Winter week / I is for ice

I is for ice (http://lettersnumbersandbooksohmy.blogspot.com/)
We added our i to our letter tree and watched Chicka Chicka Boom Boom on youtube again. So fun! I also am using our fridge Leapfrog ABCs when we do our letter of the week. I play the song for each letter a few times as we are doing our craft and also sing the ABC song several times.


We made salt dough snowman (thanks Susana for the idea!!)

Charlie had fun mixing the ingredients which was nice since he has not had a lot of interest in baking lately ;(



We also did a fun experiment with ice, salt and food coloring. (thanks again Susana!) Which led to melting ice chunks at bath time.


Charlie continues to practice his hand writing. This week we made our Thank You cards for his birthday presents.

Each day he traces the letters of the day of the week and we sing a fun alphabet song. We also alternate days using his Kumon and Explode the Code books. We are quickly losing interest in the Kumon book though, which is the math book. I am going to check out another math curriculum and see how that works. He LOVES the Code books though and I need to order the next one soon!!

He also did a few different worksheets throughout the week. He did a dot to dot number sheet and a dot to dot alphabet sheet
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Charlie did a Snowman math game. (1+1+1=1.com) He laid out the Snowman cards in numerical order then placed the correct number of snowflakes on each number card. He had a great time doing this and I might make some similar cards that are higher numbers, maybe in the 20's and 30s



We made melting snowmen out of candy melts, and varies other types of candy. The kids REALLY liked this and kept saying "thanks mama, this is yummy!". I think they did a great job making their snowmen.



We found a fun snowman sheet on a website, can't remember which one. Charlie had fun coloring the different hats, scarves and snowman. Then I cut out most of the pieces and had Charlie cut out two of the hats. We are still working on cutting and I think he is finally seeing that using the correct finger placement is actually easier then using 2 hands to try and cut :)

And last but certainly NOT least, we worked on chores. They boys don't have specific chores that they must do each day but they expected to do the chores that are asked of them. Cleaning up after dinner, putting plates in the sink, washing the chairs and table, feeding the dog, putting laundry away etc.


And of course we just had to play farmer kitty taking a ride on his new John Deere tractor filled with his harvest! Love it!

Week of the Cat/ Letter C

Charlie worked on matching lower and upper case letters together and then putting them in alphabetical order. (matching game from 1+1+1=1.com)

Both boys worked on lacing. Charlie decided that he wanted to make a number necklace and he arranged the 1-10 number beads on his lace.

We pulled out a new number puzzle like one I had growing up. It was easy in the fact that Charlie knows his colors and so quickly put the correct pieces together. Difficult in the fact that he is still working on his numbers and does not know some of them from sight. We have been working on the 20's and introducing 30's to him in the last 2 weeks.

We did a connect the dot ABCs, cat style.

Charlie worked on his word card puzzle. He actually sounded out the words and read Cat, fox and. (makinglearningfun.com)

We started our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree today with our letter C. Both boys enjoyed this.

We watched Chicka Boom on youtube and had fun dancing and singing to the song.

Letter C for Caterpillar

Tracing and writing his name...so cute!

We made some of these yummies
frozen bananas covered in chocolate with pecans, coconut and sprinkles
Charlie also worked on some large dice math
He rolled the dice put the number of dice #1 in the first box etc and then added the 2 together. He can now read an equation, 5+3=8 etc. He counted up to 50 this week with his Kumon books. He is mixing up 13 and 14 less and learning to count by 10s. Numbers are still the one area that I know he could use more work in, but I am proceeding as he seems interested and willing at this point.

Charlie colored a cat face that turned into a little pocket and held C words, cowboy, corn etc. He had fun coloring all the little word tiles and would show each of them to me when he was done. It is hard to see in the picture, but little white kitty is sitting next to the crayons watching him...so cute!

Charlie is also taking great delight, both boys are really, in feeding and caring for our new dog, Bo.

This was a short week for us, only 2 days of school. But we squeezed a lot in and had a lot of fun!

Tommy's Tot School

We have been doing a lot of fun stuff with Tommy in the last 2 weeks


Playing with our Dig container. I keep it filled with rice krispies, toy cars, small cups, spoons etc. This is an all time favorite.

Helping mom make muffins on freezer cooking day.

Washing up

practiced cutting with playdough during brother's school time.

drawing, working on lines and the letter T

Sink or Float experiment with brother

Color matching game (from totally tots)

C is for Caterpillar letter of the week

another color matching game using cookie sheets and abc magnets

watching the recycling truck

and made chocolate covered bananas..yum!

Back to School! Dinosaur / letter D

We had a great break in December from our normal curriculum but it is also refreshing to get back to our routine!

This week was Dinosaur and letter D week.

Charlie worked on his Code books

He cut out shapes to make dinosaurs

The boys made fossils and LOVED this activity!

We did a few worksheets about Dinosaurs and the letter D. Charlie worked on cutting, letter writing, coloring, matching skills and recognizing other words that begin with the letter D.
We used playdough to make numbers and count

I took out some plastic dinosaurs from the library and we did a lot of pretend play with them. Charlie even made trees out of Legos for the dinosaurs to eat. We learned about a lot of different dinosaurs and different characteristics about them. I had found a fun sticker book at the dollar bins at a store and Charlie loved matching the stickers with the correct dino!
Charlie is really into make maps. He made a map of a city that had a Zoo and a Museum where the Dinosaur fossils live. Here is a picture of his Dino at the Museum
The pen is pointing to the head of the dino, the legs stradle the musuem. so cute!
We are really enjoying make charts lately. We did a Float or Sink chart and both the boys loved seeing what objects floated and which ones did not. We talked about the similarities between objects that floated, what they were made of etc, and the ones that sunk to the bottom. We even tried to make the yellow cylinder sink by putting other small objects into it to. This was great fun for us all!

Charlie has also been doing a lot of writing. Here is making his buddy Connor a bday card.
And all the kids made D for dinosaurs. It is so cute to see how each one is different.