Friday, October 25, 2013

GLE Week 6 "c" is for colors

Also, week 6 encompasses the story of Joseph and his beautiful (if problem causing) coat.  Curriculum found here.

Wearing her paper bag coat, retelling the story with her Joseph puppet, and some of the crafts we made. 
This child.  We mixed these one day and now she knows them.  Model student!



I thought I would also teach Caleb his letters along with Autumn (even though they have their learning times separately from each other).  Caleb is 22 months.  We learned all about what sound C makes!  All of the materials I used with him can be found at 1+1+1.  (LOVE that woman!)

Finding C words in a kidney bean sensory bin and some artwork


Even baby sister got in on the action! Yes she puts things in her mouth and yes I was watching her like a hawk. See my hand in the bottom of the picture? 

Literature for both kids!  Autumn's (left) goes mostly with the theme (colors) and Caleb's goes more for the letter sound. 


We decorated pumpkins this week and I thought it was funny there was a pumpkin for what both kids were leaning.  Caleb's has a big C on it and the pumpkin on the end has rainbow crayons melted all over it to emphasize colors!

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

GLE Week 4 & 5

We are still using God's Little Explorers as our bible study every day.  It is wonderful!  We are also learning sight words using Reading the Alphabet.  We are going pretty slowly with this, but so far she has learned to read 3 sight words ;)

I am really no good at taking pictures.  For the last two weeks of our time together I have 5 pictures.  I got tired of documenting everything but then this week I decided it will come in handy when I got through it with Mr. Man so I started trying to take them again.

So, week 4 was z is for zoo (Noah's Ark).

I actually only took ONE picture this week, HAH!  Autumn and I (Autumn and I? No, it was just me.) found this online graphing game that she loved.  We actually found an entire mega pack and did quite a few things out of it.  Cutting and pasting, q-tip painting, and other fun stuff.  The picture on the left was just my big kiddos playing in the rain!  It seemed appropriate!

Week 5 was t is for tent (story of Abraham).

We set up our play tent and made a campfire and played with it all week!  This week was harder for Autumn to grasp for some reason.  I think trying to explain traveling around from place to place living in a tent all for the sake of obedience was just over her head a bit.  She loved the star crafts we did though!  You know that verse about Abraham having more descendants than stars in the sky?  That is the reason for the star crafts.

We are also practicing writing our last name.
 

Monday, October 21, 2013

Ladybug 7 Months

Her first Halloween costume!

That child you see above?  I am totally obsessed with her.  We all are. She is nothing short of a delightful, joyous, overwhelming blessing to this family.  It is amazing how much love one heart can hold.  It also boggles the mind that people wonder if having multiple children detracts from the family unit somehow.  

She is starting to sleep better at night.  Not fully arrived or anything, but getting better.  She only woke up twice last night (11 pm and 5:30 am).  She is crawling now!!!  She still doesn't sit up though.  Is that normal?  She enjoys chewing on everything and anything so we have to be SUPER diligent around here about picking up after the {almost} two year old hits up (aka destroys) a room. 

She loves to eat, eat, eat!  Nurse or table food.  

Finally took her to her doctor's appointment and she is a tiny thing!  But she hasn't always been so...so we have to take her back in a couple weeks to make sure she is gaining weight.  If not they are going to do a bone scan to make sure her bones are growing.  She went from being in the 46% to the 11% for weight and from the 79% to 50% for height.  I'm sure she's fine.  I mean, I'm 90% sure.  I can't help but being a tiny bit nervous.  We have tried to add formula to encourage weight gain but she just will not take a bottle. It's crazy how much she won't do it.  If we do ever have to put her on formula, it  is going to be a struggle.  

I found a way to make her laugh so that is fun.  Before she would just smile really big but now she actually giggles if someone does this certain thing.  It's kind of like you "scare" her...you just pull back and then rush forward and make a funny noise and she loves it.

Her favorite thing to do is to crawl around and explore everything right now.  Makes cooking dinner a challenge since I used to be able to leave her and she would stay in one spot! I try to stick her in her exersaucer while I do dinner. The big kids always watch a video during dinner prep.  

She is still very easy and very happy and I love her so very very much. 

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

GLE Week 3 "A is for Apple"


You can find the amazing curriculum we are using here. A is for apples!  Plus the story of sin entering the garden.  Autumn loved reading her bible each day because there is a picture of a big snake.  This girl loves snakes...not in real life, but she loves stuffed ones and pictures of them.  Crazy child! 


Our verse for the week on apples we printed.  I saved these in a plastic bag for review. 

More fun with printed apples!  I labeled them 1-10 and we practiced putting them in order.   I laminated these for future practice.   The bottom picture is a few of the crafts we did throughout the week.


Apple pie playdough :)
We also tried to make stars with paint and an apple core (kind of like a stamp), but it totally did not work at all for us!  Even I couldn't get them to look like stars.  So they just smeared some paint around.   

We had an apple taste test (top right picture) and then we took our apples and made applesauce.  Another day we made mini apple pies.  I tried to review the letters we've learned so far with the pie topping.

Last, we ended our week with an apple tree bath.  This was because my son doesn't know his colors yet and I am trying to teach them in fun ways and also because they both love fun baths!  They absolutely LOVE them!!
This was a super fun week for me.  Maybe my favorite so far!

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

GLE-Week 2 "G is for Garden"

Ok, week two of God's Little Explorers.  G is for garden!  Highlights were...

Soda pop flowers.  She dipped the end of a 2 liter into paint to make the petals, then painted the insides yellow.  I added the stems and leaves.  We made enough to send some to a few family members.
We printed and laminated these cute flowers and bugs and made some homemade play dough and dyed it green and brown for grass and soil (at the expense of my hand!).  Then we played "flower garden" for a long time. 






 
2 different sensory bins.  The top one was soil, glass gems (pretend seeds), and fake flowers. Then my parents actually sent a nature box from their back yard in Tennessee this week so it was perfect! There were pine cones, acorns, and lots of other seed pods from their yard. 


2 fun snacks: dirt cups, found here. Plus yogurt with orange slices around it to create a flower. 

We also do some tracing pages, puzzles, letter workbooks that I don't take pictures of (kind of boring!).  I normally print off lots of options from Confessions of a Homeschooler Letter of The Week series or Carissa from 1+1+1=1 and then let Autumn choose what she wants to do each day.  She loves to cut right now so we cut A LOT!

I am LOVING this curriculum as it is centered around the bible! Every day we do "bible study" and she doesn't even realize she is learning letters, sounds, and math while we are doing it.  She is getting more familiar with her bible and is starting to take ownership over it.  These times together with her are truly the highlight of my entire day.