Success!!!

He finally did it - he turned over. I was stressing because all of the "baby experts" said he should have been rolling over beginning at four months. Well, now we are in the later part of six months and he hadn't turned over yet. So yesterday, I kept putting him on his tummy (which he only likes for a short time) and he finally got tired of it and rolled over. Yay! I promptly texted my DH and when he came home, he wanted to see Kaleb roll over. Well, everyone thinks I am crazy because he didn't do it. I have the pictures to prove it. I don't care what anyone says - he turned over on his own, I didn't push him! ha ha

Another Country

This week, we have had to pleasure of leaving the city and experiencing the country for a short time. When we were preparing for this new adventure, I was discussing the "country" with J. J was soo excited that she proceeded to inform Keke that "We are moving to another country!!!" No, we aren't in another country but it can feel that way when you are away from the bustle of the city. We didn't do any letter learning this week but J learned many things. Let me share them with you.....

This is one of the views from our cabin. It had rained just about all week but this day was finally sunny! You can still see the snow on the mountains.

This is a picture of our cabin. This cabin was complete with a fireplace and a loft with a ladder J had to learn to climb up. We enjoyed many nights with a fire in the fireplace. Look at the green grass, we don't really have grass where we live.

This is Montana. This dog loves rocks, pipes, pine cones, and basically anything you can throw. J had to learn to get along with him. She loves dogs but Montana is pretty big and he gets soo excited when you are about to throw something, he will knock you down. He just wants to play. You have to be quick though because he will snatch whatever you were planning to throw out of your hands. Throwing plastic pipe is one thing but you should see the huge rocks he expects you to throw!

Here is J and Kaleb. Although it finally became sunny, it was still cold. Here they are enjoying the playground on site. It was cold enough for Kaleb to wear his mittens. He really didn't like having his hands covered but he managed.

Kaleb in the swing. He zonked out after this picture.

J on the playground enjoying the fresh air! It rained soo much that every time we went out, we came back muddy. I thought I overpacked clothes for the kids but J has used all most every outfit I packed. If she got the least bit wet, she had to change. I finally figured out that we had to have "outdoor" clothes and "indoor" clothes. When she came in, she changed to her indoor clothes. That saved on some laundry.

My darling hubby. This trip was his idea, he found this awesome place. He even got to use his skills of irrigation to help the owners with their field. He may even get yo use a backhoe! Look out! If he does get to drive it, I will post a picture, this should be interesting.

My pretty white Converse sneakers - I don't think they will be the same after this trip. I encouraged Keke to only take one pair of shoes which we both did. I didn't expect the amazing amount of mud here. I was doing good with the sneakers until Montana stepped on me foot with a muddy paw, it was all down hill from there. I really like these sneakers.

Well, I guess it is back to reality and back to the city. Next week, we will resume our letters. I believe we will be on R. (only 7 more letters to go) I passed my first Internet class with a 98% so I am happy! I am currently working on one more then I will be done. yay!

Zoo Train

When my older kids were younger, we used to spend quite a bit of time in the bookstore. This particular bookstore had a Brio train set for the kids to play with. My kids loved going to there because it was a new toy to play with. This past weekend, our school had a consignment sale and I happened across a Brio train set. I had planned on buying a train set from IKEA for J's birthday but here this was....a complete train set. I hemmed and hawed for awhile until DH said "just buy it." So I did. Here's what we did yesterday....

We put the train together and ....

we made a zoo for all of the passengers to visit...

and we had a great school day just playing with the train. My next project (hopefully soon) will be a train table. I am searching the bargain room at IKEA for a coffee table with a shelf that I can paint. I will be able to use the shelf underneath for train storage. So J got an early birthday present and I think Kaleb will like it too when he's older, of course. We are finishing zoo and moving on to garden. I am hoping to plant some things soon and someone just gave us a table and chairs for the balcony. So now, we will have a place to sit outside when it gets warmer.

