Living Abundantly With Joy: September 2014

I am so excited to share about our Preschool letter /d/ week! Of course, one our first ventures was making homemade baked donuts! I bought a perfect donut pan online at Walmart for less than $10 and found an easy homemade donut recipe on the Food Network website recipe courtesy of Ina Gartner! We decided to make a glaze for the topping and I found a wonderful recipe at Jenny Steffens blog. They were delightful and fluffy which completely inspired me to keep trying new recipes especially after my weekly baking mishaps!

My little Baker!

Our yummy donuts! YAY!

Did I mention they love to be silly! I love how Little Man always copies his sister!

Bug just adores Dora the Explorer so it was wonderful to implement her character in a variety of activities to keep Bug motivated. I will continue to use the idea I found at .... to make rainbow letter in order to make writing fun and motivating with lots of repetition tom improve handwriting skills

We also practiced number recognition (1-20) using free printables from This Reading Mama. We had a race to see who could find more numbers first. Before, she stamped each one with the Do-A-Dot markers, I had her identify the number orally. I have seen a leap in improvement in her number recognitions skills and I am confident she will have this skill mastered in no time!

Ready to race mom!

Dairy Queen was a perfect choice for our Letter D week! Bug was so excited to make her Dilly Bar puzzle during preschool time!

During outside time, we pretended to fly to Dora's house and went on quite the imaginary adventure! Bug was thrilled to find another caterpillar and treated it like royalty! She took her green caterpillar on airplane rides, tractor rides, and carried it around like a prized possession for a majority of the day!

Bug and her new found friend!

Bug taking her cute little caterpillar on a plane ride!

During /D/ week, we focused much of our attention on dental health and also on dolphins!

I found this precious idea at Pre-K Fun under the dental theme which had free printables to categorize what is healthy for you teeth and what is not. We read a book about going to the dentist called: "Max Goes to the Dentist" by Adria F. Klein. We did this great activity to learn about how to floss which you can find here at From the Hive. Afterward, we practiced flossing Bug's teeth. There are several wonderful pinterest activities regarding dental health for the preschool age! I didn't have time for all the ones I had planned!

Bug and Little Man were elated to visit the pond and feed the ducks for /d/ week also!

Little Man loved how the goose ate right out of his hand! He kept chasing the geese saying "here, here, here."

Sweet Bug had a wonderful morning visiting the ducks and geese!

Bug loves the outdoors and especially beautiful flowers so I couldn't resist using the idea I found at: Fun at Home with Kids blog to give her the opportunity to create a daisy garden! We also discussed the four needs that plants have and the basic parts of a flower. She loved making a bird out of the left-over flower petals!

Bug also learned about the sight word "I" and practiced counting syllables this week using these great printables and more at: This Reading Mama!

I love for Bug to practice handwriting but I always try to make sure it is fun! So, we discussed her favorite things that start with the letter /d/, she traced the letter /D/ and I wrote the rest. Of course, Dora and Doc Mcstuffins made it to the top!

Little Man enjoying lunch during Preschool time!

Bug earned a dolphin box for a reward this week which she gladly colored purple! We also read a wonderful book this week called "I am Dolphin: The Life of a Bottlenose Dolphin" by Darlene R. Stille which tells about the daily life and activities of a bottle nosed dolphin from the perspecitive of a dolphin! Bug learned all about dolphin communication including echo-location!! She loved nodding her heard up and down to pretend she was a mommy dolphin telling her baby dolphin to stop what she was doing. We read a cute, funny little book about dog called. We also plowed through our Sonlight books this week and enjoyed them thoroughly too! Our letter /d/ movie this week was 101 Dalmation and Bug was completely fascinated and entertained buy this fun filled movie!

I love hands-on learning and this dough project was the ideal fit for our letter /d/ week! Bug learned about fractions as we measured the ingredients for the dough, fine motor skills as we painted and practiced comparing and contrasting the different play-doh ornaments she created! We found the idea to make homemade play-doh and leaf impressions at The Imagination Tree blog. After we finished making the leaf impressions and hypothesizing about the type of tree it came from, Bug asked to use the remainder of the dough to make Christmas ornaments. Of course, I couldn't resist this sweet little smile! Afterwards, she enjoyed carefully coloring each ornament. It was a wonderful activity and so easy!

We had a fun "What begins with letter /d/?" scavenger hunt! We used a cute, free printable from Confessions of A Homeschooler for our letter /d/ hunt! She has a wealth of ideas for each letter of the alphabet perfect for preschool and I couldn't love her site more! We also used the free printable dinosaur cards with numbers from her site to practice number recognition and fine motor skills.

I am so looking forward to sharing about /E/ week! We had a blast making Easter eggs, going on egg hunts and much, much more!

Loving these Preschool times!

I loved letter C week because it involved so much sugar! :) We started our week by making yummy cupcakes with cat decorations! Our theme this week for Sonlight is generosity so we packed a bunch of our cupcakes up and gave them to a new friend! Our verse for this week was 2 Corinthians 9:7: "God loves a cheerful giver" so this was a perfect time to share and "Be doers of the word" as the Bible says in James 1:22.

