Preschool - Letter O!

Well, here is another school post, just one week later than the last one!  What a surprise! :)  We enjoyed studying the letter O this week! 

Here is our calendar & circle time board! We enjoyed changing our calendar to February this week!

And our Bible Time board!  Our verse was John 3:16, which Zachary did an excellent job learning!  And our fruit of the week was love.  When I 'caught' the kids showing love to someone, I gave them a little M&M.  It was a fun way to apply the fruit of the Spirit!  Zachary would do something nice, and then say, "I shared with Natalie! Did you catch me?" :)  Our song for the week was "Because You First Loved Me" from the Sovereign Grace CD, To Be Like Jesus.  

We made an Octopus O!  Here's Natalie stamping a letter O stamp on her octopus legs to make the suction cups! :)  I got the idea here.

more stamping!  The octopus legs are made out of their traced & cut out fingers! :)

Here's Zachary stamping his octopus legs! (He's having a 'jammie day' in case you can't tell.) :)

Our finished Octopus O's!
We also watched an Octopus video from a great new learning website I found, PBS Learning Media!  The video we watched is here.

Zachary cut out his own pieces for his sequencing worksheet this week!  He is doing awesome with cutting things out!!

putting the pieces in order to tell the story - he's getting good at this, too!

coloring the picture to match

Natalie coloring too!

We played an octopus counting game - you put the number in the box & then count that many octopi & put them on the page.  I love how Nat's laying there watching! :)  This game is from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Zachary did a GREAT job with his verse puzzle again this week!

Here is his finished work!

We did our cut & paste page again this week (from here).  This is to show how I cut it almost apart for Nat so that she only has to make one little cut between each picture & then she feels like she has cut them out. :)  She can only cut 'fringes' on the edges of the paper so far, so I feel like this helps her feel like a big girl. :)

Here's Zachary gluing his O pieces on!  Both Z & Nat LOVE this simple activity - it is great cutting practice for him & they both love gluing!

I find it so funny how he arranges his pieces & one always sticks way off of the page - he doesn't plan it out ahead of time - I am a perfectionist when it comes to crafts so I'm trying really hard to back off lately, and let them do their own crafts & look like a kid actually did it! :)  This is something that I really struggle with, but I'm realizing that in order for them to learn, I really need to stay back & let especially Zachary do things himself! :)

Zachary picking out a sticker! :)  We've been using stickers as rewards for good work lately, and both he & Nat love to pick them out! :)

This was a craft/experiment that we did this week.  I got the idea here, and it was supposed to be a 'trained octopus' but we couldn't get the original idea to work because the eye dropper 'octopus' we made wouldn't fit into any of the necks of the bottles we had!  So we ended up using a medicine dropper instead - and then we got it to work!

You leave just a teeny air bubble in the dropper, then you can squeeze the bottle & it floats down - when you let go, it floats back up.  It was fun but pretty hard for Z to squeeze!  He made some hilarious noises while he was squeezing it! :)

 One other new thing that we're doing along with school this year is praying for all of the countries in the world!  My sister in law recommended this website: www.operationworld.org - they have a book that you can purchase (we do not own it), but on the website, you can also click on any of the countries, see a map of that country and where it is in the world, and read some facts about the populations there, and also read prayer requests and items of praise for each country!  So far, we are keeping current on the prayer calendar, and have just finished talking about each continent in the world - we move on to individual countries in just a couple of days!  Z loves looking at the maps & talking about the people in each country & then we take time to pray for them - I am very excited about this beginning to learning about geography - I'm learning a lot, too!

All 3 kids together on the couch! :)  I love this picture, it definitely captures how much Z & Nat adore little sweet Davey. :)  And the feeling is mutual, as you can see! :)  

I love the stage where they chew on their feet, I find that so hilarious. :)  

Davey is 6 months old now (really? how can that be?) and he is eating baby food, and really loving the fruit & cereal...and okay with veggies sometimes... :)  He is a happy boy, and so sweet, he is a little joy. :)  His nap schedules are kind of weird lately, but we've pretty much got him transitioned to sleeping in his bed instead of his swing, I think! :)  

Well, that's what we were up to this week!  To check out what all the other creative people did for school last week, go to Tot School and Preschool Corner!  Ooh, ALSO! Pinterest!  Are you on pinterest??? I resisted it for a Looooong time because I knew it would be SO addicting and bad for me, and it is.  Way worse than I even imagined. :)  Love it!  I even have an app on my phone! I can repin recipes and craft ideas while I wait in the parking lot for the post office to open - amazing! :)  Anyhow, I'm mrshart03 if you are also addicted & want to follow me. :)