Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Fun with food!



While surfing the web I have noticed a new trend in kids lunches, whether packed for school or eaten at home they have gotten quite elaborate! I've seen an octopus made from a  hot dog. Owl sandwiches, Rainbow lunches...the list goes on and on! So we rolled up our sleeves and had some fun in the kitchen making an owl sandwich and a cucumber carrot tree! I must say Kaitlyn really enjoyed it because when lunch was over there was nothing but some cucumber rinds left on her plate!
Posted by Picasa
Here are a few ideas I found around the web

Lots of mamas are making muffin tin meals, great concept to get kids interested in what they are eating. Each tin follows a theme and presents a small serving perfect for growing toddlers!
This is a great website I found with some super cute ideas, so I hope you find something that inspires you to have some fun with your little ones at lunch time!




Monday, September 26, 2011

Nap Time....Planning Time


The greatest peace during the day for a stay at home mama is nap time! Some days naptime feels like a figment of your imagination that never quite comes to pass, yet there are some days where it all works out just right........
You see there are several combinations that can occur during naptime when you have more than one child...... some days you might have one child that is peacefully napping while the other one is wide awake, while other days you have two kids that are wide awake and have no desire to rest peacefully, however there are those rare days when all of the stars align and both children are quietly off to dreamland at the same time. Those are my favorite days because I know I can accomplish so much while they are peacefully snoozing away! Today was that day! Whooo Hoo! I had 3 uninterrupted hours of quiet, and boy was I productive! I had a chance to plan out my next months worth of homeschool activities as well as make some fun printables I will be featuring here in the upcoming lessons. I even had some time to peruse through Pinterest...ohh the possibilities so much craftiness so little time!

Here is a sneak peek at what is coming up over the next few weeks

Posted by Picasa

The Letter O is for Owl! Hoot Hoot!

Today we learned about the letter O

We started out with a sensory activity. I squeezed some different colored paints ( blue, purple, black, light blue, glitter paint) onto a piece of construction paper. Kaitlyn practiced making her o's by moving the paint around with her finger. When she was all done we sprinkled on some glitter and set it outside to dry.


While it was drying we went out to the front yard and gathered some fall leaves and found a nice branch for our picture.

I used the hot glue gun to attache her branch and her leaves onto her painting.
I then traced the body of an owl onto some construction paper and asked Kaitlyn to color him brown.....I look over a few seconds later and see that she drew feet onto the owl ( this was a first for Kaitlyn) She is starting to become more accurate in her depictions of things. We made some handprints for wings and added them onto her picture!

We discussed today how owls are nocturnal animals and how they fly quietly at night to hunt for their food. We read several books today about Owls, Kaitlyn's Favorite was Owls, by Gail Gibbons

 
 
Letter O, Practice


Kaitlyn practiced her letter O's today on her mats I made. She used pom pom's to make the shape of the letter O. She also used her dry erase crayon board to trace the O's

Hoot Hoot! It's Orange Owl Cupcake Time


Kaitlyn and I had some fun in the kitchen this afternoon cooking up some orange cupcakes. Kaitlyn and I decorated them to look like owls. We used oreos and little green candies for the eyes. She then decorated the bodies with almond slivers and cocoa pebbles cereal to mimic the feathers. The finishing touch was a goldfish cracker as a beak. They were so much fun to make! Now to find a small army to eat some owl cupcakes!

Kaitlyn loves "school" time and loves practicing with her learning puzzles. This is a great one that we actually got as a gift. Kaitlyn matches the color or texture to the object. It is a great way to learn about describing words. When she is all done she practices reading the cards by pointing to the words and saying the describing word and the objects name.....a great way to develop those early reading and decoding skills.


