School Time: Week 4 (Pp concluded)

As I mentioned last week, we continued the letter P this week.  One of our word cards is "penguin" and we have been waddling like penguins to go hang up our pictures.  We played a follow the leader type game acting out different penguin actions as we walked around the living room and dining room.  That reminded me of our little booklet about penguins in our lapbook, so we pulled the penguin lapbooks out of the box and used the "Parts of a Penguin" cards in addition to reading the booklet and looking at our shape hunt.  For complete details of the penguin lapbook head on over to my post from earlier in the year.

 We put our P collages together.  I have decided to do all the cutting for it because the girls have found it too tiring.  I guess a little cutting is okay, but I was having them do too much.

 Amelia has started layering everything:

 We also made our P Pig craft.  You can find the details here.

Because I could NOT come up with a p craft myself I took some time looking at the crafts linked up at The Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection.  I really liked the pig, but hubby liked the idea of the piano.  So, instead of a tactile P we made another letter shaped craft.

I had the girls trace over dotted lines for the piano keys

 Amelia wanted to trace her own lines in addition to the ones above

 After she glued her keyboard to the P Tabitha pretended to play the piano.

 I thought it was neat that Amelia made her own pattern

I was familiar with the following idea from working at the Montessori, but I couldn't figure out how to implement it at home.  Then I remembered I had an extra container available so I filled it with a thin layer of salt so the girls could practice writing their letters.

 Finishing up our Pa state page

 Tabitha's tracing is improving a great deal

 This morning I let Amelia get on her Starfall (alphabet as she calls it).  Tabitha helped her move and click the mouse.  Then they wanted to type, so I opened up our Microsoft Works program and let her type away, occasionally giving her a specific word to spell.  This was how she spelled pepper, "pepr."  She getting there.

 Then they pulled out their farm.

 All ready for lesson time.  Hannah in the Bumbo doesn't last too long, so I enjoy it while I can.  

My left arm really appreciates it.

 A simple popcorn counting game.  I just cut out a strip from an egg carton and wrote the numerals 0-5.

I used popcorn kernels, but I won't do that again, too hard to get out.  So I let the girls use the popped popcorn.  

 Stay tuned to see what we make with these materials.  

We are almost done, but decided to do some baking instead.

We decided to make something special for the bake sale (we had already made some for ourselves last night).  Can you guess what we made to go with our letter P

adding baking powder to the flour and baking soda

 and some cinnamon

 after adding the nutmeg we stirred together the dry ingredients

 Getting ready to cream sugar and margarine

 Amelia thought it was loud.  

So do you know what we made for the bake sale?  If you think you know just leave me a comment.

 Some special Tiny Tot/Mommy Time

Hannah is learning to sit!!

I did catch her right after taking the picture because she started to fall, but she is getting there.

 Just one little helping hand is all it takes to keep her steady

 Couldn't resist this expression:

Our Bible verse these last couple of weeks has been, "Praise ye the Lord for it is good to sing praises unto our God." Psalms 147:1

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

Gonna link up our piano to 

  

Already linked up the pig.

A Little Bit of Photography (Alphabet and You Capture)

For the alphabet photo challenge hosted by Barb Phillips I was to be searching high and low for pictures that represented D to me.  

Then I realized I didn't have to go very far at all to get pictures of my

Dear Darling Daughters

Daddy's Delicious Dessert

(for his birthday)

Downpour

(I was getting ready to go to the post office and I realized I had

a great D opportunity staring right at me, had been all day)

These last two pictures are for the You Capture photo challenge

over at I Should Be Folding Laundry

This week's theme is Togetherness

Amelia and Hannah

Grandma reading to Tabitha and Amelia

Piggy P Art

I am once again linking up to A Mommy's Adventures stART

And I just found out about Read Explore Learn over at JDaniel4's Mom's blog, so I am linking up there as well.  Head on over to both blogs and take a look at what others are being inspired to create after reading books.

We have been focusing on the letter P for the second week.  Last week we read 3 P books, but this week we added a 4th book, because mommy really likes it and I realized I should have had it planned from the beginning.  One evening we had pancakes and I remembered I had seen the P pig over at The Attached Mama's Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection.   It was posted by Jen at thesellers.net.  For some really cute P ideas head on over to her blog.  She had found the P pig over at Cindy's blog, Along the Way.  For some more really cute ideas for P and pig I would suggest you head on over.

Anyhow, I decided to add If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff to our reading list for the week.  I just love this book, along with the other 2 books of her's that I have read (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If You Give a Moose a Muffin).  I love the way a simple request for a pancake can turn into quite an adventure as the pig is reminded of various things along the way requiring a halt to the current activity to start the next.  I wonder if the author has or knows children with ADHD.  Just a thought that has run through my head many times when reading these books.  I love the way she always brings these books around full circle, so by the end the pig is again requesting a pancake because of the associations made. The pig is seen in such activities as preparing a bath, participating in a photo session and building a tree house, to name a few.

So we made the above mentioned P pig.  I cut out all the pieces 

and the girls glued them together.  

I colored in the black area of the oval body so

the girls would know where to put the glue for the head.

Then they drew on the details.  

 Very simple craft. The girls loved giving the pig a pipe cleaner curly tail. The only differences between my version and the original are, due to lack of wiggle eyes we glued on white paper circle eyes and drew the black pupils, and I used the lower case letter.

I am also adding our version of the P pig to the Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection