Wow, A Blog Award!

I am truly honored to have been nominated to receive a blog award. I love being able to blog about what my girls and I do. And I am so glad that people can find my ideas useful. This was why I wanted to blog in the first place. God has given me a gift for teaching my children, for being able to come up with projects to do. I feel I should be sharing these talents. And this award just means that others are seeing these ideas and finding them of use. So I just wanted to thank Counting Coconuts for thinking of me.

And now I see it is my turn to pass the love along.

The CreativOnline Award

I was nominated for this award for being creative and loving to share my work. Here are those who I am passing it along to who also "show a lot of creativity and love to share their work":

A Mommy's Adventures

Mama to 3 Blessings

The Activity Mom

Monkey See Monkey Do

One Mom, Five Boys

The rules for accepting this award:

• Put the logo on your blog (copy and paste it) or within your post.
• Nominate 5 (or more) blogs to pass the award on to.
• Link the nominees in your post.
• Let the nominees know you've given them this award by commenting on their blog.
• Share the love and link back to the person from whom you received this award.

Snowman Poem

I know this is off subject from the Pp lessons we've been doing. But I just wanted to share an idea I just found. I actually was checking out the blogs I follow and found some really cool winter songs at The Activity Mom blog. That reminded me of a song I used to sing years ago with the older children. I am not sure if we learned it at Head Start or from a friend, but it is called "A Chubby Little Snowman." I couldn't find who wrote it, and when I searched I found a lot of different versions. The version I learned goes like this:

A Chubby Little Snowman

A Chubby Little Snowman

(form your arms into a circle in front of you)

Had a carrot nose

(place your fist in front of your nose)

Along came a bunny

(put index and middle finger of one hand up like

bunny ears and hop it along the opposite arm)

And what do you suppose?

(shrug your shoulders)

The hungry little bunny

(rub your tummy)

Looking for some lunch

(your hand shades your eyes while looking left to right)

Ate the snowman's carrot nose

(place fist in front of nose again)

Nibble, Nibble, CRUNCH

(open and close hand 3 times, starting about a foot away from your face and ending with your fingers wrapped around your nose on "CRUNCH")

While I was searching I found a cute little project to go with the song, along with some more cool winter themed ideas. Here is the link.

Seeing as we won't get to Ss for a while, I think we may take some time to just do some snowman crafts. We did get to go out and play in the snow a few days ago, but the snow was so hard and crunchy the girls couldn't do much as we've had rain to melt most of the snow away and harden the snow. And the snow falling that day didn't amount to anything. Tabitha did enjoy painting the snow purple though. Yes, I have to get in our letter Pp if I can. LOL.

We also had fun talking about prints:

(Footprints. And I had them follow me around in my footprints)

(and Amelia "fall in the snow" prints)

However, she did prefer to just sit on the tricycle even though I explained she wasn't going to get very far.

And here are some more pictures of them playing in the snow:

Activities for Pp

When I was trying to plan my week for the letter Pp my paper was filling up fast. There are so many foods that begin with the letter Pp. So far this week we have had pizza (homemade, one with pepperoni, one with pineapple and ham), pancakes, pudding (chocolate of course) with peanut butter, peanut butter and pickle sandwiches (I thought it sounded weird but a child where I used to work brought them for lunch almost every day, so I thought it was time to try one. Children were not impressed, they stuck with their normal pb and apple butter, but I thought it was pretty tasty), porcupine snacks (I peeled a pear, cut it in half and cored it, laid it middle side down with raisin eyes attached with peanut butter and the children gave it pretzel quills)

We didn't eat any peas yet this week, but the sweet snap peas that I was snacking on last week gave me the idea for one of our activities. It had been a while since we did a counting activity (I don't think I have done one since we did the ladybugs on the blades of grass in our lapbook). So I took green construction paper and cut out 10 pea pods for each girl. I painted some of the paper green so we would have a different color green. When it was dry I cut out circles for peas. During our lesson time I lined the pods up and I asked the girls to get the first pod in the row and then I wrote the numeral 1 on one side, we turned it over and I put on one dot of white glue, to which they attached one pea. I did the same for the second, third, fourth and fifth pea pod.

