Site Word Pancakes

Oh, the fun we have had with our pancake site words.  Thank you Primary Teachers for this super fun idea.  It's simple enough.  I simply took old cereal boxes and cut out circles.  Then I wrote one of Addi's site words on each of the pancakes.  I called out one, she scooped it with the spatula, and flipped it.  We had "pancakes" everywhere!  LOVE IT!!!

 

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Site Word Bottle Cap Matching

This site word activity is super simple to make.  Print off a worksheet with your words and place alphabet stickers on water bottle lids.  Easy peasy.  I did notice that this was a more difficult activity for Addi and I think it is because the letters in the words are more spread out than I wanted them to be.  If you replicate this, maybe try to make the words look a little more normal.

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Site Word Parking Lot

As I was checking out Pinterest one day I ran across a site word parking lot by New Rant Mommy.  Although I liked her idea, I knew it would be too easy for Addi if I only gave her 8-10 words per page. I figured she would get board with it fairly quickly.  I looked a little further and found a larger parking lot by Juggling with Kids but it still wasn't exactly what I was wanting.  So, one afternoon the whole family had coloring time.  Addi and Siah colored from coloring books and mommy and daddy made Addi's new site word parking lot.

A few days later instead of me calling out her site words I put in the Preschool Prep DVDs we use and let them call out the site words.  I made sure she had a huge stack of her brothers cars and for 20 minutes she played the game all by herself, only asking for help one time!

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Building Letters

Last fall when we were visiting a friend in GA their preschooler had this really neat Letter Construction Activity they had found on Amazon for $30-35.  It was so cool.  The goal was to place pieces of colored plastic on top of a template of a letter and actually built the shape of that particular letter.  A few weeks later I saw a post on Pinterest about how to make your own version of this activity.  I've gone back and looked through my boards and for the life of me I cannot find that pin.  So, please know that this was not my idea and to whoever came up with this do it yourself "Build a Letter" activity, THANK YOU!

For the lowercase letters I used some orange foam and even made the template cards to place the foam on. However, for the uppercase letters, I ran out of ink and scrapbook paper so I decided that my kids could just do it without the template and figure out how to fashion the letter from the blue foam alone.  Both ways have worked just fine.  It took about 1 1/2 hours to pint the letters, cut the letter, paste the letters on the scrapbook paper and then cut the foam strips.  All in all 1 1/2 of work saved me approximately $30.

  

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Sandpaper Alphabet Set

As I've been teaching Addilyn her letters, I think it is more important for her to learn the sounds each letter makes rather than the name of each letter.  When we visited a montessori school I saw their sand paper alphabet set.  They had wooden blocks with each letter of the alphabet on it.  As the student traced the correct way to draw the letter he or she would also practice saying the sound the letter made.  I thought this was wonderful.  I looked for the tactile letters set online and they ranged from $15-$42.  We didn't have the money to go buy these sandpaper wooden blocks so I decided to make them for my self.  With a little red card stock I had laying around and a pack of sandpaper I bought at the Dollar Store, we now have our own set to practice with and it cost me a total of $1.08!

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We love because God first loved us!

Most people in our culture could not tell you the history or origin of Valentines.  Most would not know the story of St.Valentine who was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers and ministering to Christians being persecuted under the Roman Empire.  Most would not know that the day was also celebrated as a fertility festival with rather risqué elements that I won't go into here. However, to most individuals, Valentines has become a day to celebrate the idea of love.  Weather it's flowers, candy, a nice dinner these things are meant to be shared with those who are special to you.  So, regardless if it's origins are nobel or revolve around pagan rituals, and despite our societies transformation of the day into a "Hallmark holiday," in our house we celebrate Valentines as a day to focus on LOVE.  True love.   Love that comes from the Creator God himself!  Last year, when Addi was one we told her over and over again "God is Love"  (1 John 4:8).  This year our verse was 1 John 4:19, "We love because God first loved us."  We made a point to teach Addilyn that the only reason we can love others is because God has shown us love.    Some other verses we read together and tried to live out included:

• Deut 6:5- Love the Lord your God with all your heart!
• 1 Cor 13:4a - Love is patient, love is kind. (This is how we can put love into action)
• Matthew 22:36-29  Which is the great commandment? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (This is why we sent cards to others and hosted a party)

Here are pictures from our fun week trying to remember God's love for us and striving to love others from the overflow. 

