Photo Fix Friday

Here's some pictures of M and C from this week. They love to play outside.

Hanging out. Gazing at the clouds trying to guess what each cloud represents.

She still loves her horses.

A boy and his bat.

Do you like my horse?

Watching the neighbor play catch.

Wordless Wednesday

Chillaxin' in the Pool

Good Deals

If you like Southern Living, but don't want to pay for a year's subscription, go over to this website and see the cool offer she found on Amazon.com. It is too good to pass up.

Also, if you shop at Walgreens, they have a $5 off coupon to use Wednesday through Friday. You can get that coupon here.

ABC and 123

UPDATED!! I forgot some pictures in the original post.
Here's some pictures of the activities we have been working on over the last week and this week.
Marlee knows her colors very well, so I challenged her to find the color of beads to match each number from her number puzzle. The we went back and said each number and counted each bead. She really liked the file folder game. She counted the number of animals at the zoo and found the number card that matched.


Here are the A and B pictures from last week. They painted apples and A's. We made the A's into alligators. M colored and glittered 2 B's and we cut them out to make a butterfly. We added eyes and an antenna after I took this picture. I stopped C's activity with just coloring and adding glitter.

I got the idea for this scrap paper activity from here. Marlee really enjoyed making different pictures and then gluing them down.

For the letter C, we made a caterpillar and clouds and read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Little Cloud by Eric Carle. The other picture is of some books we read last week and are still reading this week. We've been talking about feelings and sharing, too.

I ordered 3 books off of Amazon.com last night. I had seen the Animal ABC book in stores and saw it reviewed on this website. I know that M and C will enjoy all of the pictures. This phonemic awareness book had lots fun stuff that I think will fit in with our daily routines.

I actually bought this book instead of the one above. Oh, well. I think it will work, too. If I like it, then I'll go back and buy the other one.

I used Chicken Soup when I interned in Kindergarten. I loved the flow of the book. It will get stuck in your head.
I also got a subscription to Family Fun Magazine. I had a few moms suggest it. It is full of fun activites for your family. You can get a year subscription (10 issues) for only $10. If you're interested, you can access the online order here.

I forgot to add these pictures in the orginal post. M and C love to do puzzles. So we spread a bunch of puzzles on the floor. I found my magnetic letters and numbers in my school stuff. I got two cookie sheets and they went to town. I didn't do anything formal with them. I just let them explore. We'll probably just start with letter and number recognition.

INKed

We had a great time at INK yesterday. If you live in the Atlanta area and have kids ages 3 and up, I suggest you take them. There was so much to see that M and C were a little overwhelmed with it all. Thankfully, most of the areas are contained, so I could keep an eye on them. The biggest hits were the doctor's office, grocery store, airplane, and the soda shop. Here are some pictures of the fun. Blogger is being slow, so I'll try and add some more pictures tomorrow. To see more here.

Cooking at the Soda Shop.

Hanging out on the fire truck and flying the airplane.

Grocery Shopping Pros! Cooper hung in there with the girls!

Have a great weekend!

Field Trips

We're going to head out on a little field trip/playdate tomorrow with our friend, Elizabeth. We're headed to a really neat place called INK in an effort to expose M and C to more interactive play and places in a community. I remember going to Cumberland Science Museum as a child and having a great time exploring. I want M and C to have those same types of experiences.

I've set aside 2 hours, but I don't know that we'll get it all in within that time frame. Here's a map of all the exhibits. Click on the picture for a closer look. I just hope I can keep up with the two of them!! I'll post Friday about our adventure and add some pictures.

Some of the other places we plan to visit over the next month are Imagine It!, The Chattahoochee Nature Center, and Tanglewood Farms.

Are there any neat places in your area that you recommend visiting?

Structure

As a teacher, I know that structure is important to a child's productivity. I didn't apply too much structure to our daily routines this summer and feel that may be partially to blame for the roadblocks I ran into with M's behavior.

Since the outcome of where we will be is still up in the air (don't ask), I didn't enroll M into a part-time preschool. Therefore, I decided to try and work with her in a more structured manner at home. To get my teacher fix, we went to The School Box, and I got a few items for us to use at home. I searched online and found a few different resources I will use to help pace what we do for learning. Thankfully, I am able to tap into several of my teacher boxes for materials and some books. Utilizing the local library for weekly books will also help us defuse the amount of money I will be spending.

