School Time: Week 3 (Pp)

We started this week by coloring our Pp pictures.  Our Pp words this week are piano, pig, pumpkin, and pea pod. The words I couldn't find signs for our pepper and penguin, though we made a sign up for penguin the last time we did P. This week the girls had to follow instructions and color each picture a specific color.  I think they did a great job. We still have to glue them to our capital P though.

After they colored them we focused on our shapes and color green collage.  You can see the post about that here.  Tuesday we had our Pizza Party.  We had a pizza party when we did P back in January (it was also Tabitha's birthday party, sort of) and Tabitha really wanted to have another one.  We made invitations last week and took them to playgroup to hand out.  

I cut out circles, colored a smaller red circle to represent the sauce, then colored the inner circle yellow for cheese.  The girls glued on red circle pepperoni, onto which I wrote the party info.

This week play group came to us and the children got to make their very own personal pizzas: 

 Then we had pepperoni pizza, popcorn, pickles and punch. 

Oh and there were peanut butter cookies for dessert.

 Do you remember the pictures I shared in my first post for the school year.  Pictures of how organized the playroom now was.  Well...the children were here for approximately 2-3 hours and after they left the playroom looked like this:

Goes to show it doesn't take very long for a mess to occur. 

 Do you also remember I had shared the before pictures in that same post, so I would never let it look like that again.  So I have been working on cleaning it.  This is how far I got:

It's much easier when things already have been organized and I know where to put them, instead of hunting around for a place to put things..

 Later on Tuesday afternoon, we had a visit from my friend from playgroup.  Seems her daughter wanted Tabitha to go over for a sleep over.  So, I woke Tabitha up from her nap and she was so excited with the prospect of spending more time with her friend.  We gathered her stuff together and I send my three year old on her first sleepover.
Seems all went well and she joined us late the next morning while Amelia and I were working on our projects.  I found a really neat idea over at a new-to-me blog, My Tot Learning Time. She used a larger letter with her daughter and jar lids, but I had these soda bottle lids given to me a while ago, so I used them.  Amelia has gone back to this activity many times since Wednesday.

 Then I decided we would Paint P's Pink and Purple.  They just love painting and I am really trying to do at least one painting project a week.

Yes, she's using 2 brushes.  And there IS pink there she just covered it with purple.

 I pulled out our Add The Toppings to the Pizza activity, changed up a bit from earlier in the year because I found these cute circle magnets at KMart.

Red is pepperoni, green is green pepper, white is mushroom, yellow is yellow pepper and blue is blueberries.

(Tabitha insisted on keeping the blue)

(Amelia got a little creative later on in the week.)

I found some different wallets at the thrift shop recently and decided to put them on the shelf as an activity.  They all have different means of opening and closing (zippers, clasps, snaps).  I also put some pompoms in them.  They prefer carrying them around to put other things in.

If you look really carefully in this picture you can see the nail polish she got painted on her finger nails while she was on her sleep over.  She wouldn't let me take a picture of it.  This is what I got when I asked:

We do prefer no makeup/nail polish on our girls, so I will have to ensure it doesn't happen again.

 Just a picture of the wallets out on the mat.

 And we had a P lunch of course.  We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, popcorn, peas and pickles.

Our Bible verse for P is "Praise ye the Lord for it is good to sing praises unto our God." Psalms 147:1

We are reading lots of stories that include Peter this week and the girls enjoy singing 

Peter and John went to pray

They met a lame man on the way

He asked for alms and held out his palms 

and this is what Peter did say,

"Silver and gold have I none

but such as I have give I thee

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth

rise up and walk."

He went walking and leaping and praising God

Walking and leaping and praising God.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

Due to some unforeseen happenings this week, we didn't stick to our schedule and I am extending our P lessons for another week.  I always said P has a lot of things that can be done with it. We will finish up next week.