These were cards we sent to grandparents and great grandparents.  On my mom's side of the family we always used the sign for "I love you" when leaving the house so when I saw this idea on Pinterest I couldn't pass it up!

This was the card we sent to Addi's great-great grandmother! Underneath all the pieces there really is a heart, I promise.  ;)

Addilyn made a heart butterfly to give to her Daddy.  So sweet!

Some of our friends who live pretty far away are going through a tremendous life change in their family by taking in a few foster children who desperately need love.  We collected letters, notes, and scriptures from others who knew them before they moved and put it into a Valentines care package. 

This is our Valentines morning breakfast tradition.  We LOVE cinnamon rolls in our house!

Addi and Siah had almost 20 friends coming over for their Valentines party so I thought we needs a few yummy treats to share with everyone.  Here is a homemade heart-shaped cookie cake.  I was so gooey when  took it out of the oven and began to crumble on the left side, but my oh my did it taste good.  

There was at least one friend who could not eat chocolate so of course I had to make another dessert so he could have some too, right?  It gave me a great excuse to make a homemade red velvet cake with homemade cream cheese icing.  I love baking, but feel I need excuse to do it.  This was my chance!

Since the party started around 10:00 I thought it might be good to have a few breakfasty items.  This was my attempt at at tray of raspberry danish bites and heart-shaped wild berry muffins. I think the muffins turned out rather silly looking, but oh well.

We had a fruit bowl full of heart-shaped strawberries and bananas.

Addi was thrilled to decorate for her party. She put decorations on the table...

...and sprinkled silk flower petals and heart garland all along the food counter.

For lunch, I could not pass up the opportunity to provide bagel pizzas with heart-shaped pepperonis.  So fun!

All the children helped make cards for a few ladies in our neighborhood.  They colored and used tons of stickers to really make the cards stand out.  I wish I would have taken pictures of a few of them.  They really were beautiful.  In addition to craft time, we also had game time.  I had made some Valentines busy bags for Addilyn and Josiah to play with and I pulled them out at the party to keep some of the kids entertained.  All in all I think everyone had a good time.

Heart size and color matching. 

Broken heart sticker counting.

Size sorting.

Cookie cutter match.

Candy heart pattern matching.

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Letter of the Week - Letter Q

Alright, so letter Q is quite quirky.  After letter P week where there were 1,001 themes to choose from we were pretty limited for letter Q week.  We still had a lot of fun and it gave me a chance to take a day or two off so we could run errands, play, and plan for the next few weeks.  It was a really nice change of pace to be honest.  We have less than 10 weeks left in our letter of the week series.  My how time flies.

Here is Addilyn's capital Q quail.

I cut up some fabric and let Addi make a no-sew lowercase q quilt.  She thought this was so neat.

When she was finished we rested on her baby quilt I had made before she was born.  We traced the rectangles in the quilt and counted the different patterns.

We did several different queen themed activities.  First we painted a queen on a toilet paper roll with q-tips.  Addi liked painting with q-tips.  

We also dressed up like a queen and made crowns with friends to wear as we played pretend.

And, of course, here are our letter Q books for the week.

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Letter of the Week - Letter P

Here is our curriculum for Letter P week.  I learned that lots of things that are fun and interesting to a preschooler start with the letter P!  Next time I will ave to make sure to stick to one or two themes and not try to create activities for the many, many, many letter P words.  

I have forgotten several times now to fill the appropriate spaces for the books we've gotten from the library and for the specifics of the spiritual discipline lessons.  Oh well.  I hope you can still enjoy some of these activities with your kiddos.  

P is for pandas and pianos!

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Letter of the Week- Letter O

We just wrapped up letter O week.  Here is our curriculum and a few pictures of all the great activities we did this week.  Please click on the link to see a larger version of the chart.

Sandpaper and yarn letter Os.

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