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

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

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

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

                            

B is for.....

Butterfly, Button, Bread, Banana, Builder, Bowl, Beads, Baby & lots lots more!

We started out our letter B focus with our Button decorated Butterflys & then had lots of fun with our Builder & Water Bead small world box.

We had a nice selection of work sheets to  use however Joseph (4) lost interest after he did the baby do-a-dot sheet from a great Baby Pre-School Pack, We also used work sheets from the pre-school printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. For lots more printables & ideas check out my Work Sheets Pintrest board.

 Here is the banana bread that we made, we had lots of mix that wouldn't fit in my silicone loaf tin so we made some mini ones as well, which were great for the boys lunch box's. I used this Nigela recipe which is fab as it has a button to convert from UK to US measurements. I still haven't got my head around US cup measurements so I'm on the look out for a set of measuring cups so I can try out all the fab recipes I have pinned.

Joseph & I went to a local pet fancy rat show at the weekend (we didn't show our girls, but will at the next one). They had a colouring & a model rat competition for the kids. This was the first time that Joseph had used plasticine, he did find it hard to use at first, however soon got the hang of it. I helped a lot with making his model rat but the colour choice was all his! He decided to call his rat Bertie so we made a letter B for his plate.

Why not check out our letter A activity's.

x Jo x