Having Fun Learning

Having Fun Learning Together This Week!!!

Emily is 4.5 years old and Juliette is 27months old

Emily and Juliette are really enjoying helping me watch their cousin who is 12 weeks old.  He fits right in with them and both Emily and Juliette look forward to having him come over.  The girls have been keeping busy with lots of different activities while I am with the baby.  They play nicely together and so far it has been working out really well.

The girls liked coloring in a different spot.  I let them bring their papers and markers onto the floor in the living room, the change of location made this activity a little different and they thought it was fun.

Juliette has enjoyed having some quiet time in her room, when I went to check on her she was quietly “reading” her books.  I often find this bookcase completely empty after she has “read” through all of them and left them in a huge pile on the floor!  She is such little bookworm, just like Emily :)

  Juliette loves helping feed her baby cousin.

Emily enjoyed dressing up her Snap 'N Style Doll and making up stories to go with them.  This doll is getting ready to be in a wedding! The highlight of  Emily’s week would have to be getting to use the peeler to help me peel carrots for dinner.

The girls with Grandpa playing Sequence for Kids .  This game is a fun strategy game.  Emily loves playing to block other people, she will block them before putting down her own winning piece.

  Emily relaxing on the couch working on her Lauri Toys Dot-2-Dot Lacing Enchanted Kingdom cards.  These are lacing cards that have numbers on them like a connect the dots puzzle.  She has to begin at #1 and lace through to the last number in order.

Emily found and cut out pictures in a magazine that began with the letter A

Juliette has really enjoyed building with Duplos she has been creating some really great structures.  Usually she just fills the whole board with one layer, now she is building up to make some tall towers.

After making our Water Color Leaves for our stART project the girls had fun exploring with the liquid watercolors and diffuser paper a little more.

Great fine motor practice with theseMelissa & Doug DeluxeLacing Beads   

Juliette played Perfection .  She requests this game a couple of times a week.  She does it without the timer and then when she is finished we push the board down set the timer and wait for it to pop up.

Juliette is amazing at Zingo , she has been playing this bingo game almost a year now and every time we play I am amazed at how she seems to barely look at her card yet know exactly what she needs and what I need when we play.  Her favorite part is moving the tile dispenser to show the new tiles.

 

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Having Fun Learning

Having Fun Learning Together This Week!!!

Emily is 4.5 years old and Juliette is 26 months old

This week I started watching my nephew who is only 2 months old.  He will be with us 3 days a week so this first week we spent just getting used to having a baby in the house again!    Emily and Juliette loved helping out with him and showing him with lots of love, hugs and kisses too.  I love that Juliette is getting to experience helping out with a baby the way that Emily did around her age.

While he was napping we were able to fit in some activities, hopefully we will be able to keep up the momentum with all the things we have started and are working on :)

 

The girls enjoyed making Mini Apple Pies.

We  made some leaf prints.  Emily was really into this and picked the leaves she wanted and the colors that she wanted.  Juliette did a few with my help.  She was excited after the first one and then she wanted me to help and then she would rather just play.  Emily Played Memory, What’s Missing?  This is great practice for paying attention to details.  Emily seemed to like the change from the regular game, even though she didn’t always get it right she still wanted to play.

We discovered a Giant Green Squash in our garden.  We thought the vine was a Pumpkin and were very excited to find this!

  For our stART project we read Who Hoots? and made paper plate owls. Our fall sensory bin minus the silk leaves was a huge hit this week.  They asked me to take them out right away, but they loved scooping and pouring with the split peas and popping corn. Emily decided that she would sort the split peas and popping corn!

Emily used apple stickers to make her own patterns.

We used our domino set to make matches.  She loved being able to match every one and see what design it made. Emily colored in the faces for the apples in the Apple Happy Poem.  I plan on doing a poem like this each week so that she can add it into a poetry notebook.  She loved reading it after we were finished.

Juliette wanted to make smiley faces.  I made one for her and she kept trying to copy it.  So far she made a circle shape with lots of dots inside for the eyes and nose and mouth.  She was so excited and I was very proud of her!  At the bottom of the paper she was trying to write her name.  She was asking me to help her.  I guess she sees Emily writing and drawing pictures so she wants to do it too!Juliette liked making pictures with different shapes with  The Learning Journey Match It (Shape Shuffle)  activity.  We talked about the colors and she shapes as she was working.

Using a real knife to cut apples was definitely the highlight of Emily’s week.  We made a regular sized apple pie for dessert and Emily loves trying to use her little knife to cut things.  I said she could help me with her little knife, however once she started to try to use it I noticed it was way to dull and was actually afraid she would get more hurt using that knife.  She did a great job cutting the apples in half for me!

Juliette did a few with my help, but I was obviously unable to get a picture since I wanted to make sure she kept all of her cute little fingers :)

Both Emily and Juliette were also excited to help with slicing and coring the apples.  They each tried one apple.  Emily did it all by herself, Juliette needed my help as soon as I finished taking the picture. We pushed down on it together.  These were both great practical life skills that I hope to practice with them more often.

 

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Memory a New Way

Emily and Juliette have been enjoying using our Mickey Mouse Paint Chips, which we got for free from Home Depot to play the traditional version of Memory.  They turn them upside down and pick to cards until they get a match and repeated.

Emily enjoys it, but I wanted to challenge her to something a little different and came up with…

Memory, What’s Missing?

First I put some of the cards out on the floor

  I told Emily to study them and try to remember what was there. Then she closed her eyes and I took one away.

She had to tell me which one was missing.

She did really well and said the yellow one was missing!!

After a few times we added more cards.  This was harder for her and she would get it right part of the time, but she said it was fun and wanted to keep trying.  We took turns taking the card away and figuring out which one was missing.

We also played it with them in straight lines too.

This was a great way to practice paying attention to details and working on memory.  We talked about noticing patterns, for example in the first set there were 2 of each color.  You can do this with any group of toys to go along with anything you are working on or your little one is interested in.  Next time I think I might take out our little people!!

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