Tot School: Farm Frenzy

We had a couple of short weeks so we made our Farms theme last for 2 weeks instead of just 1. If you missed the farm tray post you can find it here for more details about the trays (and other trays that might not be included in this recap).

Asa working on the vegetable garden activity.
How Many Spots counting tray.
On the farm/Not on the farm tray sort. Apparently I only took pictures Asa one day this theme. lol
Working with the farm patterning animals.
Outlining the letter Gg with stickers. This boy is obsessed with stickers.
We also started Saxon Math K this last week. He has really enjoyed it. He is always begging me for more school work to do.
It's a trap....for the boy and girl that keep stealing the kids toys. Explanation: When the kids can't find one of their toys (because they misplaced them) they blame it on a little boy and girl that come to our house when they aren't looking and take all their things. :)
The next lesson we worked with exploring counting bears.
Silas really enjoyed the color sorting tray this week.
The magnets were another one of his favorites.
I was surprised that he worked on this veggie garden activity for so long. I was even more surprised to find that he was matching the numbers on them! Yes, this boy can apparently count to 11 without missing a number. When he picked that up I have no idea.....kids are pretty amazing.
Silas did his farm puzzles.....and then one by one threw them off the table. He is such a stinker....and LOVES to makes messes.
This was by far his favorite tray. He loved matching his farm Little People to the vocabulary cards.
He also really enjoyed his dot markers....of course.

I got this cute idea from Honey Bee Books. I saved up some milk jugs and then the kids painted them and turned them into farm animals....


They are supposed to be a cow, pig and a horse.....the pig lost an ear...but he does have a cute little curly cue tail that you can't see in this picture.
Silas really enjoyed playing with these while they lasted (....about 25min. lol).
The boys had a fun time with farm themed sponge capsules.

I laid them out to dry and then we painted with them a couple of days later.


Good times. We are taking it easy this week. We'll be doing a couple of Thanksgiving activities but not much else besides that. If I don't get back before Thursday the happiest of Thanksgiving's to all of you! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking to 1+1+1=1

Woodlands: Porcupines & Deer

We had 2 short weeks here so our lessons for those weeks kind of got combined together. We are in the Woodlands now and are really enjoying it. There are a LOT of outdoor activities in this unit. I wish we had gotten to it a little sooner than what we did.

We started out discussing what types of animals live in a woodland environment. These were the animals that Annabelle came up with.
We talked some about porcupines. I made chocolate play dough (which didn't turn out quite right...oh well) and she used it, toothpicks, and google eyes to make a porcupine.
We think it turned out quite cute!
Then in honor of hunting season we discussed deer (actually it is really just a coincidence...deer was the next scheduled animal). :) Fun conversation we had about deer:
Me: Annabelle what are deer antlers for?
Annabelle: Wrestling for girls
Me: Good listening!
Annabelle: Mommy, if they share the girls they wouldn't have to wrestle.
(Awkward silence as I try to think about what to say to that lol).

Working on her animal notebook with the great lapbooking components from Homeschool Share.
Finished deer lap book.

We are also talking a lot about trees right now too. This is our "Tree" that we are going to be observing throughout the year. It is right in our back yard. I kind of like this tree. When we first moved to this house the leaves were all spotted and ugly. In the fall the leaves would just turn brown and fall off. Then this summer I noticed there were hardly any little black spots on the leaves. It turned a very gorgeous shade of yellow this year! I was pretty excited about it. Someone told me it is probably getting better because we've been taking care of the yard and raking the leaves away from it the past 2 years. I like to think that it is getting healthier in our care. :)
We did some bark rubbing on the trees in our yard.
We also picked up a couple of leaves from our tree and did some leaf rubbings....so pretty....I do not know why we haven't done this before.
Doing math and LOVING every minute of it!
My favorite part of the last couple weeks? Teaching Annabelle how to wash dishes. She has done this 3 times in the past couple weeks. It will be nice when she's good enough at it that I don't have to inspect every dish she washes (by then she won't want to do dishes anymore lol).
Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Linking up to Preschool Corner

