F is for Frantic

 So last week, and this week, we have really dropped the ball with our summer school program.  We have had a lot going on at home and just haven't had a lot of free time.  Here's what we managed to pull together for week F.  First we used Bendaroos to try an make some letters.  This didn't go great.  Gooba is just not able to manipulate the Bendaroos very well.

After Bendaroos we did some stamping.  First I just had her stamp the paper with capitol and lowercase F's since that was our letter of the week.  Then I let her use all of the stamps A-F and we named the letters for review.  She very much enjoyed this and it was a great review.  I also learned that she loves the letter B.  Good to know.

After stamping we sorted and made patterns with some firefighter cards I got from 1+1+1=1.  Gooba has a real fascination with firefighters these days.  I not sure exactly where it came from, but I suspect it was a Little Einstein's episode.


After we played with the firefighter cards she wore her firefighter helmet and we did some pretend play.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of this one since we were pretty into it!  AFter that we ate some fish crackers and watched the Bubble Guppies episode about firefighters.

The next day f was for fine motor.  We played with stringing beads onto pipe cleaners.  Gobba made a pretty nice bracelet out of one of them.  The one she's showing in the pictures is apparently a flower.... that starts with f!  This activity was a huge hit and we played it alot this week.

Other things we did that I didn't take a picture of were some magnet pages and some coloring pages.  We also sorted and made patterns our of some flower cards.  No crafts this week, booo!  We might have to squeeze some f and g crafts in together so we have something for our scrapbook.  I'm also behind on that!  Yikes!  I need to catch up on all of this stuff before school starts back up!  I can't start the school year behind already!

 Finally, f was for felt this week.  I spent a significant amount of time making Gooba a Quiet Book.  You can visit the link at the top of this page to see her book in more detail.  We went away for the weekend to celebrate her great grandma's 90th birthday and I wanted her to have a nice Quiet Book to play with in the car and in the hotel when there was some down time from running around with her cousins.   I'm really pleased about how well it came out considering I was rushing like crazy to get it finished.


Well there it is, our lame f week.  Unfortunately I think week g might be equally awful as we try to cram as much fun possible into what's left of our summer time together.  I'll keep you posted!

E is for Everything

 Ok, we actually did a ton this week, but I've been slacking a little with my blogging.  My apologies in advance for this extensive post!

Our first activity was glueing blue and green pom poms to match the water and the land on this Earth map.  It involved pom poms so it was a hit with little Gooba.  Understanding that we live on a planet was a little bit of a complex idea for Gooba, but she was willing to go with for the sake of crafts.

We also did a little Earth coloring page and an Earth lacing card, but frankly her attention span for both of these things was too short to warrant a photo!

Then we used this cute Little Einstein's magnet page.  She adores the Little Einsteins so this was a nice addition to E week.

Then jumping back to D week a little bit we had some nice visitors in our yard.  A mommy and two fawns played in our yard.  They ran up and down our hill about four different times.   Unfortunately Gooba was taking her nap during their visit.  Extra sad for Gooba since before she went down for her nap she asked if we could see more deer.  We had seen a deer crossing the road on our way home that day.  Maybe next time.

 Continuing with our Earth theme I tore up blue and green pieces on tissue paper and Gooba stuck them all over a round shaped piece of contact paper.  She was a big fan of this project.  After she was done adding the tissue paper we added a slightly larger second sheet of contact paper and made a nice window decoration.

This next activity was an idea I got off Pinterest. Then we drew all over a coffee filter with washable blue and green markers.  When she was done scribbling we sprayed it several times with the water bottle and the marker got all smeary.  Gooba liked this a whole bunch.  Later we glued it onto the black paper, but apparently it wasn't quite dry enough and the glue bled through the paper.  Still looks cool though.

After craft time it was time to bake some Earth muffins.  I got this idea from No Time for Flashcards but I used my own blueberry muffin recipe.  We also used neon green food coloring and I think the color came pretty good.  It's a little more green in person than in the picture.  Either way they are delicious!

Later in the week we met up with Pretty Girl and her mom from Stay at Home Adventures at their house.  First we did some coloring sheets.  Gooba was really into one of the sheets and not so much into the other.  She's so finicky about when and what she feels like coloring.  Such a little nut!

Then we rocked out to some Hokey Pokey Elmo. He was a big hit with the girls today.  Poor Elmo got his workout today!  Elmo even got to dance in their playhouse!  Notice Gooba putting her foot in... or is that out?  Either way too cute!

