A is for Aquarium

Our final letter A day was A is for aquarium.  This was a much shorter day because we were getting ready for Father's Day, had an out of town friend come to visit, and had two big family barbecues.  We still managed to cram a few things on between Thursday and Saturday.

The first things we did was a combination of reviewing the letter A and getting some fine motor skill practice in at the same time.  We used Bendaroos to make the letter shapes on a printable that I slipped inside a sheet protector.



After we were tired of the Bendaroos we moved on to play doh.  Pretty much we did the exact same thing with the play doh as we did with the Bendaroos.







When we were done with that we decided to get to work on our craft - an aquarium for Daddy for Father's Day.  The first thing we needed to do was use finger paint to cover one regular paper plate and one paper plate that I cut the center out of.  While this was drying I cut out the shapes for the fish and the seaweed.





While I was cutting out the shapes Gooba played with an ocean gel bag filled with blue hair gel from the dollar store and glitter.  She practiced writing her shapes and her letter A's.

A little  bit later that day Gooba and I finished our Father's Day craft by glueing the fish and seaweed onto the bottom paper plate.  Then we glued plastic wrap onto the underside of paper plate ring.  I think if we made this craft again I would tape the plastic wrap on so it stays in place better.  Then we taped both plates together and added the writing with permanent marker.


This pretty much concluded our letter A review from Thursday and from over the weekend.  More to come later on our first day of letter B week.

A is for Astronauts

Today was a very exciting day!  Our first alphabet date together with Pretty Girl, Bro Bro, and Little Man from Stay at Home Adventures.  Letter A astronaut adventure was at our house this week and we planned a TON of things to do since this was our first alphabet date and who knows how anything is going to go when there are two 2 year olds, a 5 year old, and a newborn.  Surprisingly we actually managed to do everything!  That was very unexpected.  

After a few minutes are getting ourselves together and letting the kids mingle we decided it was best to start with some painting since we would need this to dry for a craft later.  First we let the kids paint gray paint all of the white paper and smear it all over.  Then we sprayed each kids paper with water a few times and let them smear the paint some more to get a moon effect.  Then it was off to drying for these papers.

When we were done with painting we decided to more onto space bags.  I filled gallon size bags with clear gel, a couple drops of black paint, and some glitter.  Then the most important step... I used packing tape to tape the tops closed.  I used a lot of tape, which turned out to be a very important step when all three kids tried to open the bags.  Pretty Girl and Bro Bro practiced writing their capital A and lowercase a, Gooba practiced writing circles.  Circles are kind of like lowercase a's.... right?  Either way the space bags were a huge hit!

When we had our fill of space bags someone - not mentioning any names (Gooba) - was getting a little on the cranky side.  It was definitely time for snack.  Earlier that morning I had made a batch of moon balls for the kids.  See the Super Snacks tab above for the recipe.  So we chowed down on some moon balls and milk and everyone (Gooba) started feeling a little less cranky and a little more cooperative.

What seemed like the next best thing to do after eating a bunch of moon balls?  Playing in the rocket that's what!  The rocket was a little too small and pink for Bro Bro, but Gooba and Pretty Girl had a "blast" playing, hugging, and tickling in the rocket.  The rocket mainly consisted of a long tunnel to crawl through as the entrance, a pink pop-up princess tent, and a large box covered in shiny pink wrapping paper, which was a prop from my fifth grade talent show at work.  I linked all the pieces together and threw some blankets in there for the girls and voila!  instant rocket!

After some time in the rocket, we had noticed something strange had happened outside.... ALIENS had invaded the driveway!!!!  Or mommy slipped our and drew a bunch of aliens with chalk on the driveway while no one was looking.... either way... ALIENS!  Fortunately we had some expert astronauts to help us with this problem.

First we needed to identify the aliens, so we knew what we were dealing with.  I forgot to take pictures of this step.  We called out all of the colors and ran from alien to alien.  After we identified the threat we got our squirt bottles out attacked the aliens.  This took a little longer than expected, which was AWESOME!  All three kids loved this activity.  We also got in some body part identification - Spray his hands etc.

