Monday's Discovery

This Monday's Discovery is toilet paper. He was bound to find it. He has been waiting for the right time and he found it. I left him in the bathroom while I was putting the clothes away and he reached it.

busy...busy...busy

What he left in his wake....Toilet paper - fun, fun, fun!

Pete the Cat - Rocking my School Shoes (part2)

We are continuing our lessons this week with Pete the Cat as well as our space unit. J is loving space right now. We are reading every book we can get on anything related to space. I gave her space socks that I found in the states last summer (I have been waiting to give them to her) and she has worn them two days in a row. (that's pushing it for me but I will wash them soon!) 

J made a name rocket using foam letters and scrap paper.

Since we are learning about astronauts, we made a jet pack from a cereal box and toilet paper rolls. She is asking for a helmet but I just haven't found anything to create one. Our milk jugs are only one liter so they won't work. I might just have to work on using a large yogurt container, we'll see.

We used our counting blocks to play a game. We tried to throw as many as we could into the rocket ship. Then, we counted by two's to see how many. (yes, she dressed herself, she loves these leopard tights that a friend from church gave her)

We are still working with color words. J is creating a Pete the Cat page using the word orange while writing it in orange (her idea).

J colored Jack and Jill puppets that we used to retell the rhyme. I think our most inspired idea, though, came from J. She said since we were studying about space, Pete the Cat should be an astronaut. So, I roughly sketched out a helmet and, of course, sneakers.

I love it, totally inspired! He looks super cute on our space wall. We are still having fun Rocking in our School Shoes!  

Pete the Cat - Rocking my School Shoes (part1)

This week's book is the next installment of Pete the Cat and he is rocking in his school shoes! It is all good. We are still working with color words and our new rhyme is Jack and Jill. We also started our space unit which has J completely excited.

To start the week off, I made homemade play dough. I wanted an extra special play dough that had lots of glitter. I was really hoping for a deeper blue but this is what I ended up with. I added a whole container of silver glitter as well as little blue stars that I found in Ikea a couple of years ago.

I gave her a Space Ace badge and for every space related activity, she will earn a star on her badge. She though this was cool. She wanted to be a Space Ace.

She received a star for making this rocket. I found a printable astronaut and photo-shopped her picture on it. So she is riding in her rocket.

We made this rocket that had a rubber band underneath and J launched it into the air. While she was launching her rocket, we were practicing counting backwards towards blast off!

I printed some planets and astronauts for our felt board. After I laminated them, I added some velcro to the back so they would stick. She played with these for awhile. We are going to learn about the planets later, this week is for astronauts.

Our rhyme this week is Jack and Jill. J played doctor to Jack and glued bandaids to all of the "boo boo's" that Jack had after falling down the hill. She then proceeded to treat the rest of us (Kaleb, me, and her animals) as Doctor J.

Lastly, she started her Pete the Cat picture. I gave her several different blues and she painted on the cat outline that I printed out. We will add eyes and shoes later when he dries. Pete has to have shoes! We had a busy first day and I have tons of other fun stuff planned. Have a great day!

Monday's Discovery

He was a little too quiet while I was working on J's school stuff. I should have known he was up to something. What did he get into? A large package of markers. He grabbed them from the table when I wasn't looking and he went to town. He took all of the lids off. He colored the floor, he colored himself. What fun!

I should know by now that a quiet baby is trouble. At least it washes off!

Pete the Cat-I Love My White Shoes (part 2)

We continued our adventure with Pete the Cat. J worked on writing her color words, of course, her favorite word was pink. 

J colored a mini book using all of the colors for Pete the Cat.

We are working with the Nursery Rhyme Hickety Pickety, My Black Hen. So for our Science activity, we used our ears to listen to "eggs." The idea was to use plastic Easter eggs but we don't have those here, so I used some candy containers that I have been saving.

I filled each container with different items such as rice, lentils, dry noodles, sugar cube, etc... J shook each one and tried to guess what was inside. This was interesting since several sounded the same. Her guesses surprised me, she guessed rice. I didn't think she would get that one.

I wrote her guesses then we opened the containers to see if she was right. She was surprised that different items sounded the same. Next time I would put two of the same items so she could match the sounds.

I let her eat the chocolate. I love this picture. 

J then made a hen puppet that when the wings close, she hides her eggs. For another Science activity based on the rhyme, we grouped animals into two categories - those who lay eggs and those who have live babies. We have a good selection of plastic animals (J loves them) so we used those.

She did really good at this. She even knew that insects laid eggs. J has been asking to study space, so we are off to explore. We will still use a core book but our Science will be based on space. We found some space men in a toy store here to play with in the sand box. She is excited to begin her space learning. May your weekend be wonderful.

Pete the Cat-I Love My White Shoes

We have officially finished our FIAR units for the books that we own, so I have decided to do some fun units with special books. Pete the Cat was given to us by Grandma for Christmas along with the Pete the Cat stuffed animal. Grandma is always finding great books for J and Kaleb. We are lucky. This book is ultimately about having a great attitude no matter what happens. J loves this book along with the second Pete the Cat book - Rocking in My School Shoes. A new Pete the Cat book will be out in March, Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.

I scoured the internet for Pete the Cat resources and found a few. I decided our focus would be color word recognition since J already knows her colors. We will also be working with the nursery rhyme, Hickety, Pickety My Black Hen so it kinda follows with our color theme.

After reading the book and watching the video on youtube, we practiced our color words. I made a show matching game that had the color on one and the color word on the other. We are using these for reference for other games this week that we will play.

J wrote about her favorite shoes - I love my pink shoes and colored pink sneakers. We worked a pocket chart where J put together sentences about different color shoes.

We played a Pete the Cat board game that I found, only the color cards were printed in black ink. J had to match the color words in order to find what space she could advance to.

We played color bingo to practice more color words.

J made a mini book on the Nursery Rhyme, Hickety Pickety. She really likes these rhymes and I am going to try to keep it up for the rest of the school year to see how many she can remember. We practice the old ones every day as well as the new one.

We have more things planned for this great book. But you will have to wait....Because it is All Good.... (Pete the Cat).

Monday's Discovery

This week's Monday Discovery is snow. We recently had about 20 inches of snow and it seemed like it wasn't going to stop. Every time I looked out the window, it was snowing. It also happened during the winter break for school so even DH and DD did not get one snow day out of it. We spent our time indoors, mostly, playing Nancy Drew and chilling out. But one day, we decided to go outside. I got Kaleb dressed to the max and even he went out in the snow!

He wasn't too sure about it.

Here he is with J and their snowman. Isn't he cute? I like having the balcony, it holds just enough snow to keep J occupied and it is close enough to a bathroom when needed. On a side note, we also had a little excitement. An apartment caught fire during our snowstorm, not too far away from our house.

This happened in the morning hours but the fire fighters eventually came and got control of the fire before long. Always exciting-here in the city, huh?