Then I also wrote the numerals on the extra pea pods so we could use it as a matching activity.

Our other food related activity was based on the octopus/cheerios activity from last week. I cut out a circle from poster board to fit inside my round tray. Using red marker I gave it a thin red "sauce" border one inch from the edge. Then I painted the cheese. When it was dry I drew lines for the slices and 3 circles in each slice. The girls enjoy placing Froot Loops in the circles for the pepperoni. Of course, I let them eat the cereal/pepperoni when they are done.

The Start of the Pp lessons

Wow! What an awesome letter Pp is! So, maybe awesome isn't the right word, but I have so many ideas for this letter that I know we will take at least two weeks to be able to accomplish everything.

We started out our week with a craft from dltk-kids.com. They have quite a few peacock crafts to choose from. I chose to do the paper plate craft because we could use markers, paint, crayons and glue. I try not to choose crafts where all I do is cut out pieces and have them glue them to a specific spot. With this craft they drew the tail lines on with marker:

Then it was time to paint on the "eyes" of the tail. I varied from the pattern here because they called for dark colored thumb prints (blue, purple or green) followed by a lighter colored pinky print. I viewed some photos of peacocks on Google and decided to have the girls paint theirs' this way:

First came the yellow thumbprints

Then the light blue prints using the index finger

And finally, we used the pinky finger to add the dark blue

Tabitha insisted on doing it herself. Miss Independent!

(Though she did need help with the pinky)

I printed out the black and white version of the body parts. I colored Amelia's for her (blue for the body, purple for the beak and orange for the crest, with a little bit of blue and purple at the top). Tabitha colored her's using Amelia's as a pattern. I showed her that the body should be blue and the crest orange. Then she surprised me! I had been busy with something else and when I turned around she had picked the right color and was coloring the beak.

When it was dry we glued it all together. One more time I changed the project a bit from the original. The crest was shown to lay horizontally, I just thought it looked better vertically.

More posts on the letter Pp to come.

Postcard Exchange

I just found out about this postcard exchange yesterday and am so happy to share it with you. I am hoping we can have lots of participation in this. I found it on the Counting Coconuts blog and she had found it at the Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn blog. I think this will be a great way to incorporate geography for the girls. We have worked on maps a little before. They love to watch Dora! And a while ago we made a map of our town (I believe this was before the break for summer). I plan on covering it with contact paper and using velcro to attach specific landmarks in our town. But that is a lesson for another time as I plan on being able to go for a walk and be able to point out a few specific landmarks at a time, like Dora does, just 3 to keep track of where we are going. And obviously right now, we are NOT going for a walk around town, BRRRRR!

Anyhow, I think it will be great to be able to receive and share postcards and be able to mark on a map where they come from. I think it would be cool to receive them from other countries as well.

Anyway, if you want to join the fun, here's what you need to do:

1. Simply leave me a comment letting me know you're interested and I in turn will be in touch via email to exchange our mailing addresses.
2. Agree to "pay it forward" - i.e. send a postcard back to me. And, if you're interested, post about this on your own blog and get others involved, too. If you do, please include a link to my blog, thank you.
3. When selecting your postcards, choose ones with geographical pictures or images of things specific to where you live. This will so help us learn about where others live.

Oo Lessons

Well, we started off the week planning on focusing on Oo and we did. We had a very productive week. We got to get a full lesson in on Tuesday as there was no playgroup. And I was able to have lots of learning time today as I didn't need to get finished early as we didn't have care group. And there were no doctor appointments I had to be responsible for driving people to. Plus I have been trying to stay more organized and I am excited about our positive beginning of incorporating some Montessori activities, which I have discussed previously this week. I've pulled myself away from the computer and spent a lot more time with the girls in activities in addition to the "lesson time" and projects.

