Weekly theme: birds

Our theme this week was birds, and I thought I'd share a few of our activities.

This Children's Guide to Birds was a great resource.  We had fun pointing out some of the birds that frequent our area, and Gemma did a great job using it as a guide to color some printable bird pictures.

We had a lot of fun with this owl craft.  It was great for both kids, the scissor skills practice was especially good for Kolbe.  I just love displaying our children's crafts in our kitchen.  They make me smile every time I look at them.

We checked out a big stack of fiction and non-fiction bird books from the library, and as usual enjoyed wading our way through those.  I don't know how I would function as a parent without the  library.  Really.

Next, up, TRAINS, and I am excited about getting started with our Handwriting Without Tears activities.  I've done a lot of planning, and I think I have found a way to be able to include both Gemma and Kolbe in these lessons (though they are mainly for Gemma), so that makes me happy.  The Teacher's Guide has some great multisensory activities and other suggestions that have been very helpful, and I have a good friend who has kindly loaned me some of her supplies and manipulatives.  I am excited about what our year has in store!

Fishy fun!

We had a fish theme at our house last week, and did several fun activities I wanted to share.  

Colored goldfish made a great math activity, we did sorting, counting and patterns.

We had fun with this fish craft from DLTK.

Some of our favorite fish books:

• Ten Little Fish (this was a fave of Kolbe's last spring, he was excited to see it again)
• The Biggest Fish in the Lake
• Swimmy
• various Rainbow Fish books

We also had a handful of fish coloring pages and activities to work on throughout the week, and enjoyed baked salmon (a regular fave around here, especially with Aaron and me) for dinner one evening.

Summer sun

We celebrated the first week of Summer around here last week!  Gemma did this awesome craft.  Seriously, I think this is one of my favorites so far in the "craft" department (or "crap" department, as my husband calls it).  But then, I am a sucker for hand-print crafts so that could be part of it.  But really, isn't it just adorable?

Some of our "summer" books from the library were:

• Summer Days and Nights
• Summer Wonders
• Summertime in the Big Woods
• The Very Lonely Firefly
• It's Summer
• Mama, is it Summer Yet?
• Come On, Rain! (this is a really great picture book, check it out if you haven't!)
• And some poetry from Flit, Flutter, Fly!

Now to suck it up and get the kiddie pool out.  Normally I love this as much as the kids, but I just haven't had the energy or desire this summer.  

Shapes and beads and cats, OH MY!

A very random post, but that's how my brain is feeling right now, so you get what you get folks!!

We talked about shapes last week. Seems Gemma is becoming more capable of understanding and comprehending as each week goes by. It's fun to see her learn.

Here she is sorting her shapes with one of the books we got from the library.
And here with her shape pancakes she had for lunch! "Circles and squares" was her request.
I think some dress-up items are in our future! I got these beads out after she kept trying to put the shoe-strings from her lacing cards around her neck. She thinks they're pretty cool.
The cat ears were from my MIL for Halloween. So cute.
And there goes Kolbe!!! Typical sight anymore. ;-D
Crawling anywhere and everywhere is definitely his favorite pass-time of late. Why do cords and night lights and door stops have to be so stinkin' interesting?! GAH!!! It's fun seeing him discover the world around him though...he just keeps me on my toes for sure!

Happy Monday, everyone!

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!!

Apple week

Last week was apple week at our house. We had some fun activities and started the week off by making applesauce on Monday morning with some apples from my sister's tree. First we read Applesauce Season together. It was a fun, educational story and worked well after modifying it a bit for Gemma's level of understanding/attention.
It turned out SUPER tasty. We just cooked the apples down in the crock pot and added some butter, cinnamon and brown sugar. Typical Gemma fashion, I think she tried about one bite. Silly girl. Bubby, on the other hand, LOVED it (sans sugar/cinnamon/butter) and I even made another batch later in the week to freeze specifically for him. WHEW! I've peeled a lot of apples lately. 'Tis the season. ;-D
Wednesday was the hilight of the week, when we took a trip to an apple orchard with my sister and her children. The day dawned just perfectly...sunny with a crisp chill in the air. The perfect fall kind of day for picking apples. We had a great time and my sis went all out with some really neat activities for the kids when we got back from the orchard.

Picking apples
Having fun together! Gemma and I ended up in matching hoodies...didn't even plan that!!
Cousins!!
I love this picture.
She dutifully toted her box all over.
Where's Gemma?
Tossing apples in the box is fun, just don't toss too hard!
God's beautiful creation.
Kolbe decided to grab a little snooze.
Our "catch" for the day, around 20 lbs (yea, more peeling for me!)
Time for apple crafts! Gemma got to use paints for the first time!!
Getting their feet painted for the footprint tree trunk.
Blowing the paint around to make the tree-top.
Sometimes fingers work better! ;-D
Adding some sparkly red apples to her tree.
Finished work of art.
Bobbing for apples (slices). "You want us to what?!!"
Taking turns and enjoying some tasty, fresh-picked apple slices!
Who knew bobbing for apples was a full-contact sport!
Sweet Gemma chewed up a bite of apple and crawled over and put it in her bubby-brother's mouth for him. I suppose she's seen me bite large pieces of food into smaller bits for him. It was really sweet.
We also enjoyed reading Apple Harvest a couple times throughout the week. I really like the series from which this book came. The books are geared toward young preschoolers with short concise sentences and wonderful photographs. As we were talking about this book, I was mentioning to Gemma all the tasty things we could do with apples: applesauce, apple pie, apple crisp. I said, "you like apple crisp, don't you Gemma?" To which she looked at me and very seriously replied, "No, I just like grandpa Chris" (who is my dad). Apparently she didn't hear the "p" on the end of "crisp". She cracks me up!!

The week was a success for sure, and we still have lots of apples with which to make yummy treats! Happy autumn, everyone!!

Celebrating the angels

This past week we celebrated the Feast of the Archangels (Sept. 29)
and the Feast of the Guardian Angels (October 2).
I thought it would be fun just to kind of make an angel theme of the whole week, and it worked out well. I know as the years go by activities like this will mean more and more to Gemma, but I think she enjoyed the small things we did and learned from them. We checked out several Angel books from the library, including an over-size one with lots of angel art. It was just beautiful, and wonderful to be able to see so many famous works of art that we will likely never see in person. I also put a small angel statue with her things on the fireplace. Here she is with our items for the week (and the diaper pail in the background ;-D). She has taken a HUGE liking to the song "Angels Watchin' Over Me" the past several weeks (it's on one of her CD's) so I was excited to find a book by the same title at the library. It was sort of cute, but nothing special. I was kind of disappointed but oh well. The story of Pasucal and the Kitchen Angels is sweet, honestly I don't think you can ever go wrong with Tomie dePaola.
Our main activity for the week was making angel cookies. This was a lot of fun, Gemma really enjoyed it. And she reallllllly enjoyed eating the cookies too of course! They were very special to her since they were something she helped make and they made fun snacks and desserts several days in a row. We also shared a few with the neighbor-girls, since "Jesus wants us to share." (ooooohhhhhh such a tough lesson to learn, especially when you have a baby brother who is becoming more mobile as each day goes by. But that's a whole other post in and of itself...) I was so excited with the recipe too. Usually when I bake things they turn out OK. These were fabulous!

What cookies are complete without sprinkles?
She was very proud of her work.
May the angels always help to light, guard, rule and guide our bodies and our souls!