Last post until the New year!

I have not posted in a while but we are still alive here.The elf  who my kids named Buddy is still up to his antics.Maybe next year I will make a better more sturdy Elf.

Cutting out Cereal faces and sticking his head through

Stacking things on the counter

hiding under a glass

Writing on the mirror Elf was here

Wrapping up my son's backpack

don't forget the bow

This December has been a rough one with the passing of my husbands Grandma.She was a neat lady and we miss her.Tragedy has struck us all in one way or another and it is important we talk to our children to help them feel safe and accept death as a way of life.I am hoping as I take the next couple of weeks off to be with family that I will feel renewed and ready to make goals again and have more fun posts than ever!Merry Christmas!

The rest of the letter E

      

Letter E continues with having the kids match up the plastic egg pieces.Then they wanted to hide them.We rolled them on the tile floor.I pretended that they were turkeys and stuffed their shirt.They would stand up and then they would all fall out again.

 The rest of the time we made animals that would go inside eggs and we talked about mammals,reptiles, and birds.Here are some of our creations!

Snake

Snake and its eggs

Dragon

Rowen creation.He liked the big eyes

 

 

I mentioned on the last post that I had made an elf and this is where the kids found him!

Letter E,purple and the number 5

 

Circle time:Intro to letter E and sound. and Days of the week.We read The Elves and the Shoemakers.We talked about how it is nice to help others without being asked or to do secret acts of service.

Next we practiced writing our E and tracing it with our finger for the Tot.I had him find the purple crayon and make a picture.

I laid  out a whole bunch of shoes and had the kids count.My Lexi counted by twos and we decided that was a faster way of counting. We counted to 5 but agreed that you couldn't have one shoe without its mate.

Next I had the kids try on the shoes and we talked about when we would wear them.What does a ballerina wear? What about a soccer player or a fireman? I put on some music and had them dance in the shoes.My daughter pretended to be the Mommy and walked Rowen all over for pretend errands.








E is for Elf.I made this elf with paper and toilet paper roll.Lex used him to pretend to make the shoes. I will be using him for my elf on a shelf.Tomorrow will be his first antic.

Cute little penguin appetizers

One of the traditions for Christmas is to have a progressive dinner in my husbands family.We get to see each others lights and we are each responsible for a different course of the meal.We had appetizers so I looked online and found this cute penguin appetizers with olives,carrots and cream cheese!
http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/19687/cream-cheese-penguins

To make them you need:

• 18 jumbo black olives, pitted
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 18 small black olives
• 1 carrot

 

Directions

1. Cut a slit from top to bottom, lengthwise, into the side of each jumbo olive. Carefully insert about 1 teaspoon of cream cheese into each olive. Slice the carrot into eighteen 1/4 inch thick rounds; cut a small notch out of each carrot slice to form feet. Save the cut out piece and press into center of small olive to form the beak. If necessary cut a small slit into each olive before inserting the beak.
2. Set a big olive, large hole side down, onto a carrot slice. Then, set a small olive onto the large olive, adjusting so that the beak, cream cheese chest and notch in the carrot slice line up. Secure with a toothpick.

 

After we were done we made some blue jello and spread marshmellows around to make it look like snow or ice. These little guys were a big hit!

 

What are your favorite traditions? 

Review week letters A-D

Circle time we just went over the letters and the days of the week.The ABC song was also sung.
 
They played with the foam letters
 
Then we looked for circles
 
Triangles
 
Squares
We had an alphabet race where I would call out a letter and have them say the sound and they would race to it.

Then I wrote down words and had them match it up with the letters
For music and movement we played freeze tag.
For colors I had the tot pick out different color crayons and color with them.He still gets a lot of his colors mixed up.
Last was practicing counting.I wrote 1-4 on a piece of paper and he matched the number with the same number of counters.He still needs a lot of assistance with this as well.It is mostly familiarizing him with letters and numbers at this age.But it is a great review for my Kindergartner!