Its almost Valentines Day!

Its been a pretty laid back week over here. We have played our hearts out, gone to the Library, worked on Valentines day crafts, reorganized the kids room, and reviewed letters and verses. I caught the kids reading together in Sophie's bed several times and it was way too cute to pass up a picture(I know, I know, I never pass up any picture opportunities....)

We also made some fake snow for the kiddos to play in by cutting open a diaper and then pulling out all the stuffing. I asked Soph how much water she thought the snow would hold and after her original answer of "Ummmm a lot??" She guesstimated 4 cups. It held a bit more than that ( I didn't really know when to count that it had stopped soaking in. :-)) Idea for the diaper snow and heart valentines found here.

We had a bit of a "If you give a cat a cupcake" theme since Sophie has been really into the "If you" books and I found these cute printables for some additional fun. We made some grape scented playdoh and used it to make "cupcakes" in some cute spring looking cupcake liners we had and put candles in them. All of us had birthdays this week!

Exodus 20:15

We started working on our 'T' unit this week. Our verse was exodus 20:15 "Thou shall not steal" and we also talked about tigers, trains, and turtles.

We started by painting the trains that we received in our gift bags from our friend Maiya's birthday party! Sophia started asking the minute we got home from the party to paint them and its been a long two weeks until we actually did! I knew the T unit was coming up and so we held off for a few weeks. Anticipation for school stuff is good! :-) So of course this was the first thing on our agenda the minute I mentioned it was 'T' week!



She really enjoyed learning about the verse and learning what not stealing really meant. In our "ABC Bible Verse" Book we read about a little girl stealing flowers from a neighbor. Soph was convinced that she had NEVER stolen anything in her life. We had to really go into depth about what stealing was. She has since given a few toys back to her brother with wide eyes saying "I just stole this Mommy!" Its pretty neat to watch when your kids start really hiding Gods' word in their hearts and applying it to their daily life.

I found the pack of heart erasers at Target dollar spot and they have come in handy from counting turtles to sorting by size/shape/color.

Her scissor work is improving when cutting her verse out but it is still a source of frustration for her. Need to include more activities to help her improve and gain confidence in this area. Any suggestions on activities that will help?










Resources found at::


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L Unit Wrap Up!

We sorted ladybugs by size, practiced writing L's on our chalkboard with q-tips and water, used our L playdoh mat, hunted for big and little L's, and had lots and lots of fun! :-)

Brown Bear Fun

My kids ADORE Brown Bear. Thats an understatement actually. Its one of our most worn in books and both kids can recite it. Sophia has it memorized and Liam knows a lot of it. It has a lot of our sight word for the week which is "See" So we read it and did the corresponding tot book found here.

Sophia worked on sorting by size. Matching heads and tails. Counting. ABC's. Colors. She really enjoyed it! And it helped enforce our sight word of the week.

RRSP L Unit

We started the L unit on Tuesday. I am figuring out that it takes Sophia about a week and a half or so to finish a unit. I'd rather spread it out and have her still enjoy it than force her to sit when she "needs a break Mom!!"

We made these cute ladybug snacks that I saw on here


I brought out Lions that I got here and let the kids sponge paint on a plate to make fun 'L' masks. Sophia loved wearing hers and walking around roaring. Little teething Liam wanted nothing to do with wearing it and I felt so badly because I was trying to put it on him and he slammed his face on the ground and got a bloody lip. Mommy fail. :-( He did like painting it.




Heres a little video of her saying her verse and painting.

Clothespin wheels

We printed off the Color wheel, Shape Wheel and ABC Wheel that I found on 1+1+1+1. I pulled out the ABC clothespin wheel and it was harder than I thought it would be for Sophia. This is a good thing! :-) She has so many activities that she is a pro at, that its a good thing when I find an activity that uses the skills she needs to work on! For this reason we got about 9 letters on her first time and then took a break and we moved onto the color wheel. She flew threw that! We will be going back to the clothespin wheel today! It challenged her letter recognition and fine motor. Getting the clothespins open was hard for her. She did giggle as she called them alligators eating the letters. Maybe I'll make some green with teeth??:-)

We also worked on stringing fruit loops with patterns. We did one with two colors and then with three colors. She really enjoyed that!

