100th Post

Wow, this is my 100th post! My how the time flies:)

Ellie loves playing on the computer and that is what she does a lot of time when I am cooking dinner. So I thought I would list some of her favorite websites! What are some of your childs favorites?

www.starfall.com
www.pbskids.org
www.playhousedisney.com
www.noggin.com
www.pbssprout.org
www.plcmc.org/kids
www.tvokids.com
www.jellytelly.com
http://www.abc.net.au/children/


I also wanted to mention that there is going to be a drawing for a giveaway at ABC 123 for a 12 month curriculum from Itty Bitty Book Worm. It looks awesome so go sign up!!

Wordless Wednesday - We Love Spring!!

Earth Day

Last Wednesday was Earth Day but so was Chris' birthday so we "celebrated" it on Thursday. Our globe sits on a shelf in the bonus room and the girls have never really paid much attention to it but I put it on the table while we were eating breakfast and they were so excited!!! While they played with the globe I explained to them about the meaning of Earth Day and how we live on Earth. We talked about Earth is made up of land, air and water and how God made this beautiful Earth so we need to take care of it. Ellie and I colored a picture of the Earth and Ellie decorated hers with flowers. I found a cute story on Kidssoup about the rain cycle so we did that and I showed Ellie the recycling symbol and we talked about the importance of recycling. Now she picks out the symbol on all sorts of things and says "Yeah, we can recycle this!" She asked lots of questions and seemed really interested in all of the activities and throughout the day she would ask what other things I could tell her about Earth. We had a lot fun. I had also planned on taking the girls on a walk to pick up trash but we have yet to do it but hopefully we will do it sometime this week.

New Activities

Recently we have gotten two really cool things to add to our preschool activities.



The first one is Widgets. Ellie got these for her birthday and we love them!! It is something fun for Ellie, Emily and me! You can build so many neat things. She also got widget cards that have you build certain patterns but we haven't even broken those out yet.



Another cool thing we have gotten is Wiki Sticks. I purchased the alphabet cards and it came with a good amount of wiki sticks. They have a wax coating on them so they stick to the cards. Ellie has enjoyed this more then I thought she would. Several times I have gone in her room and she was sitting at her desk doing the alphabet wiki sticks. Also, if you have never checked out the Let's Explore store where I purchased the sticks then you need to check it out. Lots of cool stuff!!

Preschool

Here are some preschool activities we have been doing.

Using the foam blocks to fill in the pattern. (Sorry the pic is sideways:) )

Easter egg gel clings for the window. I had her pick a # and that is how many eggs she had to put in her basket. I thought she would love this but she only wanted to do it once.

Graphing with dot markers.

Sorting money into groups. I ended up downsizing the amount of coins b/c she was to overwhelmed. She had a hard time distinguishing between nickel and quarter.

We have also worked on learning the sign language for colors... we have done blue, red, yellow, pink, purple and orange. After we learn how to do a color we would go on a color hunt and fill our baskets with the colored items we were working on. I didn't think she would love this because it would be too simple but it was her favorite activity.

Wordless Wednesday

Emily's first time at Monkey Joe's! She really liked it!

Sign Language

When Ellie was little we did sign language with her. It was so great because she was able to let us know when she was hungry and thirsty etc. We learned most of the sign language from the Signing Times video series. They are wonderful and we all enjoyed watching them. Unfortunately when Ellie was around 2 1/2 she kind of lost interest in the videos and since she could hold conversations at this point so we all stopped signing. Well, once Emily was around 6 months old we started signing with her and I am just blown away with how many signs she knows at 15 months. She is not the least bit interested in TV except for the Signing Time videos. It has also been great because her and Ellie can communicate some. Ellie had forgotten a lot of the signs she had learned when she was younger but she remembers the basics. I have decided to start incorporating sign language into our preschool lessons and hopefully we will stick with signing even when Emily starts talking.

Amusement Park

Chris and I took the girls to an amusement park last week and we had so much fun! I wasn't sure if Emily would be too scared to ride anything but she loved the rides! Talk about a laid back driver

Emily trying to slip through the gate so she could ride the airplanes with Ellie

This is the balloon ride, which I really thought might be too scary for Emily, but she giggled the whole time!
Ellie keeping her distance from Sponge Bob

Emily driving us around

Ellie was riding the swings and Emily really wanted to ride!

Wordless Wednesday - Easter

Preschool

Here are some of the activities we have done in preschool lately.


Jelly bean memory game using plastic eggs.

Decorating foam eggs

Sound eggs. I put an item in each egg and had two eggs with the same item. She had to shake them and match the sounds. I was surprised with how much she enjoyed this. She did this activity a lot.

Worked on our sight words.

Lots of puzzles!!!!!

My goal is to post once a week on preschool. It helps keep me accountable:)

Happy Easter

Resurrection Eggs

I bought a set of Resurrection Eggs to help explain to the girls why we celebrate Easter. They are awesome. I wanted to wait and use them when Chris could participate but once Ellie saw the container she was determined to play with them, so we did. I had her open each egg while I told the story. I couldn't tell if she was really listening or not though. Well, tonight after we dyed eggs we pulled the Resurrection Eggs back out and while she opened them she told Chris what each item was and how they related to Easter. I was stunned. I had no idea she was not only listening but retaining the story of Jesus' Resurrection. It was a very proud moment:)

Blessed Day

We had such a great day today. I had nothing planned for us to do and couldn't really think of anything I wanted to do so I decided that we would hang out at the house all day, no errands or anything! Normally that would not excite me but today was so beautiful that I was excited (it helped I have gotten 3 nights of good sleep). Ellie didn't even ask to go anywhere, which rarely happens! We spent a good amount of time outside playing. We ate our lunch outside, played in the sandbox, played on the swings a lot, went bug hunting and found several caterpillars (poor things), painted and just ran around. I wished I would have taken more pics but we were enjoying ourselves so much I never thought to grab it until I went inside to get the paints. Our plan was to paint faces on acorns but it turned into this, which was probably more fun.