M is for Monkey

It's M week and look what Adam found at the grocery store. It amuses me that while I'm busy shopping Adam stops me and says, "take a picture of me with the monkey for M!" Yep, I've trained him well.For our book, we read Caps for Sale. We love, love, love this book! I don't know how to express the warm fuzzy feeling that came to me every time I read the page where the cap peddler, whose hats all disappeared while he was napping under a tree, looks up and Adam EVERY TIME would giggle knowing what was coming on the next page. (Spoiler alert: the peddler will discover that monkeys in the tree took his caps.) Whenever I wonder if reading the same book five days in a row is really meaningful, I'll think of Caps for Sale and how fun that anticipation was every day. I found A LOT of activities on the internet as this seems to be a popular book in the preschool world. One had a bunch of different hats to stack on top of a monkey. Adam amused us all by only picking the boy hats. He would not put a bonnet on his monkey.He gave Jill one of the bonnets, and she glued it on her coloring page. I love how proud she is!

We also collected hats to see just how many we could wear on the top of our heads like the cap peddler.

We even found time this week to be monkeys outside. Here Beth swings with Ellie at the park.And here Jason, Adam & Beth ride their scooters around our complex. I love these monkeys!

L is for Lion

This weeks book is Christian, The Hugging Lion. If you haven't already seen the video of this lion bought from a store, raised by two men, released to Africa and successfully becoming wild but not forgetting his two friends watch it here. I know it's the cat lover in me, but I get choked up every time. Anyway, the story's been turned into a picture book, and I couldn't resist. We enjoyed reading the story together and watching the youtube video. We talked about why it would be fun but not a good idea to have a lion as a pet. And we talked about unusual friendships. This really became our theme for the week. We read Aesop's Fable of the Lion and the Mouse and talked about that unusual relationship. We talked about the Good Samaritan and why it was unusual for the Samaritan to help the man. We read Isaiah 11:6, "The wolf will dwell with the lamb...the calf and the lion will feed together."

On this theme of unique relationships and opposites, we spent a day talking about another L word - lamb. We read about lambs and then drew a lamb using Adam's handprint. He then filled it in (maybe a bit too much) with cotton balls for that woolly lamb look :) The practice L's make a nice finishing touch.

Here is Adam "roaring!" It's fun to be a lion :)

K is for Kite

Our book for the week was The Kite Festival. I searched through many books to find a book about kites and found a winner. It's the story of a boy who picks a spot on a map for the family to drive and have a day picnic. The town they end up in is having a kite festival. Without a kite of their own, the family uses materials they do have to build their own kite, such as band-aids from the car's first aid kit. We enjoyed the book very much. Some rainy weather postponed us from any kite flying but eventually (a week later) we flew our own kites in celebration of K week. Ironically, it was at our friend's birthday party - the Krusiewicz family! We ran into K's everywhere!
K week also involved a lot of K foods. There are not many foods that begin with K but Andrew felt challenged when I told him Kiwi is the only K food. He found some unique K foods. We did eat Kiwi (a favorite fruit in this house.)And then we made our own homemade kettle corn. This was easier than I thought but wow, that's a lot of sugar! We enjoyed our kettle corn outside to avoid the sticky mess :)And finally, we made Kix bars. It's simply melted chocolate chips and peanut butter and then add in Kix, Cheerios, and peanuts, and refrigerate. They were yummy but we decided rice crispies make a better cereal bar since they're smaller.There were many other random K references this week. We watched Kung Fu Panda after I had oral surgery and just needed to do nothing but lie in bed! And finally, to wrap up our week, we had a visit from the Keenans! Stephen and Adam had a great time playing. Yea, for the letter K!

