer wanted to take a nap. He would wake up after 20 minutes no matter where he was - in my arms, in the bassinet, in the crib, or the bouncy chair. It kept on like this for the whole week. He would finally pass out at night and sleep for five or six hours because he was exhausted. I truly believe that it was from the shot that he received. It is now Monday, a week after his shot, I think he has finally snapped out of it and is back to taking naps. So "school" was alittle difficult this week but we did get it done. J wouldn't allow any less. Here's our week...

I found a 3 piece kitchen towel set at one of my favorite stores - IKEA and I used one of them to make an apron for J.  Notice the C is for cupcakes. I have plans to sew a matching chef hat and oven mitt but alas, I had no time this week.

C is for cooking, actually baking. We made cookies and cream cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting - yum.

We counted coins.

We counted the felt cookies I made and matched those with the number we rolled on the dice. My felt cookies have chips on one side and numbers on the other. We read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff.

We practiced letter recognition of her name and the order they come in.

We separated letter tiles and matched them to the correct letter.

We put together 2 puzzles based on the book we read - The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

And here is baby Kaleb during one of his 20 minute naps in the bouncy chair.

Keke recently found this video of J when she was younger and I thought it was soo cute. I had to share it, enjoy it. In it, we are reading/singing Snuggle Puppy by Sandra Boynton. We love this song/book and we sing it every night without fail. I love Boynton's books.

Letter B

This is some of what we did this week for the letter b. We learned about bears, bees, birds, butterflies, and bones. We ate b shaped pancakes and made banana splits. We poured and measured beans and played with bubbles on the balcony.

We threw bean bags on letter b's.

We made our body out of paper plates.

We sorted buttons, some of which happened to be in the shape of bears!

And we made a little girl body out of shapes. In case you were wondering, J loves to color with markers and she is fascinated with the color pink. This was our week, we enjoyed the letter b and we are moving on to the letter c. We will also be finishing our farm unit and learning about ponds.

1 Month

Where did the time go? Kaleb is officially one month old and he has gained 2 pounds and grew several inches. This past weekend, he has started sleeping for five hours straight at night, yeah! It has been fun to see his personality develop - he doesn't like it when you don't pick him up. He's a sweetie and I think we will keep him!

Letter A Week

J has been begging to learn her letters. I wasn't planning on teaching her the letters until later in the year but she wanted to learn them so bad, that I figured I would encourage her enthusiasm. We are starting at the beginning of the alphabet and working our way through to z. One thing that has helped is the learning DVD from Leap Frog about letter sounds. She has enjoyed watching that and it has helped to teach her some of the letters and their corresponding sounds. Our first week and letter was A. We learned about alligators and how close they lived to Josh. We learned about ants and apples and airplanes.

We are still learning about the farm and we made hand print sheep that we glued cotton balls to and added to our mural. You can see one of the sheep above J's head. Also, if you haven't noticed, J is fascinated with the color pink.

We stamped alligators and letter A's on a letter a.

We made a letter a with some fun foam puzzle pieces that I made.

We matched apple number cards to apple seed cards to review our numbers and counting.

We traced the letter a using wikki stix. These were new to her so we played with them for awhile. We also made an ant using the stix. You can reuse these over and over.

 We made ants from egg cartons and read about ant cities. We read The Ant and the Elephant by Bill Peet about an elephant who helps everyone in the forest and no one will help him - except the ant.

We made simple apples from squares of fabric, stuffing, and green pipe cleaners. No sewing, we just gathered and tied. We then used the apples for silly apple rhymes.

We played a silly game of trying to get the apples in the basket blindfolded. She thought this was fun as long as I didn't turn her around! We had fun this week for the letter A. It is definitely alot of work but she has enjoyed learning all about it. Next week is the letter b, she has already told me what our letter is and we had borrowed some books for it. She is excited and is always begging to do "school" even on the weekends!

What was baby Kaleb doing while we were in school? He was sleeping in the bassinet. We try to do "school" while he is taking a nap. We succeed most of the time but it turns out, Kaleb isn't on a schedule so sometimes school is in the morning or after lunch. We are flexible.

A Nice Surprise

Friday, DH arrived home with these pumpkins. It was a nice surprise for us. They may look like ordinary pumpkins to you but to us, they are a reminder of autumn in America. You see, we don't have pumpkins that look like this. Our pumpkins may taste like pumpkins but they definitely do not look like the ones we are used to seeing around town. These pumpkins were grown by a lady who brought the seeds back from America to raise money for the boy scouts here. We don't have the fall festivities that you may enjoy here. Gone are the hay rides, decorating pumpkins, picking apples, apple cider - anything that reminds you of fall. You think you wouldn't miss that but you do. So this is alittle piece of America for J, she will get to decorate the pumpkins. We will probably cut it open and count the seeds, scoop out the inside and maybe even cook it for pumpkin pie. (We don't have canned pumpkin for pies either) What a nice surprise-thanks DH.

What we did this week

Well, most of us......

Mama J

Having a new baby in the house definitely takes some adjustment. My main concern was for J and how she would react to a little one taking the attention away from her. She has been a big help for me. She wants to help change diapers, feed him, wash him, hold him. She is always checking on him to make sure he is all right and, if he makes the slightest sound, she comes running to me to tell me the baby is crying. Now, I am not saying that we haven't had any problems but J is a trouper and she loves her brother. I am constantly telling her how much I love her and how good she is at being a big sister. It is still an adjustment but we are working on the transition. I love it. Yes, having a new baby means little sleep but it is worth it. We are all enjoying our new addition.