Posted by Picasa

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Fall Suncatchers


We completed our suncatchers today and they look oh so cute hanging in the kitchen window!
Step 1 Trace a Fall leaf onto Orange construction paper, Step 2 Cut out center of leaf, Step 3 Trace leaf onto colored wax paper ( made previously see below for directions) Step 4 Glue orange construction paper leaf onto the wax paper leaf, hole punch and hang by a ribbon in your favorite sunny spot!
Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

It's Finally Fall & The Letter L


This week we have been working on the letter L. Kaitlyn has been using her letter flash cards and puzzles to practice all of the letters we have learned so far. we start each day out with a review.

Letter Play

Today Kaitlyn used her pom poms to trace the letter L, she also used her homemade fundough to make her letters. We practiced her handwriting and trying to stay on the line while tracing her L's.

Another fun way to review letters is by using a paint tracing bag....Fill a ziploc bag with some paint, close it tightly and get all of the air out while sealing it closed. Have your little one use a q-tip to trace the letters onto the bag, the letters disappear quickly and are a great way to practice using some different materials.




Cooking up some patterns in the kitchen


We had fun cooking up some patterns in the kitchen this week. We made some sugar cookies and separated the dough into three bowls. kaitlyn and I read a book about Fall trees so I asked her what colors we see in fall she chose, green, red and yellow so we used some food coloring to dye the dough. Kaitlyn rolled it out and flattened it with her hands. Using some small leaf cookie cutters she cut out three different types of leaves one type for each color.

When the cookies were all done we practiced making patterns using the three colors of leaves....I must say Kaitlyn had fun with this activity....only hazard is the leaves started disappearing mid activity :)


Colorful Circles & Fall Suncatchers

All week we have talked about colors. We have learned about fall leaves and how they change colors. This activity is a lot of fun and illustrates how mixing two colors can make different colors. First you take a large piece of wax paper, then you squirt some hand sanitizer onto it. Then take some food coloring, we used red and yellow, add a few drops of each. Then fold the wax paper over covering the colors. Kaitlyn mixed the colors by practicing her circles. She drew large and small circles with her finger mixing the colors as she went. Tomorrow we will be using this to make some Fall sun catchers.....so check back to see pictures! we set it out flat to dry over night.


Our L Page 

We made our L page for our ABC Book. Kaitlyn made a leaf rubbing using several leaves we found outside. I found it helpful to use double sided tape to stick these onto the table so they wouldn't shift while she was doing her crayon rubbing. I wrote the letter L using a sharpie marker and had Kaitlyn glue her smaller leaves onto the L.

All week we have been getting ready for fall we have enjoyed nature walks and many books about the changing of the seasons. Today we worked on some colorful and very messy art projects to get the house all ready for fall!


Get three large bowl and fill with 1/4 cup of paint we used red, brown and orange. I also mixed some bronze paint in with the brown to give it some shimmer. Then I added some water to dillute the paint. We took our containers outside and Kaitlyn took coffee filters and dipped them into the paint bowls, after she dipped them she wrung them out and then we set them out on the deck to dry. Setting them on wax paper works best for easy removal after drying.

Mommy's naptime craft project

While the kiddos were napping I put my crafting skills to work, I heated up my hot glue gun and got busy!
Step 1: Take a cardboard circle ( I use cake rounds) and cut out the center. Then take the painted coffee filters and bunch them up at the middle. Hot glue them onto the cardboard circle.
Step 2: Go around the whole circle in teh same fashion.
Step 3: Add som ribbon, loop it through the wreath and hot glue together, hang in front of a miror for a dramatic fall look!

I had some left over coffee filters so I added them onto some twigs we collected on our nature walk. They made for great table decorations in the dining room! The house is all decorated, the cinnamon candle is burning in the kitchen, my favorite sweater is hanging in the closet.....now if the cooler temperatures could just arrive!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

What are the three words no mother likes hearing...especially at 3am?????

