W lessons concluded

Well, we didn't do very much this week.  Brother and sisters were down from NY for the weekend and left after lunch on Monday.  So the morning was spent with them.  They spent a lot of time at the park recently.  The girls love swinging and sliding.  Of course, Tuesday was play group.  We did take our two W books with us, a couple of the children have gotten used to us bringing books to read.  The ironic thing is, Tabitha and Amelia rarely want to hear the books while they are there.  The first book we took was: "Diary of a Wombat" by Jackie French,which is a really cute story detailing the daily activity (or inactivity as the case may be) of a Wombat from the perspective of said wombat.  If you are wondering, a wombat is another one of those unique creatures that lives in Australia.  Oh, and they look a lot like bears only smaller.

The story is adorable!  Wombats tend to sleep and eat a lot.  The cute part about this plot is that the wombat gets new neighbors, humans.  It is amusing seeing normal everyday objects from an animals perspective.  

The other book we read several times was "Weaving the Rainbow" by George Ella Lyon and Stephanie Anderson.  The weaver in this story takes care of sheep, white sheep, but she can see a rainbow in their future.  The reader goes through the year with these white sheep who are getting closer to the rainbow.  We learned about shearing and preparing wool to be worked with and a quick introduction to looms and finally we see the rainbow the weaver has seen all along.  

Two great books to go with the letter W.  I wanted to find a way to do a weaving activity with the girls.  And then...another great find at the thrift shop last week.  A book called "Things I Can Make" by Sabine Lohf.  It had a Loom Weaving project!  I followed the directions then did some tweaking.

I took two cereal boxes (one per girl) and cut off the back panel.  Then I cut slits in 2 opposite ends.

I stretched yarn from one side to the other, probably not the correct way as the yarn would pop off when the girls would try weaving.  I rectified that problem by taping the slits closed at the top.

We tore old scraps of material into strips 

which I tied together.  

First they were too long, so I cut them in half, as I decided we could always add on as they were just tied together anyway.  The weaving was definitely too confusing for Amelia, but Tabitha is getting it. She did get tired of it after a few passes through the loom.  We decided it would take a few days of working on it a little at a time to get it finished.  I debated putting it on the shelf as an activity, but Tabitha said she wanted to finish it so she could hang it on the wall.  Maybe I will make an extra one for the shelf, so the girls can work on it occasionally and improve their weaving skills.

We also played the Winnie the Pooh file folder game again.  

Tabitha played on Starfall and wanted to write the words they gave her to go with the e.  She made some of the letters, but I decided I would make some activity pages with the words for each letter (one letter featured per page) written out as dots.  Then she can reuse it over and over as we can put the worksheet for the letter she is working on in a sheet protector and use dry erase markers.  

Tabitha continues to amaze me by being able to spell words orally that we give to her, or she comes up with herself.  I am planning on writing a post soon highlighting some of the strategies that seem to have worked for her with her reading readiness .  Who knows, maybe these same things could work for you.  Of course, who knows if they will even work for Amelia.  All I know is, Tabitha is only 3 1/2 and she can read simple words. And after she sounds it out and realizes what she has sounded out she gets so excited and proceeds to tell me what she knows about the word.

Amelia was enjoying our ABC wipe off book I found... yes you guessed it...at the thrift shop.

However, we have had this book for a couple of months at least.  Tabitha is the one who wanted it and usually uses it.  Today, Amelia took her turn.  Mostly scribbling, but the scribbles meant something to her.  She made some scribbles that looked like V's and called them V's.  So she is definitely catching on.

Today I read a big book called "Spinning a Web" by Lisa Trumbauer.  

Then we made webs.  I glued black construction paper onto a piece of cardboard (actually it was one of the panels I had cut off the cereal box for the weaving loom).  Then I cut out two almost circles and then cut out slits.  The girls twisted yarn around and around to make a web.  

And as soon as I find the blog I found this on I will link to it.

Update: I found the blog where I spotted the idea for this web craft/activity.  Nicole over at Tired, Need Sleep had finished up a unit on bugs.  Here is the link to her Weekly Wrap-Up post on bugs.

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