This week at our house.... (Well, two weeks actually)

I'm a little behind on the posting. Sorry to the two of you who read this blog (Grammy and Nona). Oh wait my Aunt Robin just told me she was reading it, so that makes three! We went for a visit to Poppa and Nona's in there and we had a birthday party of J-Man! So, we've been trying to stay busy in the meantime. We're continuing our snow theme, even though as I see the weather report right now, it is currently 60 degrees in our neck of the woods. Oh well. Fine by me.
Here are some things we did:

We talked about Penguins and where they live. The kiddos can also tell you that polar bears and penguins live at opposite poles. They can also tell you that the daddy penguin stays with the egg while the mommy goes back to the ocean for food. And that the leopard seal eats the penguins.

Here are a few math things we did. We worked on making winter shapes with pattern blocks. We reviewed the shapes (especially trapeziod and rhombus). And then we did a little sy-mitten-try (sorry, couldn't help it). They both really liked this. I think it was because they got to smush their paintings!

I saw this cute little snowman on Pinterest and wanted the kiddos to make them. I added a little math to it by having them make the square in a pattern. They also had to draw the circles themselves. You can't really tell by Brother's squares are stacked on top of each other. They also had to cut out the squares themselves from strips of paper (for some cutting practice).

Yes, we are still obsessed with The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats as mentioned before (see previous post). I found this mixed media art from Pitter Patter Art and knew it would be perfect for my two. Brother chose the last page for his art and mostly painted and painted, while Sis chose the sledding/sliding Peter for hers. I cut out the Peters and they glued them on to their paintings. I think they came out great!

Here is Brother's art.

And here are Sis's.

This project is a crayon resist. I have LOVED crayon resist since I learned about it in my Art for Education class. I have probably used it as my "go-to" artsy activity for a lot of different ages. For now, I wrote the kiddo's names in white crayon and drew some snowflakes on their white paper. Then they water colored on top of it. They ooohhhed and ahhhhed. Brother even said it was "Magic Paint." And here's the best part-They were still and quiet for at least 30 min!

Here's one of the last things we did last week. I've been working on a few sight words with the twinkies. Sis has her's down pretty well. Brother still needs some work, so I thought I would make a kinesthetic activity! I taped down sight words on the kitchen floor. Each kiddo had their own color. When I shouted out a word they had to jump on it. It was so fun! We'll definitely be playing this one again. I'm getting ready to read Boys and Girls Learn Differently, which of course I know, but my schema ;) is limited, so I'm going to read some to build my background knowledge.

I also have our book list to post and another few things, but the oven timer is beeping at me, which means the meatloaf is ready! I'm also back at work for the new semester and I have a bit of a commute this time, so things get hectic from time to time (anybody else feel that way?).

Happy Learning!

The Snowy Day

My children apparently do not read the weather report! It has been unusually warm here, but we've been doing nothing but reading about SNOW! Our new obsession is Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day. So this week we did a lot of crafts and learning games with our good friend Peter and his snowy day. We will definitely have to get some more of the Peter series books! Here's what we did this week:

We got a new Melissa and Doug alphabet magnet set for Christmas, so we've been sorting lowercase and uppercase everyday. We've also been spelling our names and other simple words.

This is brother's "Don't See Me" face. He does NOT like to have his picture taken (most of the time), and yes, sometimes we do work in our pajamas!

We also made snowflake stamp paintings like the end pages of The Snowy Day (for some reason it is not letting me italicize or underline the title, which is really bothering me!).

I made those stampers with foam stickers stuck on bottle caps. I LOVE pinterest!

To continue our winter theme, we made these cute little handprint mittens

(remember I'm a sucker for a handprint craft!). They turned out SO cute!

For a little math, we made snowmen using lots of different shapes and we talked about sizes and order and so on. We also reviewed the shapes we used (hexagon, trapezoid, rhombus etc.).

I'm so glad the princess was able to join us for this activity!

We've also been working really hard on sight words. We played a new sight word memory game, which brother LOVED! It was the first time that he wanted to say the words and it wasn't like

pulling teeth to get it out of him.

Another Snowy Day activity we did was work on sorting beginning sounds. We sorted "Starts with S" things from the story and "Does not start with S" things from the story.

We also did a little interactive writing with this and the kiddos wrote the beginning letters for the pictures.

We also made a flow map of the sequence of the story. We had to reread it a few times to make sure we got it correct, but trust me, they didn't mind! I'm working on getting all these things together to make sort of a Snowy Day Tot Pack out of it, but I'm about halfway finished.

Another thing I am trying to do this month is chart what books we are reading each day. I thought it would be neat to look back at the end of the month and see how many books we read. Here is what we read this week:

Sunday: The Snowy Day, Berenstein Bears Count their Blessings, Berenstein Bears Too Much Junk Food

Monday: The Snowy Day, Tops and Bottoms, Asparagus to Zucchini: A Vegetable Alphabet

Tuesday: The Snowy Day, The Biggest Snowball of All, Let it Snow, Mine-a-saur

Wednesday: The Snowy Day, Brave Irene, Put Me in the Zoo

Thursday: The Snowy Day, Ready, Set, Skip!