Also, I thought I would document what we're doing for my reference and to share with any of you that are interested. I am going to focus on 3 areas: phonemic awareness, math, and life skills. I will build upon the phonemic skills with M's advancement. Math and science skills will intertwine with structured play and cooking. History exploration will relate to the life skills. Of course, we will read books on the different topics and have arts and crafts that relate each day.

I know C doesn't fully understand what we are doing, but if he can color, paint, glitter or just get messy, he's all for it!! I figured he will pick up a lot just from the exposure.

So what have we been working on? This week we are focusing on colors, lacing, and reading lots of ABC books. M has enjoyed the books. C still doesn't have the attention span to listen to more than one book at a time.

We've played file folder games with colors and letter recognition. C was really into the color one since it is all trucks, but he didn't really care about the letters.

We made "Popsicles" out of construction paper and glitter. M painted her first rainbow. We strung colored noodles on yarn and played playdoh.

Here are some pictures of our activities. Enjoy!!
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I had these ABC books in my teacher stash and one was given to us by a friend. Can you guess which one is M's favorite? What about C's?

Marlee making banana bread.

She builds airplanes out of Lego's.

The ABC Matching Game. Marlee did pretty good for our first try.

The color matching game and color counters that they sorted and then played with them.

Blogger does not want me to upload anymore pictures today. So, I will upload the rest of the pictures to this post a little later.

Have a great rest of the week!

Wordless Wednesday

Since I missed Wordless Wendesday

Here are a couple of pictures I took on my cell phone. They are a little grainy but show what we've been up to this week.

M has been lucky enough to get some hand-me-down clothes from my cousin's daughter. She loves all of the dress up type stuff, especially the ballet goodies. She spends most of her days and nights pretending she's a ballet dancer. She loves to twirl around in the skirts and wear ballet shoes during the day. I can't wait for her to start dance class. As soon as we are settled, we plan on enrolling her in some classes.

C loves any kind of ball. To Chad's delight, baseballs and footballs are his favorites right now. Just the other night he and Chad were "playing" football. Really it was more C running around with a football with Chad chasing him. He loves his "besball" glove and bat, too. Can you see the glove on his hand? He likes to put any shoes on and loves to put on these rain boots the most. He is so proud of himself for putting them on but gets frustrated when he can't get them off. Wonder where he gets that???

Have a great weekend!

L-I-V-I-N

We've been doing a lot of living around here as of late. M and C continue to blossom as brother and sister. C idolizes every move M makes. I think that accounts for the rocket of vocabulary he's developed lately. C calls M, "Sissy". Anything of hers he sees, he says, "Sissy" and takes it to her. They are becoming more like playmates. M still expects a lot from him, but he usually plays along side rather than with her. We're already experiencing sibling rivalry. I do dread the sibling fights in the years to come. I have low tolerance for that kind of stuff. I've bought a book to read and hope to gain some good insight on how to handle these fights.

C has become more observant of his surroundings. He points to things, wanting to know what they are named and tries to say it afterwards. He will hear a noise and say, "Noise?" wanting to know he heard. He is also crazy about school buses. He thinks all big vehicles are, "Skool Bus!" He says it with such exuberance! It is quit funny. He also loves Thomas the Train, cars, trucks, shoes, baseballs, footballs and Mickey Mouse. He is still attached to his paci and adores his "deece" just like M. He is more of a monkey than M ever was! I can't keep his little feet on the ground for anything. He finds random items to use as a step to climb on the couch. He pulls the kitchen chair out and climbs up when he's is ready to eat. It was cute the first couple of times. Now it just drives me crazy! HA HA He's definitely a Mama's Boy and I love it!! M is a Daddy's Girl so it's only fair! :)


M spent a week in TN with her grandparents. She really enjoyed herself and looks forward to going back soon. Her current obsession is The Land Before Time movie collection. Our neighbors gave us an old dvd on the 4th of July. We have rented 3 movies from Blockbuster and have watched some type of dinosaur movie everyday since then. They are sweet, funny, and a little exciting, but not scary! So, of course, she likes to pretend she's a sharp tooth. She still loves her blanket and baby doll. She loves trains and cars, too. She plays pretend with baby dolls and likes to bounce balls. She is very much a girly, girl. Loves to wear dresses and receive compliments about how pretty she is. I hope to enroll her in a couple days a week preschool. She really loves socializing with other children her age and doing anything crafty.

Well that about sums up our recent adventures. We hope you all are doing well and have enjoyed the summer!