Spray, Squirt, and Splatter Paint

Yesterday, I taped a large sheet of paper to the back fence and gave the kiddos spray bottles with orange and yellow paint.

As they were busy I heard the words spray, splat, splatter, squirt. ALL Ss words for our Ss art work.

Afterwards, Aidman said "it looks like fireworks, BOOM!" And it really did, I think I might let them do it again at the end of the week using blue and red paint.

They LOVED this project!! As you can see, they got VERY messy so I was glad that we wore cover ups (Daddy's old t-shirts).

After the painting dried, I cut it into more manageable pieces and drew circles and Stripes on it.

The kiddos cut on the lines.

Then they glued the stripes to the circles.

It made beautiful SUNS!!

WHOOPS! Muffin Tin Monday

Today Lyssy woke up asking for pancakes. I just couldn't pull it together in order to make it for breakfast. So I decided to make it for Muffin Tin Monday since I THOUGHT there was no theme this week, but I am wrong the theme is actually Patriotic (maybe I'll do that tomorrow).

I rememberd several muffin tinners making mini pancakes to put in their tins, but the more I thought about it the more that seemed like a real pain to get the pancakes that small. So I asked Lyssy if we could have waffles instead. Thankfully, she said yes.

We had waffles, leftover egg casserole, syrup, blueberries, and orange juice.

The kiddos loved dipping the waffles into the syrup.

ALL GONE!

Ss Lessons

We are SO happy to be getting back to our letter of the week, we all really missed the routine of it during our 2 week break. That said, I am Seriously overwhelmed by the amount of words and activities that can be done with the letter Ss. It really could be spread out over 2 or 3 weeks, but we will just have to save much of it for another time. Here is what we are doing this week.


Art:
-Star Stickers on Letter Ss

- Spray painting, cut dried art into sun

- Sponge painting

- Cutting with Scissors (TTT)

-Stamps (TTT)

Science:

-Straw/blowing races

-5 Senses- focusing on sense of smell and hearing sounds

-4 Seasons- focusing on Spring and Summer

Math:

-Sorting Shapes (TTT)

-Straw Lacing (TTT)

-Shallow/deep, Small/large

-Sort Seashells (TTT)

-Skittle Graphing

Cooking:

-Stone Soup

-Salad

-Spaghetti

-Sandwiches

Movement/Outside:

-Skip

-Simon Says

-Slide

-Spin

-Kick Soccer

Sensory Table:

-Sand

-Shaving Cream

-Scrubbing Stuff with Soap and Sponge

-Shredded paper

Table Top Toys (also known as work boxes or activity boxes):

Listed above as TTT

Literacy:

-Sing Songs

-Ss Tongue Twisters

Other Ss words:

silly

sock

snack

shoe

seven

sky

super

spider

story

snail

safe

snake

silence

serious

sift

spread

sticky

sensitive

suck

slurp

special

space

seal

squish

scallops

shrimp

squash

strawberry

shut

shirt

squirrel

sail

sneeze

squiggle

seed

snow

shake

salt

skeleton

sink

send

My Little Fish!

I'm so PROUD of my little swimmer. After just 2 weeks of ISR training, he is completely swimming on his own! He can even save himself if he falls in the pool wearing winter clothing (he was tested this way). I HIGHLY recommend doing ISR with your children!! Lyssy starts her training in about 2 weeks.

He is even brave enough to jump off the diving board.

Kids in the Kitchen and Tea Time Thursday

My sister, Sherryberry (I'm sure she's Loves me calling her that) at A Little Fun with me and Lu, has started a GREAT new Blog Carnival!! It's called Kids in the Kitchen!

Ya'll just know how much I love cooking with my kids so I just have to participate in this new carnival. Please join in the fun!!


Today we made Lemon Glazed Candied Ginger Cookies.

I was alittle lazy and impatient, so we didn't put the dough in a disc and refrigerate. Instead, we just made the dough into rounded teaspoons. It turned out perfectly.

I love this picture of Aidman pretending to lick the dough.

Then we joined On a Whimm to have our Tea Time Thursday. We ate our yummy cookies and had some ginger tea.

To make the drink I boiled about half a pot of water and added a handful of candied ginger, juice of a lime, 1/3 cup brown sugar, and then tossed the squeezed lime into it, and let it step and cool for about 10 minutes before straining. It was really yummy, I think it will be even better and more refreshing over ice.

The kiddos loved the cookies.

And the tea.

Tea parties are so much fun!

