Thanksgiving Smiles

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Kaleb is sending you smiles. (I am not the best photographer but I think these are cute!)

Our Week

This week was the Kurban holiday which enabled DH and Keke to have a week long holiday. We were hoping to get out of the city but it was not to be. Instead we did several things around the city. J and I did not do school but she still had a pretty good week with it ending in some friends coming over for her 4th birthday.

I finally had the chance to finish the chef hat that matches the apron I made J. I was worried when I started to put it together that it wasn't going to work but it did. I thought it came out cute. I had to make some adjustments because I didn't have the fusible webbing that it called for but she loves to wear it when we are in the kitchen cooking and she is helping.

We taught J a new game - Parcheesi but about half way through it, she wanted to be the tigers (which were me) and she thought I should take over her camels. It was nice to sit down, away from the computers, and enjoy a family game. Even Kaleb is getting into it!

We were able to experience the zoo here. It was not at all what we expected but J was able to see (and unfortunately touch) some of the animals. She also had the chance to feed the chimps some veggies which was fun but she was nervous about the animals touching her. She had a good time with her friends and was tuckered out by the time we got home.

And we had a mini birthday party for J. She had two friends over and enjoyed playing with them. We made rainbow cupcakes and ate lots of junk food. Later that evening, I caught J hiding under the table, licking her fingers. She was putting her fingers in the frosting leftover from the cupcakes and licking them under the table so I wouldn't see what she was doing. I knew something was up but didn't put it together until about the third time she did it. She had a good birthday. That was our week, not too exciting but fun. Next week, we work on the letter D, we will have Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's house, DH will be playing traditional/American football, and I will try to keep up.

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.