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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Alexander, 4 months


Alex's first Easter
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Everything is starting to go straight to the mouth if he can get it there, mostly his fists right now.
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 He's the best hat wearer of all my kids as little babies.
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The baby talk is almost constant now.
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Fingers in the mouth, he likes those.
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 He rarely takes baths just because I always forget.  With 3 other kids that are always way dirtier than he is, I don't get his bath in everyday.
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This little outfit was a special gift from Emily, our neighbor.  Her oldest boy wore it when he was a baby.
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Aric loves to give his baby brother his toys.  He thought it was pretty funny to have Alex hold his Gumby.
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Aric showing baby more of his toys!
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Friday, April 29, 2011

Preschool happenings

Here are the things the boys did the last 2 weeks for preschool at home (hence, a very long post). Our preschool time is usually in the morning because Aaron goes to afternoon preschool 3 days a week.  They sort of naturally go to the table now and want to do preschool at around 8:30.

I printed some Easter activities up from 2 teaching mommies.  Aaron is really interested in reading and learning words, so he loved this Easter spelling activity.  I didn't have letter tiles so we used scrabble tiles.  He felt so proud of himself for being able to spell a word just by matching up the letters.
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This was the all time favorite Easter activity.  Jelly Bean graphing.  I wasn't sure how he'd do with graphing.  Kind of a new concept for him, but he understood it before I even explained it to him.  The easiest way for him to do it was to put a jelly bean in each square, mark the top square and then color the bar.  He loved it!
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Here he is marking the top square.
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I didn't get a picture of the final graph, but the yellow jelly beans won.  There were 11, and he thought it was pretty neat how the yellow bar had to be extended 1 square because it went beyond the 10th square.
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Aric ate sorted his jelly beans on this easter egg picture.  I had to help him a lot because all he wanted to do was eat them.
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I have sort of unofficially started Aaron on some Kindergarden work, and have a lot planned for him to work on this summer.  He's so ready for K, so I am having him do some letter work each day.  This day he was working on his letter C.
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Tot school (printables)
Carisa at 1+1+1=1
has started offering tot school printables for tot schoolers all based around a letter and theme.  We decided to try the first letter A unit with Aric.  He enjoyed it, but he really enjoys a lot of school stuff.  This kid has the best attention span, and grasps a lot of concepts at a very young age.  He always surprises me.  He will sit with me and do pretty much anything I plan for him.  So, with that said, I really like the tot school printables, and we'll probably do these combined with the Raising rock stars preschool for Aric.

A is for Apple:  He I colored each apple when he would say correct color that was written inside the apple.  I helped him color these obviously, but he did tell me the right colors.  He's such a perfectionist and doesn't want to scribble so he insists on me coloring everything for him.  Then he made them into a long "train".
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Apple sewing and puzzle
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A coloring page.  He did surprisingly well with tracing the A's.
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Matching A to a
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Sequencing, shapes, and fruits vocabulary development.  The sequencing is the 1-2-3 with the pictures of eating the apples.  Then the long "train" like thing above that is the shape/fruit train.  We cut the shapes out and glued them on to strips of paper,  he told me the shapes as we went through each one.  Then he wanted to do that with the fruit sheet too.  He learned a lot of new fruits!  (Fruits was the theme for this unit)

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More letter A activities:  High way letters Aa...
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He likes to park all his little cars on the letters, and keeps asking to play with his "letter sidewalks".
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Then we did "car" painting with Easter colors since this was the week before Easter.
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Of course they love to just mix all the colors up.
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Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm lapbook

I've had this book for a while, and thought I had the unit from Itty Bitty Bookworm to do with it, but didn't.  So we decided to do the Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm lapbook and activities from homeschool share.

First we read the book, and then we read it again.  The boys liked it.
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Then we fingerpainted clean and dirty pigs.  The dirty pigs were painted with pudding.  As you can see here Aric didn't like painting with his fingers.  I had to get out the brushes.
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Both boys got busy with their clean pigs and painted shaving cream on them.
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And, eventually, they decided they didn't need the paint brushes after all and had some shaving cream fun after the pigs were all done.
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We love shaving cream.  It smells good and the boys can clean it up super easy.
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Aric's completed lap book.  Left panel: top, what is brown book.  Bottom, in the city (the animals ran away from the farm and went to the city, so one of the activities was to make a city with all the cars and buildings).  Middle panel:  Mrs. wishy washy craft
Right panel:  After the clean and dirty pigs were dry I cut them out and glued them in their lapbook.
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Lapbook front:  Big and little washbuckets activity, and animal sounds flapbook.
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Raising Rock Stars Preschool

We are up to the letter E in this preschool.  Here's Aaron coloring a color by number letter E page.
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These are the lesson cards Ee, #6, and sight word "is".
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The craft was coloring an egg and basket.  It worked out so perfect for doing this letter around Easter.  Here's Aric working on the egg.
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I know that was long, sorry.  That was 2 weeks in one post.  I am linking this up to:

Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations, and tot school at 1+1+1=1

Tot School


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Wordless Wednesday: A new bed...

...for us!

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After 12 years we decided to completely remodel our bed.  The whole bed is new, the frame from Ikea, the cover set, and right down to the foam mattress!  It is heaven.  Happy early anniversary to us!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Aaron's ladybug

Sometimes I am amazed at how much nature inspires us, especially my children.  Aaron found a ladybug in our back yard, and so we decided to get a little bug keeper to put him in.  He put some grass in there, and carried that ladybug all over.  I keep it up on the window sill when he's not playing with it.

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Then he drew a picture of his ladybug for me.  This is what it is all about!  I love seeing Aaron's creativity take off right now.  Sure does make me happy.
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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Easter gratitude...

I like how my friend Brenley does a Sunday gratitude post every Sunday, so I decided to wrap up some of the Easter things we did this year I would do it in a similar post called Easter gratitude.  So, today, on this lovely Easter Sunday  I am grateful for...

~my little family (sometimes I feel like it's big now though).  I think having 4 kids is wonderful, and I'm thankful each day for each one of them.  I also am amazed at my wonderful Hubby, and thankful for all he does.
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~simple things in life.  I'm thankful that my kids loved their simple baskets, and that Easter can be made so simple with just one toy, not loads of them.
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~fun restaurants that let you throw peanut shells on the floor, and how cool the kids think that is.  No more impatient kids at that restaurant.
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~rainbows amongst dark stormy clouds and a little sunshine.  Such beautiful scenery on a long drive home from visiting family this Easter weekend.
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~neighbors who bring over cool Easter treats to my kids just because.
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~the joy of being creative this Easter with all kinds of different activities that I did with my kids.
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~little hands that love to be held
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~easter egg hunts of all sorts.  This year we had a hunt at Grandma's house, on our cul-de-sac, and at a birthday party.
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~my home.  It's always nice to come back home after being away.  We had lots of fun visiting family in Springfield this weekend though.
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~all the things that keep me busy.  I really love serving my family by taking care of them each day, even though some days it's really hard.