Fun alphabet match turkey

Sophie worked on a fun lower and uppercase matching project the past couple days that is a perfect thanksgiving decoration also. I wasn't sure if she knew all her lower case letters so I thought a little stamping would be a fun way to find out. I cut out turkey feathers and she set to work stamping. Come to find out, she knew all the letters! 

                             

Then we assembled the turkey. Sophie got some good cutting practice in as well cutting out the turkey body, head, and legs. Here is her turkey, named Gobble!

                             

S is for Sophie

Sophie is really becoming interested in learning. She can spell her name and does a decent job for a 2 1/2 year old writing it. I do try to do different learning activities with both the girls randomly but never get too structured. Since Sophie's interest has heightened I thought I'd get a bit more structured. We started with the letter S because that is the letter she struggles with the most while writing her name. Tracing sheets are okay but Sophie is such a sensory-type girl that I thought we'd try shaving cream. She loved it and it helped because later when she was tracing she did a much better job. Of course there was time or play and getting her hands gooey!

We fixed broken snowballs by matching the appropriate number to the dots.

Playing a snowball game with number cards was a big hit...especially since she won 2/3 times.

Sophie knows most of her shapes, including the rhombus....it's not a diamond, folks. So we worked on constructing the square with marshmallows and the letter S. we did have to pause for a few snack breaks!

Finally, we worked on sequencing and built a snowman.

Blogger and I are not getting along at the moment and I'm having to do this on my iPad because I can't upload pictures from a file and I don't k ow how to move them in the app version so they're all stuck at the end....grrrr. If anyone knows how to fix this, let me know, please!

ants and picnics

we have finished our unit on ant and picnics except for a few handwriting sheets that molly will continue to work on. the girls are having so much fun with the activities...it makes me excited for our next unit! here are our final activities: patterning to make a tablecloth. sophie caught on quick to this and knew exactly what color she needed next. this was not a challenge for molly but she still had fun. she turned it into a race (of course, sophie can't finish before her) so her tablecloth was a little off...

 then, the girls used their finger, or fingers/hand in sophie's case, to make ants crawling on their tablecloth. i think there was an ant on almost every square!

molly practiced writing A's and P's

 sophie colored on a dry erase board for a bit but quickly grew tired of it so we sequenced dinosaurs. she preferred this activity and did great! she's learning so much, so quickly!

 molly and i played a build an ant game. she won every time! sophie played once, but again, her patience level was just not there. finally she was the designated dice roller.

our last activity was a picnic at the park. i had high hopes that we'd be able to picnic in an area without a playground. i wanted the girls to just experience an open field, eating, and playing with a ball or running around. however, we pulled into the park (a new one for us) and there was the playground.

 making silly faces while eating was a fun thing. after we ate we played some duck duck goose around our picnic sheet.

 and then the playground. it was a neat playground with lots of different spinning things. molly loved them all while sophie was a bit scared. the cautious side in sophie is coming out, i think.

 much to their resistance, i made the girls stop playing on the playground and go over to the open grassy area to play with their balls. molly learned to drop kick, kinda and we played catch. i was a bit disappointed in their lack of creativity and enjoyment in the grassy area. they're so creative and imaginative in almost every situation but molly asked me what they were supposed to do. i'm blaming it on the playground....they wanted to go back and play on it. oh well, we will try again...in an area without a playground and maybe bring some kites along.

coming up next in our summer school: caterpillars and butterflies.

summer school

molly LOVES school and was so bummed that there was a summer break for preschool. she couldn't understand why anyone would want a break. i love her enthusiasm for school and learning and assured her that we'd do fun school stuff this summer. i'm sure one day this will not be the case and i'll be posting that she hates that i'm a teacher, like one of my facebook friends posted earlier in the week, when i'm forcing her to read and keep her multiplication facts in the forefront of her mind over summer break.

so, i've come up with some fun summery units, in no particular order for letter practice. this week we're doing A and P for ants and picnic since they go well together. today we made the letter P out of playdough and then created a picnic with our fun picnic playdough set complete with little black ants crawling to and on our plate. the girls loved it!

molly's 1st P without any prompts on how to make one

making ants

lining up ants

very focused

concentrating on placing ants

the final product

after playdough we made A and P pages. molly loved searching through magazines and finding A and P words. it was hard to find A words! sophie enjoyed gluing her pictures on and scaring me when she'd grab the scissors and attempt to cut.

lots more to come on letters A and P!

lately...

it's been a little while so here's a quick update on what we've been doing.

cloud dough: mix 8 cups of flour with 1 cup of baby oil and enjoy. (i doubled the recipe) thanks pinterest for the idea!

 it's messy...well, at least when my girls play with it. but it does clean up nicely. so much better to play with outside on the deck.

 sidewalk chalk paint: mix 1/2 c. cornstarch with 1/2 c. water add food coloring. paint on driveway. so much fun!!! again, messy so we wear paint clothes! (also a pinterest thing!)

 mother's day: molly's preschool class put on a little program and tea for all the moms. she made this cute little gift and had so much fun visiting with me during the tea.

 love my girl!



last day of preschool: molly's preschool celebrated their last day at the park. here's a pictures with her teacher, mrs. franklin. she was wonderful!



playing in the rain: we haven't had much rain so the girls enjoyed getting out their umbrellas and getting wet!

graduation: my little brother, alex, graduated from high school last saturday. he's off to emporia state in august to study secondary education with an emphasis in history. molly's not too sure about this college thing and uncle alex being gone. 

kansas city zoo: today we took the girls to the zoo. we watched an animal show and at the end the girls were able to give the macaw a dollar to put in his mailbox to help save his friends. 

while at the zoo we also rode the sky tram. that was fun! we had a great view of the giraffes and zebras and their cute little babies. it's been a fun month!

preschool!!!!!

molly started preschool today! we hadn't planned on sending her this year but went to check out the preschool we were interested in for next year last week. i was very impressed with the structure of the school and molly loved it. they told us they had an opening in the afternoon tuesday-thursday class so we signed molly up. we visited last thursday for about an hour so molly could fully decide if she wanted to go. there wasn't a doubt in her mind...she loved it. off to target we went to buy a school backpack. not just a backpack, but a school backpack.

 here she is ready to go into her classroom at sunbeams preschool!

 hanging up her school backpack.

 her first day was a great one to start out on - valentine's day! she was so excited to have a valentine's day party and make valentine's for her classmates. holidays are a huge deal to molly and must be celebrated just so! she wanted to cut out hearts and then we found glitter...ta da!

 she had lots of fun at her party eating cupcakes and making a cute craft.

 passing out valentine's was another huge hit! oh, and see her teacher? that's mrs. franklin, wife of the car guy, jeremy franklin - "where you'll always be (beep beep) another satisfied customer!"