G is for Giraffe and Umm Africa?

So my plan was to go with G for Giraffe last week until Maddie became interested in the African drum display at the library. She noticed that the drums looked alot like the one she had a home (thanks Aunt Becky). So since I had already created these ideas around giraffes I decided to go with a more African animal and sounds idea. Besides um Giraffe does not make the G sound guh that toddlers expect to hear. oops=) This week Maddie took it upon herself to be as honery as possible. She decided it would be a good idea to put my cell phone away for me. After calling it a couple times I found it in a box inside Landons school desk. Thank goodness the battery wasn't dead or I would never have found that thing! Then for Breakfast that morning she had greek yogurt and berries. While she was eating I went upstairs to get dressed and returned to see she had drawn all over the table with it. This is just the beginning of a long list of things she did during the course of the week. She was excited to see the gigantic strawberry and we took the opportunity to talk about big and small. She said it was the hugest one.lol  I posted a pic of the assorted acctivites we did and books we read. She is really getting good at tracing dotted lines and actually gets a little out of lines later to making swoopies as she calls them. What can I say, she's an artist. We ended our time everyday with African animal matching using cards I made of different animals. She really loves the matching games.

The week we also had a celebration with the boyscouts at the blue and gold banquet. Landon recieved a golden egg and his progression badge with one bead. He was super excited. We also lerned that night that there is a video game badge? Pretty sure Landon should already have that one=) It was a nice night of activites. He really loves boyscouts. Jared is out of town a bit this week so our schedules might be a bit different for school. We are starting H and of course doing horses. Because as Maddie informed me, she does not like zebras she likes ponies. lol

Last weeks lesson

Last week we covered F, so I embraced Maddies obsession with all things girly and went with fairies. I found  super cute book to read and came up with a few activites. You have no idea how hard it is to find fairy lesson plans for preschool online, they just don't exist. Sooo I cut and pasted several fairy trading cards from Disney online and made flash type cards with them. We then used those to play a matching game. We must have aplayed a dozen times. I also had her do bit of prewritting by tracing lines from the fairy to their mushroom houses. She is getting better at this. We of course had to dress like fairies, I had to be the bumble bee as we only own one set of fairy wings. So I apologize to any neighbors who thought I was crazy taking out the trash in my wings=) We ran around the house saying fly fairies as fast as we could, unitl I realized I'm old and had to take a breather. We dvr'd the movie tinkerbell and the great fairy rescue so we watched that and then created our very own fairy house (sorry no pics) Super fun. Of course a lesson wouldn't be complete without painting so we did a watercolor resist butterfly painting. According to the movie thats how butterflys get their designs. If you have a fairy lover in your house go to disney.com and look up Tinkerbell, talk about a ton of stuff!

We had a full week that ended with not one, but 2 sets of Grandparents visiting for the weekend. Then Maddie had a dental surgery early this week. This is why I'll have nothing to post for this week. We are focusing on Valentines day by talking about shapes (hearts especially) and the word love. She is recovering nicely, but looks a bit rough so I am just taking this week a day at a time to see how she feels. Next week is Giraffe- she has already picked out the art project she liked best so be looking for some awesome toddler art work next post!  As for the super cute pic of my little man, I LOVE that my 8 yr old comes bounding off the school bus wearing this hat and has no notion to think he might look uncool. I hope this lasts forever. He is so cute!

Last weeks lesson

I am pretty sure that the gods of homeschooling would kringe at our lessons this week. I was trying to cover the letter E ands its sounds etc. She just wasn't into it, after a couple minutes of trying to persuade her to get into it, I gave up and went with the flow. My thought was E for elephants. She did not want to do any of the tracing or cutting so we watched clips about elephants on youtube. Then we listened to a couple elephant songs on it as well. The songs were great, she is still singing them. Then I made elephant pancakes. So that was day one. Not to forget we did our usual calendar and weather. The next day went a bit smoother. We made elephants from handprints. She loved this of course, and I have to admit the art is always my favorite part. I read some books that featured a ton of words with the long and short E sound. We had one of those wierd weeks in the winter where its 50+ degrees outside. We played outside a ton last week. So I like to think we were working on motor and social skills alot this week. Landon made me some cool lego creations for my birthday. LOVED IT! Not sure why everyone is drinking.lol The last pic is of Maddie enjoying a slice of the amazing cake my neighbor brought over. She obviously really loved it.
 Maddie is very excited about the Fairy books we got from our library trip that we will use this week. This week and weekend was busy busy busy around here so hopefully things are smoother this week.