U lessons concluded

I am going to see if I can get a decent blog post out before the baby decides it is time to eat again.  We finished the letter U last week and I started introducing V this week.  I have yet to do anything crafty with the girls this week though.  I feel so unproductive, but little Miss Hannah doesn't let me get a lot done.  Most of the things we do get done are spontaneous and have nothing to do with our letter of the week seeing as I don't have time to prepare our activities.  Here is what we did get accomplished last week:

We made Upside-down pineapple cake.  My first time ever and it was delicious.  I am not patting myself on the back.  I found a great recipe at www.allrecipes.com.  This is actually the first cake I ever made from scratch.  The girls really enjoyed helping.

Getting ready:

Cutting cherries:

Adding cherries walnuts and brown sugar to melted margarine:

Adding and eating pineapple:

Sifting flour with baking soda and salt:

Enjoying the privileges of helping bake:

Not the best looking, but it was delicious:

Speaking of "upside down," we also made an upside down picture.  I wracked my brain for quite a while trying to see what would work.  

They cut fringes for grass (I love her look of concentration)

Amelia posing for a picture (I couldn't resist posting this)

Amelia attempting to use scissors (at least she let me show her how to hold them properly this time!)

They glued the grass and clouds on.

I know I know... it doesn't look upside down yet.

Then they glued on the tree trunk.

They painted the tree leaves green

Did you know, if trees turned upside down the eggs would fall right out of the nests?  Lol

And that was our upside down project.

It was while I was over at Mozi Esme that I thought of finding something to do with "upside down."

We also got outside a few times last week.  Daddy helped us fly a kite Up in the sky.  

I picked on daddy because he is flying a Dora kite.  I know, it's not nice to pick.

They didn't have much success as there wasn't much wind, but the girls had fun.

On a different day we spent some time just looking up at the sky, at the clouds.  Tabitha kept telling me what various clouds looked like, I just don't remember which cloud was the alligator or the hippo.  Maybe you can tell?

I think that is all we did that was letter U related.  The girls did request to play Candyland several times recently.  In fact, I fell asleep while I was supposed to be playing the one time.  I just fell asleep sitting up!

Amelia can say blue (I think it is the only color she can say), but she was able to find a matching color on the board each time, usually not the space she needed to move to, but we helped her move.

One video I would recommend is Leap Frog Talking Words Factory.  Tabitha loves to watch it and I like the way they explain how to blend the sounds.  Adorable letters with their own individual personalities to compliment their sounds are brought together by different machines at the factory as the children help the professor make words for the talking words dictionary.  Since she began watching this (we take it out from the library a lot) if we give her a simple phonetic word, like cat, she will say she is spelling it.  She will say the word, say the first sound /k/, then move to the next sound say /a/ and move on to /t/.  Most of the time she will use the sign for the letter, so we know she is comprehending that the letter corresponds to the sound.  Daddy told me she sounded out her own name to write it on my mother's day card, only having trouble with the "th."  

Besides these activities the children have mostly played with Legos, loved their sister to pieces (poor Hannah) and watched signing videos.  I was amazed to see Amelia actually signing along with the video.  I know she knows signs, but I never saw her interacting with the video before.  We enjoy the Signing Time DVD's and one called I Want to Learn to Sign.  Unfortunately our library system only has Vol 1.  In order to get Vol 2 I would have to request it and three other people would have to request it.  Grrrrrr.

And yes, we are working on our Creation Lapbook, but I will have to ask you to stay tuned once again for a post about it.

To see what others are doing with their preschoolers and tots, head on over to Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1.