Letter Q

This really doesn't have anything to do with the letter Q but I found this game and Education.com and it was too cute. I just had to make it. It is called Monster Mix-ups. You roll the die and move around the board collecting monster pieces (head, body, feet). The education value? Probably not much, maybe number recognition using the die. The fun value - she loved it. She wants to play it again tomorrow. You will have to excuse the way she was dressed. No, it is not warm here but she said she wanted to "air out." So, she didn't put on her shirt that I laid out for her. She left her favorite princess t-shirt on and as you can tell, she had lunch in it and shared it with her shirt. I asked her what she got on the front, her reply "tomatoes, I forgot to lean over!"

Q is for quilt. We looked up q words in the picture dictionary and then we created a pattern block quilt. This was found at Confessions of a Homeschooler. She has lots of activities for the letter q.

Q is for quail. We read about quail in our Science ABC book of animals and J colored her quail. If you notice, she also wrote a q next to her quail. The quail was found at Making Learning Fun.

J stamped a q with quails. I love these stamps. They were purchased at Michael's. They have an animal for every letter in the shape of that letter.

We are still learning about the zoo. J is separating animals into those that eat plants and those that eat meat. This was really too easy for her. She asked me if the words above each column said "herbivore or carnivore." I had to tell her no. This cute activity was found at 2 Teaching Mommies. I haven't been able to access this site for a long time, not sure why. Sometimes access goes in and out with the tide. But this is a great site, with lots of printable activities and fun stuff to do. I hope I will be able to access this website again.

Q for quail. She colored a quail and traced her Q's. This coloring page was found here.

Q is for castle? Nah, but every castle needs a queen! I printed this castle on card stock and J painted it with water colors. I then cut out each piece for her to glue together as she wanted. a mighty castle indeed, don't you think? The castle was found here.

Q is for Queen and here is Queen J! I altered a picture of a queen and added J's pic. She then painted it for her castle. Isn't she cute? Queen/princess found here.

And I had to add some pics of my sweet pea. He is so much fun. I just love that smile.

Don't you love that hair? More stuff to come...have a great one!

The Letter P

Sorry it has taken awhile to post. I have been taking an online class and it is alot of work. The class has me making a web page for a unit study. It has consumed my time and I still have four weeks to go. Last week, we worked on the letter P. Here is what we did.

Here J is adding her O to the Chicka tree. It is getting full and she knows when we finish the alphabet, we will be taking a trip to 'Merica. So, she is getting excited.

P is for Princess. I found this game from little piles everywhere. It is really cute and J had to match the Princess with the crowns.

Here is a close up of the cute game. We played it all week.

Here is J's finished ocean mural from the letter O week.

This isn't really for the letter P but we are still loving snakes right now. I made snake 3-part cards and we matched the snake with the names. I did have a Python in the cards for the letter P.

P is for penguin. J made penguins for our Zoo Train. Aren't they cute?

P is for peacock as well.

Here's my drool monster. He is drooling like a champ and loves to chew on fingers. Luckily for me, he only has 2 teeth! We are on to the letter Q and I just happened to find a good book about a quilt at the book sale this weekend.

Finishing Letter O

We are finishing up the letter O. It has been slightly hectic since I started my online class to renew my teaching certificate. Online classes are soo much work! We talked about how the owl hunts at night and we discussed other animals that hunt at night. I found this worksheet here. She colored the animals and cut them out herself. We are still practicing that skill.

She is working on a alphabet dot to dot found at makinglearningfun.

We colored and cut out a Diamond Back Rattlesnake, also found at http://www.makinglearningfun.com/. Again, with the snakes, she loves them.

Here's our owl for the Zoo Train. It's soo cute. She painted the plates and cut out the circles, pretty easy.

J is painting a movable snake that we will attach the pieces with brads. The snake will be large enough to create some letters with it.

J is painting ocean animals for an ocean picture.

Here is the background. We used blues and greens and part of a sponge to paint with. We will glue the ocean animals onto it.

This is our magic number string (really an old shoelace). She uses it to create numbers.

J doing some lower case alphabet puzzles. These were found at kizclub . What I like about Kizclub, they offer their printables in color and black/white. So if you want to same ink, you can. They have upper case and lower case. I laminated these because we will be using these again.

