U lessons concluded

I am going to see if I can get a decent blog post out before the baby decides it is time to eat again.  We finished the letter U last week and I started introducing V this week.  I have yet to do anything crafty with the girls this week though.  I feel so unproductive, but little Miss Hannah doesn't let me get a lot done.  Most of the things we do get done are spontaneous and have nothing to do with our letter of the week seeing as I don't have time to prepare our activities.  Here is what we did get accomplished last week:

We made Upside-down pineapple cake.  My first time ever and it was delicious.  I am not patting myself on the back.  I found a great recipe at www.allrecipes.com.  This is actually the first cake I ever made from scratch.  The girls really enjoyed helping.

Getting ready:

Cutting cherries:

Adding cherries walnuts and brown sugar to melted margarine:

Adding and eating pineapple:

Sifting flour with baking soda and salt:

Enjoying the privileges of helping bake:

Not the best looking, but it was delicious:

Speaking of "upside down," we also made an upside down picture.  I wracked my brain for quite a while trying to see what would work.  

They cut fringes for grass (I love her look of concentration)

Amelia posing for a picture (I couldn't resist posting this)

Amelia attempting to use scissors (at least she let me show her how to hold them properly this time!)

They glued the grass and clouds on.

I know I know... it doesn't look upside down yet.

Then they glued on the tree trunk.

They painted the tree leaves green

Did you know, if trees turned upside down the eggs would fall right out of the nests?  Lol

And that was our upside down project.

It was while I was over at Mozi Esme that I thought of finding something to do with "upside down."

We also got outside a few times last week.  Daddy helped us fly a kite Up in the sky.  

I picked on daddy because he is flying a Dora kite.  I know, it's not nice to pick.

They didn't have much success as there wasn't much wind, but the girls had fun.

On a different day we spent some time just looking up at the sky, at the clouds.  Tabitha kept telling me what various clouds looked like, I just don't remember which cloud was the alligator or the hippo.  Maybe you can tell?

I think that is all we did that was letter U related.  The girls did request to play Candyland several times recently.  In fact, I fell asleep while I was supposed to be playing the one time.  I just fell asleep sitting up!

Amelia can say blue (I think it is the only color she can say), but she was able to find a matching color on the board each time, usually not the space she needed to move to, but we helped her move.

One video I would recommend is Leap Frog Talking Words Factory.  Tabitha loves to watch it and I like the way they explain how to blend the sounds.  Adorable letters with their own individual personalities to compliment their sounds are brought together by different machines at the factory as the children help the professor make words for the talking words dictionary.  Since she began watching this (we take it out from the library a lot) if we give her a simple phonetic word, like cat, she will say she is spelling it.  She will say the word, say the first sound /k/, then move to the next sound say /a/ and move on to /t/.  Most of the time she will use the sign for the letter, so we know she is comprehending that the letter corresponds to the sound.  Daddy told me she sounded out her own name to write it on my mother's day card, only having trouble with the "th."  

Besides these activities the children have mostly played with Legos, loved their sister to pieces (poor Hannah) and watched signing videos.  I was amazed to see Amelia actually signing along with the video.  I know she knows signs, but I never saw her interacting with the video before.  We enjoy the Signing Time DVD's and one called I Want to Learn to Sign.  Unfortunately our library system only has Vol 1.  In order to get Vol 2 I would have to request it and three other people would have to request it.  Grrrrrr.

And yes, we are working on our Creation Lapbook, but I will have to ask you to stay tuned once again for a post about it.

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

U lessons

This week we made an underground picture. We glued brown paper bag (for the dirt) to green construction paper (for the grass) and then the girls painted inside the U tunnel I drew on the paper.

Then we added some pictures of burrowing animals after the paint dried. We have a chipmunk, worms, ants, a mole and a groundhog.

I saw something similar over at No Time for Flashcards blog.

I found a link to beginningreading.com at the Confessions of a homeschooler blog. I printed out a u letter find worksheet and a printing u practice sheet.

I have decided to do this for each letter from now on and keep the worksheets in a folder. Then we will put that week's worksheet into a sheet protector so they can use the dry erase markers. I also printed out a counting activity printable from the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog.

Seemed perfect that she had just posted about the letter U, as I have been looking for some more ideas.

We also made umbrellas, which have become a part of our Up banner/mural that we have started. For the umbrellas I searched for an umbrella template, copied and enlarged it, and printed out an extra copy so I could have a pattern by which to cut out the shapes in the colors the girls wanted to use to glue onto the umbrella.

Then we made some rain. I cut raindrops out of foil and the girls stuck it onto the sticky side of clear contact paper, then I covered it with another piece of contact paper.

Then we sponge painted clouds onto our sky banner/mural.

We talked about things that go up in the sky.

Our Up "mural" is the sky with the painted clouds and it is now hung to the "archway" between the living room and dining room. We made white cumulus clouds along with some gray storm clouds because I wanted to hang the umbrellas and rain to this banner/mural. We will be adding other crafts next week. Things that go UP.

This week we also started our new Bible Time book. Well, it is new to the girls. I have had a family worship felt set from Little Folk Visuals for over 10 years. I had forgotten I had this particular book as a matter of fact. I like that the book has object lessons, songs and activities to expand upon the lesson. We started with the story of creation which will take 3 weeks to cover. This week we focused on Days 1 through 3, so we had another way to link "sky" into our lessons. I decided tonight that we will make a Days of Creation Lapbook to help reinforce what we are learning. So, stay tuned...

I also found a color matching activity, though I can't remember whose blog I saw it on. As we are low on printer ink I used the template which I found for the big umbrella craft so I could cut umbrellas out of construction paper. As of today the girls have not had a chance to play this game. But they are to pick a raindrop and match it to the correct colored umbrella.

Here is the list of words I used for Uu:

words I found signs for: umbrella, uncles (I used pictures of two of their uncles), up

words without a sign: umbrella bird, umbilical cord (I used a picture I took of Hannah before her cord fell off)

Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it. Proverbs 16:22

I got my felt board out with these cute little pieces that are to be used for counting/math activities. I had been browsing through blogs, clicking on links to other's blogs and lost track of where I went. One idea I saw was to use a felt board for patterns and that was what I planned to do. Tabitha had other plans. The girls ended up putting matching pieces up in groups, in lines/rows. I took the opportunity to talk about odd and even, which I hadn't done in months. When Tabitha had two like pieces together I told her she had two pieces and it was an even number because they each had a friend. Then when she added another matching piece I told her it was odd because one of them didn't have a friend. So she would add another one so it would have a friend and become even. She would alternate between different animals until the entire board was covered with animals in groups. Then she used the pumpkin pieces and some animals got to eat.

When we were done, I had the girls sort them into piles so they could be put away neatly.

Tabitha wanted me to play some music out of my beginning piano book. When her grandmother was here she showed Tabitha and Amelia how to play with one finger so they weren't banging away. So she wanted me to show her how to play Brother John. I thought I had a brilliant idea. I used a piece of paper to mark the piano keys and then wrote just the note letters on paper. Then I pointed to the letter and asked her to find the matching letter on the keys. At first it looked like she understood. She found C, D and E but the next note was C again and she pointed to the G. Then when I tried to get her to point to C again she was looking up at the book, the paper and down the keys. I was frustrated, she was frustrated (in tears actually), so we stopped and haven't gone back to it yet. Here are some pictures of what we did:

One more picture. I wanted to share the barbells Tabitha made with her legos:

Update: I found the blog where I saw the color matching activity! Some really neat activities over at Chasing Marcus

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