To see what others are doing with their toddlers and preschoolers head on over to 1+1+1=1, Homeschool Creations  Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers 

Fall Into Reading

Well, looking at my book list from the summer reading challenge I realize I need to set more realistic goals. Obviously the baby isn't going to let me get a lot of reading done. And my bedtime reading is not happening

1) because Hannah sleeps in our room and I can't have the light on
2)I am on my blog til all hours.

So I am going to create a whole new list with the books I am interested in reading right now.

1- Masquerade by Nancy Moser

2- Before I Wake by Dee Henderson (thriller/suspense challenge)

3- A Shred of Evidence by Kathy Herman(t/s)

4- Eye of the Beholder by Kathy Herman(t/s)

5- All Things Hidden by Kathy Herman(t/s)

6- Not By Chance by Kathy Herman(t/s)

7- And Then There Were Two by Gilbert Morris (t/s)

8- Nancy's Mysterious Letter by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew)

9- The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene (ND)

10- Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene (ND)

11- The Honorable Imposter by Gilbert Morris

12- Queen Esther and the Second Graders of Doom by Allie Pleiter

13- How to Write (and sell) A Christan Novel by Gilbert Morris

14- Einstein Never Used Flash Cards by Kathy Kirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

15- Storm Warning by Billy Graham

I am also trying to finish Harry Potter before the movie comes out

16- Order of the Phoenix

17- Half Blood Prince

18- Deathly Hallows


And last but not least-

19- New Moon (again.  It's been awhile since I reread this one.  Definitely the movie didn't do it justice)

There, that looks a little more realistic. To see what others are challenging themselves to read this fall or to join in yourself, head on over to Callapidder Days. To be eligible for any prizes you need to be signed up by midnight Sept 24th.

Tiny Talk Tuesday: September 21, 2010

It's time for Tiny Talk Tuesday!

I was looking at Tabitha's hair the other day and noticing that it looked like some of her front hair was shorter than it should have been.  Seeing as I don't cut their hair I stated to hubby:
"I want to know why my daughter has bangs."
Tabitha, "I don't have fangs."
Mom, "What are fangs?" figuring she didn't know.
Tabitha, "Teeth." (Okay, she knew what fangs are, not quite sure how.)
Found out several days later that she did cut her hair because she wants to look like her big sister, who's dad does let her cut her hair against my wishes.

Not sure where this one came from:
Tabitha: "I want to get married so I can drive."

On September 18th we were in the kitchen
Tabitha, "Candy helps me grow."
Mommy explained that candy is not that good for you and helps you grow where you don't need to.  But a little is okay.
Tabitha, "I like the taste best that's what I like."

Yesterday daddy was in the bathroom trying to fix the lovely sink that Amelia clogged. Seems she likes to get toilet tissue wet for various reasons and had put too much in the sink.  It soaked the floor.  Anyhow, Tabitha was telling daddy how the sink "leaks up."

One morning daddy had been tickling Tabitha and she told him to stop so she could catch her breath.  So daddy was going to tickle Amelia, but she said, "I need to catch my breath."
Daddy asked her, "Where is it?"
Amelia pointed to her chest and said, "Right here."

To see what other's have heard their children saying head on over Not Before 7.

Muffin Tin Monday Part 2: Shapes (plus)

Today I wanted to work on the children's green collages because the pictures they had colored have been sitting patiently waiting to be cut up and made into something.  When I scheduled my days for this "school year" I forgot we were in the middle of our number/color lessons from the summer.  So today after the girls colored their "p" pictures I had them cut, tear and glue green items onto a piece of paper.  Because today's Muffin Tin Monday theme was shapes I tried to focus a little on shapes with their collage.  I searched through the foam bead shapes and found some circles, hearts and squares. They each got 2 green pompoms.  I gave the girls some green construction paper cut into triangles, rectangles and squares.  They were allowed to cut this up however they wanted to, except for the large triangle that I had them place in a corner of their paper.

Then I made the muffin tins while they watched their Signing Time show.  I have to tell you, I think I got confused on what the theme was supposed to be.  It's supposed to be shapes.  Well, it still is, but it took on a life of its own as I was searching (once again last minute) to find foods that would work.  And we ended up with a shapes/orange muffin tin.

