Happiness is...: Totschool

Lucas is 44 months. Gwendolyn is 22 months. Catherine is 6 months.

We finished up our Ll, 1, yellow, etc lesson this week. The kiddos were starting to loose interest, so we moved on :)

Lucas practiced writing Ls. He is so focused! We are working more on holding the marker properly right now than the actual letter writing. As an added benefit, Gwendolyn keep asking me to help her hold her marker the right way! While Lucas practices letters, Gwendolyn colors her Bible verse printout with the color of the week. It keeps her happy, involved and away from Lucas so that he can concentrate :) (all of our printouts are from the Raising Rock Stars Preschool site)

Gwendolyn is reading out sight word book.

Both kids colored with yellow markers, crayons and stampers. Then added L and 1 stickers. They had so much fun with this!

This week we started on our new lesson:

Tt
2
Thou shall not steal.
green
the
triangle
Memory matching cards

Lucas is still practicing to write L because, well, I don't know. He wanted to? And Gwendolyn is coloring her Bible verse with a green marker.

Lucas made himself a green necklace. Then he made a pink and red bracelet for Gwendolyn :) Such a thoughtful boy!!

The kiddos put green perler beads and green pipecleaners into a cup. Daddy even helped Gwendolyn put some of the beads onto the pipecleaners.

We played with soft fabric triangle blocks. Catherine is enjoying playing with them! Gwendolyn can now correctly identify and point out triangles! We were at the store the other day and there was a sample cart out. The kids got samples on napkins folded into little triangles. Gwendolyn held up the napkin and started yelling 'TRIANGLE!!' She was so excited and proud of herself!

They practiced putting change into a piggy bank. This, of course, ended up with the kiddos pushing the change off of the table to hear it hit the floor. Fun with sound as well as fine motor work!

We built with green duplos.

I set out a farm play set for the kiddos. With green felt as the field. They didn't play with it. Not even once. I thought it was cute tho. (I got the idea from Tired, Need Sleep. Such a fun blog with so many great ideas!!)

Magnets on the fridge. Lucas is working on learning to spell his name :) And every week, I plan to add a new set of letter/number/something that starts with the letter if I have it magnets.

Watching Leap Frog Letter Factory on the laptop. They are currently obsessed with my laptop, so every movie is watched there because it is *so* much better than the television :) We have also been playing a lot of Starfall and other various games.

Our green, T, 2 artwork.

We have been working on being kind and gentle with Catherine. And playing with her in an appropriate manner :) They adore the baby, but can be a little overzealous when sharing toys. And jumping around near her.

Alot of our school has been outside lately:
We played with penne pasta and put it into soda bottles.

Gwendolyn is watering our plants with a spray bottle.

I have started packing a bag of things to take outside with us everyday. It makes it so much easier to head outdoors for our school time when everything is sitting by the door waiting. The bag contains: a container full of penne pasta, a container with a ladybug craft project in it (we made ladybugs out of bottlecaps - I found the idea on a blog, but I can't remember where), a couple of interesting toys for the baby, a few board books that I wouldn't mind getting thrown in the pool, my journal, and a microfiber towel (they like pouring water on their little table. I dry it off before they use it for schoolwork). I usually keep markers and paper in there, too.