An Icy, Igloo I Day

 I Day was officially the most difficult day to fill with activities. I know it has been a while since I wrote about one of our Letter Days. We have slowed down a bit recently. Between Dylan being sick over the weekend, me having to work a bunch, and Dylan's next session of classes starting up at the Y, it's hard to fit all our letters in!

We did "I Day" last week, but I realized that I hadn't written about it yet. We did the Do-A-Dot sheet first. He was being so careful. And he chose to use "Nonny's favowit color."

Dylan asked to color next. I had an ice cream coloring sheet (After I took this photo he went a little crazy on the ice cream cone. It kind of ended up being a yellow blob).

He wanted to keep coloring, but I was out of coloring sheets. I did have a print-out of a lowercase i so I pulled that out. He traced it and then said, "I make a yitto i!"

After we ate lunch I had an igloo craft. I saw something similar online only it used glue. I cut the top off of a Solo cup, turned it upside down  smeared white frosting all over it and let D cover it in mini-marshmallows. That way, I wouldn't worry if he sneaked a frosting-covered mallow as a snack.

We didn't find much I stuff in his room, but we did pull out his ice pack. When D gets hurt he always wants to put "ice" on it. So I took a pic of him showing how he uses his ice.

That night Dylan had veggie straws for a snack and we made I's with them.

It wasn't quite as fun-filled as some of our other days, but we still had fun.

Woody & Worms on W Day

We continued our completely-out-of-order-alphabet with the Letter W.

We started our day looking for W things in our house...like Windows! I managed to snap a picture of Dylan and Oscar looking out of the window at the snow and the cars. This sweet, peaceful moment didn't last very long because Dylan was ready to "do W stuff!"

We started with the size sorter from Confessions of a Homeschooler. He's gotten to the point where he only wants to do this one once before moving on to "somping ewse."

Then, I told him we were going to do puzzles.

On the Confessions site, she had watermelons with shapes on them. You cut them in half and match up the shapes. I have decided to work on shapes and colors once we are done with the alphabet, but Dylan is already getting a great head start on shapes with activities like this one.

Before long it was time to color. Dylan went all out on this whale coloring page. When he finished he held it up and said, "I give dis to Daddy!" So we wrote a little note on it and I'll have to put it in a envelope and send it to Josh. Special Delivery!

Before naptime, Dylan wanted to do his alphabet puzzle while watching an episode of WordWorld (one of his new favorites).

Our afternoon W activities started when I pulled out some pipe cleaners, rolled up one end to make a head, and told Dylan that they were worms. This was the hit of the day. Four pipe cleaners can keep a kid busy for hours! Of course, before too long they turned into trumpets, lions, caterpillars, and lots of other boy stuff. His imagination was on a roll!

The worm is coming to get Mommy!

Our last worksheet for the day was his W letter search. He found every W without any help. What a stud!

Confessions activity

Dylan and I love Woody. So we had to get a photo of Dylan and his W is for Woody stuff!

Toy Story was the first full-length movie he was interested when younger. He got a big Woody pillow for Christmas in 2011 and he has a big Toy Story blanket on his bed. And he has an awesome, huge Woody that he loves. When Connie was here a couple weeks ago, she pulled Woody down from the toy net and Dylan hugged him for almost 5 minutes saying, "Woody, I missed you!"

We started reading his Toy Story book while snuggled up with Woody and the huge Woody pillow. I love this picture because Dylan is waving Woody's hand at me. "How-ee part-er!" (Or, Howdy Partner)

Our W movie that night was Wall-E. Even though we own it, Dylan hadn't seen it before. So we snuggled up with some popcorn for movie time to finish our W Day.

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I had to post this photo because it makes me smile every time. We took a break from W stuff for a while and played Hide-and-Go-Seek.

He has some of the best hiding places. Closing his eyes definitely helped too.

Giants and Giraffes for G Day

We are back to Letter Days after a 3 day hiatus. We went out of town over the weekend but are back home and back to alphabet stuff. I had a folder full of G stuff waiting for us. It was G Day!

G Day

We started with a coloring sheet and did his upper/lower case Do-A-Dot sheet.

Confessions activity

During book time this morning we looked at his Actual Size book (from Melissa Clark and family) and compared the size of his hand to the size of a gorilla hand. My little guy's lion cub paws that usually look huge don't look as big when next to the gorilla's.

I got two G books from the library for today. Silly Suzy Goose by Petr Horacek and Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae. Dylan loved both of them. We had to read each of them several times.

 











When we read the giraffe book, we lined up all 3 of his giraffes so they could listen to the story too.

We had several Confessions of a Homeschooler activities to do today. Her theme for G day was Gumball. Dylan started with the upper/lower case sorting activity:

Followed by the size sorter:

And then the letter search page:

He did great with his letter search today. He hardly needed any help at all. 

Then, it was time to dive back into Giraffe world. I cut out a yellow giraffe in a G shape and asked Dylan what was missing? "Spots!!" So I gave him his brown Do-A-Dot painter and let him add as many "spots" as he wanted.

I think the finished product turned out to be really cute! As you can see in the picture at the top, he was awfully proud of his work.


