October 2012 ~ Teaching, Training & Tantrums

Don't you just love when things work out so perfectly that you could not have planned it any better? Well, that's what I thought about when I looked at our schedule for the week. When planning for Letter F week, I knew we would be studying Fall but I had no clue we would be so fortunate for the NC State Fair, the YMCA Fall Festival, and a local church's Fall Festival all to land within the same time frame. We have had so much fun this week!

Here are some of the books we read about Fairs.

It had been a few years since we went to the North Carolina State Fair. I will say, it is a completely different experience when you are taking your one and two year olds. We had such a blast though! We rode a few of the rides. We checked out all the animals and of course...we ate some Funnel Cake!

We love the local YMCA and were very thankful they hosted a wonderful FREE fall festival. They had tons of games, inflatable, face painting, arts and crafts and food!

A local church in the area also has an annual fall festival. Each year we look forward to the games and food but the most exciting attraction is the Hay Mountain that they kiddos (and some of us adults) like to jump off of.

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To see our curriculum for this week please click on the link below.

Other than our spiritual disciples lesson, our first lesson every week is to introduce the letter for that week. We practice saying the letter, identifying what the uppercase and lowercase letters look like, and practice the sound(s) that letter can make. Then of course, Addi, can color the pictures.

Some weeks I will give her a word search that I've torn out of an old activity book and give her "Do a Dot" marker. Next, I tell her to only "dot" the letter for that week. It really helps with making sure she understand which letter we are on and what it looks like.

Stamping the letter over and over again also reinforces letter recognition.

Play-doh and letter shaped cookie cutters are a big hit every week in our house. For some reason this activity never gets old.

Number flash cards, matching cards, and worksheets are how we introduce the number for that week.

Addilyn loves to use watercolors. To make it more purposeful I will draw the uppercase and lowercase letter onto a white piece of paper with a white crayon. Then, when she begins painting the letters magically appear. Always fun!!!

Here are some of the books we read about fires, firetrucks, firemen, and fire safety.

After reading we did quite a few fun activities and had lots of great conversations. However, Addilyn wins the award for most humorous comment/ memorable moment of the week. I posted this quote on my Facebook and I got 40+ people who responded to it.

Addilyn has been trying to understand the difference between handsome and pretty. Today in the car we were talking about how pretty she was and how handsome Josiah was. It's also letter F week in our house so we've been learning about Fall and Fire Safety. We made a field trip to the fire station and the first thing Addilyn says to the Fireman is, "Oh, mommy. He sooooo handsome." Bwahahahahah!

Addilyn gave each of the three firemen who helped us high fives. I was too embarrassed to take a picture of the one Addilyn referred to as handsome, but the one in the picture below was also really nice. Ha ha. They gave Addi and Josiah fire safety coloring books, pencils, and fire hats.

They also gave each kiddo a chance to "drive" the fire truck.

Addi couldn't wait to start coloring her "fire book."

I loved this activity and I'm pretty sure this is one of those that I will keep for a long long time. We made Addi's handprint into a group of firemen. Her favorite part was gluing on all the fire hats. She said they looked like her (she's so proud of her fire hat).

That afternoon it was raining so another day we drew flames on the sidewalk and pretended to be firemen and put them out with our water bottles.

F is for fish, so why not go fishing? Addi has not played this game in a month or so and it was obvious that her hand-eye coordination and control had improved. She really had a lot of fun with it. What a great busy bag!

I cut a piece of construction paper into the shape of a fish and cut some tissue paper into squares. She was hard at work for about 20 minutes making the most pretty fish this momma has ever seen.

However, later when we were making Play-doh fish she decided that she would use the same tissue paper technique with the play doh. Ha ha! So funny!

These are a few of our Fishy books for the week.

Books all about feet. Addilyn was really good at guessing the animal who made the tracks/footprints in the two books that focused on that. I was impressed.

Making play-doh feet and football gear = too much fun!

But it's more fun to paint your feet and walk around!

And of course for letter F week we have to include a little football. First, we watched Daddy's flag football game and then later that afternoon we got to watch UGA beat Florida! What a great way to celebrate football and letter F week. Ha ha!

Part of Letter F Week included several fun outings to local festivals and a day trip to the State Fair. To check out more on our fun times click here.

We made an uppercase F with flower stickers and a lowercase f flower from construction paper.

Using construction paper and popsicle sticks we made handful of flowers. I would show Addilyn a number and she had to place that many flowers into the vase. She did very well with the counting and although we are only on number 6 this week she even got the higher numbers correct.

F is for Fall! Here are a few of our fall-themed books.

I cut a piece of construction paper to look like tree branches and I gave Addilyn a handful or two of fall leaf stickers. She decorated one side of the tree and then made sure I knew that the other side needed leaves because "Leaves grow all over trees, not just on the front."

Fall lacing cards are always fun.

I got a cheap pack of leaf dollies. Addilyn really enjoyed painting them different colors and glue them to a piece of paper to make a collage. She was so proud of her hard work.

The fall leaf matching busy bag was a huge success!

One afternoon we went on a nature walk. It was so nice. The weather was perfect. The temperature was perfect. It was just one of those days where it seems so peaceful that for a brief moment you can imagine that there is nothing wrong in the wold world. We listened to the crunching sound as we walked across the fallen leaves. We looked at all the neat colors and thanked God for the beautiful world he created.

When we got home we took inventory of the leaves we had collected.

We picked out a few leaves to do leaf rubbings.

Then, I had Addilyn sort the leaves by size. We glued all the leaves onto one of three papers. All the large leaves went on one, medium on another, and small on the last one.