 Then we did some painting.  We painted Elmo heads and noses.  Once they were dry we assembled the faces together.  Both girls were great at figuring out which part of the face goes where.

 After craft time it was time for Pretty Girl's Mommy to pick up Bro Bro, so we got a little crazy.  We played hide and seek, we had races to see who could scoot across the floor on their butt the fastest, we wrestled and tickled, we snuggled and we giggled.  Super fun girls being girls!

Once we got home Gooba was ready for her nap, so I had a chance to finish this cute pillowcase dress I made for her.  When I first tried it on her she cried and said it was "too poofy."  She LOVED it once it was washed and "much less poofy."  She tried to sleep in it, but mean old mommy said no.  I'm psyched she likes it though.  I think it's adorable on her and it only cost me $7 to make!  I love me some Pinterest.  The website with the tutorial to make this dress is excellent and I highly recommend it!  The Mother Huddle has some really cute ideas on her site.

Finally, during this week of "everything" I took yet another idea from Pinterest and painted some Dollar Tree frames and added some ribbon embellishments, a little hard to see in the photo, and hung them up in Gooba's room.  Now we have a place to display her artwork in her  room.  They came super cute and she really likes them.  Awww, already starting to look like such a big girl!






All in all this has been another crazy week.  I was happy to get back to a little bit of sewing and crafting this week.  Sometimes when we put on our "Mommy hats" we forget that there's still room on our heads for our "Self Hats."  Personally I neglect myself way too much and give everything to my little girl.  My new personal goal, since Gooba is getting a little older, is to take a little more time putting on my "me hat" and my "wife hat" and start attempting to regain a little bit of myself back.  I owe it to my little Gooba to take good care of her Mommy :)  After all, I'm the only Mommy she has!


Earth printables borrowed graciously from Itsy Bitsy Learners

E is for Elephant

 Ok so we are back to a Monday again and we got a little bit back on schedule for the first time since letter B week.  This week is letter E week and we decided to start with one of Gooba's  favorite animals, the elephant.  The first thing we did was an old favorite activity of Gooba's, moving tiny erasers with tongs from different sized containers.  At one point we did count some of the erasers, though right now Gooba can only count up to six.  This has been great fine motor practice for her and she just adores picking things up with the tongs!

 Next we sorted cards with capitol and lowercase letters on them. First we tried to do this on the table, but Gooba insisted that magnets be involved with this activity, so we went for it!  Today, despite some lack of interest for mommy's rules, she did a pretty good job sorting the cards.

Since we already had the magnets out, we moved onto some magnet pages.  I had two different ones, but after this one and the previous activity involving magnets, she started to lose interest.  After playing with the magnets and announcing that she was not listening, I know..., I told her she would not be able to help make elephant cookies if she didn't play by mommy's rules.  The picture to the left is what happened 15 seconds after I made that statement.  Toddlers are such stinkers!

 Next, I followed through with my promise and we made elephant cookies.  We used Pillsbury sugar cookie dough and added some extra flour.  I found the best way was to roll the dough almost back into it's original log form and cut of two circles for each elephant.  The first circle I flattened out to make the head.  The second circle I flattened out and cut into thirds.  The outside two thirds became the ears and the middle became the trunk.  Then I just smooshed them all together.  Very important next step!  I put the whole cookie sheet in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes.  Then I baked them at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  The second batch was much colder and did not spread out nearly as much as the first batch.  Then I just used icing and sugar wafers to make the details on the face.  These were a big hit, Gooba LOVES helping me in the kitchen.  She also loves eating!

A little bit later we worked on some cutting.  One of our kindergarten teachers at my school told me the number one thing kids can't do is cut, since all parents are terrified to give their kids scissors.  This time she did better than last time.  She let me help her with that first cut across the top and then I let her go for it.  This is definitely a skill that needs some attention.  This is also a skill that requires her to have help from mommy, something she is not a fan of.  So I have found that perhaps teaching to cut involves fine motor, listening, patience, and calm.  Of course, all things every toddler possesses!

 Speaking of fine motor, looks how far our line drawing has come!  It's actually touching the line this week.  Boy, she has come a long way with this one in just a few short weeks!

Time for my favorite part... CRAFT TIME! This first one is actually one I worked out in my own little brain, as opposed to all my other ideas being stolen for around the web.  The head and trunk are her footprint and the ears are her hands.  Then she stuck on the eyes where I put the glue and I added the little trunk lines with marker when it was dry.  So cute!  I love how this one turned out.