J is for Jelly Jar Jumping

...or Jam or jump rope or Jack-in-the-Box...We did it all. Our book for the week was Bread and Jam for Frances. This is the classic tale of Frances the badger who likes bread and jam until that's all her mom serves her. I looked into making jelly or jam from scratch. I know it's doable but...it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe someone out there can convince me that it's easier than it sounds AND worth it. Instead, Adam and Daddy made bread together, and we made a point to have peanut butter and jelly (although I don't think a week goes by that we don't have peanut butter and jelly.)
The book has the added bonus that Frances likes to jump rope so we spent the week talking about both jelly and jumping. We tried jump rope and discovered that that's going to take some practice...and a better jump rope. But we still did a lot of jumping. Adam has learned a lot in gymnastics where there is a big focus on balance and coordination so he happily showed how well he can bounce on one foot and how he's learned to skip.
We also watched, and then continued to sing all week, a Sesame Street video that the older kids remember from their years of watching (we don't watch anymore but some of it sticks with you!) Sing! "J, J, jumping J, who'll join the jump with the jumping J..."
I also thought this would be a good week to review as J is the 10th letter of the alphabet. I filled a washed jelly jar with letters A-J, two of each, and Adam matched them all up. It's his jar of letters (I used Bananagrams tiles). He even went down the letters and said their sounds but when I tried to video him he told me that he's only able to do it one time so you'll just have to take my word that he knew all the sounds. I was impressed :) Here Adam practices writing the letter J on a white board. He wasn't very happy with it.He was much prouder of his fish drawing :)Adam also practices drawing his letters using cattails at the fountain by our library.And it's amazing what happens when you give a child a bag of straws and paper clips. This is his triangle. It then became a rectangle and then a hexagon. All on his own, he's learning his shapes.
Now that makes me want to jump!

I is for Iguana

This week is Spanish week. We practiced saying hola and adios. We counted from uno to diez. We played with our toy drum that says the alphabet in Spanish (although I had to consult a friend to clarify the alphabet. Did you know that "ch" is no longer in the Spanish alphabet?) And we practiced our Spanish playing a computer game. So what does Spanish have to do with the letter "I" you ask...I found a very fun book - Manana Iguana. It's a southwestern version of The Little Red Hen. The characters in the book are named the Spanish word for them. For example, the snake is Culebra and the tortoise is Tortuga. It's an adorable story with a happy ending (the friends feel bad for not helping the Iguana so they clean up after the fiesta.) We read another book to help us learn more Spanish called Say Hola to Spanish. We really enjoyed the sing-song nature and silly pictures in this book that really teaches a lot of Spanish. The kids thought it was particularly funny that burrito, pinata, and mosquito are the same in English and Spanish. I would like to start teaching a foreign language, I just hope they're as eager to learn as they've been this week when I finally get serious!

We also spent some time talking about Iguanas, reading books from the library, and looking at pictures on the internet. We learned that iguanas are a lizard and can live in deserts, rainforests or even the ocean. This is Adam putting his coloring into his notebook.We actually saw an iguana at the zoo the week before. But our field trip this week was Sea World. This was a fabulous homeschool trip were we attended a great educational sea lion show and then self-toured the rest of the park. As for the letter I...how about "icky" when the dolphin soaked Adam :) Or how about "interesting" as these four eyed fish definitely were. Oh, I know - invisible. We all really liked these fish...Ok, we didn't focus on our letter of the week at all that day but Adam learned that fish breathe with gills. He thought that was very interesting, and we've even spent time at home reading about fish and looking at their gills....it's important to be flexible and seize those teachable moments! Now back to our letter...Adam spent the week turning his letter "I" into letter "H." Did you know you could do that? He did it with the wooden sticks, ABC crackers, stickers...I'm confident he knows the shape of H and I (I just hope he remembers which is which after being silly and switching them all week!) And to complete our "I" week, we did eat a very special "I" food - ice cream! (that was a Klondike bar but he ate most of the chocolate first :)

H is for House

This week we read The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. It wasn't Adam's favorite book but that was fine. I had already decided to focus this week on construction and building houses. We had a bunch of books from the library on how to build a house, and we read a different one everyday. We also played with a tools puzzle learning all the names and purpose of each tool. Daddy even spent the weekend building with Adam. He even gave Adam his very own hammer to keep. And as a bonus, Adam got to change Andrew's license plate (we finally made it to the DMV to get our licenses and plates changed from Georgia!) I was also pleased that Jason and Beth's Bible verse this week is "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock." Matthew 7:24 We talked about the importance of having a strong foundation when building a house and what that means spiritually in studying and following God's Word in our lives. I love when everything connects!

