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.

Last weeks letter

Whew last weeks school was a little bit everyday. Between doctors appts, boys scouts and Maddies activities we were lucky to get 30 minutes at home a day. But we did it! What a week, D is for Dinosaurs (and dragons Maddie tells me) We read soem really cute books like 'How do Dinosaurs go to school' and 'ABC T-Rex'.  We attempted to make dino track cookies but failed miserably, Maddie did enjoy making the footprints in the cookies though.  Wow lets see we did big to small dinos, letter matching for the word dino, drew lines to get the dinos to their homes, which dino is different, and last a bit of scissor practice. Oh wait how can I forget, we played archeologist and she searched for the dinos in her jello mold. The biggest part was the trip to see the dino exhibit in Dayton. As an adult it was way over priced and took all of 10 minutes. But as a toddler and 8 yr old it was pretty cool to see life size dinos moving. A great field trip to go with our Dino studies this week.

Pinewood Derby

This week was the big race for Landons awesome military cop car. He was so excited. He worked very hard and it paid off. Landon took 2nd place overall! I guess all the extra paint he put on it didn't slow it down.lol That means we get to got to districts in March! He is very excited and couldn't beleive he got a trophy. We are so proud of him for bieng a gracious and humble winner, even though I know he was wanting to jump and yell about his win=)

Landons car is winning in this one

Stepping up my game

So I have viewed about as many preschool mommy blogs as I can. After feeling like a complete failure I decided to step up my game a bit. Its a learning process, but I am starting to come up with new ideas and have found a site where starting next week I can print all sorts of fun alphabet themed activities to go with my plans for that week. This week we are learning all about the letter C and the sound it makes etc. We started the week with our usual calendar time and reading our themed book. I loved the book Mouse and the Big Cupcake. Sooo cute and Maddie loves it too. We have read it everyday wince bringing ti home from the library. Tuesday we started out with our letter recognition, spelling the word cupcake. She LOVES the clothespins and has done this one many times for Daddy Landon and anyone who will watch. We had a spur of the moment play date arrise and decided to go to a friends house for playtime and crafts that day so thats where C ended for the day.

 Bieng out of the school setting I take every opportunity to play with kids when we can. Sooo that brings us the Thursday. Busy day! Of course calendar and book on cupcakes. Try explaining to a toddler that it is cloudy outside when its one giant cloud. so we went with rainy until it started snowing=) Next we moved on to  arranging the cupcakes I printed out in to order according to size we did this a dozen or so times at her request both big to small and small to big. She's a pro. Maddie took a quick puzzle break while I prepared for the baking part of our day. She has a little boy body puzzle that she calls her Landon puzzle. She loves to take him apart and then reassemble, not sure if thats a good thing or not.lol  

Maddie helped me mix the cake batter and then we added color to seperate bowls, of course we talked about what would happen etc. She was amazed to see the batter change colors as she mixed. Soooo here comes the messy part, I set her up with a tray and I had one too. She dumped generous helpings of batter into the little cups, all the while licking everything her little hands touched. (dont worry neighbors if you recieved mini cupcakes today, you got mine=) I could not believe how amazingly bright they turned out! Maddie was more interested in eating the icing and sprinkles then putting it on her cupcakes. We even lucked out and Daddy came home for a surprise lunch and took a pic of both of us in the kitchen.

We ended our school day with a new task, sewing. This was a bit of a challenge, but once she realized what I was asking her to do she quickly caught on. (thanks for the string tip Stacy) I think as she continues her ability to hold the card and string it will improve. Soooo very busy toddler day, my house is relatively clean as I was entertaining Madddie all day so she had no time to run around and destroy. Oh my, I almost forgot to mention our art project! WHAT ME? We used barbasol and glue mixture to make fake frosting (thanks Tracy)and painted and smeared our mock cupcakes and then added sprinkles. It was so fun.

B is for Ball and other stuff

This week school was abit more flexible. I haven't been feeling good and my back is still on the mend sooo, we skipped Tuesday and had school Wed and Thurs this week. Had to throw in the pics of Maddies bed head. I was so excited this week because I had found this great tutorial on how to make your own bouncy ball. So I planned to make Balls one morning and then paint with them. Well, the tutorial was a bust we tried 3 times and i finally gave up. Although Maddie seemed to thuroughly enjoy the substance that we did make=) We quickly moved on to coloring our B is for bouncing ball pictures. I have no pics from Wed. because it was very messy and Maddie insisted that I join in on the coloring fun. Next we read Maddie's current favorite book, A Bug a Bear, and a Boy at home. This book has a ton of the B sound. We ended our session singing the B says Buh song. Thursday went a bit smoother, we started our morning singing the weekday song and doing our calendar (this is a new thing for us).

 Keeping her from moving everything around when I am not looking is tough. I found various balls around the house and lined a tupperware with paper and primary paint colors. Maddie tilted it all around and really got into making the paitnings and mixing the colors. Of course as usual we had to do a bit of finger painting.

 
(I suggest using real bouncy balls or marbles with adult supervision, they roll better and don't get stuck)  Maddie at this point is covered in paint so we moved on to Bubble and water time at the sink. As you can see she had a blast. We ended the session with a bubble bath and some berries with Yogurt for lunch. It was a day full of B.

I was a bit aprehensive about doing B day as this is what my nursing child lovingly refered to the boob as. She would get sidetracked when I said the letter B and then told me she had little B's. lol So I guess we threw in a bit of human anatomy today as well=)