9/28/13

39/52

"A portrait of my child, once a week, every week in 2013."

Logan: collector of all things pretty-- rocks, twigs, sticks,leaves, and stones. You are especially happy this time of year.


Linking up here.

Favorites from last week: josephine, clementine, and lia

9/26/13

september day date

Today I had a meeting with a potential future employer, and from there on the day just got better. I had my favorite two tagging along. We walked through one of our favorite towns, sipped coffee and chocolate milk from Starbucks, and ordered the best salad in town to-go. We ended our afternoon with a walk to the park and an hour full of climbing and sliding. I love afternoons spent with these two. 

9/25/13

preschool homeschool// week 3

Our letter this week was Ee for earth.
This week during our Earth lesson, we were talking about the moon and it's location in the universe compared to earth. This craft was the beginning of a moon phase lesson we will be working on. Logan is really interested in the moon, often asking questions that I find myself googling to answer-- so I wanted to definitely do a fact filled lesson on it. 
She currently can label a half moon, full moon, and crescent moon. 
She also can draw a mean moon, with craters and all. 
I'm still exploring ideas for our moon lesson. I don't want to go too in-depth for a 3 1/2 year old, but I do want to provide her with more info since a strong interest is present. More of that to come in the next few weeks.
Moon Phases printable found here. 

Logan worked on matching capital to lower case letters. We made this game with milk caps and a laminated printed out alphabet on card stock. I find she does better with the more obvious letters like: x, k, s, u, w, y, and z. I also found that if I have her do those letters first, then there are less options for the others, and it makes it easier. I plan to use this letter match weekly for better recognition.
Inspiration for this idea, here
More brilliant and simple milk cap inspiration here.

For a counting lesson, I was really inspired here. Logan loves ice-cream and picking fun flavors, so once I labeled each color a flavor (white=vanilla, green=mint, white with black polka dots= chocolate chip, blue=cotton candy, and brown=coffee) she couldn't wait to get creative with making  ice-cream cones. I took this out for her as I was preparing dinner, and Logan got through 1-7 within the matter of minutes. I did 8-10 with her because at this point she wanted to make all of the cones with manymanymany scoops. Logan seems to be a visual learner. She wow's me with how she can often look at things and tell me how many are there without counting them out. My hope with this activity is that she will strengthen her number recollection and practices out loud counting slower.

Like ice-cream, Logan wishes she had access to tape all the time. Today her wish came true and she was able to tape how much and however she wished. I think she did a pretty good job with these painted elephant pictures we got out of a National Geographic magazine. The elephants helped with the letter Ee lessons. I also printed out an African Elephant for Logan to paint and assemble here. We'll be using it in our lesson next week too.

This week we had two playdates with our best girls. Here are pictures from the first one. The girls painted pumpkins, made a caterpillar craft, and decorated cookies. I think it's safe to say they had the best time.
 
 Caterpillar collage found here.

Our book of the week was: Room on the Broom, written by: Julia Donaldson. This is new to our library, from our book store date night this past week. Lo's pick-- a good pick too. We've read it just about every day, and we we weren't reading it, it rested safely on Lo's nightstand.


We don't watch much TV, so I like to find little clips and videos that coincide with things current with our life and learning. I love pairing a book with a video-- Lo does too. We were able to find an animated short on Youtube here. It goes right along with the book. Lo really enjoyed it.

Logan decided she wants to be a witch for Halloween, so we have been on the lookout for all things witchy. She has been super obsessed with "Sofia the First-- Little Witch episode." She watches it daily. And with credit to the episode, she's been putting Hex's on everyone. She makes such a good little witch. We have a Halloween countdown calendar posted on our refridgerator where Lo X's off a day every morning. Needless to say, she can hardly wait.

9/22/13

38/52

  
"A portrait of my child, once a week, every week."

Logan: Finishing up this last week of summer by perfecting her swinging skills. With this gorgeous weather lately, she's had plenty of time, thus making her a happy, confident swinger.

9/21/13

magazine make-over

 I love having 'staple' crafts on hand that can entertain my girl. Not the involved kind with lots of supplies that require a great deal of assistance, but the simple kind that can easily become on-the-go for doctor appointments, long rides, and visits at Grandma's. This craft proved to be exactly that. Logan, and her cousins Jordan and Angelo kept busy for well over an hour with an Oprah magazine and a ziploc full of sharpies. The older boys had a ball making over faces like Ellen, Curtis Stone, and Jennifer Aniston. I kept the full page frontal facing faces for Lo because they were bigger and this was something new for her. We've been doing this to magazines foreverrrr, but this time around we were inspired here. I think it's safe to say, Lo is a natural.  

