We've done A-D in the alphabet path. You already saw A.
B ended up being a full two weeks starting with Lucy's First Cardinal's Baseball Game. This was another lucky timing. I didn't plan for it to fall in B week but she won tickets through the library summer reading program and this was the only game that didn't fall during naptime or too late at night. She actually lasted longer than we expected (5 innings!) and told me all about the escalators she rode on, the pretzels she ate and the men that called out "beer, beer, pretzels, pretzels." She didn't mentioned baseball at all but she seemed like she had a good time on her daddy date.
The next weekend, I noticed some baseball gloves 75% at the grocery store. For less than $7 total, they each got a ball and glove. I won't say Lucy's a natural but she has really enjoyed playing catch with us since then and has told me she is"ready to be on a team because my glove is pink and purple and will be the most beautifullest - unless someone else's has diamonds."
We made some Bees. For all the complaining people do about pinterest, it has its purposes. I wasn't planning on doing any crafts but the day we were supposed to start the letter B (as in, the day the kids KNEW we were supposed to start the letter B) I still hadn't gotten over to pick up our books for the library. I told them this and Lucy says "Oh, that's fine mom, we'll just do the crafts you planned instead." Uhm...okay then!
Later on we made butterflies from watercolors, coffee filters and pipe cleaners after another pinterest session. Jonah's were more moth colored by the time we were done but we all had fun. We also took our buckets, balls and a brand new balloon boat to the creek to play.
Practicing our letters in some salt.
A few favorite B Books: Blueberries for Sal, It's about Time, Jesse Bear, Pete the Cat and 4 groovy Buttons.
We did another letter craft for C because "mom, we always make a letter!" How can kids do that? You do something one time and it becomes a tradition.
So I thought we'd cut out Cs and add cotton ball clouds but I couldn't find my cotton balls (until the next day that is) so I mixed white glue and shaving cream and the kids used q-tips to paint clouds on blue construction paper Cs - except Jonah cut his out himself so it wasn't really very c-shaped and Lucy refused to cut out the middle, insisting she had "a plan of my own." Her plan ended up being to keep the clouds in the c area and leave the middle blue so you could see the sky. It turned out really well and I'm glad I fought my type-A personality side who wanted to insist she do it right.
Then we made cookies. No pictures because I was too busy watching Jonah every single second to stop him from putting things in his mouth. He loves to put both scissors and cookie dough in his mouth. The cookie dough I can live with, the scissors drives me crazy!
A few favorite C Books: The Carrot Seed, Caps for Sale (the audio one which has additional songs), Chanticleer and the Fox and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
For week D, the only crafty thing we did was cut out crowns and decorate them. What do crowns have to do with the letter d? Nothing, she just wanted to do that so we did. Why plan things when I don't have to?!
We still did our poems and stories. I try and read a couple poems every day. This week they both got a big kick out of Daddy Fell Into the Pond.
A few favorite D Books: Have You Seen My Duckling. Dance at Grandpa and Deer in the Woods (little house picture books), Duffy and the Devil (preview this one. It's the dutch version of Rumpelstiltskin but before you know his name, it calls him a devil and there are witches too. I'm okay with fairy tales but this was borderline for me. Lucy and I talked about what devil means, how people use the term sometimes, etc. Just a heads up.)
We aren't just doing letter-y things, those just tend to be ones I take pictures of. We also had a lot of fun nature time. Lucy found these really big mushrooms and insisted we take pictures and bring them home to draw. Luckily there was enough that Jonah could have his own since his investigating tends to not end well for the specimen.
Lest you think we're just a poem in action I'll tell another little story about our recent nature times. A few days ago Lucy spotted some weird bugs on our brussel sprout plant and wanted to draw them. But then she decided she didn't like that they were yellow so she made hers purple and pink and three legs on a side were boring so she gave them seven instead. Then she got upset that mine looked like the real bugs and hers didn't! She did make some good observations and we were later able to discover they were harlequin cabbage bugs and the two sized we saw weren't male and female like we hypothesized but nymph and adult so I still count it a success.
*Catechism questions and hymns. The one were working through is very similar to this but came as a booklet from Children's Church. We enjoyed working on it and talking about what the questions and answers meant until we hit the 40s when it started getting more theoretical. I could tell she wasn't understanding so we'll just put it aside for now. She doesn't go to CC anyway so it doesn't really matter but I will try and work though the ones we know every couple weeks just so we don't forget. Similar with hymns, we've started just reviewing the ones we know. We enjoyed those but it was too much to add new and review so we'll stick with the old ones for now.
**Tea Time! This is so great it deserves its own post.
No comments :
Post a Comment