My life lesson came with tiny footsteps tiptoe-ing into my room this morning at 3am.....my precious little daughter muttered the 3 words no one wants to hear at 3am....I FEEL SICK! I was reminded that my job as a mother is one that requires me to be on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year for the foreseeable future. But as we are all cuddled up, feeling a little bit better and she is enjoying the snuggling I am also reminded at how awesome this job really is.  While the pay might not be much, and the duties are down right disgusting at times the rewards are well worth it!
So unfortunately we have had to postpone this week's lessons because my little one is sick. We will start back up next monday with the Letter L, we will be enjoying our Fall like weather by going on a nature walk and talking about leaves. So join us next week for some more lessons on the little stuff!

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the letter C...Continued

Today I was reminded of one of the finer aspects of teaching from home. Callen had been up all night cutting his first tooth (which I was so excited to finally start to see it peek through) so when Kaitlyn walked into my room this morning and said, " Mommy I want to snuggle I don't feel good" I was so glad that my answer could be yes...we had no place we had to be and so she climbed into my bed and we snuggled all morning :) It made me one happy mama! So school started a little late for us today more like lunch time. Today we finished up our lesson on the letter C. We reviewed the letters we have learned previously (A, K and C) and practiced writing on her dry erase board. She is getting much better at tracing the letters.
We started today off with our first activity a Hungry caterpillar necklace. This activity really challenged her fine motor skills and introduced patterning. It also helped her to retell the story of the very hungry Caterpillar which she did so very proudly tonight at bedtime.
First let's start with the prep work. This past weekend we made dyed pasta noodles these are great for counting, sorting and making pattern necklaces. First you get some pasta noodles and shape size will do, then you put them in a ziploc bag with a splash of rubbing alcohol, add a few drops of food coloring and close the bag. Have your little one swirl the coloring and the noodles around till they are all coated. Set them on wax paper to dry over night. The next day they will be ready for patterns :)
 The Very Hungry Caterpillar Story Necklace
So that brings us to this afternoon.....Kaitlyn and I reread the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, she helped me with the counting, we reviewed the days of the week. And we talked about the colors we saw in the story. When we were all done I gave her the Caterpillar coloring page, found in our Printables section I showed her how to stay in the lines and focus on coloring. At one point I was talking to her and she said.."Shh! mommy I am trying to focus on my colors!" Gotta love her :) So she matched each color up to the color in the book before she started coloring on her paper. When she was all done I cut them all out while she played with her color puzzle, and other color games we have been using this week. I also put a small hole punch in each little piece of food and two on the caterpillar. Next we tied her string to the end of a small bucket so her pieces wouldn't fall off. We added one piece of pasta and then 1 piece of food from the story ( we worked backwords starting with the slice of watermelon and eventually ending at the apple) We followed a pattern when adding the noodles, going through each color. the food pieces were to delicate for her to put on so I did those and she did most of the pasta....she worked hard using her fine motor skills to thread each piece onto her pasta, there were quite a few so I helped in between so she wouldn't get burned out. When we finally added all of the food we put the caterpillar on last. Now we were all done with her Very Hungry Caterpillar Story necklace! She could now use the necklace to retell the entire story of The Hungry Caterpillar!

Patternpillars
So our next activity we practiced our pattern making, first with the colored noodles and then with some red and green pom poms, we talked about ABAB patterns and ABBABB patterns. Kaitlyn quickly got the hang of it and was rocking right along. After we were done we use the pom poms to make her very own hungry caterpillar she could keep in her bug collecting jar (mason jar). I much rather prefer the pom pom critters to the live ones :)


Color Games
Kaitlyn put together this puzzle all week naming the colors and practicing her spatial awareness by completing it....It's a lot harder than it looks. I also too some crayon cutouts I had and made a little game you can find items like this at Trend or your local teacher store. I spread out several colors of crayons and I would call out a color and she would have to put it in the crayon box. I introduced the concept of shades ( light, dark and combined colors like red-orange etc.)

The C Page

This is our C page for our ABC book we started it on Monday and just finished it today. I cut out the circles from her salt painting and then drew a letter C onto her tissue paper circles. She aligned the circles onto it and then we added the finishing touches of the eyes and the antennae ( pipe cleaners)


Here is our finished unit on the letter C