This Week

This week has started off slow and the reason being is J is sick. She woke up on Monday with a fever and has been fighting a cold ever since. So far, this is what we have done.....

J sleeping on her unicorn pillow/toy that she received from her Grandma for Christmas. Hopefully she will be feeling better soon.

Christmas is Officially Over

This week, I said goodbye to the last of my family that was here for Christmas, my DS Josh. Christmas is officially over here at the S-household and it is pretty sad. I know it couldn't last forever and we were definitely blessed to have my Mom and Dad visiting as well as my son from college. I hated saying goodbye to any of them, it made a depressing week. But I have the hope (and prayer) that I will be able to see them again this summer. Jadyn is already talking about packing her bag for the plane and what items she will bring (mostly toys and stuffed animals). I keep trying to tell her the trip won't be for awhile but she is still planning and talking about it. We had a great Christmas, with plenty of visitors, and even ham (what a nice surprise!). I am alittle late in posting these 3 month pics but may you still enjoy them.

We are now getting back to the swing of things - we started back to doing "school." We began a unit on The Mitten by Jan Brett and we are continuing our work on the letters of the alphabet. I will post soon about our school week. I have also been working on some new projects for the house. I began a table runner for my buffet, some mini Eric Carle quilts for the kids' bedroom, a new valance as well, and some barbie clothes (much to my dismay). Jadyn was excited about the barbie clothes and is anxiously awaiting a matching shirt. We will see... I will post about these soon.

Juicy

That's the word - juicy. We had some friends over for Christmas and one exclaimed, when she saw Kaleb, "I just love juicy babies!" Juicy, never really thought of babies as juicy but I guess it fits him. He is a big baby, by no means will you break him when picking him up. He is healthy and lovable, smiling more everyday as well as laughing. It has been fun watching him grow and learn new things. I am so glad I can be a part of it. And, well, if you want to call him "juicy," it is okay by me.

One of my favorites - Josh and Kaleb. Josh is here for just a few more days and I am enjoying having him home.

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.