Seashells from the Seashore

Aidman has been really into shells lately. On Sunday he collected an entire bucket of shells at the beach. Today he sorted them into about 5 different groups. Then I sat down with him and showed him more differences between the shells and we ended up with 10 different types of shells. We found this website and Aidman held the shells up to the computer screen to figure out the names of each shell. I then wrote the names of the shells on a sentence stripe and taped a shell to it so that we could always identify them.

Then Aidman wanted to sort the shells again by putting them on the sentence stripes, Lyssy had fun doing it too.

Then I asked them if they wanted to make chimes with their shells. I had seen this at Read 'Em and Leap and thought it was super cute. The only problem we had was that after it dried, our washable tempera painted flaked off the bowl while I was trying to tie on the strings.

The thing that surprised, impressed, and made me proud the most was that all of this AWESOME learning was prompted and led by Aidman, but I guess the best learning is always child led.

Muffin Tin Monday, Copy Cat Style

This has GOT to be the cutest Muffin Tin Monday I have ever done!! The theme today was to copy someones past muffin tin creation. I just LOVED A Bit Of This and A Bit of That's rendition of The Three Little Pigs.

My kids LOVED that I used their food to tell a story. The also loved that they had permission to play with their food.

I WISH I could have gotten a picture of the amazement on their faces while I told the story. This was a GREAT success!!

Once upon a time there were 3 little pigs, the first little pig decided to build his house of omelet straw, the big bad white bread wolf said "come out or I'll blow your house down". The little pig said "Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin". So the wolf huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down, luckily the little pig was fast and ran to the 2nd little pigs house.

The 2nd little pig built his house of carrot sticks, the big bad white bread wolf came along and said "come out or I'll blow your house down". And the 2nd little pig replied "not by the hair on my chinny chin chin". So the big bad wolf huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down, again the little pigs managed to escape and went to the third little pigs house.

The 3rd little pig was a clever and he built his house out of cheese bricks. The big bad white bread wolf came along and once again said "come out or I'll blow your house down". And the 3rd little pig said "NOT be the hair on my chinny chin chin!" So the wolf huffed and he puffed and he huffed and he puffed, but he couldn't blow the house down.

So the unlucky big bad white bread wolf became a vegetarian and went home for a nice big bowl of salad. The three little pigs lived happily ever after eating cookies and sipping glasses of milk.
The End.

Happy Daddy Day!

Today was all about celebrating our special Daddy!!

We were supposed to go to the beach yesterday with some friends. We were on our way there when our car started overheating badly, so we had to turn around and come home. Daddy found out that the radiator had a crack in it. Being his Mr. Fix It self, he fixed it. So, we decided to go to the beach today!

The kiddos let Daddy sleep in until 9am. Then they woke him up with cards and picture frames they had made for him. Then we made our way to our favorite beach.

Daddy and Lyssy getting ready to use her new boogie board.

Aidman splashing Daddy.

Nothing better than watermelon on a hot day!

Always caught taking big bites!

The water was alittle rougher than normal at first.

I LOVE these two!!

Lyssy copying Mommy's every move.

Aidman on his boogie board, he did really good.

Riding cars around in the water.

When we got home we made Daddy a special cookie, he loves these and with good reason because they are SO yummy.

Big Cookie

1/2 c butter

3/4 c brown sugar

3 TBS white sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg

1 1/2 c flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 c chocolate chips

Beat wet ingredients until creamy. Mix in sifted dry ingredients. Add in chocolate chips. Spread on a greased pizza pan. Bake at 325 for 30- 35 minutes.


Head over to ABC and 123's Picnic Table Talk to find out how others spent their Father's Day.

Messy Playdate

It has been a busy and mentally draining week for me!! To break it up a little and add some fun, we had a Messy Playdate! I invited 10 moms (with about 20 kids) into our backyard to get messy. Each mom came bearing an edible item (so that if the kids ate it it wouldn't do them any harm). While it was TONS of fun, there was also TONS of learning going on... sensory, math, science, practical life.


Here is AB playing in a kiddie pool of flour.

Dried beans.

AB is playing in oats.

Homemade koolaide playdough.

Lyssy decorated her own cookie at the decorating station.

Aidman fingerpainting with pudding and whip cream.

Ice.

Uncooked pasta.

Cooked pasta.

Lyssy is playing in uncooked rice. We also had cooked rice that I didn't get a picture of.

Cornstarch. They played with it dry for a while, then they added water.

Then Aidman started stirring it as other friends added pasta, oats, flour, rice, ice, and beans to it.

It made a DISGUSTING concoction, but Aidman sat and stirred it for at least an hour. He LOVED it and kept saying that he was cooking and would put it in the oven for everyone to eat.

The kiddos all kept cool and more messy in the kiddie pool and sprinkler. It was SUPER messy and SUPER fun!!