Moving right along...

Two weeks into it and all is well. 

We were very active this week, maybe too much so.  I think I need to downsize the number of activities we do even though we love having fun with friends. 

We did some canning this week.  We made relish and sliced peaches and later today we will make pickles, I think.  :-)  We have also worked on school in the midst of all this other activity.  Speaking of school I began my program at a local college this past week also.  Exciting and scary all at the same time.

The weather the past few days have been on the muggy side.  Can you believe late September and we are having our summer finally? 

 Some of the things we worked on this week include the letter Aa and a bit of the letter Bb. I thought we needed to focus more on just learning one or two letters a week. For this we used a variety of things. We practiced with paper and pointing out objects that begin with the letter A as well as drawing the letter Aa whenever possible. I am teaching both, for now, the capital and lowercase letters.

We have also worked on counting. For this we have counted various objects throughout the day and many times it has been on Sarah’s insistence that we do so. We started with the fireman unit last week and those were some favorite objects using spots on dogs so we are still using those for numbers 1-10. She is a teaser though. She will look at you and grin and try to put the wrong cards together.

We have also been working on fine motor skills. I found some work sheets to help with pushing this forward a bit. I had read that children will write better if their finger and hand muscles are stronger so we are doing skills to also help that. Though why I worry about cutting I have no idea. LOL I am hoping it helps to direct her cutting more to need to cut a given shape out along the lines. We are working on following the lines closer.

Along with beginning handwriting skills and fine motor skills we have been using a work sheet that I laminated so we can use it over and over again.  It's helping to teach direction on writing and sweep I guess you would call it.  Of course we had fun with our new pattern blocks as well!  We created all sorts of shapes and patterns.

We also did some fun school stuff too!  :-)  Last Thursday was our turn to host Learn Through Play.  This month our unit study has been the ocean and seashore.  We got out the sensory bins and made accordion books and read "A Commotion in the Ocean" and discussed all the sea creatures we might find in the ocean.  Then we went exploring for "found objects" and painted with them.  It was a fun activity and worked well with our wide range of ages in the group, 2 years to 6 yrs old. 



This week we built rafts too.  That was an adventure.  Everyone's rafts floated, until they tried to stand on them.  of course mom's played a big role in this activity and again was a great project for a wide range of ages.  We picked blackberries before hand and afterwards all were tuckered out and ready to head home.  The muggy day was getting to us. 

Another home art project that we worked on was a fall line scape I guess you might call it.  We used oil pastels and it was a bit to in depth for Sarah at the end of a busy school learning time.  Next time we will have to space it out a bit more.

Along with this has been Little Gym and Ballet plus swimming classes..... A busy September for the family.

The garden is winding down and soon will be time to work the soil under ready for an early spring planting. This fall hoping that we can build a cold frame area also. Likely the best place to put it is the south side of the house and the best area for that is the front yard. LOL Oh well.... our little farm in the city... How does your garden grow?

Happy Tending!

Playing with pattern blocks