FUN DAY'S IN JULY - ICE CREAM DAY

Since we were taking a curriculum break during the month of July, we needed some fun activities to keep us busy.  I found a great book at Lakeshore Learning Center that helps turn an ordinary day into a fun-filled themed day!  The book is called Preschool Fun Days. There are 30 single-day themed celebrations in this book - each include circle time, centers, art, songs and rhymes, movement, snack time and story time. 

 

I let Stella look through the book and she picked out a few celebrations that she wanted to do.  Her first choice was "Ice Cream Day"  Here's a few pictures of our fun.

 

We got a Playdoh Ice Cream Treat Center and made ice cream cones and sundaes. (This was messy)

 

Next we pretended to scoop ice cream into our bowls.  We used large pom-poms for ice cream.

 

 

 

Then we designed our own ice cream cones on a flannel board

 

We played a game of drop the sprinkles on our ice cream.  We used small pom-poms as sprinkles and tossed them onto our ice cream scoops.  We then counted how many sprinkles landed on the scoops.

 

 

We got creative and did an ice cream craft project.  We used real cones to glue onto our tagboard cones and painted our ice cream scoops.

  

 

 

We also added a few "real" sprinkles.

 

And last, we ate some ice cream.  Yum.  Sorry, no pictures of that.  We were too busy enjoying our ice cream treat.  Well - that was our Ice Cream Day.  The first of our "celebration days".  Thanks for letting us share with you.

 

FINALLY.....WE'VE COMPLEETED OUR ALPHABET

It took us a few weeks longer than I had planned, but we finally finished going through the entire alphabet (uppercase).  Above is a picture of our completed Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree.  Below is a picture of Stella's alphabet necklace.  Each week we strung our "letter of the week" letter and now it is completely full.  Great job, Stella!

 

To help celebrate our completion, we made "alphabet soup".  Both Stella and Lyla loved doing this activity.  Here's a few pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have taken the month of July off from our preschool curriculum.  We will start back the beginning of August, and this time Lyla will be along side of us learning her colors, shapes, numbers and alphabet introduction.  We're going to be busy!!!!!

 

Thanks for letting us share with you!

 

 

The silence of hard days

Good morning,

I know it's been quite a few weeks since I've shared anything with you.  It's not that we haven't been busy or we've haven't been doing anything, just the opposite, the girls and I have had lots of fun adventures.  I have been going through a lot of "life stuff".  Not anything catastrophic, but it still has left me feeling very down.  I've struggled to write anything or share anything.  I know this will all pass, so I'm determined to work through it.  Even in my loneliest moments, I know Jesus is with me and I am not alone at all.

So, with that said, I'm going to try my hardest to kept up with the blogging and share my beautiful granddaughters with you.  Looking forward to writing you soon.

hugs and love,
Cyndi

A WEEK OF "P"

Last week we focused on the letter "P".  Our "P" words were "Princess", "Popcorn", "Pizza" and "Pea".  We had some kitchen fun as we popped some old-fashion, pop-on-the-stove popcorn and made our own cheese pizza.  But I think our favorite "P" day was "Pea" day.  Yeah, that's right, "Pea" day.  We started out by finding some snap-peas in our alphabet box.  Then we read two books about peas.  The first one was the classic tale of The Princess and the Pea written by Hans Christian Andersen.  Stella adored this book and actually took one of the peas from the alphabet box and placed it on her mattress.  Too cute!

 

The next "Pea" book was titled Little Pea written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  This is a darling story about a little pea whose parents (momma pea and papa pea) make him eat candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Most children would think this would be awesome, but not little Pea.  He hates candy and can't wait until he can eat dessert - which is spinach. This is another book which Stella had me read several times that day.

 

 

After reading our books, we went outside to find a "Pea" sensory box.  Inside the box I placed lots of dried split peas for scooping and pouring.  I placed a magnifying glass, scissor scoops, small tweezers, scoops and small buckets and several snap peas and snow peas.

 

 

The girls would play - leave - and then return to play with the box most of the afternoon. The only direction I gave them was to try to open the pods and remove the little peas with the tweezers.  They really had fun trying to pick those peas out of the pods.  Here are some pics.

 

Lyla trying to pull out the peas.

Lyla eating the peas.

And, of course, where ever the girls are, Ruby follows.

 

At first, I wasn't so sure I wanted to do a "Pea" sensory box.  I had seen several on Pinterest, but wasn't sure the girls would find it interesting or fun.  They did!  They loved scooping the dried peas into their buckets.  The scissor scoops and tweezers were a great fine motor activity and they enjoyed trying to pull the peas out of their pods.  In the end, I was glad I had made it.

 

That was our letter "P" week.  Thanks for letting us share it with you.

 

 

 

Ladybug Week Revisited

In my last post, I wrote about how my ladybug themed unit didn't pan out due to the girls being sick.  Well, we finally got around to having our ladybug day yesterday. It was so much fun and the girls loved watching and experiencing the live ladybugs.

