Autumn Walks & Using Our Finds

I don't know what it is about autumn but we always seam to take lots of walks in the woods & park. I guess we are just making the most of the weather until it gets too cold & wet. On a recent walk in our local woods we found the most amazing climbing tree, it had lots of low branches to climb. It was so good even daddy had a go!

So over the past couple of weeks we have been collecting lots of treasures on our walks we have found acorns, hazel nuts, conkers & pine cones. So while Joseph was at school Daniel (3) helped me sort out some conkers we collected. 

I hadn't realised that there were different types but we collected from 2 different trees, the 1st tree had one conker in each 'case' & the 2nd was a very spiky case which has 3 conkers in each. I'm not sure why but most of these triplet conkers were underdeveloped but we were lucky enough to find a few good ones. Daniel remarked on how the cases were soft on the inside & sharp on the outside, I then asked what the conker felt like & we agreed on smooth but hard. To continue the learning I added the letters A, C & H to a piece of paper and the name of our treasures. I read these out & helped Daniel identify which was which.

After I drew out a letter A on the back of the paper, I then asked Daniel to make the letter out of our acorn collection. This had worked well with sweets on our letters of the week J & H. He found this a little tricky as they roll around, but managed in the end & then decided to add all the acorns!

I'm not always sure what to do with all the treasures they collect its really ice now they are older to let them play & learn with them, only 12 months ago I would have been worried about Daniel eating them!

x Jo x

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

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

D is for Dinosaur...

 D is for Dinosaur & Daniel, we started off our letter of the week with our Dinoland small world play, which both boys loved & it was played with on & off all week. 

The boys made these Double Daffodil cards to give Nanny & Grandma on mothers day (UK). We then had a go at some dropper art, at a local toddler group.

 For our worksheets this we again visited Confessions Of A Homescholer & we also downloaded the dinosaur pack from Over The Bog Moon. This week for our do-a-dot sheets I decided to have a go at making some pom pom magnets like these. I used a hot glue gun to stick some round magnets that we already had on to the back of some pom poms, when i ran out of magnets I cut up some free magnets (advertising etc) to use. Some of these were a little thin so to make them stronger i used the glue to double it up before sticking on the pom pom.

 Both boys have loved the pom poms as they have been able to use the sheet over & over, we have also had a couple of free hand creations on the fridge. I was really excited when I saw this pin on pintrest Joseph (4) has always struggled holding a pen/pencil, so next time he was colouring I grabbed an old, sock & cut 2 holes, MAGIC! It really works & he loves it. Joseph calls it his pinching parrot like from the recent series, I Can Cook (UK TV show). I might even add eyes & a beak for him!

 We also had a go at the pre-writing practise from the dinosaur pack, Daniel (2.5) loved the fact that he was helping the mummy dinosaur find its egg. I think he liked the sense of purpose rather than just tracing because he was asked!

We have 2 sets of Leapfrog Fridge Phonics, one lower & one uppercase. I bought the 2nd set from a charity, partly because our 1st set was missing a couple of letters & partly so that we would have 2 base units one for each of the boys! As part of our letter of the week i have been putting away all the other letters & just leaving out that weeks letter.

We have had a great week with letter D, but are looking forward to E for Easter & Egg!

x Jo x

Dinoland

After the B for Builder small world play went down so well, I decided to make a D for Dinosaur box for the boys. In the base of our box I used small cardboard squares, which is actually for the base of our pet rat cage, its called Ecobale & is a type of horse bedding!  I made boulders out of scrunched up paper bags & sed some rocks from our beach small world. I added some plastic plants, eggs & 2 palm trees, that the boys made at a toddler group using tinsle & kitchen roll tubes.

 During play my paper bag bolders became dinosaur nests!

We used our Ladybird Dinosaur book to look up the names of our figures & taked about how big they would have been & what they liked to eat.

They got the dinosaur figures from Santa and they hadn't really been played with since, this was a great opportunity to give the boys a starting point to begin play. They both enjoyed this box and like most of our others it has been asked for several times.

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