Recent weekly themes

Here are some of the weekly things Gemma has been up to lately.

ANIMALS
The first week in October we talked about animals and St. Francis (the patron saint of animals). The lacing cards are still a bit beyond her, but she is starting to have more patience for them. She had a particularly fun time "reading" the yellow picture-book with the butterfly on the front to Kolbe. It was very sweet hearing her tell him about the different animals and what they each said. She wanted so badly for him to repeat her. Soon...
NUMBERS
Last week we talked all about numbers. Gemma has taken a particular interest in counting lately, and has even learned how to find her favorite songs on her CD's by reading the numbers on the CD player, so I thought it would be a good time to do "number week". I first saw Teddy Bear Counting in a scholastic book order about a month ago. I was particularly intrigued as I thought it would go so well with our counting bears. I decided to check it out from the library first to see if it would be a good fit, and I think this may be one we'll buy. It was great! Gemma had fun with it, mainly matching her colored bears to the ones on the pages and doing a bit of counting. Plus the whole story was all rhyme-y and just cute. But it went into pretty good depth about adding, subtracting and grouping (I'd say up to Kdg/1st grade concepts) so I think this will definitely be one we'd get some use out of over the next several years.
Countdown to Fall (another library book) talked about the different kinds of leaves found in the fall. We did a painting project to go along with this book. I painted the trunk and branches and Gemma used red, yellow and orange to paint the leaves. It was fun. It's exciting that she is getting old enough to do projects like this. (And as an aside, I am totally excited about this little magnetic photo-sleeve I found to display fridge-art! Very handy, and keeps pictures from getting bent or wet!)
I made these counting cards for her with some old stickers I had sitting around the house, and then had them laminated at FedEx/Kinkos. I was SO excited with how they turned out, and she really caught on to pointing to the "buggies" and counting them. This has been something new she has started to do, and it's fun seeing her begin to conceptualize the idea of counting and numbers.
These foam numbers are actually from a bath toy set, but they work well in our "numbers" box.
PUMPKINS
This week we are talking about pumpkins and Halloween!
I found the little wooden pumpkins on sale for $.12 a piece at Joann's, and painted them, then put the letter stickers on to spell her name. I figure since she's getting so good at recognizing and recalling numbers, then maybe she can start identifying/spelling the letters in her name as well. As an added surprise, they also have some sparkles and glow-in-the-dark paint on them! All kinds of cool! (And I'll admit, I really had a fun time making these too. Like, pathetically fun. ;-D).
I think we will paint paper-plate pumpkins together this week, and daddy has a special pumpkin surprise planned for Gemma this weekend, so you'll have to be sure to check back!!