Bug loved cleaning the dishes too!

Our C week corresponded perfectly with Bug's friend's birthday party because they went on carousel rides, rode on the caboose of a train and ate delicious cupcakes!

We also had cotton ball races by balancing the cotton ball on a spoon and running down to a pillow and dumping them out! Little Man had fun trying to put the cotton-ball on the spoon too! Afterwards, I had Bug pick up each cotton ball out of her bowl with tongs (to practice fine motor skills).while counting the cotton balls by 2s. I loved this activity because it integrated math, gross and fine motor skills and lots of giggles! We couldn't help but have a cotton-ball fight afterwards!

Bug also learned to differentiate between a few of the types of clouds this week! We found a wonderful activity and free printable at the Wise Nest. I love that homeschooling also truly helps me to broaden my scope of knowledge too! Bug and I have been identifying types of clouds all week! We have learned about Cumulus, Stratus, Cirrus, Cumulonimbus and Cumulocirrus clouds!

Another fun, hands-on way we learned about clouds this week was through this simple science experiment found here: Growing a Jeweled Rose. After you added enough blue dye, the cloud actually looked like it was precipitating which simply captivated my sweet, little girl! It also gave me another great opportunity to reinforce our previous lesson regarding the process of evaporation, condensation and precipitation!

Our movie for this week was Cinderella of course! We have incorporated an ample amount of pretend play through watching the various scenes in the movie and acting them out. Bug also loved dressing up as Cinderella too and asked me to refer to her as Cinderella on more than a few occasions! We also wrote a few things that Cinderella loves to do on a sheet of paper and attributes of her as well. I wrote dashes for her to trace which allowed Bug to practice writing the letter /C/ several times.

My Little Cinderella!

But in my eyes she doesn't need a costume,

she has always been and always will be a beautiful princess and blessing from God!

Sherriff Callie is definitely Bug's favorite Disney show right now- so we had to make a Callie craft! We used tortillas for the ears, purple ribbons for the whiskers, pink construction paper for her cowgirl hat and Cheerios for the eyes.

We also had a Crazy clothes wearing day!

We also made a Cross using contact paper and colored tissue paper. I found this idea at Happy Home Fairy

One of our favorite letter C activities by far was feeding carrots to Bingo, the horse! Little Man and Bug love animals of all shapes and sizes so this was definitely a highlight of our week! They also loved "catching" fish and a "collecting" bugs!

Bug feeding Bingo carrots!

Little Man loved throwing carrots into the horses pen!

First catch of the day which was definitely accompanied by squeals of joy!

Little Man was very excited about his sister's big catch!

Bug really wanted to keep her earthworm!

Bug caught 2 grasshoppers which came to live at our house in our bug cage!

And C week would not be complete without a cute little cowboy!

I love moving our classroom outdoors to enjoy God's beautiful creation! This week we joined our homeschool groups nature study which I couldn't be more excited about! The emphasis on our study this month is trees. We were asked to pick one tree and identify all of it attributes that distinguish it from other trees. Bug learned the meaning of circumference and measured the circumference using a tape measure too. I love that Bug was so inquisitive about the difference between our trees bark versus our older oak tree. I loved learning about the way bark changes as a tree matures through research on the internet! As each season passes, we will also study how the leaves on our tree change and any other significant differences. I am thrilled to start meeting with our group each month!

Bug measuring the circumference of our tree while Little Man makes his get-away.....

to the dirt- of course! :)

I love the sweetness of this picture as Bug makes leaf impressions with her colors!

We also made a cute little Caterpillar craft using the letter C! We found the idea at Confessions of A Homeschooler.

I just loved these play-doh letter printables that I found at "This Reading Mama".

And what C week would be complete without a circus act or two?

We also made a very homemade Carriage! I taped three pieces of construction paper together and taped them on to a bin and used a dowel rod to keep them upright! We used balloons for wheels and dowels rods for the "tug". We also studied the different parts of a carriage and picked out our favorite looking carriage among images on the Internet! She loved pretending her stuffed horse was "Clementine" from Sheriff Callie and pulling the carriage with her. Bug also made a crown for Clementine!

Our Carriage- up-close!

In our Sonlight program, we are reading the book "The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book." This week we enjoyed the suggested activity that accompanied this story. We acted out the story by making our own den and Bug, Noah and I took turns switching roles. The main character was a tiger and Bug and Little Man made the cutest little tiger faces!

Of course, we couldn't skip doing activities for literacy from This Reading Mama with all of the great printables that she provides! Bug learned the sight word "see" this week and learned to write the letter P too. Bug enjoyed the "see" word-find and the "see" poke page! She also practiced reading all of her new sight words! We also did a rhyming activity that including cutting and pasting. It is such a blessing to see how much she is growing in her literacy skills.