Christmas Week 2 Activities

We made J candy canes for Jesus (and of course Jadyn). These were made by ripping and tearing various types of red paper and gluing it on a letter J.

This is possibly one of my favorites. We made elf ornaments using our photos and adding ears, hats, and the bodies. They turned out so cute that I think I am going to laminate them and keep them for next year's tree. I found the elf printable from this website. It has really cute and free (my favorite) printable crafts.

We made an easy tree banner. All I did was cut out triangular shaped Christmas trees and had J decorate them with various foam shapes, glitter, sequins, and shiny wrapping paper. Most of the items were brought from the states but you could use stuff from here, just be creative.

Lastly, we practiced hand-eye coordination by peeling Mandarin (mandalina)  oranges. These are in season now and are easy to peel. She absolutely loves them and would eat three in a row, if I would let her. Also, these are nice because they are virtually seedless.

2 Months

Two months, can you believe it? I can't. It has gone by so fast. He is getting so big, I can barely keep clothes on him. It seems that something that fit him one day, doesn't fit him the next! He is smiling more and he loves his sisters. He is my sweet pea.

Christmas Activities

The first of December brought about a month of advent and activities that I planned. Here are some of the activities we have done so far.

We put the tree up. Here J is getting a lift from Keke.



We made tree ornaments from pipe cleaners and beads.



We made jingle bracelets from bells and cording. And then, we learned the words to Jingle Bells.



We searched for stars around the house like the Wise Men did. At the end of the star search, J got a Christmas movie.

We are also doing a daily advent reading at dinner with the whole family present. These readings come from a printable advent chain that I found online. These readings have been nice to do as a family and they are manageable for a four year old to sit through. (sorry, can't find the link but I have the pdf if anyone would like it, e-mail me)

Letter D

Sorry, it has been so long since my last post. We went through a bout of sickness here in the household. J was sick and thus decided to share her sickness with the rest of us. We are finally healthy somewhat and back to doing "school." This is some of what we did for the letter d.

Every week we begin our "school" with reading Abadaba Alphabet by Sheila Moore. It is a new book to our library and what I really like about it is that it teaches the sounds of the letters, not just the letters itself. So, she is learning the sounds of the letters which will help when she begins to learn to read.

We played a math counting game where we added dots to our Dalmatian after rolling some dice. The dots were buttons and then we compared who had more dots on their dogs.

J dug for dinosaur fossils in a sensory bin filled with rice. The fossil was actually a Burger King toy for Night at the Museum that I found awhile ago. It is the T-Rex and he glows in the dark-pretty cool.

J painted a dinosaur puppet that we made with brads.

Then we made binoculars from toilet paper tubes. Our binoculars are for our learning unit on the pond. We finished our unit on the farm and have moved on to learning about the pond. You can also see the beginning of our pond mural in the background on the floor. We made water by using blue plastic wrap and we will add pond animals as we learn about them.

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.