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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Having Fun Learning

Having Fun Learning Together This Week!!!

Emily is 4.5 years old and Juliette is 26 months old

This week Emily started trying to write words.  She has been sounding them out for awhile now and this week she decided she was going to make some of her own.  She makes the sounds of the words and then writes them down.  She mixes up the order of some of the letters but is really doing a great job with it.  I keep encouraging her and following her lead with most of the literacy activities we are doing.  I don’t want to frustrate her so right now we are working at her pace and with what she is interested in. 

Juliette spent the week doing puzzles, playing games with Emily and reading lots of books.  By far her favorite thing to do is use the scissors to cut paper.  She is doing amazing with this and she really just wants to cut all the time.  I make sure I am always with her and watching her.  I actually moved the scissors from the easy to reach place we usually store them to a hidden location because she will help herself to them, and a toddler walking around with a pair of scissors is a scary thing if you ask me!

  We had another fun trip to the Suffolk County Farm and Education Center for a friend’s Birthday Party.   The girls were able to feed the animals and we went on a tractor ride to a pumpkin patch to pick some pumpkins. Emily and Juliette loved using stickers and markers to decorate their pumpkins.Emily and her pumpkin.

Juliette and her pumpkin…I love the sideways face!

We went upstate to go apple picking and there was another place to feed some animals.  I think it is so funny that at the beginning of the summer Juliette was terrified of feeding the animals and now she can’t get enough!

Apple Picking…we have a bushel of apples just waiting to be turned into lots of yummy apple treats!

Emily and Juliette found my flute.  Juliette just wanted to hold the whole thing and make her own sounds.  Emily let me show her how to hold just the mouth piece and blow over the hole.  She still has to practice it, but she was very determined to get a sound out of it! The girls helped me make some corn bread to go with the Chili we were having for dinner.  Both Emily and Juliette with drop whatever they are doing to help me bake something.  The took turns scooping, pouring and mixing. For some fine motor skill practice and open ended art Emily and Juliette made some fall color mosaics.  I gave them each a piece of green construction paper and little pieces of brown, yellow, red and orange construction paper and a bottle of glue.  They both had fun putting the pieces onto the glue.

Our Wooden Block Set has become a favorite toy around here.  Emily loves creating different castles and Juliette loves knocking them down!  I think we will be adding another set onto our Christmas Wish List :)

We read One Red Apple and made this great apple to apple tree craft.  Emily loved the poem that went with it and had fun putting it together.

As I mentioned earlier, Juliette LOVES using her scissors.  She colored this picture in and said “Ready for scissors” went to the drawer and got them out and started to cut.  I sat with her while she worked on it.  She cut lots of little pieces and then worked on cutting the paper in half.  Once she was finished I found a new place to store (hide) the scissors.  She was not happy about this when she went to go look for them and they were not there!

Emily completed this Melissa & Doug Underwater Wooden 48 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle earlier in the day and then Juliette decided it was her turn.  She asked me to help her every once in awhile, but was able to find most of the pieces herself.  I think she called me over just because she likes me to watch her.

  Emily loves this Tangoes Jr. set, she can do all the level 2 cards and gets so excited about figuring them out.  Juliette was working on the other side of them, which has the outlines for the pieces and she has to match them.

Juliette worked on this Melissa & Doug Sort and Snap Color Match .  She was making this fish for Daddy.  Once she was finished she liked turning it upside down and popping the pieces out one at a time.  This is a great color activity and fine motor skills practice.

 

Emily played Trouble with Daddy.  This was great fine motor skills practice, one to one correspondence and number recognition.  We love Trouble!!

Emily worked on this pattern page which was on the back of her Scholastic News from school.   She was excited to use the set of 24 colored pencils I found in the basement with my school supplies!

 

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