Tot School Sharing: Spring

We did a spring theme for the week.  We looked at flowers, rain, and other themes with the season.  We used Fruit Loops to do our Do-A-Dot pages and had a yummy snack at the same time.  Caleb used the Fruitloops to cover his letter Bbs on his Tot School page and Lydia used them to fill in her F is for Flower page.  We also threaded the fruit loops on pipe cleaners for practice.

Lydia used a cut and label page to practice her writing and labeled the parts of a flower.  She also had fun making a flower out of different shapes.  We went outside and found a flower in our yard and observed it with all our senses.  

On Thursday daddy ran in a 5k race, our team's tent was near the water and we got to watch some swans.  Some were white and some were black.  Lydia didi several activities with our Spring Bible Verse:  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation" 2 Corinthians 5:17  She surprised me at gluing her verse in the right order on her coloring page.  

We wrapped up the week with a word hunt around the house to practice tracing letters and some CVC code sheets from 3 Dinosaurs.  Caleb liked building towers with his blocks and doing some foam letter puzzles when he joined us.  

Here are some of the printable sets we used this week:

from 1+1+1=1:

Pretty Bugs and Creatures Preschool Pack
Tot School Printables Letter B

from 2 Teaching Mommies:
Flower Unit & Rain Unit

Spring Preschool Pack from 3 Dinosaurs

In My Heart: 2 Corinthians 5:17 from Totally Tots

Linking up with Tot School Gathering Place

Tot School Sharing: Brown Bear & Bugs

After a overly long break form school life is returning to a new normal routine.  I have been blessed by the homeschool blog family so I want to share what we have been using to learn.  We based our week around "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" and learned about colors, animals and the letter B.  Lydia enjoyed using "See It, Built It, Write It" to work on her colors and sight words.  We use Scrabble tiles to build our words.  We introduced graphing and rolling the dice.  She thought this was a lot of fun.  

And we ended the week with a Write the Room hunt with her "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" animals which were all over the house!  We also have been working on making Birdhouses from juice cartons, painting them and adding stickers and cutting a hole for the birds to go inside.  

Here are some of the printable sets we used this week:

from 1+1+1=1:

Brown Bear Brown Bear Tot-Pack

Pretty Bugs and Creatures Preschool Pack

from Homeschool Creations:

Read It Mats Color Vocab cards

Linking up with Tot School Gathering Place

Butterfly Garden Lessons

On the first monday of the month a botanical garden in town has free admission and story-time for kids. We went for the first time in ages this week.  Lydia has been fascinated by a couple butterflies that have been visiting our backyard.  So after the story-time we headed to the Butterfly Garden area.  She enjoyed all the colored flowers and seeing so many butterflies in one place.  She got pretty close to one.

I pointed out a box where chrysalises were being kept and reminded Lydia how caterpillars become butterflies.  I felt good making it a teaching moment.  I didn't know how much she was listening.

Bob got home late after helping a friend move and we had another friend over for dinner as well and in the middle of the meal Lydia told daddy and Mr. Brian the lifecycle of the butterfly from what we had seen at the garden!  No one was more surprised than me.

LInking up with Family Fun Fridays

New Chapter, New Blog

This blog has been a place for me to share and write for the last 4 1/2 years.  I started writing before blogs were nearly as commonplace as today.  It was a place for me to write about our adventures as we moved away from home as newlyweds.  We used it to share pics of our kids when they were babies with family hundreds of miles away.  Most recently, we have used it to record the adventure God has taken us on the last 2 years to support Bible Translation.

Right now our family direction is changing and this blog will be, too. I believe God is giving me new inspiration and ideas of how to use this blog to go beyond our family.  You may have noticed a few new things popping up on my blog recently.  Last month I participated in my first blog-hop with Hearts at Home.  Its a ministry to moms that has touched me through their books and resources.  A friend in Florida gave me "Real Moms, Real Jesus" around the time Lydia was born and changed the way I thought about motherhood. Second, Moments to Remember is a link up with a couple of the homeschool blogs, (1+1+1=1 and Homeschool Creations) that have been great resources to me as I begin to do some learning activities with Lydia.  I'm also beginning to write blog posts for OneVerse.  I am excited about this because it's an opportunity we can continue to use this blog to raise awareness of the importance and significance of Bible Translation. OneVerse is a project related to Wycliffe, and their goal is to see scripture projects sponsored one verse at a time.  It only takes $26 to translate one verse of scripture, which takes the overwhelming needs of Bible Translation around the world, and breaks them down into bite-size chunks. Finally, don't worry, I'll continue to include the adventures we have has a family on top of all these new activities.

I have developed a hobby or addiction, depending how you look at it, to digital scrap-booking.  I use GIMP, a photoshop-like open source program, to manipulate virtual papers stickers, ribbons, buttons etc.  to create my pages.  I post my pages and promote a few designers at a second scrapbook blog, cyscraps.blogspot.com, so as not to clutter this blog.  Check it out!

Moment to Remember

Moments to Remember was developed as a simple way to look back on our week as homeschoolers and find photos that encompass the memories we want to remember. 

The week may have been tough, there may have been more bumps than smiles, but in the end these are the moments that keep us going, the ones we need to remember.

Caleb is getting old enough to want to earnestly try to do what big sister is doing.  This week I caught them both using the Do-A-Dot markers together.  Lydia was doing her Letter Mm pages and Caleb was having fun too.