2 cheese triangles

2 square peanut butter on cheese crackers

5 fish shaped crackers (pushing it a bit on this one, huh?)

1 oval hard boiled egg

5 circle carrots

2 crescent peach slices 

(Though Tabitha didn't quite think they were crescents, maybe wedges?)

The eggs were last minute so fresh from the pan.  If anyone else struggles with making hard boiled eggs that come out of the shell easily, let me share what I discovered today.  I was reading some directions here but only took part of the advice and mine turned out perfectly.

I did 3 eggs, one each for each of us.

Placed them in lukewarm water.

Put the flame on high and brought to a boil, added a sprinkle of salt while they were coming to the boil.

When they were at a boil I turned the flame to low so they would simmer for 10 minutes.

I ran them under cold water, alternating draining and adding more cold water 'til the eggs were warm and easy to handle.

I gently tapped them 3-4 times in different spots and peeled.

Perfect

I waited about 10 minutes to peel mine and the shell stuck in one spot, could have been a fluke, or could mean it's better to peel right away, don't even wait 10 minutes.

Then we played a game with the Preschool Printable: Shapes Around Me that I discovered over at Carissa's blog, 1+1+1=1 yesterday.  I cut the pieces out and put the rectangle cards in the center with the shapes in a circle surrounding them.

I drew one card at a time and had the girls look at the pictures.  I had them tell me what shape all the pictures showed, then they were to find the shape on the floor that matched.

Amelia had a hard time trying to understand she was to pick one off the floor not on the card.  The girl who found the shape kept the card and put it down in front of her.  Of course I insisted that Tabitha let Amelia take her turns.

Here I thought Amelia had the right one

Then she went on to just keep pointing at shapes.

Oh well.  Something to work on.

Head on over to Muffin Tin Mom  to see other's muffin tins

Muffin Tin Monday: Aa

First I am going to share our extra muffin tin from last week.  Tabitha requested a lunch in the "circle plate" so I obliged, seeing as we hadn't had a "a" meal yet.  We focused so much on apples this past week, so don't be surprised, but there are three representations of apples here

I formed an A out of two strips of apple butter toast and one strip of ants on a log toast.

The extra strip of ants on a log toast (pb w/ raisins) sort of just sat there.

Applesauce

5 (because our # was 5) animal crackers

5 slices of apple

5 chunks of avocado 

Tabitha really is getting a kick out of these muffin tin meals and is looking forward to today's lunch, which I will post about soon.

To see other peoples muffin tin meals/snacks head on over to Muffin Tin Mom

Science Sunday: Caterpillars

I am happy to say we still have our frogs, in fact here is a picture of the one perched on the rim of the jar in the aquarium.

(Isn't he cute?)

But this post is dedicated to our new observation subjects, caterpillars.  My friend is always finding monarch caterpillars and this year, while we were discussing the tadpoles/frogs, we got on the subject of the monarchs and she said she may be able to get me a few.  That was a couple of weeks ago, and she came through.  She was able to get us 3 different sized caterpillars.

September 8th (really early in the morning, before I went to bed,

so we could call this September 7th which is the day we got them, I

had only just put them in the garden.  They had been in a bucket

but I had left the lid off earlier and we had an escapee)

(If you look really closely you can see the little caterpillar on the top

right leaf directly below the daisy.)

She told me the big one was just about ready to form a J.  She was right (guess she would know having observed them for years), the caterpillar formed its J later that day, this picture was taken around 11:30 pm.



And then, one morning (Sept 10th) I woke up and it was in a chrysslis.  The funny thing was, when hubby got home from work it was still in the J, by the time we got downstairs it was fully in the chryssalis.  Doesn't take long, unfortunately because then it is easy to miss.

I do love the little tiny goldish shiny dots around the top, not sure if you can see, but they are over to the left, from this angle they are almost halfway down on the bump.

Come check out others' science lessons, or link up your own at Adventure in Mommydom and Science Sunday