Leaves & A Picnic in the Park

In Katelyn's birthday package from her grandparents, there was a leaf book for both her and Brooklyn that Kyle's mom made. 

The girls enjoyed looking at the books and I thought it might be fun and timely to do a unit on leaves.  We got a few books from the library that were leaf themed and did a bunch of worksheets that incorporated leaves.


I thought it would be fun to do a craft gluing leaves onto a wreath and have the girls collect the leaves.  We took a walk to the park and the girls collected leaves on the way.

Picking up brown leaves.

As you can see from this picture, most trees still have their leaves

Watching her sisters play.

Katelyn wanted me to take her pic after she climbed up the slide the entire way (we were the only kids at the playground).

Brooklyn headed up the slide.

Always happy.

Picnic time!

My reading materials while the kids were on the playground.  If you know me at all, you know what kid I am reading this for. ;-)

It was a beautiful day.


We made the wreaths the next week.  They didn't turn out too great as we do live in SoCal and don't really have much variation in leaf color other than green and brown :-).  But it was still a fun learning experience.

I had good intentions of doing a Thanksgiving unit after the leaf unit, but I ran out of time.

Pumpkins and Halloween

This post is a little out of order, but I have had a few requests for the Halloween pictures, so here is my Halloween post.

I thought it would be fun to do a pumpkin unit for preschool as there are tons of materials available with that theme.  We did several days of work with the pumpkin theme, then did a craft and carved our pumpkins for Halloween.

Katelyn working on her 'word families.'

Brookie gluing her little puzzles.

Making pumpkins crafts.

Carving their pumpkins.  A BIG highlight.

The cutest onlooker.

Seed scoopers.

Daddy working on the faces.

The final products!

We cooked our pumpkin seeds. (They learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin during preschool.)  The seeds on the left were supposed to be garlic flavor, but the got a little burnt.  The ranch ones in the pan turned out really tasty.

I made a pumpkin pie cake that the girls enjoyed.

Minnie & Cinderella!

Minnie, Cinderella & Super Cute Baby!

Our friends came over again for trick-or-treating!  So fun for the kids.

The kids are still eating their candy, they made a haul even though it didn't seem like that many people were handing out candy.  There must have been some generous givers.  I don't try to make a huge deal about the actual Halloween day as it is not my favorite holiday, but the girls absolutely love it and it is fun for them to dress up.  We only had 3 kids come to our door this year and Katelyn was sooooooo disappointed that she didn't get to hand out candy before she went to bed.  For some reason our neighborhood was super quiet this year (although this makes Kyle happy as he gets to eat all the candy I bought).  We might have to try somewhere else next year.

Preschool Update - Insects, Reading, and Other activities

Tomorrow is one week away from the due date.  I was really hoping our little one would be here by now.  Still waiting . . . .



We have taken a temporary break from doing any units for preschool, instead using some animal books that we have and random things I have found on Pinterest, etc. after Katelyn's reading lessons.  I just haven't felt up to organizing a full unit and related crafts and books after we did the Easter unit.  We have still been trying to do reading lessons a few days a week with a couple other small activities, including a new kids devotional we have done a couple lessons in. 


INSECTS
Earlier this spring (before Easter), we did a unit on Insects.  It took us 2 weeks to get through the materials as there are a lot of preschool packets on the internet for insects.  Here are a few of the worksheets the girls worked on.  I find these for free on the internet.

At the top of this photo are the picture we reviewed each day.  The other items are activities that both of the girls did together.

Some of Brooklyn's work.  She is getting good at size identification colors, and drawing along the lines.

Here are some of Katelyn's worksheets.  She did the wordsearch by herself and was also able to identify the name of the bugs without me reading them to her.  She is also starting math, which she seems to like and uses regularly.

One afternoon we went for a walk and the girls took along their magnifying glass to look for insects.  We had fun.

 

 

 We read a story book at the end of each lesson, but we also studied this book about specific types of insects at the beginning of each day.  The kids seemed to enjoy both.

We also did a couple of crafts.  Caterpillars and Butterflies.

Brooklyn's on left, Katelyn's on right.  Still trying to master the matching of the 2 sides on a butterfly.

The girls still talk about the different types of insects and have memorized the body parts, etc.  This unit was definitely a success.

READING LESSONS

Well, we haven't finished the reading book yet.  It has 100 lesson and we are on 84 now.  However, I am starting to feel like it is not really worth finishing because Katelyn is reading EVERYTHING.  It has been a great book overall.  She really caught on about halfway through and ran with it.  I do still plan to finish the book as some trickier sounds still need to be addressed, etc, however, her reading is already great!  She is reading books like The Cat in the Hat, Level 1 storybooks and she always follows along with the words whenever we read to her.  She also reads my blog aloud.  Actually though, she seems to have already grasped the idea of reading in her head.  (Maybe some mommy bragging in this paragraph, but I am pretty proud of her.)

Here is a pic of the story at the end of her most recent reading lesson, just to give you and idea of what she can read.

OTHER PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES

As I mentioned above, I have been finding other small items to work on while we are not doing specific units.  Here are the kids working on some other items.

CRAFT TIME

We also recently attempted putting glue and sand on paper to see what we could make.  Brooklyn really enjoyed it and did several pages.  

It will probably be a little while before I am up to doing too much more that is incredibly organized. 

Christmas 2013 (Part 1)

Although it was 3 months ago, I can't pass up posting our Christmas photos and activities.

As usual, we headed to Home Depot down the road to pick up a Christmas tree from their tree lot.   Since we were having out of town guests this year, we decided to get a larger tree than we have had in the past.  On a side note - Katelyn remembers everything.  She was disappointed that this year they did not have one of those wooden cutouts that she could poke her head through to take a picture of as she did last year.  At first we couldn't figure out what she was talking about, but as usual, she was telling the truth.

Playing in an empty tree bin area.

Daddy's helpers.

My goofballs by the decorated tree.  I bummed that this turned out so blurry.

Katelyn is in her 2nd year of Sunday School and they do a program each year a week or two before Christmas at the beginning of the Sunday church service.  She did great!  She knew her songs and sang them.  What a change from a year ago when she knew every word but refused to sing a word the entire program.  This was also the first time that Brooklyn sat in 'big church.'  She didn't last the whole service, but she did well for a little while.

My sweetheart.

Practicing in the morning before church (Katelyn is in the middle of this picture).

I had a cousin in town from Nicaragua, so we had our Christmas party with my mom's side of the family early in December.  This is how we celebrate Christmas in California ;-) - short sleeves and outside playing cornhole.

Brookie & her cousin Micah.

I made this for my girlies (thanks again Pinterest for the idea).  They got quite a bit of use out of it.  It did detract them from the real tree a little bit.  It is felt and then can move anything where ever they want.

We also made another trip to the public library for their 'Winter Wonderland.'  It wasn't near as good as the Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom presentation, but the girls still had fun.

Decorating ornaments with stickers.

Katelyn showing off her ornament.

Listening to the story.

Our first introduction to a parachute.  Katelyn loved it.  Brooklyn was afraid to go under it.

Decorating snow cone Christmas trees.  They also loved eating them.

Santa came for a surprise visit, which is confusing because we don't really do the whole Santa thing in our house, but that was about half of the time they had planned at the Library.  Brooklyn was unwilling to go near him.

The next post will include actual Christmas and the visitors who came to see us!