Preschool - Letter T!

Our family has been very busy with all kinds of fun- like a grandparents visit, LOTS of hours playing out the GORGEOUS, 70 degree MARCH weather (what? Here in western NY we regularly schedule SNOW retreats in early March!!), and even a Mommy & Daddy getaway to Niagara Falls, Canada!!  Anyhow, we somehow managed to squeeze in a week of school about the letter T!

I actually remembered to take a picture of our circle time center this week: The kids still love to use this every school day! :) 

Here is our Bible time board - Our song was Nothing Better than Jesus from the Sovereign Grace CD To Be Like Jesus.  Our verse was Jeremiah 10:6, which says 'No one is like You, O Lord. You are great. Your name is powerful.'  Our Bible passage was Jeremiah 10, about the difference between God and idols, how He is the only true God!    

Z did a great job on his verse puzzle, as usual. :)  He still really enjoys this activity each week, and he even works on it independently while I get craft stuff ready or work with Natalie.  

We made birthday cards for Daddy!! Z loves to use my circle punch (for scrapbooking), so he punched out some circles and glued them in his card. :)  He wrote the 'Hi' himself!! :)

Natalie drawing a heart for Daddy. :)

Zachary's first attempt at writing!!!  It says Happy Birthday (the bottom line is ay, though it looks like gn). :)  

We made Tree T's!  We colored the trunks brown first. 

Natalie coloring

Natalie adding some glue while Z glues on his leaves.

Our finished Tree T's (idea here).  Also, I couldn't find a T craft I liked on the blogs I usually check, so I searched Google images until i saw one I liked, and it worked really well!!

I love this picture. :)  We made these tiger paper bag puppets - we glued the pieces where we wanted them the first day, then drew/colored on them the 2nd day.  Z is growling/smiling. :)

Natalie growling with her puppet. :)

Their paper bag puppets (Z did a lot of his own drawing & gluing & his puppet is on the right.  I helped Nat a lot & her/my puppet is on the left. :)  (idea here)

This was a Saturday morning fun activity, not sure why it ended up here but I'll take it. :)  This is some sticky 'Yuck' stuff that my husband got sent a sample of - the tagline for this product was "It's just like snot!" and, um, yes, it was.  Totally gross but the kids loved it - messy cleanup though!!!  

We also did shaving cream printed paper (Pinterest idea!) - here Natalie is swirling some paint around in her shaving cream...

And Zachary is swirling his around...

And of course after we printed it on the paper, they swirled & played with the rest of the shaving cream for a little while. This was MESSY to clean up, though!!!  And my kitchen smelled like a man... :)  Also, I didn't get a picture of the finished product, but it was cool, all swirly & everything. You'll have to take my word for it, I guess! :)

Natalie concentrating on cutting apart her cut & paste pieces.

Natalie gluing - her favorite! While Z cuts. :)

Natalie drawing with a wipe off marker.

She loves to draw hearts! :)

So, we did a lot of playing outside, too - a LOT!!  Here are the kids wading in a creek at camp - it was in the 60s this day -and this week has been even nicer - in the 70s even!!  I can't get over how gorgeous it is! Such a struggle to stay in and do housework when I could be outside... :)

Earlier in the month (when there was still snow on the ground, apparently), we found a 'fuzzy wuzzy' caterpillar on our back porch - Z was very excited but Nat, who is currently afraid of all animals, cried and said, "Bug!" and refused to touch him. :)

Davey!! :) He loves to be outside!! He is currently rebelling against ever being put down or being even a foot away from me, so the fact that he can swing in his little red swing on the porch with Zachary gently pushing him (Z is so amazing with Davey!!), and then I can get something done, is totally awesome.  I am trying to work up my strength to wear him more, but he weighs 20 pounds, so I can't do it very long yet! He loves to be in the baby backpack, though, and shopping with 3 is a LOT easier now that he's big enough to ride in the backpack!! :)

Well, we didn't do a ton for the letter T, but I think some learning took place! :)  To check out everyone else's great activities, hop on over to Preschool Corner and Tot School! :)  After a week-long break, we're back to school this week with the letter U!! Only six weeks of school (and an easy Easter unit while we get ready to go on vacation) left!!  Then we can play outside even more! :)

Preschool - Letters R & S!

Well, we've finished up two more weeks of school - we studied letters R & S! It is hard to believe we only have 7 letters left for the year - plus a light Easter unit, and two separate weeks of vacation, so ten more weeks till school's out for the summer, but still - we're so close to the end!

So, we studied the letter R - again, I failed at getting pictures of our circle time & Bible time board, but our Fruit of the Week was patience, and our song was Gotta Wait from the Sovereign Grace To Be Like Jesus CD.  Our verse was Ephesians 4:2 - Be patient with each other and lovingly accept one another.  We talked about showing patience but we had kind of a crazy week and I didn't catch them displaying it to each other very often... :)

Natalie dot painting an R page

Z dot painting his R page

I was super proud of both of them - Z's is on the left, and Nat's is on the right - she even dotted in some of the holes - great fine motor skills! :)

We played with playdough, they both love to cut it with knives. :)

We made Rainbow R's (idea here).  We glued strips of paper on a page with an R drawn on it, then after they dried, I cut out the R's.  I thought they turned out cute!