We started out by reading a couple of Ladybug Girl books and a book teaching the life cycle of the ladybug.  Then we started painting our ladybug craft (we needed time to let it dry before we could finish it).  Lyla used crayons to color her ladybug :)

Next, we worked on some ladybug preschool activities.  These were free printables downloaded from Confessions Of A Homeschooler. 

Ladybug lacing.  Stella did this all by herself.  It is a great fine motor exercise.

Stella working on her pre-writing skills.  We also worked on making circles this week.

Ladybug shapes.  You cut these cute ladybugs in half and then your child matches the shapes that our printed on the ladybugs back.  Good shape recognition.

Finally, we went out to my daughter's backyard to release the ladybugs into her garden.  What fun!  My daughter took some amazing photos of the girls experiencing the ladybugs.  My camera - not so good.  Here are just a few of my pics.

 

 

 

 

After much ladybug watching, we went inside to eat lunch and have a special ladybug cake.

 

 

Our ladybug craft had finally dried so now it was time to add the finishing touches.

 

Adding the eyes.

 

Painting the black spots.

 

Voila!!!  It's done.

 

That was our fun Ladybug Day.  I'm so glad we finally got to do this unit.  Lyla loves birds, so I'm going to try to put together an owl themed unit.  It's so much fun spending time with these sweet little girls.  I think I'm the luckiest and most blessed Nana in the world.

 

Thanks for letting us share with you.

 

 

 

 

The Ladybug Week That Wasn't

I was so excited about the up-coming week.  I thought it was going to be my favorite week because we were going to do a thematic unit on ladybugs (ladybug is my pet name for Stella). I had all my printables laminated and cut out (oh, they were so cute).  I had purchased a toddler book on the life cycle of ladybugs (science unit). I had called my local nursery to check on purchasing live ladybugs for the girls to observe and then release into my daughter's soon-to-be planted garden. I had several Ladybug Girl books and even a Ladybug board game to play with Stella. We were going to make Playdoh ladybugs.  I had done my homework and I was prepared.  As I stepped into my daughter's house on Monday morning, I caught a glimpse of exhaustion on Andrea's face.  Stella had come down with the stomach flu and Lyla wasn't feeling well, either.  Oh boy!!!  This was our second round of sickness within a three week period. 

We got the girls settled down for breakfast. Neither one ate.  Andrea left for work and after the girls watched a little morning television, I brought out our "Book Box".  We did our morning Bible story and then read a few ladybug books.  I was able to get Stella to do a few preschool activities, but she shortly grew tired and tearful.  She wasn't feeling well.  All activities stopped and we just rested.  Neither Stella nor Lyla ate the rest of the day.

On Tuesday Stella started having diarrhea.  I called the doctor to see if there was anything over the counter we could give her to stop it.  Nurse said "no".  As long as Stella was drinking fluids and staying hydrated, we were good.  The bug was just going to have to take it's course.  At 2:00 pm, my daughter Andrea came home from work sick.  Within the hour, she was slumped on the bathroom floor throwing up. Ugh!!!

Wednesday finds my daughter home sick and Stella still battling diarrhea.  On this day; however, Stella is not drinking fluids.  I offered her water, soda, juice, and even her favorite "pink" sorbet, but she was not interested and she was as limp as a rag doll.  A call goes to the doctor, again.  Better bring her into the office.  I drove her to the doctor's and got her checked out.  She was not dehydrated, but we need to get her to drink fluids.  When Stella and I got home, we found daddy (Paul) home sick.  They were falling like dominoes.  Lyla, too, was still not feeling well and not eating.

On Thursday both Andrea and Paul went back to work, but still feeling yucky.  The girls were somewhat feeling better, but we still just needed to rest and relax.  No activity this day, but we read every book about Ladybugs several times and Stella was excited to tell mommy and daddy about the first life cycle of ladybug eggs.

Friday I called the nursery about the live ladybugs and found out they did not come in.  They were running two weeks behind, which was okay because my daughter's garden didn't get planted.  Stella and I did get to play the Ladybug Game, though. 

The week that I was so excited about didn't turn out as I had planned.  On Saturday, I put my ladybug curriculum back into the folder waiting to use it again in a few weeks.  Some weeks are just like that.  No matter how much planning or preparing you do, life just happens.  I'm learning to just go-with-the-flow and enjoy the days that don't work out the way I had planned.

Talking On The Go

Our daily schedule has been "off" the last two weeks.  One week both girls and my daughter were sick and then last week we just had a difficult time getting back on track.  We did do some preschool activities, but not our "normal" routine.  So instead of showing what we worked on, I thought I would share with you a great book titled, Talking On The Go - Everyday Activities To Enhance Speech And Language Development, by Dorothy P. Dougherty and Diane R. Paul. It might sound boring, but believe me, it's far from boring.

 

I found this book at Stella's speech therapist office.  The book is filled with simple and fun suggestions and activities for parents to help their child in the development of speech and language.  The book is divided by age groups from birth - 6 months, 1-2 years, 2-3 years, 3-4 years and finally 4-5 years.  All the work has been done for you, just follow the exercises that have been written out.  Fun! 

 

 Any and all children can benefit from this book. I think it is a treasure and I'm looking forward to implementing it in our daily routine.

 

Thanks for letting me share.