Tots and Me... Growing Up Together: School Time Week 37: The Start of U

It has been a busy two weeks, though not all of it was "lesson" time. In fact, last week we didn't have any lesson time because I took Tabitha over to VBS at the church where we go to play group. She had a blast. She learned her Bible verses every day and was so happy to have big sister Krystal helping out. The theme was Rev It Up and they made toilet roll race cars, a foam race car from a kit, binoculars (also from toilet rolls) and a dotted painting of a race car (using Q-Tips) for the dots.

While Tabitha was in VBS, I did different things with Amelia and Hannah. On Monday we had to come back to the house so I could figure out the muffin tin. I loved that the theme was Race cars/Rev It Up because we had just finished the letter R. So we got to make another R muffin tin-Race cars

After I figured out the tin and went shopping we went to the public school's playground for a little bit. Two days out of the week we took an hour long walk around town and then spent time at the town "playground."

I could not believe I caught this shot the way I did.

Hannah might not be able to go down narrow steps, but she had these down pat. Up and down, up and down...you get the idea.

We took a picture of our state tree, the Eastern Hemlock for Homeschool Postcard linky over at Educating Layton. This tree was actually planted by us years ago when my daughter brought it home from school as an itty bitty thing. We were supposed to record its growth along with hers. We never did. It can be found over at our old trailer.

For some more learning we had the lovely experience of finding a dead June Bug in our living room. The silly things have been beating against our windows in the evening, they are so loud. Not sure where this one came from, but the girls loved looking at it.

This week we started the letter U. And of course we started out with a muffin tin. I wasn't sure what to do. Then I thought of Underground to Up, Up and Away.

Not only did we make individual serving cups of dirt dessert, we made a bigger pan.

And then we took turns poking raisins down the sides to create tunnels for their raisin ants.

And of course the dirt had to be formed into an ant hill.

I figured a different twist to dirt dessert was in order.

The girls took turns practicing writing the letter U on the chalkboard with chalk and with a wet paper towel.

Amelia is still struggling with curved lines, but she is getting there.

We decided to put our picture cards upside down on our second day of using them.

Our words this week are:

Up, Umbrella bird, Underwear

Umpire, Ulgi fruit and Umbrella

I also put the word family caterpillar circle upside down for them to choose one at a time to say and put on the poster.

Here is Amelia working on her U collage

And this is Tabitha's

The girls finished their poster for their memory verse in the Weaver curriculum. They had to say it three times, and each time they got one more piece of the candle.

Tabitha decided she wanted to write her verse herself.

Then we discussed the fact that some people can't see and we learned about the Braille alphabet.

I marked the dots on the back with marker

So the girls could see where to stick the safety pin.

They actually had enough partway through, so mommy finished creating the bumps for the alphabet.

Tiny Tot Time

Hannah had some time with her block books.

And brother even read them to her for a while to keep her occupied while I had lesson time.

She loved helping crush cookies for the dirt dessert.

She kept trying to get a drink from the hose. She got soooo wet. Of course when I went to get a shot she was just reaching for the water.

I have had the book Slow and Steady Get Me Ready by June Oberlander for a while now. We don't do a lot out of the book and I decided I wanted to do at least one activity a week. There are ideas for developmentally appropriate activities for children birth through age 5, one for each week. This week I used a suggestion for Hannah's age. I was to trace her face and then draw it on the paper. Then I was to touch each of her facial features separately, tell her what they were and draw them. As you can see I am not the best artist. We have actually played a game with each of the girls since they were itty bitty babies. I will point to a body part and say, for example, "Hannah's nose." Then point to mine and say "mommy's nose." We make a fun game out of it, high pitched voices, drawn out words. Then I will use her hand to point to the same body parts. So this was sort of an extension of that.

Then I had to draw Tabitha.