Saturday, April 30, 2011

Alphabet Fun - Letter Ee

Jenni is 3 years 9 months

We had an excellent time exploring the letter Ee! Here is some of what we did...

Easter Story
Jenni and I read the Easter Story from the Bible. It is amazing at how much she retains from reading and listening to stories. She even shared a simplified version with Joshua.

Easter Eggs (an exceptional amount of eggs)






 Jenni dyed, colored, blew out, and tissue papered dozens of eggs. (Tissue paper eggs were her favorite.)

Tissue Paper Easter Egg



I drew and colored in an Easter egg and cut out and glued on the grass for the egg to rest in. I supplied Jenni with glue, a pencil and dozens of squares of tissue paper. This project took hours! Oh my.

Letter Ee Collage
I cut several letter Ee's out of magazines. Jenni sorted the Ee's into an "E" bowl and an "e" bowl. She then glued the Ee's onto the correct outline.

Easter Egg Tree
 I traced Jenni's arm, from elbow to fingertip, onto brown construction paper, creating the trunk and branches of the tree. I cut out the tree and pasted it onto blue card stock, resembling the sky. I made a dozen oval shaped Easter eggs on a Word document, printed it out, and Jenni painted the Easter eggs spring colors. I helped her cut them out and she glued them onto her tree.

Easter Chick Hand Prints
I traced Jenni's hand prints onto yellow card stock and cut out the body, feet, and beak of the chick. Jenni had fun gluing the pieces together and adding the googly eyes :)

Earth Day

 I drew a circle on white card stock and cut small green squares of tissue paper out. Jenni painted the circle blue and after it dried she glued down small areas of green tissue paper onto the 'water' to resemble 'land'. We discussed that the earth is round and mostly made of water.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Alphabet Fun - Letter Ss

Jenni is 3 years 8 months

We had a spectacular time exploring all the super things one can do during Ss week! Here is some of what we did...

Bible Verse:
Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. (Colossians 3:2)

Sea World San Antonio






Eric had been out of town for a few weeks and was home for a weekend when we made a spontaneous trip to Sea World! Jenni loved the whales and Joshua adored the dolphins. We had so much fun learning about the letter Ss while we were traveling. We had an action-packed weekend watching the Shamu Show and other shows, riding carousels, playing in the splash pads, walking the boardwalk and spending some time in San Marcos shopping!

S is for Springtime




We learned about the different seasons and focused on Spring. I thought the best way to learn about Spring was to experience it! So off we went to a beautiful garden. We spent the majority of our time walking through the rose gardens - just spectacular. Jenni stopped to smell each rose bush. We brought the boys with us who were not slightly interested in stopping to smell the roses :) After our walk through the gardens we had a sack dinner consisting of sandwiches, strawberries, sun chips, and snickers for dessert :) After dinner the kiddos played some soccer.



 Another great thing about Springtime in the South are bluebonnets and wild flowers :)

Sole Rubbings and Scissor Activities

Sole Rubbings - I taped a piece of paper around a pair of Jenni's sneakers that had a neat design on the sole. She rubbed her crayon over the entire shoe displaying the pattern underneath.

Scissor Activities - I made dashed lines on several pieces of paper for Jenni to cut through. Jenni kept saying to herself, "Follow the tracks. Follow the tracks. Get back on the road." It was sweet.

Sandbox Play
I called a half dozen local stores asking if they carried Crayola colored sand (usually in pink or blue - and in the gardening section). All the stores carried it but all were sold out. Who knew colored sand was in such demand? I went ahead and bought the good old regular sand and stored it in an airtight container for future uses. Jenni practiced writing s's in the sand as well as using spoons and shovels to spoon, shape and scoop with.

Sponge Painting with Shapes



I bought two packs of rectangular sponges from Wal-Mart and cut each sponge into two shapes making a circle, oval, square, rectangle, triangle, diamond, heart, pentagon.

Sunflower Hand prints
Jenni painted the sunflower with yellow hand prints and the sunflower seeds, stem, and leaves with her fingerprints. We worked on identifying the type of flower, the seeds, stem and leaves.

S is for Homemade Spaghetti Noodles (and Sauce and Salad)



I bought a pasta maker from Williams-Sonoma. It came with two attachments and you can buy additional attachments to make it even more useful. We love the purchase! Jenni and I made pasta dough, put it into the pasta maker, turned the wheel and out comes spaghetti noodles (I skipped a few steps :)) It's a fairly time consuming project but is such a neat kitchen gadget to have.

Sidewalk Chalk
Jenni loves spending her afternoons outside drawing with chalk.

S is for Ice Cream Sundaes

We made ice cream sundaes with vanilla ice cream, crushed Oreos, chopped walnuts, hot fudge and loads of sprinkles. Joshua enjoyed some Oreos with us :)

S is for the Science Museum






Jenni had a great time exploring all the exhibits the children's museum had to offer!

S is for the Strawberry Patch and Homemade Jam







We visited a nearby strawberry patch. It smelled lovely! Rows and rows of ready-to-pick strawberries. We picked a couple of pounds of strawberries, went home and started the process of making and canning jam. It was a neat (and tasty) experience to share with J and she was absolutely thrilled to can extra jars to share with her grandparents and great grandparents.