Friday: The House that Jack Built, Put Me in the Zoo, Lost Little Monkey

Saturday: Jan Brett's Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Construction Countdown, The Great Dogwash

Wheeewww! That is a lot of work in a week! It was a great week and we got a lot accomplished! I love being able to be with these two little miracles. Thank you God for giving me the opportunity.

Owl Moon

I personally LOVE the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. I used it all the time in the classroom when I was teaching Readers' and Writers' Workshop. It has beautiful, rich language that greatly demonstrates wonderful writing. In addition, it tells a beautiful story of a little girl's simple adventure with her Pa (almost every kiddo has a simple adventure story to tell!) While I know the twinkies are too young to understand some of the poetic devices found in this book, I'm a big believer in exposure to great literature leads to great readers and writers! So I read the story aloud and we talked about the season and what the little girl was doing. We also talked about what sound an owl makes and where animals are hiding in the book (this will lead to another activity later). After we were done with the book, we made a shape owl with handprints (I'm a sucker for a handprint craft) and talked about all the shapes in the owl (we know all of these already, but reviewing is VERY important!)Here is a cute little picture of our owls!













And the finished product...













A little later, we worked on sight words by playing a fine-motor clothes pin matching game.












And finally we continued to work on our alphabet border for our "classroom."
This idea is from Totally Tots, which has amazingly cute ideas to do for all kinds of ages! My goal is to put Upper and Lower cases all the way around our "classroom." We have a ways to go, but I think it looks really cute already. When we are reviewing these letters we play the usual guessing games (What sound does it make? What are words that start with this letter? etc. We also practice writing that letter as well). Here we are working on the letters...




...and here it is up on the wall!



We also worked on some other crafty things around the house. I'm hosting a crafty night tomorrow night with my girls, so I wanted to get a jump start on my crafty list! (Don't worry girls, I didn't do anything we are going to do tomorrow!) I also managed to do three loads of laundry, made pork tenderloin and sweet potatoes for dinner, and read a few chapters in my book! All in all a very successful day!

Merry Christmas and January Fun!

Well I hope everyone had a marvelous Christmas! I know we did! We had a great time with family and all of us received WAY more than we could have ever wanted. We are truly grateful for all the wonderful memories that were made, despite the circumstances.
For Mommy School in December, we did a lot of wonderful activites (labeling Santa, making Santa hats, handprint Santas) and we did focus on the REAL reason for the season and made footprint manger scenes, labeled the manger, made the nativity out of toilet paper rolls, and did this AMAZING nativity pack from Over The Big Moon. I have lots of pictures to show from those activities, but I have been working in reverse for a few months now, so you don't get to see the things we are doing until after the "season" is already done, so I thought I would try to do things a little different this time. I am posting our January "schedule" for Mommy School now. Let me just tell everyone out there that, yes, I was a teacher for 8 years, but, no, that does not mean the same thing as homeschooling! I am very new to that part and since I have never taught the littles before, I really have no idea what I'm doing! A lot of our homeschooling is just like parenting-trial and error. I try something and see if it works. It might work one day and not the next. When I began this Mommy School, I was making plans for each week. That was WAY too structured for us. Part of the reason I want to homeschool is because I want to really slow down and enjoy things (family visits included!). So then I switched to just a daily list of things I wanted to get done, which worked o.k., except that I didn't really know what I had accomplished for the entire month and I couldn't remember which activities we had and had not completed. So this month I decided to do a "Monthly List," which just lays out the entire month, but things are organized by subject rather than by day (too much pressure to get everything in each day!). So I print this out and it is hanging on my fridge. I just mark off the things that we have completed and certain things I do EVERDAY (sing ABCs for example).
This month we're focusing on Winter/Snow/etc. and SIGHT WORDS!! So far, the kidlets know the following sight words : I, am , a, the, and. We're working on reviewing those and learning a few more (which I haven't narrowed down yet!). They can also recognize their own names and their sibling's names, and "MOMMY" so we usually include those too. The "Art/Craft" section will be done as a response to the literature that we read. It is pretty interchangable as to what book and craft go together, so I can just choose which one I feel like doing that day. I have a great teacher friend over at The Garretts who has taught the littles and I glean from her amazing knowledge from time to time to make sure the activities I'm doing are developmentally appropriate. Anyway...we've already completed some things on this list (even though it isn't officially January yet) as I would much rather have to add more things to do than to feel like we didn't get everything accomplished. Some things are a review (like the alphabet-mine already know all letters and sounds)but I wanted to throw them in so we can decorate our classroom!

January Monthly Mommy School

Hapy New Year to you all and kiss and hug your kiddos!