Tot Tuesday

Recently, J has coaxed her father out of an extra tool box full of various tools. She has coveted it since and hid it in different places so the tot could not find it. Well, today, he found it. It was a blissful 30 minutes of quiet time while working with J.

You can tell he had been checking out all of the tools in the bag.

He is fixing the cabinet. You never know what is going to keep him occupied but I think the tools are a keeper.

Letters...

Recently, I have been searching the internet for preschool/tot school for Kaleb next year. I have looked for boyish preschool ideas that incorporate tools, vehicles, and messy stuff. I had decided that he was still too young for me to focus on learning the alphabet but he has changed my mind lately.

Kaleb has developed a fascination for letters. Everywhere, he sees them, he has to point them out. He tells me excitedly, "Letters! Letters! Mommy!" He even has been able to distinguish letters from numbers. I wasn't expecting that! So, I have brought out different letter learning items out for him to play with....

 Kaleb is playing with the foam alphabet that I found. He loves to pop out the letters and occasionally, he will help put them together.

Checking out the bath tub letters that I have....

He loves the large magnetic letters. I gave him the bucket and he played with them on a cookies sheet. He also played with my fabric letters that I made J a long time ago. I am still unsure of adding alpha recognition into his preschool/tot school but he has surprised me before. I will follow his lead and we will see what comes of it!

Sonlight Week 23

Wow, we are moving right along. It is hard to believe that we are already in week 23. We started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz this week. I was somewhat unsure of how she would take to the book but so far, she has loved it. She has asked everyday for "one more chapter." How can I resist? We learned about atoms and molecules, added more diagraphs to our reading, and continued to practice skip counting and subtraction in math.

She had been waiting for this letter - U because of the silly picture of underwear to add to her letter page. She thought that was so funny - underwear!

J learned a few more sight words this week. She is working on want, this one seems to be tough for her. So we are still practicing it.

We worked with a few more silly sentences. She liked this activity and I have been thinking about creating my own to go along with our Oz reading.

I added rainbow words this week to help practice her sight words. She traced over the words using crayons while practicing reading the word.

More sight word practice. We have to practice, practice, practice...

J pulled out the handwriting book. I am trying to finish this book before the end of the year but I feel that she writes so much in our day. I don't want to wear her out. She asked to work a few pages without my prompting.

We celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday all week long. We read his books and did some fun things. (I know I am late but we wanted to join in the fun) J is reading an emergent reader about the Cat in the Hat.

We read The Foot Book and painted with our feet.

I am a brave woman! We made green cupcakes and drank green kool aid for Green Eggs and Ham. What fun! Hope your week was fun, see you for week 24!

Congrads Keke

Keke, my DD, had some really great news this week. It is bitter sweet for me as a mother but I am truly excited for her. She has been accepted into college - the college she was hoping for. She has been on cloud 9 since she heard. I am happy but sad as I knew this day was coming. I will definitely miss her. The youngers will miss her as well.

I am so proud of her and I am glad that she is gearing up for the next stage in her life. I am also thankful that we will be stateside to help her through this transition....or should I say, help me through this;) Good luck Keke, we love you!

The Price for Silence

Kaleb had been sick all week, sleeping on my lap, wiping his nose on my shirt. You know you have all been there. There was finally one day where he was actually feeling like playing while J and I worked. So I let him play....and I paid the price. Here is the damage done.

He opened the small legos and went to town, dumping them all on the floor which ended up in an avalanche down the stairs.

What a mess! Then he figured out that it wasn't fun trying to walk over them. I found legos in places I didn't even think to look - we were cleaning this up for days. But it did give me some time with J uninterrupted. Was it worth it? If I step on another lego, probably not.

Tot Tuesday

When J was sick, I took the time to bring out some new items for Kaleb to explore. I brought out our magnet wands and magnets to play with. I placed all items into a bin and let Kaleb explore.

This bin had many small items and I supervised this activity. For the most part, he doesn't put things in his mouth but I just wanted to make sure. I also cut some pipe cleaners to add in the magnet fun.

When he gets older, we will work on what is magnetic or not. But for now, I just let him play with the magnets - sticking them and unsticking them.

He was mainly interested in the small nuts and bolts that were in the bin. I should have known he would zero in on something. He loves little things. 

Art Appreciation - O'Keefe

 Our new artist that we have been working with is Georgia O'Keefe. She is known for her bright flowers and artistic views on nature. Here are a few of the projects we worked on during our artist study.

 I made art cards, a magnetic puzzle, and cards for our matching game. We listened to our artist song and danced around.

I showed J O'Keefe's pictures of flowers - the big, bright colors and asked her to create her own flower. I gave her the paper scrap bin and had her free cut her project. She didn't like the idea at first but then she got into it. This project was inspired by Laugh Paint Create.

Another project J worked on was to draw a large flower which took up most of her paper. She traced it with a sharpie and then used watercolors to paint it. This project was inspired by Pink and Green Mama.

The last project she worked on was to create a large 3-D flower from paper. I made some simple tracers for the petals and the leaves.

The result was stunning but I can tell you these were somewhat difficult for a kindergartener to put together. I had to staple the leaves because the glue wouldn't stick well. J really loved these and play with them for the rest of the day. This idea for this project came Housing a Forest.

Links

Working for the Classroom has a great 3-D flower project that I love. I just needed our projects to be finished in one day and this one took a couple of days. The result is really something, though.

Deep Space Sparkle has a great paper flower project. If I had access to more patterned paper, which I don't, I would have tried this one.

The Art of Ed had a downloadable O'Keefe project for your to try.

Life's A Craft Project has a tissue and paint project that looks awesome as well.

If you would like my printables for O'Keefe, please leave me a message and I will email them to you.  I am not an art teacher but I feel that it is important to include art appreciation in our regular school week. I hope this inspires you to create some art with your children.