Some more stuff..

We got some pattern blocks and they are probably the best investment I've made so far. They help with creativity, counting, adding, patterns, shapes, and individual time. I love them, the girls love them, and even daddy loves to play with them!

I also made some math file folders. The girls love them. And it helps with helping them on more their own level, but they can do it at the same time.
Hannah has the counting cupcakes one.

And Emily has the Math adding Acorns (got them both Here)

Abigail wanted to get in on the fun.. It has been kind of UNhelpful that she's giving up morning naps.... But here she is getting into the block action... (ignore silly, yet still cute, face she's making)


We've done a ton more fun things! But I'll just keep posting some of them... Or else I'll have to make like 5 more posts...

Also we've been slowly keeping up on the Tour of the Parks.
We've gone to Bloedel, Birchwood a few times, Cornwall twice, and I think it's only fair to add Boxx Berry farms in, since tech. it did have a play area on it :-D

Some of the other stuff we've been doing..

We've been working on recognizing numbers. Emily can count pretty high, and does pretty good at this.. She had a problem with 13 and 15 for a while.. but i think she has it now. I still need to work on Hannah a bunch more with them.. But this is one of our many math activities.. Lining up the flash cards.

I found this online somewhere (i need to remember better so i can give credit to other people..) But we cut out and glued the numbers in order on the squares.. It was a little difficult for Hannah.. Not at all for Emily, but i let her do it too because i thought she might like it.

With Hannah we are working on spelling her name. She loves the frogs and is getting so much better at it.

Q is for Quilt

Q and U stick like glue. That's what we learned today (thanks to smarty-pants Emily) We made quilts out of paper. It was fun. We were going to make them out of cloth which probably would have been cooler.. But I fell asleep last night instead of finding and cutting out different cloth material. So this worked just as well! I just took some different type of scrapbooking paper and cut them into two different sizes, and the girls got to use their creativity and make a quilt.

P is for Popcorn

The girls especially loved this one. Hannah didn't end up covering much more of her P's then is in the picture... She loved eating the popcorn instead.

N is for Noodles

They really liked how the bowl full of noodles felt. Hannah just kept putting her hand in over and over without even grabbing any..

M is for Mouth..

So, we used our mouths as stamps and stamped the pictures. The girls really enjoyed being able to use my makeup... And I laughed and laughed at them as they did it! Learning was lots of fun today!

L is for Leaves

We took a little walk outside and reached for some leaves off the tree.. It's hard to tell in the pictures, but there are leaves all over the paper... They were darker covered leaves... The green tree leaves were WAY to far up for me to reach.

K is for Kleenex

The girls loved that they were allowed to shred apart Kleenex and glue them to paper.

J is for Jellybean.

For the letter J we made Jelly bean J's. It's as easy as it sounds.. And the girls LOVED it. They of course had to try a few.

H is for Heart

I happen to be at the dollar store and saw the perfect foam hearts.. So that's what we did. I like stickers, especially individual stickers. I like to think it helps develop small motor skills.. Emily was making a H out of hearts (but i didn't get a final picture). I like these little crafts because I just say "here's the stickers" and they decide exactly what they are going to do with them. Helps the develop their creativity..

G is for Glitter

We made Glitter G's for the craft when we were learning the letter G. The thing I like the most, is all the crafts for the letters are done in a journal. They are ALL together, I don't have to worry about taping it all over my house.. And it's easier to review what we did the previous day. I also got foil pans to put them in.. That way they catch all the mess.. After the craft is dry, I just empty the foil pan in the garbage and that's clean up. It's great!

F is for fingerpaint

This one was a little tough for Hannah. She is a clean little girl. She loves to be clean. I provided a towel so that she was able to wipe her hands off whenever she felt she needed to. By the end she was okay with getting paint on her fingers. Emily however, loved EVER second of painting with her fingers. She painted with her fingers, with her palm, with her arm, and so on. She had so much fun getting paint all over her. Luckily in one fast run to the bathroom sink it all washed off. And we were able to do the rest of school.

