Ha! I started this post in May and now its July 6th! Oh Well. Here's a recap of May. Hopefully we'll get around to June!
We've been real busy around here the past month and tot school has had to take place within all of our other activities. We started the month with a week long missions conference at our church and had the pleasure of having house-guests all week and meeting missionaries from around the world. Munchky did pretty good learning how to sit still during services. We've also had to do some house and yard projects after our very long winter. And finally we got some planting in b/w our cold and wet weather. We've mostly been going to the playground, outdoor walks and watching Dad play softball.
Here's a recap of some of our activities:
Crafts
Caterpillars during our "The Very Hungry Caterpiller" Week
Making a nice shade of brown
Please pardon my appearance, I was getting over a cold
Rainbow (color and size sorting)
Coffee filter Butterflies
Don't worry this is water not carpet cleaner.
That was hard work!
Outdoor Fun
Learning to Ride
Taking Walks down our street to the playground
Munchky is learning the names of flowers/plants and T-Rex is working on his colors!
We've made these into a book called Seasons on my street and plan on updating it as we go through the year.
Doing Yard Work/Gardening
Munchky had a great time digging in the dirt, planting and watering the bulbs. T-Rex ended up getting to close and got a face full of water, which shocked him so much he fell face forward into the freshly watered soil. That ended our gardening for that day.
This week was bug week of our spring unit, in more ways then one. Just as we got over our colds and the weather was warming up we were hit with the stomach bug. T-Rex was hit especially hard for practically the entire week and only wanted to sit in Mommy's lap and whimper when he was awake. Munchky rebounded pretty quick and we did some activities while T-Rex was sleeping.
Munchky's favorite activity was playing with these masks that I got at the dollar spot at Target and using a bee magnifying glass (also Target) to check things out. We had fun acting like bees "buzzing" and flying around.
He also loved this "small spaces" activity putting in butterfly sticks (from Dollar Tree) into the holes of our colander and played with it over and over again. Apparently he got over his objection for it being used for anything else but catching balls.
Some of the sticks were fatter than others, and made a "snapping" noise as they were pushed into the holes. When this happened, he said, "You alright, butterfly?, Be careful."
We did a butterfly finger painting using a stencil from Dollar Tree.
Searching for the bugs I added into our spring sensory bin. He decided it was easier to try and shake them out.
The boys working on Butterfly and caterpillar sheets from COAH. This is T-rex's lone appearance for the week (about 3 minutes worth).
We read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" this week and talked about how caterpillars became butterflies. We also worked on this tot pack created for it by Carisa at 1+1+1=1.
Munchky loved the color matching (word, color, and food). He got it right away, words and all, without me having to show him. (I'll have to see if he knows the color words if they aren't printed in that color). He liked them so much that he had to take the cards with him to bed!
Working on matching the uppercase letters to lowercase. I decided not to cut up the lowercase letters and he could place the uppercase on top of the matches. (less cards that way)
Munchky used the M&D lacing beads to put the numbers in order. (I was missing the six in the bin and he wasn't happy, I tried to convince him to use the nine upside down..but he didn't buy it.)
I tried to get him to lace the beads..but he's still not interested. He did one and then he was done.
Munchky seeing how far the gel clings stretch
Munchky and Daddy after a long day.
PS. T-Rex felt much better today (Sunday) and wanted to go downstairs (to our tot room). He loved the butterfly sticks, having Mommy wear the bee mask while he "buzzed", and digging in the sensory bin. He also really enjoyed the ABC cards to the Very Hungry Caterpillar, though he insists that all the fruits are apples.
We really enjoyed our week celebrating spring with our focus on bunnies, ducks, and eggs, oh my!
The boys had loads of fun coloring eggs.
The boys really enjoyed the spring sensory bin and looked forward to playing with it every day. Munchky must have chocolate radar, b/c the first thing he did when he saw the bin was pick up the brown egg, shake it, open it up and discovered the M&M's.
T-Rex dug right in and pulled out the ducks.
His brother kept the M&M's a secret. Mom had to eventually clue him in before big brother found and ate them all.
Both boys loved opening the eggs to get the spiny balls and then of course throwing them around.
later in the week I was able to get Munchky to match the spiny balls with the correct color eggs.
T-rex decided to have a taste test between the yellow and purple balls.
And of course they had fun "making it rain".
Munchky has been working on his sounds. So I wrote out "spring" saying the sounds and he told me the letter to write down. He wasn't satisfied with just spring and wanted to do all 4 seasons. He did great at this as he got about 90% of the letters.
T-Rex has really started to get interested in 'drawing" lately and when Munchky and I were finished he had to add some "letters" of his own.
T-Rex working on M&D pets puzzle. He's getting better and better at puzzles.
Muchky liked this egg letter matching printable from 2 Teaching Mommies spring unit After I showed him how to match the upper and lower case letters by drawing a line from one to the other, he did great doing the next two. That must have been too much b/c after that he just crossed out the letters as he went.
He also worked on these spring spelling sheets from 2 Teaching Mommies. We worked on the letter sounds as he placed the letter tiles.
We read The Runaway Bunny and then did these If/Then matching cards from Homeschool Share. Munchky was excited when he saw the cards (he loves matching cards) but was apprehensive when he saw that these did not match in the traditional sense. I went through all of the cards showing how they told the story if we matched the little bunnies "if" to the mother's "then" reply. After I did that he really liked putting them together.
We read a lot of books this week - so many good spring books. We especially enjoyed "Splish, Splash, Spring" and its paper collage illustrations.