9/16/13

preschool homeschool// week 2

This week's letters are L and M.
Printable(s) art found here.
For our letter art craft we did L for lines and M for mouse. Fellow mama blogger and preschool homeschooler herself, Jody, over at MudHutMama, with her girls did M for maps here, and I so wish that we would have thought of that idea, because maps are totally right up Logan's alley. But nonetheless, we are more than happy with our little mouse!
We made play-doh monsters and accessorized them with goggly eyes, straws, and craft pompoms. Logan loved making them babies-- babies who cried a lot.





I planned the book "Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance" for our book of the week. We bought Lo this book for her 2nd birthday, and it's been a favorite ever since. Even though we've read it a hundred times, I thought it would be fun to find ways to incorporate it into our weekly learning and play. By a chance of luck, on Youtube, I found an
 animated short  made of the book. This made Lo's day, and week. We watched it a few times, every day. We may or may not still be watching it :) 


We also worked the story "The Lion and the Mouse" into some of our lessons. This book is a collection of Aesop's Fables that Lo received as a gift from my parents for her first Christmas. We are just beginning to explore it. I love that these little short stories teach a lesson and moral (even if it sometimes a bit extreme.)
 We made a big paper plate lion craft that Lo had a blast with. It was a very simple craft with a short materials list: paper plate, construction paper, scissors, glue, and a black marker. We used this (full cover face) mask to act out The Lion and the Mouse story. This was a great story for preschool age. I think Logan was able to understand it, as she was able to recall it and apply the message to other situations. 
Our kitchen craft this week involved sugar, sprinkles, and lot of colors, so of course Lo was stoked from the very beginning. We packaged some up and brought them over to Lo's cousins as a back to school treat. Needless to say, they were a hit.

The weather has been so kind to us, so we were able to get in lots of outside play time.
We began to practice correct form for holding a pencil (or crayon in this case) and tracing shapes.
Another great week!

9/15/13

37/52


 "A portrait of my child once a week, every week, in 2013."

Logan: my little artist keeping very busy with a paint brush in hand, as we work on some of our preschool homeschool lessons. 

You can see more activities from our preschool homeschool week 1 here.

Linking up here.

9/9/13

preschool homeschool// week 1

This past week was our first week of Preschool Homeschool. Logan was both interested and intrigued with the entire learning process. We started with the letters D, G, and O (idea found here.I'm finding that Logan is more into the whole gluing, cutting, and painting aspect of it all more than anything else. This comes as no surprise. This little girl is an everything-art babe. So naturally that is what we tend to spend a lot of time on. And that is fine with me.
We worked on grouping things into day and night categories.
We did some painting too. Logan's art skills are expanding dramatically. I love how she outlined the dolphin in red first. She is beginning to paint with a purpose and it is so fun to watch her truly blossom into a little artist.

We read many books daily, but each week we will focus on one book specifically and base some of our learning and play around the concepts within it. 

"My Garden" by Kevin Henkes, was our pick this week.


We checked this book out of our local library. It is a really cute and imaginative story where a little girl describes how her garden would be if she had one. There are many activities online that go with this book (which I of course found after our week with this book was over. Fail.) We did however, create our own garden. We looked around for a few random things to glue onto out garden. Lo put some of her favorite things including watermelon, a button, and a shell. She had a lot of fun with the craft and with this book.

 I decided to print out some upper and lower case letter pages for the days when Logan wasn't into structured activities. I'm glad that I did, because on Wednesday, she woke up grumpy. Basically our entire day was nothing more than cuddling, reading, and some afternoon painting-- and that's okay. Logan did a terrific job in staying in the lines. 

We also worked on counting 1-30 and sorting objects by color. We went swimming and to the park. We learned about peanut allergies and why some people cannot eat nuts because of it. Random I know, but Logan was watching "The Game Plan" with her cousins one night, and the little girl in the movie had a peanut allergy. Logan had been borderline obsessed ever since.

For Sensory Play we took out our O is for Ocean bin. We talked about the different animals that live in the ocean. The octopus was used in our Letter Art for the letter O.

I'm so proud of this little girl, and more than happy with my decision to take the time to teach her myself this year. We are both equally excited of the weeks to come. 

end of summer photo shoot

This time of year is always a bitter sweet time. 
We want summer to stay but we find ourselves craving all things fall. 

We spend so much time in the sun and swimming that we really do miss all things summer once they're gone, but just as that, once fall arrives, we totally do it up. 

I got my first taste of fall last week when Sco surprised me with a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte. That was all I needed to make the goodbye to summer so much easier. I also have some new boots, scarves, and sweaters in my closet just dyyying to be worn.

But aside from that, we are still spending much time outdoors, more time now in fact, since the weather has been so lovely.

Lately, my little pea girl is pure beauty in every aspect. She is so nice, so smart, so pretty and sooo sweet-- couldn't be sweeter, really. I want to remember her like this forever.  I can't help but snap her picture a thousand times.

She is fall ready herself. We have begun a countdown calendar, for her to check off each day closer to halloween. 

She can't wait to dress up as a little witch.