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

....just add glow sticks. :) This idea has been all over blog world lately. I've been wanting to try it and last night was the perfect night for it. While Annabelle was off at her dance class the boys had a fun glow in the dark bath.
If you can't see Silas' face well enough look closer (or maybe brighten the screen or something)....he is positively giddy with excitement....you can see him much better on my camera.
They thought that this was the coolest thing ever. They played so nice for such a long time....and there weren't even buckets of water on the floor of the bathroom afterwords. Such a cheap, fun, way to make a 'chore' so exciting.....I got the glow sticks at the Dollar Tree (they have them all year round cause apparently every day is a glow stick day!). Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Garage Sale Christmas

If that is not the most red-neck sounding blog post title I don't know what is. The only redeeming factor is that I don't know if red-necks write blogs. lol Anyway, if you've read my blog for a significant length of time you may know that I LOVE garage saling. If you didn't know that about me now you do....if you would like to see some of my conquests this summer just visit the garage sale tab under my labels.

We were very fortunate to be able to find excellent gifts for all of my kids this year from garage sales. I wanted to see what shopping for Christmas would look like for my littles if I did it all second hand. I'm pretty excited about their gifts!

This is an entire Sweet Streets collection from Fisher Price. I was breathless when I saw it sitting there in a HUGE tote (which came with it) at that garage sale. It wasn't even a sale on my list to stop at! I was ready and willing to pay up to $50 for all of this stuff. I asked the lady how much she wanted for it (yeah ....one of those sales where they don't price anything). When she responded $15 I almost said out loud, "ARE YOU CRAZY??" Instead I said, "Ummm....I'm going to pay you for that right this second before I even look around anymore."
I was delighted to get this home and find that it is in pristine condition. Absolutely like new.... (this is the hotel and the grand mansion)
AND all but 2 pieces are accounted for!! Beauty Salon/Pet Shop, Candy store/Dance Studio
Country cottage/Beach House
School/School Bus
Horse drawn carriage/Ice Cream Truck, and the floormat too! This will actually be Annabelle's only present from us since it is such a HUGE amount of stuff.
These little Kelly Dolls will be in her stocking. We don't really do Santa (not that I think there is anything wrong with him), but we still do stockings....they were my favorite growing up....my parents did AWESOME stockings.
This little one is my favorite with her red hair and freckles. :) $5 for all!
This mini beanies will be in her stocking too....ladybug, cats, butterfly. She loves little things like this. $1.00 She will also get a toothbrush, jammies, and I'm thinking about Hot Dots OR Bob books too.
I actually bought this Little Leaps a couple years ago at a garage sale. I think I paid $10. I forgot about it and then just remembered it again this year. I am also looking into getting a couple more games for it off of Ebay. Asa really enjoys computer games and watching people play video games so this will be a lot of fun for him (plus, they can use it to control netflix!)
Geo Trax were by far our most expensive purchase this year. I found a huge 'main city' set for $15...it came with trains, people, fire station, train terminal, and some extra vehicles. At another sale I found a Western type one for $10 that came with another train....
...that same day I found this cool airplane one for $8. I was pretty happy. Everything is clean and in working order. I asked Zak to set it all up for the pictures, but he politely refused and said that he would not set it up to just take it apart again. lol :)
Silas is going to have a blast with these Shake n' Crash cars by Fisher Price. I believe I paid $15 for this (note to self: these will need new batteries!).
Silas is adores puzzles. We've asked for a lot of these for Christmas and also got him a couple ourselves. Two of them are from the Target Dollar Spot. The Tonka Truck book I got for $1 or $2 at a garage sale. It is brand new and every page is a 12 piece puzzle.
This Clip-on table will be fun for him too. I really think that he will enjoy building on it. It is in new condition. In fact the lady I bought it from said that her little one never touched it. I got it for $5.
This little guy was .25. He is in grand condition. He will be part of Silas' stocking.

So, yup....that's it. I think that we did pretty good. Just have to figure out stockings...and those are always fun for me. :)
Kids Christmas Total (minus stockings): $87.25!!!! Our budget last year was $100 per kid (including stocking items). This is quite a savings! I may be cheap, but will kids will never know the difference (at least not this young any way lol). Happy blogging!

jess_hak