This was hard to top, but the fun continued from here.  Now that the aliens had been neutralized we were free to the moon rock toss.  I cut a milk jug up and we drew some circles (craters) on the driveway and threw the moon rocks (marshmallows) into the milk jug.  Lesson learned here...marshmallows get very sticky very fast in the sun.  Pretty girl and Bro Bro seemed to pick up on this concept extremely fast - Gooba seemed to be the most interested in squishing the marshmallows between her fingers.  After squishing them she tried eating the dirty, sweaty, sticky marshmallows.... ewwww.  That's my girl!

After marshmallow toss, a well deserved clean giant marshmallow to eat, and a super garden hose hand wash, we busted out the moon sand/ moon rock letter sort.  The moon sand recipe is in the craft tab above.  Earlier we had marked ten rocks I got at the dollar store with silver permanent marker and buried them in the moon sand.  I had painted them the night before, but in the morning the paint had all come off.  Then we drew a capital and lowercase A in the circles on the driveway we had used for marshmallow toss.  The girls dug around for the rocks and sorted them by letter.

By this time we had worn the kids out a little bit and it was time for some nice lunch on the deck and a little bit of water table time.  Neither of those were letter A related, but they sure were fun!  This also gave the mommies a little chance to catch our breath and clean up a tiny bit.  After lunch it was craft time again.  While the kiddos were eating I took their gray painted paper from earlier and cut out a half moon and a lowercase a.  This kids glued these on a half sheet of black construction paper and added some glitter glue to look like stars.  We had some glitter glue issues so we just smeared it on with our hands.

Then we moved on to telescopes.  We cut out rectangles of silver wrapping paper and had the kids decorate them with star stickers.  Once they were done decorating we wrapped the paper around a toilet paper tube added a little bit of tape and.... instant telescope!

These telescopes came in handy for our alien moon rock treasure hunt in the front yard.  Earlier I had spray painted 31 small rocks with florescent orange paint and tossed them all over the yard.  We had the kids use their telescopes to find the rocks.  As you can see from the pictures those library binoculars are still a huge hit with Gooba.  She apparently needed the binoculars and a telescope to find moon rocks!  I knew this would be a big hit for her since essentially it has an Easter egg hunt but for rocks instead.  Gooba loves her some Easter egg hunting!


So that pretty much sums up our first alphabet play date of the year.  All in all I feel like it was a pretty successful day!  Looking forward to finally doing some B activities next week.  Frankly, mommy is a little tired of the letter A.  Gooba however has recognized A's all over the house, so I guess we're doing something right!  And if we're not, we sure are having a lot fun!  Thanks again to Stay at Home Adventures for a wonderful day!

A is for Alligator

Good afternoon, today was another eventful day for little Gooba!  We ended yesterday on a big high note - DRY all day.  I wish I could say the same for today, but sadly I cannot.  Fortunately we have had some other exciting things going on.  We continued with the letter A today with an alligator theme.  We started with sorting alligator counters in our muffin tin. First we just picked them up with the "clapper catcher" then we sorted them by color.  We found out that these were slightly more difficult to pick up than the apple erasers from Monday.

Next we moved on to a game we played yesterday.  Today she was much more interested in "heads and tooshies" as she calls it.  At first I started by having her look for the match to whatever I was holding and then she just took over and started making matches herself.  We played this two or three times in the morning and again later after lunch.  A big hit today!

After "heads and tooshies" we got dressed for the day and headed out on a new adventure... mommy and me gymnastics!  Gooba did pretty well for her first time.  She did several forward rolls, jumped around, and crawled through tunnels.  I believe the highlight for me was when my two year old little girl said "Mommy let's go bounce over there with that boy - he's so cute."  Oh dear.  Something tells me we are in for some trouble down the road!

So after gymnastics we were both exhausted, so we came home for some juice and lunch.  Then we needed something calm to do so we played more "heads and tooshies" and then made some crafts.  First we made alligator A our of craft foam and construction paper.

