Never Play with an Axe

When The Rain comes.....

Ohhh the excitement is in the air, or maybe just rain.  It's coming and I can feel it. I LOVE rain. But I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to playing outside barefoot.

A love of things Korean....

I don't think it's much a shocker to find out that I like things from Korea. When Andrew and I were there in July, we brought back this fraction set for the kids.  I think I paid $8.  I have seen (and wanted) similar things here but there are much more expensive.  But not only did we get the wooden fraction set but the book that went with it.  It is a pet peeve of mine to know that something exists in another country at a fraction (hahahaha) of what it costs here.

Rant aside, my kids have been having a lot of fun with this set.  Even though the book is in Korean its pretty straight forward.  You can use the pictures to build little figures.

You can match the pieces to the book to create a picture.

Here is the page Hannah and Ethan were working on by making sea creatures.

There is quite a bit on color, shapes, matching etc.  I would be lying if I didn't say I like playing with it too.  I really wish I would have bought some of the other sets.  I'll blame it on Andrew.

Wordless Wednesday

Week 3 - Letter C

Nature: We had a lot of fun outside this past week looking at clouds.  Of course the first day we tried to find some it was a perfect blue sky day.  So we opted instead to make our own clouds.  We painted white paint onto blue paper and after they dried we cut them out into cloud shapes.  We've hung them on the glass door so its cloudy all the time now hehehhe. 

We finally did find some clouds and used these great cloud viewers to spot clouds and guess their type.

Art:  We made collages out of C things (coffee, cotton balls, and coffee filters).  Let me tell you how good our kitchen smelled from having the coffee out.  I don't drink coffee so its not a normal smell in the house.  I was surprised how much Ethan enjoyed this activity.  His hands were covered in glue and coffee.

We also put spots (using corks and black paint) on our picture of a cat.

Math:  I think this was the favorite of the week.  We measured Hannah and Ethan's length out on the table  using green painters tape.  Then we counted how many cars fit the length and how many more cars Hannah was than Ethan.  Hannah was 2 cars longer.

 Reading and Language Arts: We read the book "The Big Green Pocketbook" by Candice F Ransom.  This is the story about a little girl who goes with her mother to do errands with her big green pocketbook.    Hannah liked to pretend this was a story about us, and she played purses all week with Ethan. We also worked through our activities in our All About Reading Level Pre-1 for capital C.  Hannah and Ethan finger painted their letter page.

Faith Foundation:  This week we worked through the first part of lesson 2.  The focus for this lesson is that we are unique individuals created by God, and our smiles can be used to express feelings and to encourage others.  Our smile can be a expression of our faith, hope, and love for God. Our verse for this week and next week is from Proverbs 15:13 A happy heart makes the face cheerful.

We talked a lot about how you can tell how people are feeling by looking at their faces.

Fall Play Dough

I made a batch of fall play dough, yesterday.  I haven't had the best luck when it comes to homemade play dough recently.  I don't know if it's because I measured wrong or I happened across a faulty recipe, but I wanted to make sure that it came out right this time.  It did!!!  Here is the link for the recipe I used.  I added food coloring after I made up that batched and divided to use fall colors.  The color in my pictures are off slightly, they really look more earthy.

I wasn't planning on using it but after nap/rest time Ethan spotted it and wanted to use it right away.  I also pulled out the cookie cutters that I won at a baby shower.

Ethan made some leaves.

I love how Hannah needs to get her face right in there.

Happily playing away.

I think later this month we will use the play dough to make leave prints.  Have a look here and see what sparked the idea.

Wordless Wednesday

Week 2: B week

Letter B activities: Hannah and Ethan practiced "reading" their B poster (I got these posters from my sister.  I really like them), Hannah and Ethan played with their rice boxes filled with B items.  Finally they threw balls into the baby bassinet (a new favorite for sure).   

Art-Bubble Wrap Painting:  I don't know why I've never done this before.  It was so much fun and not nearly as messy as I envisioned.  I taped a piece of bubble wrap to the tray so it wouldn't slide around and then Hannah and Ethan painted it.  Then you press a piece of paper down and pull up.  Volia!!

 Faith Lessons:  We continued the second part of the lesson we started the week before on how each person is made and loved by God, and therefore special. One of our activities was to draw a picture of their faces.

Nature Study: We dried flowers.  The kids thought this was fun but as I expected Hannah asked me over and over when flowers would be ready.  I left them for 2 weeks and they were almost ready.

Our dried flowers felt really papery.  The center of the flower still needed more time so we put it back to dry longer.

Reading Activities (All About Reading Level Pre-1 and B4FIAR):  We decorated our Capital B picture (it's hard to tell buts it is  a picture of Bees buzzing around a Bee hive).  We also read "Ask Mr.Bear" by Marjorie Flack.  Its a very cute book about a little boy who is trying to find a gift for his mother for her birthday.  Their favorite activity was playing with the little animals and retelling the story. 

Math:  For a math game I pulled out some tweezers and our bear counters. Hannah placed her counters into an egg tray and Ethan happily "tweezed" into a paint tray. It was funny watching them do this because our tweezers our quite difficult to use, so you can see how Ethan was helping it along with his other hand.  They practiced counting and placing one bear in each spot (Ethan mostly needed work on this).

Proud Mommy Moment

I am very proud of my children.  I love them to death but beyond that I am proud of them for how much they love each other and others. Today was out first day of BSF and because we switched to a new location this year it meant new teachers and classes for the kids.  They were excited but I could tell Hannah was a little nervous and even a bit teary when I left her.  Normally, Hannah and Ethan have been in their own class (divided by age) but I think they weren't quite ready this morning because they had all the kids aged 2-5 in the same room, so I happily left Hannah and Ethan together.

When I came back to pick the kids up at 11am I had one of the teachers come up and ask if Hannah and Ethan were my children.  I kind of wanted to know what she was going to say next before I claimed ownership of my two.  She said that Hannah must love her brother very much because she spent the entire 2 hours taking care of him and making sure he was okay.  She then said that Ethan was very sweet also and that she enjoyed watching them together.  Warms my heart.  If there is one thing my mom harped about over and over was how lucky we (my siblings and I) are to have each other because she is an only child.  That when all else comes tumbling down around we have each other.  I'm glad Hannah and Ethan are well on their way.

Almost Wordless Wednesday......

My Grandma needed some pictures of the kids 

to take with her to visit her sister in Saskatchewan.........

My favorite is the glare I got from Hannah in the last one.

Our First Package

Last year, I participated in a cultural exchange and enjoyed it so much.  Melissa from Chasing Cheerios organized people into groups and then each family prepared a package about their home country.  While I didn't receive all my packages (which was disappointing), but I enjoyed it enough to try again this year.  These year we only sent 3 packages out (USA, Australia, and Malaysia) and already 2 have arrived in the mailbox.

I'm so glad I did it again because Hannah was so excited and really understood what we were doing.  Not surprising she mostly enjoyed looking at all the wonderful things that came in our packages.  Here is the package that we received from Utah.

This is her curious face.

Yes, she was THAT happy to wear the head band.

Looking at the goodies. Amazing really!!!!!

I couldn't believe how creative Angela and her family got with their package.  Their package included seeds, coins, a puzzle, flag craft, wooden people craft.  As well as, a jammed packed letter with coloring pages and stickers.

Flags, headband, stickers, play money.

I going to incorporate some of these ideas into my next package if we do it again next year.