Nn Continued

Well, I planned on continuing Nn this week, and we did! On Monday we decorated the number nine with 9 noodles. I have found the white glue since the last time I tried to do a counting lesson, so we had 9 dots of glue visible for the girls to put their noodles on. Before I realized it, even Amelia had her noodles placed on the glue dots. She is loving doing these crafts!

Tuesday was play group, so we didn't have time for a project. But on Wednesday we made neckties for our letter/sound book. I found the idea at the dltk website. I used some scrapbooking paper I have on hand. We used plain colors for the shirt and a coordinating design for the tie. After I had everything cut out and ready we began by drawing a line down the middle and gluing on 5 buttons (Tabitha is obsessed with the number 5).

Then they glued the collars on and the tie with the knot as per the directions at the website.

On days when we didn't have appointments we started by looking at our word cards and putting our pictures on the poster. Usually I will say the word slowly and run my finger under the word. Then I have Tabitha say it fast (something I learned from the book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Siegfried Engelmann). I show them the picture and they find the matching picture to hang on the poster. It sure is nice to be back to doing our lessons the "right" way.

And here is the way the poster is supposed to look:

We also read the poem "The Night Will Never Stay" by Eleanor Farjeon, one of the poems suggested at the letter of the week website. We also read "The Best Nest" by P.D. Eastman. Unfortunately our other book didn't arrive in time to really enjoy for the week, though we will still read "The Napping House" by Audrey and Don Wood.

And surprisingly we were able to find nectarines this time of year at our local store to eat for snack. They were a little hard and not so sweet and juicy, but Tabitha, at least, enjoyed them (5 pieces at a time). I cut them into slices, and by the time she was done she had eaten the entire nectarine herself! Amelia got a little ahead of me and started eating before I could get it cut.

Started "N" lessons

At the beginning of last week I was feeling so encouraged. I had prepared our lessons for the letter N. Then we each took turns being sick. So we didn't get to do everything exactly as planned. But, we are continuing "N" this week.

So, on to the lessons/projects that we got done. Though I was feeling blah on Monday Amelia really seemed like she wanted to do something. So after dinner I let her glue shredded brown paper on her nest and then glue on her eggs that she colored blue. I had planned on them painting a tree/branch on some construction paper so we could glue the nest full of eggs to it, but that hasn't happened yet. Tabitha hasn't even had a chance to glue the eggs on as they got misplaced. I believe we will finish this project this week.

Next we dyed noodles. The girls helped count 10 rigatoni noodles into each bag, we did all six colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple (ok, we didn't do indigo). In order to dye the noodles I looked on various sites to get the instructions. I found two different options. Use rubbing alcohol or white vinegar. Using the vinegar was suggested to make them safer for the children and to make them edible. I chose to do an experiment. With the girls help we did the vinegar option. Here are the directions:

1) Place noodles in zippy plastic bag. (Lots of practice counting to 10)

2) Add 1 teaspoon of vinegar (or rubbing alcohol)

3) Add 5 drops of food coloring

4) Squish and shake the bag up until the color is evenly distributed and soaking into the noodles.

5) After finished with all the colors you are doing gently dump them onto wax paper (I covered cookie sheets with the wax paper so I could have room on my counter)

6) Let dry.

I did the rubbing alcohol version after the children were busy in the other room.

What I discovered was we prefer the rubbing alcohol. The colors come out much brighter and seem to be "soaked into" the noodles more thoroughly. Also, the vinegar ones became brittle. I can break them with slight pressure between my thumb and index finger. The ones with the rubbing alcohol didn't break with even more pressure. (Though they do break if you step on them! Ooops!)

Left-vinegar/Right-rubbing alcohol

I won't post all the colors, I figured these give the general idea. Of course if you want to use them for cooking you'll want to use the vinegar. But we used them the following day to make noodle necklaces and we really couldn't use ones that were cracked down the side.

Surprisingly, Tabitha did a great job threading the noodles onto yarn. I say surprisingly because we have never done it before. Even Amelia had the idea, she just couldn't get it to go through. I plan to keep practicing with this activity to help the fine motor skills. One little trick I tried was to leave the yarn attached to the skein so it wouldn't fall off the other end as they threaded. It worked really well!

In the above pictures the girls are standing in front of our Nn poster. I usually cut the N's out. I cut them out in green for the poster, white for our alphabet chart and the cover of their letter/sound books and black for inside the sound books. That was one thing I didn't feel was important last week as I was sick.

The words I chose to put on cards for this week that I could find sign language signs for are: nurse, nest and nickel. The other words I put on word cards are narwal, numbat, Noah's ark, and newt. We also learned to signs for noodle and necklace. Our verse for this week is :

No man can serve two masters...Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24