Then we made a clothespin alligator.  FYI - dollar store markers are hard to get off your hands!

We still needed some calm activities so we colored an alligator page...

and we worked with some magnets.  Today she placed all the magnets on the circles!  The second day of an activity is remarkably better with toddlers I've found - mostly because I don't need to annoy her with directions!

STILL worn out from gymnastics we watched a little TV and did our alligator lacing card.

So now we are down for a nap with very few things left to do in our learning box today!  Hopefully when she wakes up it will still be hot enough to get some water table time in.  I've got some plastic alligators to swim around in there time and weather permitting.

Printables today borrowed graciously from www.lawteedah.com

Letter A craft idea borrowed from www.notimeforflashcards.com

A is for Ant

After a wonderful Day 1 of all sorts of applely goodness, I was not expecting very much out of Day 2.  I was very much surprised!  We had another wonderful day.  Our day started out with another new favorite for Gooba... magnets.

In the beginning she was very conscious of were she was placing the magnets and making sure they were covering a circle.  Then we just went magnet bonkers and were sticking magnets on everything..... that sounds like learning too... right?

After magnets we played a game that Gooba referred to as "heads and tooshies."  Not bad, we played once and then she was back to the magnets.

Once we were FINALLY done with magnets and "heads and tooshies" we got dressed for the day and were out onto a new adventure.... Story Time at the new Library!!  This was exciting for many reasons.   One because they just finished building a new library around the corner from our house a few months ago and I've been dying to get over there and two because Gooba stays with her grandparents while I am at work,  I think it's really important for her to be around other kids when we can.  So for the record, our library is GORGEOUS!!!  I cannot wait to go back.  Story Time was also amazing, we listened to books, danced, played instruments, played parachute, and with finger puppets, sang songs, and Gooba's favorite, we got a pair of toilet paper binoculars covered in paper that they decorated with stickers.  SO FUN!  After that we picked out some books and played with friends at the puzzle table.

After a short trip to the grocery store, we had some ants on a log for lunch and got right back to..... MAGNETS.  Yeah I should have hid those before we left.

Finally we were able to move on past the magnets (thank you Little Einstein's) and I could hide them without her noticing... though I'm not sure how that happened.  While we were watching Einstein's I handed her a lacing card - which she enjoyed yesterday, but not for long - and she totally LOVED it today.  I think it helped that she knew what to do with it.  For some reason... when mommy explains how things work, it is obnoxious to Gooba.... can't wait for teenage years!

After lacing cards we played a match the shape game, which was made apparently more awesome by looking for the shapes through our new binoculars... thank you Story Time!

Moving on to more couch learning... I busted out the clip cards.  I thought... the only thing hard about this will be her number recognition... since she knows none of her numbers... WRONG!  Apparently opening a clothespin or "clippy" as I was instructed they are called is the most difficult task on the planet.  Now I know everyone feels this way about their own kid, but I feel she's a pretty smart little girl and she's freakishly great at fine motor activities.... except for clothespins!!  It took us FOREVER to squeeze one end and clip with the other.... so FINALLY she got it... kind of.  On the upside she LOVED the "clippys" and enjoyed making signs out of them.  She even told me I was holding mine nice and then patted me on the head.  Lol.

After I was tired of clippys we moved on to scissors.... equally frustrating since they involved instructions, which she despises.  We managed to cut a straight line with help though... not bad.  After that she said "let's play with more cards."  OK!

So.... we played with more cards.  Her personal favorite of the day I think... size order cards.  We referred to them as Grandpa, Grandma, Daddy, Mommy, Big Brother, Big Sister, and Baby.  She sorting them correctly about ten times in a row and then took them to nap with her.

So another crazy fun day down for a nap... we still have a craft to make if she's interested when she wakes up.  We have had so much fun in the past two days I feel so honored to get to spend this time with her over the summer. Tomorrow we attempt mommy and me gymnastics... a new adventure for us both.

Also.... we've been DRY all morning!!!  Fingers crossed for the rest of the day and days to come!

Ant printables today were borrowed graciously from Confessions of a Homeschooler