J is for JOSEPH

We have sort of taken a break from letter of the week over the summer but have also been focusing (on & off) on the letter J. To be honest I don't know where this summer has gone! So as J is for Joseph & he has started school today, I'm dedicating this post to him, my wonderful tall slightly rebellious & very crazy not so little man....

After the success of the Haribo H's we practised our J's with Jelly Beans!

Daniel (3) helped make some Jelly

Joseph (4.5) coloured a J...

to add to our letters on the kitchen wall.

I really hope he loves school, I know hes going to have no trouble making friends...

x Jo x

I is for ....

Ice Cream!

We have had lots of fun looking at the letter I for ice & ice cream. So we ate lots of ice cream & ice lollies. However not as much as we would have liked, as our freezer decided to break & melt all our ice cream & some of our food! I was also planning on doing a ice sensory box however the lack of ice maker/freezer & poor weather means we didn't get around to it, but will try to later in the summer.

We also made these fab rice pictures at a craft session we went to.

And Daniel (3) did some colouring to put up on the wall with our other letters.

We are really looking forward to moving on to J for Joseph & jelly!

x Jo x

H is for...

 We haven't done as much work on the letter H as we have other letters as we have just been so busy out & about enjoying this lovely weather. I quickly made these sheets for the boys to put their Haribo sweets on in the shape of a h. I also pointed out the H on the sweet packet. They really enjoyed this especially that they got to eat them once done! I will use this idea again for other letters.

I collected & cut out several house pictures (house insurance leaflets from supermarkets were a good place to look). The boys then used a glue stick to make a collage, i then wrote on one so we could add it to our letter wall, as we didn't do any printed sheets this week. It was really nice that we could work outside for these activity's.

During the week Joseph (4.5) pointed out that H is also for helicopter, I was really impressed with this as out of all the H words I hadn't mentioned this one, he had picked it up from the helicopter pads on our car mats & garage.

I also made this House lunch for the boys as part of the Hoops & Crosses competition.

x Jo x

G is for...

Firstly apologies for the delay in my letter of the week, series of posts, what with birthdays, holidays & days out we have been so busy! To start off the Letter G, we went on a Nature Walk searching for Green things, more details here.

We made Green jelly & also had a chocolate fondue with Green Grapes, 

which I will post about soon.

Both boys have been spending lots of time in the Garden, Daniel (3) is loving playing football (in his unique way) with the new Goal he got for his birthday.

Joseph made some elastic band Guitars, details here.

At a toddler group we drew around a flat wooden giraffe, then coloured him in, we also printed off a couple of colouring sheets & used our dot markers (ELC easy painters) to 'paint' them.

Whilst at Legoland (post to follow) we spotted this amazing Giraffe, which had a moving head!

We have also been Growing & Gardening:

Celery stalk & Carrot Top

Joseph re-homing some snails, from my pots to a nearby hedge.

Planting some sunflower seeds (lets hope they do better than last year!)

x Jo x

F is for...

This week fortnight we have been looking at the letter F. We had so much Fun with Fish in our Small World Aquarium. We also had a go at painting magic fish which wasn't so successful!

 We pulled out our FP Little People Farm, which hadn't been out in a while so got lots of attention, it was even left out for a few days so they could revisit it. It worked well having our Ikea car mat out as well to add to the play. 

I really love seeing the boys play together. Its happening more & more these days and it really makes me realise that a small age gap was a good idea, its only taken 3 years to see that!

We did a few colouring sheets, however as the weather has been nice we have been outside more.

 

We also got our frog figures out - I came downstairs in to the lounge to find that Joseph (4.5) had lined them all up on Daddy's desk. These frogs might make an appearance in a sensory box soon...

x Jo x

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E is for ... Easter

E is for Easter, Egg, & Elephant!

We've had lots of fun this week:

Decorating Eggs & Huggers

Small World Play

Egg Collage

We turned our collage eggs & other eggs that I cut out from the boys paintings & drawings in to this Easter display. I used blue tack to attach them along our floating shelf that we have in the kitchen. As we don't have a fire place this shelf is effectively our mantle where we display cards etc. & above is where we display the boys artwork.

We used our pom pom magnets again this week with an egg print out from 3 Dinosaurs Easter Pack, I have also printed out some other ages from their spring pack which we will probably complete over the Easter weekend.

 We have also been using these Easter colouring sheets, I was very impressed by Josephs (4) kisses (top left).

Joseph also had his first go at colouring by numbers, he has done this on the PC & tablet before but not on paper. We used a sheet from Confessions of a Homescholer's letter of the week curriculum.

 I explained to Joseph that he needed to look at the numbers next to the colour & find it on the picture & colour it using that colour pen. I then turned my attention to Daniel (2.5), when I turned back around, Joseph had used a line to link all the colours up to the relevant part of the picture, before colouring it.

When printing most of our work sheets I tend to use the draft option when printing, which uses much less ink, when printing colours this does make them very pale & in this case made red pink & brown orange. So I used our felt pens to colour over the printed squares, this worked really well as it meant that they were all the same shades as the pens we have.

When I picked up the boys polystyrene eggs I got a slightly larger one for myself. I'd seen several ideas on Pintrest, but didn't pin any of them so cant give credit oops! I used a selection of buttons from my stash, some new & some upcycled. I used some cheap coloured pins to attach the buttons on to my egg & another pin to attach some ribbon at the top. I'm pleased with the effect however its not quite as good as I was expecting! It was however nice to do some crafting just for me, as I'm usually making & sewing for the boys or to sell.

We still have our Easter bonnets to make but as the boys haven't been feeling to well & Daddy has now gone down with man flu, I thought I had better put this post together before I go down with it! I hope you all have a great Easter with your families & if you are looking for some more Easter ideas take a look at my Pintrest board.

x Jo x

C is for....

Car, Cat, Coin, Chocolate, Cheese, Carrots, Caterpillar Clown & lots more! We started off out letter C activity's with some painting using cars, which was a big hit with the boys.

We also had a letter C lunch of car shaped sandwiches, cucumber, carrot sticks, cheese cubes, crisps (chips) & cranberries. When using cookie cutters to make sandwiches I make sure that any left overs are eaten either by the boys or myself, so as not to waste any. Both boys ate all their lunch & had some extra sandwich.

That same day we also had a letter C snack of cheerios, cranberries & chocolate coins. While they were eating I used the opportunity to point out that everything began with C & since they have been able to name several foods that begin with C when asked.

 We used some more of Erica's work sheets this week a Caterpillar do-a-dot sheet & Circus Cutting practise. With the cutting sheets the boys trace over the lines first to help with writing skills then use their scissors to try and cut along the dotted lines. Daniel was so excited when he made a triangle.

We also tried something new with our worksheets this week - play dough. Daniel was making balls using our Play-Doh Candy Cyclone, when I realised that they were the perfect size for the do-a-dot sheets. So he pressed one ball on to each dot. He really enjoyed this and it was a great way to add some extra interest to the work sheets. Next time we do this I will put the sheet inside a plastic wallet (or laminate) so It can be used again.

We had to have our car play mat, garage & dress up out. We also read so letter C books this week which included the boys favourite The Very Hungry Catterpillar