I also have this tin and put some scrapbook letters in it. While I was setting up one of the activities I let her pull out the letters and make piles. Left side was letters she knew and right was the I need to work on pile.

She did that while I finished creating the winter counting sheets. My wonderful Mother in Law brought over a huge bag of scrapbook scraps, a circle punch and a snowflake punch and some other great additions to our school room! I used the punches to create a winter counting activity. I printed the numbers 1-5 onto paper and let her count out snowmen and snowflakes to match. She could use all of one or mix and match. She stuck with one, my little orderly lady! :-)

Liam

Since we have a theme of green this week Liam sorted some green stuff into our new muffin tins; here he sorted green pom-poms, green pony beads, and green fruit loops. He also started "beading" for the first time. I had him put fruit loops onto pipe cleaner and although he did need my assistance, he really enjoyed himself and looked quite proud. One of his new phrases is "good job!" and he said it A LOT! LOL

Some of the skills he used were sorting and this really helped with his fine motor skills. Picking up those pony beads was challenging to his little fingers. He also is learning/working on his colors. I would recommend only putting in 3 things to sort so they don't get overwhelmed at this age (14.5 months)

Planning

Just printed off 21 pages for next week! Love having my ink cartridges back!! Starting next week we are moving from random teaching to more intentional teaching with Sophia. We have a lot of fun doing the random crafts and projects that we do but I'd like to focus more on scripture learning, character building, abc recognition, and number recognition. Along side some other skills areas that need growth; scissor use, and handwriting/drawing.

I found the perfect package to use. Its called Raising Rock Stars and the name is taken from two different verses;
Philippians 2:15
so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.

Matthew 7:34
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

You can read more about the program here.

The only thing I can't decide is if I will start at her unit one which is the letter L or just start with A... there is a method to why she creates the units in that way. She wants her kids to learn to write each letter so L is a very easy word to start with. Of course, I printed the A unit this morning but think I will be back to the printer before Monday to print out the L packet. I'll need them both anyhow. :-)

I will continue on with Tot school for Liam. They have so many cool packages and lapbook ideas for him but hes just a little young yet and my thought of the day is that I don't want to wish away any of my childrens developmental stages because I am so busy anticipating the one to come. So he and I will just have fun doing what we have been doing. :-) He is so much fun and learning so quickly at 14 months! I thought he only knew 3 or 4 animal noises and started teaching them more intentionally yesterday only to realize he knows dog, cat, sheep, monkey, fish, squirrel, cow, duck, Lion, tiger, bear turkey, dinosaur, and bird already! So I guess we move on to horse, owl, and elephant! Also cracking me up from smarty pants is the fact that now when we say, "Liam, count" He veryquickly says "one, two, free!"

So thats whats on our plates starting next week! Keep checking back for some (hopefully) more organized teaching and learning photos! :-)

Adventurous edible art!

Today was all about edible art. We started by having a friend over and making mini marshmallow hearts. Unfortunately my pictures disappeared on my phone so all I have are the finished product pics. I really need to start using the real camera more, we actually have a very nice camera! If you notice a few of my pics look much better than the rest, that is why.



Anyhow, we had the girls first sort the pink hearts out of the pack (It was a 4 pack, multi flavored, and yes, I did have more marshmallows eaten than crafted from my tiny marshmallow monsters....:-) ) Then they put glue around the edge of the heart and stuck the little mallows on. Later this evening our little scavenger did eat half of the marshmallows (and the glue) and we narrowly avoided a meltdown when big sister saw what he did -thankfully this is a QUICK craft to redo.

This afternoon we moved on to edible paint. I used pumpkin and apple baby food for Liam to paint with. I am always worried about him eating paint and no matter how much supervision I provide, he still trys, so I was so excited to see this idea here. For Sophia I took "whupped cream" and added a few drops of food coloring and let her finger paint with that. The kids both had a blast! One tip is to make sure to tape their paper down before letting them start.

These are nothing to hang on the fridge, lookwise, but fun! So have fun, take a pic when your done and let them get messy!