Next was Jack & the Beanstalk!

I found some really cute printouts for Jack & the Beanstalk here and decided to add it to today's to-do list. Dylan is kind of obsessed with Giants right now (a couple of his cartoons have had Giant stuff in them lately), so I figured we could use the story for "G as in Giant." I got the book from the library and printed everything off.

The first time we read the book, I had him find all the objects out of the pile when they were mentioned in the story. When the story was over we rearranged them into our own little storyboard for a photo. Then Dylan sat down and I used the pieces like puppets and told the story again in puppet-type show. He LOVED it! I had to do that darn "puppet" show three times!

Dylan wanted to be the giant. So he grabbed the Giant piece and started stomping around saying. "Free, Foe, Figh, Fum!" (close enough, right? It's the toddler version)

The only way I got out of doing the show again was that I promised to do it again before bedtime. And we had to read the Goose book and Giraffe book again as well. I guess all of today's stories were big hits!

We also took today's official G stuff photo with Dylan's 3 stuffed giraffes and his giraffe slippers.

Happy G Day, Everyone!

Valentine's V Day

Since last Thursday was Valentine's Day, it was obvious what letter we chose for that day - V Day!

V as in Vet

Our morning started off in a very non-Valentine way. I had to take our cat, Oscar, to the vet. My mom came over to hang out with D while I was gone and she had an amazing idea. She brought over her stethoscope and she and Dylan played Dylan the Vet with his animals. I didn't even think about V as in Vet! Way to go, Grandma! And all of Dylan's animals got a much needed check-up!

He got so into it that as soon as we got home, he ran over to Oscar's crate (before I could even open it), welcomed him home, and told him he missed him. My little guy is so sweet.

Our first Valentine's Day craft involved painting, which always makes D happy. I saw a different idea on Pinterest that inspired this. I had a square canvas, used scotch tape for the letters L-O-V-E and let him go to town with red and pink paints.

He started to get really into it and decided that one hand just wasn't enough.

The finished product ended up being so cute! 

Dylan was really excited about coloring his V is for Veggies coloring sheet. Please not that I only have 4 markers and I know blue cucumbers aren't very realistic. We took creative liberties.

[Did you notice his Valentine's Day shirt? It is very  appropriate. he is quite the flirt!]


We also did a Confessions worksheet. This is the one she uses with magnets on the website, but Dylan likes using the little dollar bin craft balls.

Confessions activity

Dylan got a special Valentine's Day snack that afternoon. I put animal crackers, strawberry frosted mini wheats, Quaker Oats Whole Hearts (just like Cheerios but heart shaped), and a handful of Valentine colored M&Ms.

We did one last Valentine craft before getting ready for bedtime. I saw this one on Pinterest, too. We used different colors of paint and Dylan finger-painted dots. After it dried, I cut it into a heart shape and painted a tree trunk. We made a heart tree!

Happy Valentines Day!

Big Q, little q, what begins with Q?

Today was Q day!

Confessions activity

We did his Do-A-Dot upper/lower case practice sheet to start our day. That was followed by his upper/lower sorting game from Confessions. It was a Q is for Quilt activity. As usual, he breezed through it and didn't miss one!

I saw a couple Q game suggestions in various places online. I decided we would give the Quarter Toss a try. I cut out an uppercase Q, put it on the floor, and then gave him 6 quarters to throw into the Q (And yes, I did pull the paranoid mom thing and wash all the quarters first). Making it in the Q was kind of hard - quarters bounce! It was pretty fun.

Next, we tried to do quarter rubbing with his crayons. It didn't go very well and neither one of us really enjoyed it.  He didn't completely grasp the whole thing and didn't think the finished product was that cool. But we tried.

After we were done with our two quarter games I brought his piggy bank out and had him put his $1.50 inside. He loves his piggy bank and wanted to carry it back into his room and put it on his dresser "all mysewf" (translation: all by myself).

By the way, that piggy bank was from Drew & Holly. It was part of the basket they sent to the hospital when Dylan was born. It's really cute!

Every letter day we do, we stick the matching flash cards on his bedroom door. After we stuck the Qs on, I thought it was time to take a picture.

Tonight for dinner, we stopped at Qdoba to get quesadillas & queso and brought them home to have a picnic on our big tropical quilt. Wow, that's a lot of Qs.

I saw an idea online and changed it around a bit for Dylan. I cut out 4 pieces of construction paper and drew shapes on them. Then I had him use Q-tips to match the shapes.

Our final Q project of the day was making a lowercase q look like a quilt.

I simply cut out little squares from construction paper, covered the q in Elmer's glue, and let him fill up the q with quilt squares. 

I love this picture of him working on his q quilt because his face looks so funny! I think he must have gotten his finger in the glue.

Our Q book for the day was one I found suggested in a couple Mommy blogs. We got The Name Quilt by Phyllis Root from the library.

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Some lucky girl that lives in this house got Valentine flowers and chocolate covered strawberries delivered today! Dylan was so excited to try the strawberries. They were a huge hit! We love you, Babe! Thanks for the beautiful flowers and the tasty treats.

Loving the Valentine chocolate covered strawberries!