tt: turkeys, native americans, and thanksgiving

Here's some of the things we did for school leading up to Thanksgiving.
We made turkeys out of oreo cookies, whoppers, candy corn, twist'n'pull twizzlers, and pretzel sticks

Then "turkey and dressing".

I thought this picture of the girls was so cute! they were sitting in the same chair and didn't even notice because they were so busy with their markers!

Fall recycled crayons with cousins!

indian corn with cocoa puffs and honey kix cereal

We made headbands and lined up the 10 Native Americans with the right number.

Plymouth rock cookies that didn't turn out at all like they were supposed to, but the girls still ate them!

The girls loved making thumb and fingerprint turkeys, then they just wanted paper to make as many prints as they could

halloween happenings

Tinkerbell was sighted all over OKC!
Trick-or-treating the dorms was just the beginning. Elle had a halloween parade and party at school. Then she and I went to Haunt the Harn with the OSSM students while Chris had dorm duty. It was fun except for the rain, which forced everyone into the event barn. Elle wanted to get her face painted like a kitty cat and did so well.



Then costumes at gymnastics, where she got candy at stamp time


Storybook Forest with friends from church



Then trunk-or-treat at church and we won most humorous (i think it was mops as captain hook, or it could've been that peter and wendy had a much more scandalous relationship than a kiss). sorry no pics, the camera battery died. Finally, trick-or-treating at the Whaley's.


For school on Monday we focused on candy corn. We read Julius' Candy Corn by Kevin Henkes and Candy Corn (about a candy corn cat and finding triangles all over Halloween) by Kelly Asbury. We ate candy corn and made our own button candy corn.


Let's just say I'll think twice about making another costume, but at least she used it a lot. Now it's going in the dress up case!

tt: acorns and leaves

The last two weeks we focused on acorns and fall leaves for school. We went outside and picked up acorns from under the oak trees by the school building. Then another day we dropped them in the water to see if they would sink or float. If they float they won't become trees, and if they sink they will (a little trivia from my nephew's Big Backyard magazine.) I found some little fall cookie cutters and Elle and her friend Keely played with them with the playdough.

we read a lot:
*That pup! by Lindsay Barrett George
Elle loves this book and will not let me turn it back into the library. We have to read it at least once everyday. It's got cute illustrations. For extra fun you can look for the acorns and the squirrel hiding somewhere in the pictures.
Earl the Squirrel by Don Freeman (author of the Corduroy books)
Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger
Clifford's First Autumn by Norman Bridwell

and we ate a lot:
fall trees (pretzel sticks, peanut butter, and fall M&M's)


acorns (Nutter Butter bite, Hershey's kiss, chocolate chip "glued" together with peanut butter), which we shared at the Jr/Sr football game tailgate party

another acorn project (acorn cutout, oatmeal for the nut, chocolate chips for the cap, glue), and Elle loved eating the extra chocolate chips


other activities that we just didn't get to:
painting the acorns and hiding them in fake leaves, then raking them up
identifying all the animals that eat acorns:
squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rabbits, cattle, pigs, deer, chickadees, quail, wild turkey

tt: fire prevention week

This week for "school" we did the letter Bb and fire prevention week.

Monday the girls made fire trucks for a snack/craft and practiced their stop, drop, and roll. We also read Corduroy Goes to the Fire Station by B.G. Hennessy.
We used a graham cracker with red icing for the truck, chocolate cookies for wheels, a chex cereal piece for the window, pretzels for the ladder, and a red gumdrop for the light.


We also got lucky because the room had some fire engine puzzles.

stop, drop, and roll!



I have a great curriculum book called Sesame Street fire safety station that includes a cassette tape. (Click on the title for information about the curriculum. It says they restrict sending the kit to preschools and fire stations, but it never hurts to try and order it. There's also several for sale on amazon.com.) We listened to the stories and songs on it this week. We also played a game called "red dot, blue dot". We went around the house and put red stickers on hot things, and blue stickers on cold things. Elle also went around and looked for all the smoke detectors. The curriculum comes with a coloring book and to get a copy click here.



For letter Bb we made a bear out of a B and did some sidewalk chalk writing.

toddler tutoring

I've officially started "school" with Elle. We're just doing a few things each week and keeping it low pressure, for both our sakes. We try to do calendar every day and then on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I'm planning activities to go with a theme and letter/number for the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays she still goes to Sonshine School and her teachers this year have really stepped it up. Chris and I both feel it's time to be more proactive at home. But, I also don't want to take these precious toddler days away where she's able to explore on her own, learn through play, and enjoy being a toddler. I know from firsthand experience once she goes to official school it's more and more "academic" and less play. So, I'm trying to find activities that are fun, age appropriate, and won't taint her experiences once she actually gets to elementary school. Basically, I'm trying to find things that she may not do in a regular classroom or steer away from things she might do later on (because inevitably teachers use a lot of the same activities) so that I don't take the excitement away from her once she's in a classroom.

Here's her school nook:


Last week was our first official week of toddler tutoring. The theme was apples and the letter obviously was A. Here's some of the things we did for the week:

Mondays we go to Mayfair and play with Elle's friend Olivia while her mom tutors an elementary student through the mentorship program at the church. Since we're in the room that the girls go to for bible class I decided to do some of our school activities there so that they wouldn't get bored playing with the same things week after week. (I'm hoping Olivia's mom is okay with her being one of my guinea pigs!)

We ate apples and peanut butter for snack while I read Amazing Apples. Then the girls made "apple pies". I printed a circle on a piece of paper and they painted the crust with a brown paint/glue mix. Next, we sprinkled cinnamon on the glue/paint mix and added apple cutouts. Another cute version of this would be to use a paper plate with the ridges.


(These are great science books for younger students because they aren't very long, but have a lot of good information.)

We also worked on recognizing the letter Aa. I found a suggestion to call the uppercase letter the "mommy" and the lowercase the "baby". At first I wasn't sure if this was a good idea, but the last time we were at the zoo I noticed Elle calling the bigger animals the mommy and the smaller ones the babies. I also remembered most of my students in kindergarten still checked for understanding when I used the terms upper and lowercase by asking whether I meant the big or little letter. (Chris also informed me that the terms uppercase and lowercase come from the printing press days when they had the larger letters in the upper drawer or case and the smaller letters in the lower drawer or case.) So, I guess it doesn't matter that much.

We also made apple trees using cut apples dipped in paint.



Unfortunately, the only apple orchard I could find in OK is in Porter, OK so we couldn't do that, but I do have an apple picking movie from my teaching days.

We also read The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall, which I would have used on Monday, but I couldn't get from the library in time and Clifford's Apple-Picking Day by Samantha Brooke.