Then since she loves having her hands and feet painted we painted her hands again to make these two cute little elephants.  She added the eyes where I put the glue and I added the markers when it was dry.  The original idea I saw for this was a mommy and baby elephant, but Gooba was extremely offended that I would paint my hand instead of hers, so we did two babies instead.





We did a few more things I did not take pictures of.  From 1+1+1=1 we used some of the Animal ABC's pages on the computer.  Since we are just now drawing lines, drawing shapes is out of the question.  So instead I pulled up the page on the computer and I called out the shapes and she pointed to them.  We did the same for the colors page.  We also used the vocabulary builder from the same set of worksheets and we talked about and answered questions about the picture of the elephants.  Mostly we talked about the baby elephant.  Somewhere at some point we also kind of did a lacing card, but she was a little to excitable to really pay any attention to that this morning, maybe we'll take it out again this afternoon.  I also hope to take out our plastic elephants and our elephant puppet and have some creative play when she awakes from her nap.  All in all, though we had some spurts on defiance and an absolute refusal to use the potty today even though we've been dry for almost a week, I still feel like we got a lot done and had a lot of fun too!




Printables graciously borrowed from 1+1+1=1, Confessions of a Homeschooler, and Making Learning Fun.

D is for Dinosaurs and Daddy

 This week continued to be crazy despite the fact that our family went back to Connecticut.  I guess I just need to get used to the idea that our life is crazy and just embrace it!  So we moved onto one of Gooba's new favorite things, Dinosaurs!  The first thing we did was play with some modeling clay and some plastic dinosaurs I got at Dollar Tree.  I saw this idea on Pinterest, which directed me to Our Crafts ~N~ Things, and LOVED it for making dinosaur fossils.  I was under the impression, no pun intended, that the modeling clay would dry rather quickly and then harden.  It took about two days to get rubbery and hasn't hardened yet.  This was my first experience with modeling clay, so maybe I just didn't get it.  I think if I were to do this activity again I would use play doh instead, that seems to get very hard overnight.  Either way Gooba had a blast playing with the clay and smashing the dinosaurs into it.  Our plan was to later bury the dinosaurs in some dirt and dig them up, but temperatures have been in the triple digits for days and it is miserable being outside.  Maybe we'll save them for F week and file them under fossils.



After we were done playing with the clay we moved onto capitol and lowercase D sorting.  Gooba not very interested in this activity today, mostly because it paled in comparison to the clay. She sorted one of each and then was pretty much done.

Ok, here comes a proud mommy moment, I left Gooba alone to work on some magnets while I made her lunch and TADA she made the whole letter D herself with the magnets!  I love watching her grow!

After magnets we worked on some patterns.  Gooba was not so much interested in making patterns with these cards today, but she was all about sorting them.  That counts enough for me!

Then we did a coloring page next and Gooba seemed very interested in trying to trace the letters today.  Perhaps this came from her mega success tracing a D a few days earlier.  She did pretty good as far as staying near the letters goes.

Then we had another success.  She traced a capitol D AGAIN!  I'm so proud of her, she is really improving her control.

The next day we worked on using some dot markers to trace a capitol and lowercase D.  She went crazy again with the bingo marker and started coloring the paper.  Hand control is growing, but not self control.  I guess I can't expect too much from a two and a half year old!

After using the bingo marker we looked at a bunch of pictures on the computer for Daddy day.  I pulled up some animal family pictures and had her point out which ones were the Daddy.  This is perhaps one of her most favorite activities, she is constantly classifying things into family groups.  Her favorites are the ones involving babies.

Next we did this really cool activity I saw on No Time for Flashcards called magic letters.  I used white crayon to draw a capitol and lowercase D on half sheets of paper.  Then Gooba used watercolors to color over the paper.  The watercolors don't paint the white crayon so voila.... magic letter D's showed up on her paper.  She was less impressed with this activity than I was, but she enjoyed the painting aspect of the whole thing.


So this week we left out several things again that we had planned, but we had a blast nonetheless!  I can't believe next week is already week E.  The summer is flying by and we are living up every minute of it.  Also today we broke ground on Gooba's under the deck playhouse.... hoping that will be a really fun space for our little girl to grow up.



Printables graciously borrowed from Confessions of a Homeschooler and 2 Teaching Mommies.