D is for Donuts

We're working on cutting out as much "Junk" (as Hannah calls it, aka junk food) so we didn't use real donuts.. I had some adhesive paper.. So I cut out donuts and they thought it was so fun that I had donut stickers.. So they put the stickers in their journals and we put some Elmers glue on it and they were able to add real sprinkles. Again, it was fun and easy. Yet it made me a cool mom :-D

Finished project (almost.. the glue wasn't dry yet)

C is for Cottonballs

Did get any pictures of the girls making it. But they really thought this was an awesome craft... and it was so simple. It's a win-win craft!
Pretty much self explanatory.

B is for Bubble Art!

Today we learned the the b sound.. For our craft we made bubble art. I took some paint, added bubbles and water, and blew it through straws. Fun, yet so so easy.



Each day we also trace over our name with dry erase markers.. Hannah's getting the hang of it.. Emily is pretty much ready to move on (she knows how to spell all but baby Abby's name by memory).. But I make her keep doing it because it's good to get practice with writting the letters correctly.

Make it, Bake it Monday!

I decided each Monday we would Make and bake something fun! This week we made spring cake (just cake but it had spring sprinkles). The girls got to help put in all the ingredients and then they got to frost their own piece afterwords.





Abigail was awake for it this time.. So she just kind of did her thing.... She has been learning too. Her newest trick is climbing on chairs. She loves it.


For math today we went fishing. We had numbers on the back of the fish and the girls had to tell me what number it was.. Next time we'll also add in putting them in order once they catch them. (no those aren't bags of trash you see, we were given a bunch of clothing that don't quite fit the girls yet, so we have no idea where to put the bags, they have just kind of stayed there while we find a place)

Vocabulary Recap.

So, as we read books I find new words that I think the girls don't know.. And we use them for our vocabulary words.. (Mostly for my record) Here are last weeks words:

Antenna
Honeycomb
Internal
Skeleton
Nectar
External
Arachnid
Thorax
Communities
Abdomen
Inchworm
Praying Mantis
Absurd
Cocoon
Vowel
Camouflaged
Moth

It pays off fast!!

Quotes that let me know the girls are learning what I'm teaching...

Emily and Hannah tonight as we were trying to get ready for bed, "you can't find me, I'm camouflaged" (one of our vocabulary words)

We were at the park today and we found an insect and Emily exclaimed "it has a thorax!!"

And then we saw their Aunt.. And Emily recited there whole vowel poem (well up to where we're at)

Makes me more and more excited...

This week is Safe Kid themed week. I'm hoping to arrange to go to a fire station.. we'll see!

There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly

In our Bug box this was one of the books. The girls liked it a lot.. Well.. they liked all the books..
So today we made our own Old Ladies and put all the animals inside her tummy.

Here's Emily's.. Her old lady had a poka dot dress.

Here's Hannah's.. All green.
We used plastic bags to put the animals/bugs in.. And then we added a little air so they could move around.. Add stapled/glued/taped it all together.. Easy, yet the girls loved it.

Here they are making silly faces with the silly book.

Tour de Parks

I've decided for the Physical/Outdoor stuff over the summer we are going to Tour the Bellingham Parks.. We've gone to Birchwood (like a million times).. On Saturday we are joining a little girl at Arroyo Park for a Birthday party... But then next week we'll be testing out some more parks. Yes, we've been to a few of them before.. But this is my summer list of Parks to visit
Stolen from here. Look for my reviews on each park weekly! (that way I'll have to be accountable..) Hopefully some will have rain spots.... since the next two weeks are supposed to be rainy..

Park	Sports Fields	Trails	Play/ Picnic	Water Access	Other Amenities
Arroyo Park
Big Rock Garden
Birchwood Park
Bloedel Donovan
Boulevard Park
Broadway Park
Carl Lobe Park
Civic Athletic Complex
Cornwall Park
Elizabeth Park
Euclid Park
Fairhaven Park
Fairhaven Village Green
Forest & Cedar Park
Fouts Park
Franklin Park
Happy Valley Park
Highland Heights Park
Lake Padden
Laurel Park
Little Squalicum
Lorraine Ellis Park
Maritime Heritage
Memorial Park
Northridge Park
Rock Hill Park
Roosevelt Park
Sehome Hill Arboretum
Sunnyland Park
Whatcom Falls Park
Woodstock Farm