This was Z's rainbow Color By Number (from Confessions of a Homeschooler's LOTW curriculum). I thought he did great on this, too!

Z traced the number 18!

He circled all the things that begin with R - www.beginningreading.com(worksheet here).

Sorting rockets according to size (I got this here, but due to copyright issues, she had to remove all the printables from her blog - sadness - her stuff was SOOOO cute!! :( ).

Natalie surprised me by doing a great job sorting by size, too!!

We made rockets out of old bottles - first we painted the inside of the bottle with acrylic paint (but I only had a little, it was metallic black & sparkly, so then we used tempera paint for the rest, it never did dry, I finally gave up after 3 whole days & just hot glued the lids on so the kids could play with them).  Then we glued on construction paper wings & windows & a door, but they fell right off, so we had to tape them on & then Davey ate one of them....okay, don't tell the kids but I already threw these away. But it was a fun craft & when they weren't falling apart & refusing to dry, the kids had fun playing with them! :)

Our finished rocket bottles. :)

Natalie gluing her R cut & paste page (from here).  

Z cutting out his cut & paste things.

Zachary playing playdough - has anyone else had issues with Blogger uploading their photos in RANDOM orders lately?  I don't know why this one is here and I'm too lazy to switch it now. :)

Natalie pinning a clothespin onto a number flashcard.  The clothespins have the numbers on them & the flashcards have a number of items on them to count & match.

Z playing the counting/matching game.  These flashcards were $1 at Walmart & the clothespins are super cheap, too, you could probably make this game for about $2 & 20 minutes total. :)

One Saturday morning, we made paper bag puppets - Z made a dog. :)  

I love the eyes he drew - here's a closeup! :)

Whoops - while I was taking pictures, Natalie was gluuuuing away! :)  We decided to add buttons to her pig since he had glue all down his belly. :)

Our paper bag puppets! :)

 Next, we studied the letter S.  Our fruit of the week was kindness, and thankfully the kids did better at showing kindness to each other this week.  They ended up getting Twizzlers for showing extra kindness at least a couple of times. :)  Our song was You Show Me Kindness, and our verse was 2 Timothy 2:24 - A servant of the Lord must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone.  What an awesome verse to use in discipline situations!  I will definitely be referring to it in the days and weeks to come - as anyone who has more than one child has surely experienced, we talk about being kind to your siblings A LOT! :)

Zachary practiced his cutting - this is from Confessions of a Homeschooler's LOTW curriculum again.

Z practicing cutting while Nat writes (scribbles) on Z's letter hunt paper. :)

Pinterest Idea!! I buried the letters from this foam puzzle in some rice (I only had brown & it is kind of messy, it gets 'dust' on the puzzle, I think white would be better in the future), and the kids had to find the letters and put them in the puzzle.  They just really enjoyed playing in the rice more than anything. :)

They did put some letters in the puzzle, though!  

We made Superhero S's for our craft!  I just noticed Nat's (the white page) was upside down - whoops!  This idea was from No Time for Flashcards - I love her crafts!!

Here's Z and his finished verse puzzle - he consistently loves this activity, and it is SO easy to make!  He is getting better about working independently on his puzzles and seatwork, so that is nice. :)  

Natalie LOVES to glue! :)  She's working on her cut & paste page again!

Gluing on her S items!

Z is concentrating on cutting out his S things.

And carefully arranging them on his page. :)

Matching snowflakes together - Z also came up with a game where he hid these around the schoolroom and I had to find and match them - he loves to make up games! :)

Another Pinterest idea - we painted on the inside of cereal boxes with homemade puffy paint!  The recipe includes just salt, self-rising flour, water & baby shampoo & food coloring.  

We had a lot of fun with it!

Here is Nat's picture before we put it in the microwave for 30 seconds to dry & puff up.

And here is her picture 30 seconds later!  The kids LOVED this activity & when we were talking through our week, Z said this was the craft he'd like to do again. :)

Here is my puffy paint picture! Now that you're all jealous of my artistic abilities...moving on... :)

Here is Z matching number clothespins with a counting wheel (game here).  

rolling it like a wheel...of course. :)

One perk of being the kid of a program director is that sometimes he gets samples of fun stuff that people want him to buy to use at camp!  And sometimes he brings them home for you to play with! :)  Here are the kids playing with a sample of something called Saucy Yuck.  It was really fun, I was just worried because you're not supposed to let it go down the drain (it starts out as little crystals that absorb water), so I was wiping the kids with paper towels instead of washing their hands, etc.  It ended up working out okay, and the kids loved it! :)  

Here's my requisite Davey picture!  He has grown up a TON these last couple of weeks!  He now has two teeth (bottom middle), is getting some cuuuute spiky blond hair on the top of his head, and is rolling & scooting backwards!  It is so weird to walk into a room and think, 'Oh! Didn't I put him down here? Oh, there he is!' since he can motor around the room now. :)  He loves his baby food, puffs & now Cheerios, but he still loves nursing the most. :)  It's so fun to watch him interact with Z & Nat more and more as he grows! :)

Well, so that's what we've been up to around here for school lately!  To see what everyone else is up to, check out Tot School and Preschool Corner!