Week in Review

The end of another great week here at our house. We have been able to get most everything accomplished that I've wanted to do for two weeks straight now! That in and of itself is amazing. We are slowly but surely catching up on our alphabet. I am completely amazed with Asa who can identify almost every letter in the alphabet. I have no idea where he picked up the incredible talent. Maybe it was all because of Super Why. lol And Annabelle is getting closer to being able to count perfectly to the number 15! Still having issues with the numbers 13 & 14 (she thinks they are one in the same and not two separate numbers).

Working hard on our letter Jj activities. This day we had fun with jellybeans with printouts from Confessions of a Homeschooler.
We also worked on our letter to hang on our alphabet wall. J is for jellyfish.
Here is the finished project. I think it turned out cute, and Annabelle really likes the pink jellyfish. Who am I kidding, if broccoli were pink she'd eat it. :)

We had a fun visit from Great Grandpa and Grandma Cummins this week. They hadn't seen Zak since he arrived back from Korea and the kids and I didn't get down there around Christmas time so they had a Christmas on Saturday. It was a nice visit and the gifts were wonderful. The kids played with them the whole afternoon! They love their new Melissa and Doug art easel! They were regular Picassos.
This was one of our fun Bible lessons this week. We talked about how King Saul was very sad and David played praise music and it made King Saul very happy. The paper plates represent King Saul as happy and sad. During the story they listened for the words sad and happy and would hold up the correct paper plate. We also did a cute word song with the paper plates too. I don't know what Asa thought the crowns were supposed to be, maybe hair. lol
This jellybean sorting activity was a HUGE hit. It can be found here.
Look at that concentration. I don't know if it's concentration for actual sorting, or just trying not to eat the jellybeans during the activity.
They both really enjoyed this Jar Twist activity that I put together for them. They worked with these most of an afternoon one day. Annabelle's favorite was of course the pink jar.


Asa really enjoys these pattern blocks from Melissa and Doug. We got these for Christmas and they didn't have the green triangles in the package. We finally got our replacement with green triangles included. Asa was excited as you can see.
One of his favorite activities this week was cutting. He would color on paper and then cut it into little shreds. To make this less messy I have him cut onto that green craft tray that you see next to him. This eliminates most of the mess on the floor.
We had a lot of fun with the Silly Faces game from Discovery Toys. I set the cards and the mirror out on the tray and he copied the faces that were on the cards. This was a complete riot. I love this little series of pictures.
He called this one the naughty face.
....and this one the happy face.
Silas wasn't feeling too good at the beginning of the week. He insisted on sitting in this chair with the puzzle while watching Super Why. For anyone who is curious he did do the puzzle over and over again the whole time he sat there.
Did I mention that he loves his books!
His new favorite of the week.
He loves this little jar! Thankfully, it is pretty durable. I think he really likes that he can take the lid on and off by himself. He actually thought up this activity all by himself one day. The clothespins were on the table in this jar and he got them down, dumped them out and put them back in (taking the lid off and putting it on every time). So I quick grabbed a tray and set it out the rest of the week. It was his favorite for sure this week.

Goliath bowling was a big hit with all the kids. Here are some of my favorite shots from one afternoon of playing.

Silas got a turn with a ball. He thought it was great!
This is what he did most of the time though.
A couple great/cute action shots of Asa. Look at that superb form!

Annabelle helping Silas knock down the pins that the ball missed.
We had ssssooooo much fun this week. To see what other people did this week click on buttons and enjoy! Happy blogging.
jess_hak

Sneak Peek: David, Jj, and Snowman Game Explanation

I almost forgot about my calendar! Well, it's back. We did start this week off yesterday as the date suggests. We've been having major computer problems this last weekend and they're following us into this week. Fortunately Zak is pretty good with these types of things so hopefully the computer will be up and running and back to normal in no time.

This week we are looking into the life of David. Each day we are learning something new about his life. We start off with his life as a shepherd looking after sheep and how he was chosen to sing to King Saul. The next day (today) we will be talking about his friendship with Jonathan. Wednesday we will talk about how he was chosen to be king over all his brothers. Thursday and Friday we will be discussing David and Goliath. Friday we will be watching the Veggie Tales movie: Dave and the Giant Pickle. So many great things to glean from David's life. In these particular stories I hope to touch on friendship, working hard and doing a good job, praise and worship, and God can use anyone no matter how little and seemingly insignificant that person is.

I found these bowling pins at a garage sale this last summer (they are huge!). I thought it would be fun to tape pictures of Goliath on them and use them to bowl the giants down. I think it will be a big hit.
This week we are also diving into the letter Jj. Still a couple of weeks behind in our letters, but we are catching up quickly and will be back on track soon. We are doing a few different activities for the letter Jj. Mostly with jellybeans and jack in the boxes. These cute jelly bean activities can be found here. The activity on the left is matching the top half of the jelly beans with the numbers on them with the bottom half of the jelly bean with the correct number of dots on it. The activity on the left will be done with real jelly beans....yummmm! Annabelle and Asa will both get a pile of jelly beans and will sort them into colors. Each color will then be counted and placed on the graph. Then we will determine which color had the most and which color had the least.
This is an activity that I made. I painted jars all different colors and then painted the corresponding lids with the same color. The object is to find the lids to put on the jars.


I posted a picture of Asa playing this snowman button game yesterday and said that I would quick post an explanation about it today. So as promised here is the explanation. Remember the snowman and his buttons can be found here.

This is a picture of a card that Asa would draw randomly from a pile. He would then count the dots (he doesn't correctly recognize his numbers quite yet without some help), and find the corresponding amount of shapes from a little bowl that I have them in.....or in this case spread out all over the table because he would dump them all out of the little bowl to rummage through them. :) So the card he drew says 3 hexagons, so the snowman gets three hexagons. Simple enough right?
This is an example of the card sets that I made for each of the buttons. I do not intend to make him go through all of the cards. Asa plays until he gets bored and then moves onto something else. You would also not have to put all the shapes available in the game at one time, or all the numbers available for that matter.
Well, that is our week in a nutshell. Hope the snowman pictures cleared up any questions. I have a tendency to over complicate simple explanations. Happy blogging.

jess_hak