Here's a photo of some of the completed ones. They are simple puzzles with just 2 pieces but when all of these are mixed together, it is harder than you think. Notice I ran out of ink when printing some, that's okay she didn't care. And I didn't want to print them again and waste the card stock (or ink).

One last thing - J finally mixed up her rainbow rice! Isn't it pretty? J didn't want to mix it up but her sister Keke convinced her to. They spent some time playing in it together which was fun to watch.

HSV Garden Challenge

I have been reading on other homeschooling blogs about the Homeschool Village Garden Challenge and I began to wonder if I should participate. I had planned on doing a unit on The Garden with J after we finished the Zoo Unit we have been working on. We were planning on planting some seeds to watch them grow but I wasn't sure if I could do it right now. We are going to try. I live in the city on the top floor of our apartment building (9th floor to be exact). We have a large open balcony with tons of sunlight available to it. We are planning hanging boxes on the railing and perhaps a few small planters around. I would show you a picture but we have workers who are painting and fixing the roof, so it is quite messy. I have plans to fix up the balcony so we have a nice place to sit and play.

My plans for our garden will most likely be flowers. At the moment, we are growing an onion that we found in my pantry. (It decided to grow in spite of us so we just added it to some water.) I am concerned about our flowers though because we will be returning to 'Merica for the summer and my DH will probably forget to water the poor things. But we are going to try to grow something. Here's what I have soo far...

Okay, so it isn't much. I have to do this in stages. I bought the potting soil last week and this week, we will buy some window boxes and hopefully some seeds. The brick is for the balcony door which likes to swing close and lock me outside. Not a pleasant feeling so the brick is essential to my balcony garden. Homeschool Creations has a gardening preschool pack that I plan on using with J and if you post about a garden of your own, you can get the additional files she has created. I love her preschool packs as well as her blog.

 I am planning a garden sensory bin. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Well, it will just be some dirt, little pots I found at our T Family Dollar (of sorts), some fake flowers, a small watering can, glass rocks, and anything else I can find that will be fun to dig up (maybe some beans). J is waiting for that bin. I know it sounds crazy to have a dirt bin but what kid doesn't like to play in the dirt? And it can be cleaned up with a broom, if need be.

We will be making all kinds of flower art projects to create a garden mural of our own, one that doesn't have to be watered! We will be reading about flowers and insects as well as snakes. I can't get away from the snakes, J loves them! And, of course, we will still be working on our alphabet.

Here are some garden links that I have been saving for this unit. Maybe you will find something there of interest and be inspired to start a mini garden of your own!

thehomeschoolvillage this is the link for the garden challenge. I looked today and there are already soo many links posted about gardens they are planning. I am jealous since I only have a little balcony and I see all of these pics with lots of land to play on!

Minimops has a game where you can plant a virtual garden

naturegrid has an interactive site to discover more about plants

se7en has some interesting takes on container/windowsill gardening

familyfun this art project looks cool

choiceusa  from seed to plant ideas

lapbooklessons has some pictures of a flower and plants lapbook

mrsleeskinderkids scroll down and see her garden mural, soo cute!

squidoo here is a great link if you are planning a spring lapbook, lots of activities for different ages.

lapbooklessons this link has lots of printable spring ideas for the age group of 3 to 6

kidsgardening you may find some things of interest here to help you plan a garden

notimeforflashcards has a garden sensory bin that incorporates lots of beans and bowtie pasta to be butterflies (I just may use that myself)

sesamestreet has some online games about growing healthy food, learning about insects, as well as play lists of fun things to do.

J loves to play on the computer but I only allow it for a certain amount of time. I purchased an inexpensive timer from IKEA and turn it to the amount of time she has to explore her learning games. She knows when to timer dings, she has to stop what she is doing. The timer helps her to know when she is done and it eliminates the begging for more time/whining not to get off of the computer. It has helped alot. We also use the timer for clean up. I have her race against the clock to see if she can clean up her toys before the timer goes off. This puts alittle spring in her step!