Outdoor Adventures--- Window Paint

Activity

I decided to start with window painting.
I originally was going to use our finger-paints and add soap to it. When I tried it, however, it separated. So we ended up using straight finger-paint.  It wasn’t very bright. I think next time I will use our tempera paint, and water it down with soupy water.

Action Shots

Here are some pictures of Monkey in action.

Here is my Alligator…not participating. He is reading a teacher book of mine about the alphabet…lol…what can I say, he loves anything letters!

We washed the first layer off with the hose, then monkey painted again.

He decided it would be fun to try to wash it off with his water gun!
 

What do I think????

Alligator hated the whole idea. Monkey liked it. It kept him busy for about 10 minutes. But then, he was done.
I wonder if we had used tempera paint if it would have captured his interest more. But I am doubting it!

Will I do it again?

Maybe! I know it won’t keep him busy long, though.
Guess, we’ll try something else.

Outdoor Adventures

~It’s too hot~It’s too cold~It’s too bright~I’m bored~I want to watch TV~

Does any of that sound familiar? This is what I hear whenever I dare try to get my kids outside.

I don’t understand it at all, I loved playing outside when I was a kid. But my rambunctious boys do not enjoy being outside, especially my oldest.

Monkey will do races inside the house. He will happily jump on our couch, or from the couch and crash land onto his bean bag chair. Just don’t ask him to play outside.

Now, they do love the park, and we go quite often. Monkey will play outside if we have friends over, but that just doesn’t happen that often.

We have a pool, but “I DON”T WANT TO GO SWIMMING!” is what I am constantly told.

 

We have a water/sand table.

We have a little swing set.

We have a beautiful sandbox.

We have a bazillion outdoor toys/ride on toys/water guns….you name it we have it.

But again, they would prefer to be inside, normally watching TV, which is happening way to often.

So, I have a plan. I am going to start planning outside adventures for the boys. Things we can do outside. Maybe they need more structured play. They both thrive on structured games inside, so why not outside.

I have gathered a few resources to get us started, and we’ll see how it goes.

I will do a series of posts about what we did, and how they reacted.

I am hoping by planning some activities, not only will it make the outdoor time more enjoyable, it will also give them ideas of things they can do outside in the future.

Wish me luck!

Also, if you know of any great outdoor activities, please leave a comment and a link, I can use the help!

Favorite Post of the Week, #4

I have decided on Sundays to feature a post that I really liked. (I am a bit behind but, here it is anyway)

No…silly, not one of mine.

I read a lot of blogs, and each week I will choose a post I really loved and share it. And since I get to decide, I am adding the princess picture to the top of the page. Yes, that is supposed to be me. :)

I had to share this post. How many of you have the Letter Factory DVD.

Well, a wonderful blogger hand drew flashcards for each letter; they are amazing. She has them as a free download!  The blog is called Running with Scissors. You totally have to check it out!

Read and Enjoy!

Preschool Corner

We have finally gotten back to some after-schooling this week. And it has been a total blast. Monkey especially loves doing learning activities with me. So he is a complete joy to work with.

Mother Goose Time

Monkey and I did some Mother Goose Time activities this week. I let him look through the lesson plan book, and decide what he wanted to make. He chose the flashlight, and the star. Apparently I didn’t get any pictures of his work  on the stars. But I did get a couple of pictures of the play flashlight he made, and the dance that he and Alligator did to the flashlight song.

Sight Word Work

Monkey is now noticing some of the words he knows when we are out and about. Like, the other day he saw the word ‘you’ on a box at the store, he recognized it and said “look mom, that box has the word “you” on it, isn’t that one of our words?'” So they are really becoming immediate in his little brain. Which is AWESOME!

We are adding to our Caterpillar. (The idea is from The Moffat Girls, but we aren’t following their program exactly, so I have made circles to that have our words on it, to add.)

Connecting the words, from Carisa’s printables.

Sight word Binge, again from 1+1+1=1.

Stamp the word.

He loves a water gun. So we invented shoot the word. I wrote this weeks words on our porch. Then we rolled our dice, and he had to find the word that came off and shoot it with the water gun…hey, what ever works right???

Workbook Fun

We bought some great workbooks from Barnes and Noble. They are based off of Disney animate shows, like Cars, and Handy Manny. This one is about measurement, and Monkey really likes it. At first he measured with blocks, but then he wanted to try measuring with his measurement tape (they gave it to us when we registered him for school). He caught on quick to lining up the “0” with the start of the item he was measuring.

      

Linking up to Preschool Corner.

Favorite Post of the Week, #3

I have decided on Sundays to feature a post that I really liked. (I am a bit behind but, here it is anyway)

No…silly, not one of mine.

I read a lot of blogs, and each week I will choose a post I really loved and share it. And since I get to decide, I am adding the princess picture to the top of the page. Yes, that is supposed to be me. :)

I have chosen a series of posts to spotlight today. Creative Learning Fun did a series of posts this week with a Zoo theme. She even created free printables. Definitely  take a look, they are awesome!

Read and Enjoy!

WOW! Crazy Life!

Life has been crazy lately. We just finished Vacation Bible School. Both boys got to go, and I helped out in the 3 year old room. It was fun, but  also crazy.

Between VBS, me being sick, visitors and DH being extremely busy at work, there has been no time for blogging.

Luckily things seem to be calming down. DH’s work craziness should end Thursday or Friday, and we have no visitors planned for a while.However, I did injure my neck/shoulder horse playing with Monkey yesterday. I woke up with it so stiff this morning, and it continues to hurt. But, a quick prayer will hopefully help to alleviate that!

Although we have been busy, I have continued to do activities with the boys. I just haven’t necessarily photographed it.

Monkey—You Can Read

We have continued with Carissa’s You Can Read program (YCR). Although we are only on week 2…ready to move onto week 3 though. Monkey seems to love it. I have decided to hold off on The Moffatt Girls reading program (TMG). I started the word families with Monkey, and he is just not ready. But we will be doing some of the sight word activities from her program.

Here he is working on making the Caterpillar from TMG. We hung it up on the wall, so we can review it regularly.

Here Monkey is using glue on the word cards, and will then put glitter on them. We hadn’t used glitter much, he really enjoyed this (TMG) 

These are from Making Learning Fun.

 

Mother Goose Time

We continue to love Mother Goose Time.

The were pirates!

  

Alligator loved the shape cards, he enjoyed putting them in and taking them out of a tissue box.

Alligator- Alphabet Activities

Alligator had his follow up meeting with his developmental pediatrician. She was in Awww of his ability to indentify all upper and lowercase letters, all number 0-10, most colors, and most shapers. I am going to continue doing the letter activities with him from Carissa.

  

This is from Homeschool Creations…Awesome! It is the do-a-do alphabet.

Time For Tots

We are getting back in the habit of using our Time for Tots kits

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We did these on multiple days over the last week, but I only took pictures once. 

Linking up to tot school and preschool corner.