Wednesday, May 26, 2010

White Pines












We went to White Pines for the first time this season. Gwendolyn was able to walk the entire trail!! Which was completely exciting :) We all love to hike!! It's so nice that Gwendolyn is able to keep up with us now. After the trail, we stopped to play in the river. The kids threw rocks in. They had a blast! It was so much fun! Can't wait to go again!!

Sunday, May 23, 2010

School time!

Lucas is 44 months. Gwendolyn is 21 months. Catherine is 6 months.

I haven't posted about our school activities for a long time. (since before Catherine was born?) We have been doing some unorganized school stuff the whole time, I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to organize, photograph, blog about it. But all that has changed ;) I realized that Lucas really needed the structure and activities of TotSchool back. I went to the 1+1+1=1 website (the home of TotSchool) and found Raising Rock Stars Preschool! Awesome!! It looks absolutely perfect for Lucas!! And easily adaptable to include Gwendolyn, too! I am beyond thrilled about this :) It's lots of fun and super easy to add other complimentary activities to (as is suggested - it's a foundational program, not a complete program) I think it will take us a little while to get into a routine with this (because I have been unorganized with school for so long), so for now we are taking it slow and having fun. And will work on the first lesson (Ll) until the kids seem ready to move on. It will probably be a few weeks :) I decided before we began that this would be more about fun and exposure than about trying to rush through the lessons just to move onto the next one.

This week we worked on:
Verse: Matthew 5:16
Letter:L
Color: yellow
Number: 1
Sight Word: see
Song: This Little Light of Mine

Game: Don't Break The Ice
Shape: star
(And if an activity looks in no way related to any of this - it probably isn't. Some stuff is just random fun)


Coloring printouts of the verse and a craft. (all of the printouts are from Raising Rock Stars Preschool unless otherwise noted) Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the finished products. The kids loved coloring and putting the craft together!!

Lucas really enjoyed cutting and taping. There were thick gray lines on the paper for him to cut along. He did such a great job staying on the line! Then he taped the strips together to make one long strip of paper. That had the verse written on it.

He was thrilled to hang his cut/taped masterpiece up on the wall :)

He loved cutting so much that I drew black lines on a yellow sheet of paper so that he could so it again. He asked (very nicely) if we could hang it up on the wall next to the first one. Of course we did!
Gwendolyn 'helped' by holding each strip as it was cut off.

She tried using safety scissors to cut her own piece of paper. But she still doesn't exactly get the concept. She had a great time playing with them tho! (Before anyone worries - they were true safety scissors. all plastic, no metal blade. They won't cut a piece of paper, much less a little girl)


We played with yellow Play-doh. And used an 'L' cookie cutter, a '1' cookie cutter, a yellow patterned stamp, and a pair of safety scissors. The kids LOVE Play-doh!!

We colored our dry erase book that is meant for tracing letters/number/shapes.


Catherine is hanging out with us :) Gwendolyn has such a long attention span these days. She often stays at the table working on something long after Lucas has gotten up.

The kids had lots of fun painting with Aunt Heidi! They didn't actually like this water color paint activity. They just enjoyed her company that much!

Lucas and Gwendolyn are playing Don't Break The Ice in the background. We played it almost every day this week. They are loving the extra game playing fun!

Not pictured: lots of things. Because I have gotten out of the habit of taking pictures of everything.
We sang The Little Light of Mine many many times a day. Kiddos love to sing!!


Tot School