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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Little Photographer!

Allie has been enjoying taking pictures! (That's right folks...I'm starting her young!:))  She hasn't done too bad- and it is interesting to see what she chooses to take pictures of. Over all, she is doing pretty good. Here are some of her pictures! :) 





























Monday, August 29, 2011

Favorite Random Photo... :)

Cousins K and L were here a couple weeks ago. I snatched this cute picture of them all looking out the window. :) I think they were watching for Allie's daddy to come home. :) 

To market!

Allie got a new cash register for her birthday. We had to set up a little market for her to come spend her play money. She wanted to buy stuff and wanted us to use her cash register. :)  She kept buying all of the stuff I had set out, so I'd have to go find more. :) She enjoys it. She brings her little shopping cart, and her purse with her play money and pretends away. :) We are loving the pretending phase! 






Saturday, August 27, 2011

She's a Learning Sponge! :)

Allie girl is such a little sponge right now. Being a teacher- this is exciting for me. I have been trying to take advantage of her willingness to learn and make it purposeful and fun for her. To sit back and just let these teachable opportunities slide by without doing anything makes me cringe- so I've been loving coming up with new ways to teach her. :)  We don't sit down at the table and do workbooks or formal lessons...everything is teachable play, intentional play, and purposeful. I have a reason for every little thing that I do- and while she still has TONS of free play this is one little way I can challenge her and help her to learn new things! She loves it and usually sparks the flame for more learning and other new things. :)  She is a quick learner and it is fun for me as well as her. :) I have a bunch of little things that we have done, and I'll share more as we do them... for now.... here's some of them...


ABC Letters: 
Aa- (July activities -Week or two in length total spent broken into random times)
She knows her ABC's and has has been able to sing the song for quite a while now- so I thought she was ready for the next step. She initiated this on her own and I went with it. She brought me a magnetic letter and said, "Look mommy, an A!" How cool! I was of course ecstatic and praised and praised her. Since it is the first letter of her name, we have told her what it was before, and when we write her name, we always say the letters. Between that, and some of her shows, and other random mentions of it, she knew what it looked like. I asked if she could find any other ones... turns out- we had a ton! :) We talked about the sound that a makes and some words that it also makes. I had these neat little books that you can color for each letter of the alphabet as well, and so we worked on the letter A (big and small a's) and the sound, and words that start with A. We also did a craft and poem with the letter a.  We also looked for the letter in books sometimes when we read them together. :) She's got the letter name, sound, words that start with it and she's made a couple of A's in her drawings too. Usually she makes a cross, but sometimes gets the actual capital A made too! :)
 We did a sorting activity after she found several a's. We put the big ones together, and the small ones together. :) 



 Then we sorted them by colors......
 Working on how the A is made.... She can't do it consistently, and that is more than ok...just learning. :)
 She knows how to make a Jesus cross! :)

 one that mommy and allie made together....

 She's helping George to make one too. :)


 And teaching George what the sound is... :)  (She thought that was fun!):)
 A folder... i drew pictures, she colored, and then I wrote the label for each picture and she found the A's in the word and I highlighted them. :)
 Craft with our poem.... She wasn't into this as much....


 We talked about first, next, and last.  (with the apple craft) Sequencing is a great skill!!!  And... the finished hanging mobile.
Coloring in the Aa book I had. :) 

 Making A's with pretzels.... :)



I started her with this letter (actually she started it all... :)) at the end of July. We are now on the letter C. :)  I'll update with the other letters and other things we've been doing too. :)
Skills introduced- 
Letter recognition, letter sounds, letter formation, sorting, sequencing, fine motor with coloring and making a's, basic word identification (labeling words that start with a and also finding words that have a's in them)

Friday, August 26, 2011

Clean up project

Allie girl and I have been busy the last couple weeks.  We have this room over our garage that is awesome- it  is nice and spacious- with good cupboards and workbenches. The only problems are that it isn't connected to the main part of the house- except through the garage (something we can't fix right now) and it was a HUGE MESS! (something we can fix now! :))  So I got busy. Why we saved some of this stuff I'll never know.... :)  Anyways- I enjoy seeing progress so- I took before and after photos... :) Warning- it is BAD before....how embarrassing!!!!!!!!!!!!! But the finished product is worth it! :) 
Before- as you come up the steps....
 Before- One half of the room...lots of empty boxes.....
 Before- The other half of the room- after I had started working already....
 After clearing (with daddy's help) most of the boxes away.....
 After clearing boxes away- still have junk to go through and organize and PITCH!!!!  I pitched so much stuff and probably could have pitched so much more!  A lot of this stuff on this side is my personal school stuff that I wanted to keep to use with Allie someday- or for if I go back to teaching someday.
 Another view from the first half of the room (from the before pictures)

 And....the AFTER it is all DONE..... Ahhhh! :) 
Top of the steps view....
 After- First half of the room....
AFTER- Other half of the room....
I made a little table that we can use for crafting or projects or whatever.  It is easy to move it and take it away if we need the space or don't want it. Just pieces of stuff I had up there already- making them functional. 
 Another view....
                                  

 My little handy helper.... she likes this table... :) 
 Helping me- with her sweeper. :) 
 Our trash pile....it doesn't look as impressive as it actually was.....


We also cleaned out a big closet that had been driving me nuts...it was a catch-all closet....
Before/During....
 During...stuff is EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!
After.... all nice and organized.
 Makes me happy! :) 
 Love her! She was a good little helper and enjoyed looking at everything I pulled out of the closet. She really enjoyed the keyboard and the tiara! :) She's so sweet! :) 

:) I'm loving the time to be able to do stuff like this that has needed done for so long. It feels great to get projects like this checked off the list- and to feel like I'm making progress.... daddy and nana and papa call these cleaning episodes tornadoes.... :) They happen fairly often.....they usually involve more than cleaning.... it has to be gone through- things pitched, reorganized, reminisced, and then put back - usually not the way it was before in any manner... it takes forever- but is so worth it in the end. :) (As evidenced by the trash pile this week... :) )