Now, on to our Oo lessons. Before I forget, it is so cute. Amelia will try to say the short o sound, but every time, before she ends the sound, she ends up saying the long vowel sound. Anyhow, we started the week by making shape books with orange shapes. Each page was devoted to a specific shape (square, triangle, circle and rectangle).

As I had printed out extra pictures accidentally I decided one of our projects could be a letter collage. We haven't done them for every letter, sometimes only as a last resort if I couldn't think of something to do on a particular day, so I figured, "Why not?"

These are the same pictures I use for the word cards and to go in the books.

Found signs for these words: octopus and orange

Made up a sign for ostrich

No signs for Oscar, olives or otter that I could find.

Amelia was so adorable. She saw the picture of the octopus the one morning, before we did our lesson, and she attempted to sign it. Later that day I got pictures of both the girls signing octopus while they colored their octopus picture.

We definitely had a lot of octopus related projects this week. Not only did the girls color a picture of an octopus, we had a poem about an octopus called "Once I Saw an Octopus" which I found while looking for an octopus poem of the same name recommended by letter of the week. I do not think this was the correct poem because, though the poem on the letter of the week website had an author, the website where I found it said the original author was unknown. That's okay, the girls liked the poem that I found at preschooleducation.com. We made a project out of it. I let the girls paint the ocean under the poem:

When the paint was dry I glued on an octopus body I cut out. I put eight pieces of velcro on the bottom of the octopus:

The next couple of mornings I recited the poem and we attached the tentacles.

Here is another octopus activity I found on the blog Counting Coconuts. The writer of that blog actually found it at a different website, but I just drew my own octopus. I figured it went along with the Montessori exercises I introduced this week. They needed to use fine motor skills to put the "o" cereal on the circles drawn on the octopus. Once again I used a shoe box lid as a tray. Tabitha was able to get all the circles covered along with the mouth, eyes and o in octopus. Amelia mainly places them on the paper randomly, though at times she does try to place one on a circle. Unfortunately most times it moves off anyway. Though she does real well with her pincer grasp.

When they are done they are allowed to eat the "TO's" so they really like doing this activity. Maybe I will think of a "P" picture to use this activity with for next week.

And our last octopus project was made today. We made oval octopuses to put in their O Books. I traced an oval for the body, let the girls glue on oval eyes and then we glued on the tentacles. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Amelia making hers as I was holding the bottom of the body out of the way while she glued the tentacles underneath. Tabitha was able to do it independently for the most part.

Our week wasn't all octopuses. I went out and bought oranges and the girls chowed down on them for a snack on Wednesday. Then we cut some into slices to make potpourri. Another activity I found at the Counting Coconuts blog. I cut the oranges into 1/4 inch slices and had the children arrange them on the oven rack I had laid on the dining room table, while the oven heated to 225 degrees.

As you can see, they thought it was snack time still!

Then they sprinkled on the cinnamon. I had to use my Magic Bullet to grind up some cinnamon sticks as we had used almost all our cinnamon up baking Amish Friendship Bread. Didn't come quite as fine as I would have hoped, but it worked. Unfortunately mommy had been distracted by something and when I noticed what Tabitha had done I realized two orange slices had quite a bit of cinnamon on them. But we fixed it. Then I realized that the second step was supposed to be, use a paper towel to blot off excess juice, so I gave them all I nice pat, even though they already had the cinnamon on.

We also made octagons. I cut out white strips of paper and we glued them onto orange paper. I put on a line of white glue and let the girls put the strips on. Funnily enough I had this all cut up and ready to go over the weekend and then I saw something similar on the Counting Coconuts blog. Only difference was, the colors were reversed.

Well, that is it for Oo. we will put pictures in their sound books tomorrow so we can be ready to start Pp on Monday. Looking at the time I guess when you read today I mean Friday and tomorrow means Saturday.