Me, I, or You?

Have you ever tried to teach a two year old the proper use of I, you, or me? This morning Jim and I were having a conversation with Matthew and he was using "me" instead of "I". We were trying to correct him and we would tell him to say "I" and he would come back with "you" because he thought we were talking about ourselves. I don't know how to explain it, I guess it was a "you-have-to-be-there" moment, but it was so funny. We never really did get it all straightened out with him!

Letter R Rainbow Theme

Rainbows - this is the most simple rainbow experiment I found. We'll be trying this to see how it works. http://www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus/simplescience/feature.htm

Colors This is a great color mixing experiment using simple household ingredients http://www.kidzone.ws/science/rainbow.htm This is a little more advance color wheel sheet off of Learning Page somewhere in the fact files. Not sure exactly where I found that one!
This is cutesy color wheel :http://www.kidzone.ws/science/colorwheel.htm

Color Flannel Board Activities:
Donuts
Balloons
Fish and Crocodile
Online Coloring
Coloring Pages
Rainbow Necklaces out of froot loops or fruity Cheerios
Books: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Flannel Board Characters Songs: Our Primary Colors I Can Sing A Rainbow Simple Math: sort Skittles or M&Ms and count. Graph according to color, etc.

Rock Cars

Here are the rock cars! The kids had a blast doing these. After we finished the cars, Emily and Spencer spent the afternoon just coloring and decorating other rocks.

Starting from left to right: Gabe's tiny car (courtesy of Emily), Emily's pink van, Matthew's compact car, the yellow extra (because they painted sooo many rocks), and Spencer's multi-colored racecar.

Letter C Themes

This week we are working on the letter C. Our general theme is cars, but we have many other "C" themes that go with this for science and fun.

The letter story is C the Caterpillar that cuts in the Amazing Action Alphabet Book . We read the story and made the action and sound while "cutting" (tickling) each other with our scissor hands. The kids thought this was great!

We glued cotton balls on the letter C in our touchy/feely alphabet book. This went great with our science theme of clouds, rain, and rainbows.

We are making cars out of rocks--I will post pictures when we are done. We found our rocks and washed them this morning and we will paint them this afternoon, let them dry and glue on buttons for wheels. We are also going to drive our matchbox cars through paint and make designs on paper, then give them a carwash.

We are also going to play with cars lots this week. We have a car mat and several different car toys. We are going to build cars out of legos. Play Lots of Levels, Zip Track Rally, and Pump Action Racers from Discovery Toys.

Cars Theme Booklist:
Cool Cars by Tony Mitton & Ant Parker
*Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car by Eileen Christelow
Cars by Anne Rockwell
Richard Sacrry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
My Car by Byron Barton
Rattletrap Car by Phyllis Root
The Wheels on the Race Car by Alexander Zane
Cars and Trucks (drawing Book) by Joan Holub

Trucks Booklist:
I Love Trucks! by Philemon Sturges
My Truck is Stuck by Kevin Lewis and Daniel Kirk

Cars Activities & Games on the Web:
This is one of the best resources for activities and games for the kids I have found. There are several car theme activities if you scroll down the list. I plan on using the car colors book and the cars number match. There is also a car shape flannel board story that is excellent, but I think we will save that for shapes.
Car Colors Book: Color Black & White

http://www.childcareland.com/free.html

Science Themes:
Clouds, The Water Cycle

The Water Cycle - this is the best kid explanation of the water cycle I found. Make sure and scroll all the way down the page and use the worksheets which have some great things to do as examples of evaporation, condensation, precipation and collection.
http://www.kidzone.ws/water/

Great Story About Drippy the Raindrop and the Water Cycle along with additional activities
Try out the cotton ball cloud experiment - Science Experiment #3
http://www.first-school.ws/activities/science/drippy.htm

Cloud Types
This is my favorite website with simple explanations of the main cloud types. There is also a great little interactive quiz (probably 1st or 2nd grade level -- with some help).
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/2003FF/clues/index.html

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/2003FF/clues/cloudclues.html Test your cloud knowledge!

Clouds - Cloud in a Bottle Science Experiment
www.weatherwizkids.com/cloud1.htm

There are a couple of other science experiments we are doing out of Janice VanCleave's book Earth Science for Every Kid -- science experiment #74 & 75

Additional Themes:
Cows - we are going to milk cows at Wheeler Farm and we are going to make butter out of cream.
Also, I love the book Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type by

Snacks: crackers, cookies, cereal, carrots, candy, cheese, chips, cake, cupcakes, cantaloupe, cherries, rainbow goldfish crackers

Character Training: Sharing

Sharing Books:

Letter B Themes

Building (Construction) Theme Booklist:

*B is for Bulldozer, A Construction ABC, by June Sobel
*Construction Countdown by K.C. Olson
*Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson
Building Maching and What They Do by Derek Radford
Alphabet Under Construction by Denise Fleming
*Jack the Builder by Stuart J. Murphy

Letter A Themes

Back to School Bash

Our cute kiddos!

We had a great back to school party with our homeschool friends and cousins. We made a pinata shaped like a pencil filled with candy and school supplies like pencils and erasers. There were a lot of kids there, so we divided into stations--an about me station and a puppet station. At the about me station, we made special "About Me" pages for each child with a picture we took that day, their handprint (or in Gabe's case his footprints), and age, height, and weight. They turned out so cute! We have ours taped on our kitchen wall for now!

At the puppet station, the kids made paper sack puppets for the Three Little Pigs story for the younger kids, and the older kids made up their own story which was: "The Father Troll and the Four Princesses" (this group consisted of one boy and four girls if you can't tell). The kids presented their puppet shows at the end of the party before we broke open the pinata. The puppet shows were great! Zach was the big bad wolf and he did a great job saying "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!" The princesses were great in their story with the story line coming to a point where the princesses had to climb over a wall, one of the girls yelled out "But I can't climb over that wall--I'm wearing high heels!"

"Big Bad Zach"

We had a great time, and look forward to our next party--Halloween!!

Some people thought the party was more fun than others . . .

The highlight was of course the pinata! Jim was the mastermind behind this project and it took us about a week to get it all done. The kids helped the first night with the paper mache, but the boys didn't really enjoy getting their hands dirty! Grandma Goostrey was here that week and helped us keep adding layers. Jim and I ended up finishing the pinata the night before and after it got to be really late, we gave up on the puffy pinata look where you take tissue paper squares and twist it around paper, dip in glue, and put on the pinata, and went for the lets just get this done, the kids don't care option. They were so excited to see it when they woke up the next morning! The pinata worked out just perfect because everyone got a chance to hit it once before it broke open for the oldest child! The kids now want a pinata at every party and Emily is already talking about one for her birthday! We're thinking they are probably easier to just buy!!

After the party, Amy, Drew, and kids stayed to frost the cookies that we didn't get to frost during the party since we ran out of time. As you can tell, they had a great time. I think Daniel had the most fun . . .