I realize that an appropriate field trip this week would have been a construction site or hardware store but thanks to our friends, we enjoyed a FREE field trip to the San Diego Zoo. So for one day, H was for Hippo! We saw many animals that day but made a point to see the hippos and talk about how hippopotamus starts with huh, huh, huh.
I tried to take a picture of the actual hippos but the glass and water were making for some bizarre and confusing pictures. This is what I got... strange, huh, huh, huh? Happy H Week!

G is for Grandparents

Adam loves practicing his letters and numbers in his rice tray.I've recently been inspired to put together a family tree photo album. I want pictures and stories of people in our family that my grandchildren can read and see. With this in the making, I had to do G is for Grandparents. It may not have been as easy as grapes or goats but it was fun and meaningful. We looked through photo albums and talked about family. We explained and discussed what makes a grandparent (both biologically and emotionally). We had Grandma McCambridge and Grandpa Skelly send Adam a letter in the mail to make him feel special and loved by his grandparents. We colored our own pictures to mail to all our Grandparents. We read What Grandpas Do Best or was it What Grandmas Do Best. And we made a family tree where we can hang pictures of Adam's grandparents and great-grandparents. I bet you didn't know our family tree was so colorful :)

Along with letter themes, we're also learning math. I must be honest, at the beginning of this year while doing a puzzle with Adam I discovered that he had no idea what a rectangle was. I was shocked. I felt so bad that somehow I hadn't sat down with him and done shape puzzles and talked about shapes and pointed out shapes. Isn't it amazing how we can beat ourselves up? Anyway, I explained what a rectangle is and decided to incorporate some sort of math into his day. This includes identifying shapes, patterns, and numbers, and recognizing patterns and comparisons. He loves coloring shapes and doing puzzles and most of all...finding shapes in our everyday world. Look...a circle! I don't have to encourage this behavior. He does it all on his own and usually catches me by surprise. Did you know that the light panels in our kitchen are rectangles? I do now...And look! Squares behind him, and he's standing on a rectangle! It's adorable and oh, so encouraging!

F is for Fish

When I recently read Adam the Creation Bible story at bedtime, I asked him, "what's your favorite thing God created?" His answer, "fish!" You'd think with that much love I would have planned an amazing week of fish activities. I must confess that did not happen. Coming off of Jill's birthday weekend, I realized I had done little prep and planning. The one project I had in mind involved photos from our recent trip to the aquarium but we were having printer problems...I didn't even have a book for the week until the Friday before. I randomly picked a book at the library: Barry, the Fish with Fingers. I learned a hard lesson this week - planning is necessary! It doesn't take long but preparing ahead of time is critical. So here goes, what we did do:

We colored F fish pictures (copier worked, just not printer!) That's Adam's "fish face."Whenever I can, I try to offer food shaped as the letter of the week. This is often done with pancakes. This week, however, it was chocolate sauce. There were raspberries for dessert with chocolate to dip. Adam doesn't like berries of any kind so he got a plate of chocolate for dessert, yummy!As for our book, Barry the Fish With Fingers...It looked cute and inspiring. Barry has fingers and can therefore do many things like count to ten, fingerpaint, and tickle (Adam's favorite part). What I didn't read until I had the library book at home was that Barry's "fingers" are actually fish sticks (you know, the frozen ones you eat!) and he gets a big box and then all the fish have fingers, yea! It is just slightly bizarre. I decided to go with it because it was Sunday night. Andrew called it cannibalistic. The kids thought it was funny. I won't be buying the book but it did inspire us to fingerpaint (it also inspired fish sticks for dinner, is that wrong?)Jill loved fingerpainting and could have gone on for hours. Funny thing is she really focused on using just her one finger. I finally got her to use all her fingers at the end so I could get a 2 year old handprint picture :)Jason went to both extremes creating a nice picture with a tree and stars and then just mushing all the colors together and making a mess.Beth was her girly girl self barely using her fingers. She used a popsicle stick, sponges, and her one finger to create her pieces.

It was a fun week even though it was a little weak on the fish theme. I plan to make it up to Adam with a fish tank for Christmas :)