Ladybugs, Lions & Lizards! Oh My!

L Day started off early with breakfast. 

When D was heading to the table, I told him that he was going to have a special breakfast for L Day, to which he replied, "A special breakfast? I so excited!" Have I mentioned that my son is awesome? But unlike the caterpillar snack from yesterday, he dove right into his lion waffle*.

*It was a waffle, mandarin oranges, banana slices and two chocolate chips in the eyes. You'd think I was a gourmet chef from his happy reaction.

Confessions activity

Since breakfast was such a hit, Dylan was ready to immediately dive into L Day activities. He wanted to do a L puzzle. Okay, I know that the upper/lower sorting game isn't a puzzle, but he didn't argue. He is getting to be a pro at sorting his letters. He did this one quickly without any help or any hesitation. I was pretty excited...and proud.

Confessions activity

Next, we did the letter search. There were so many Ls in there! He is really good at finding the ones at the beginning of words, but finding ones in the middle was a little harder. This was definitely his most challenging letter search so far.

One of our afternoon crafts that we were both excited about was building a L Lizard. Dylan had a little example picture and I cut out all the pieces. I was on glue duty and he put everything in its place. It turned out really cute!

Placing the head

The L Lizard!

We took the L hunt into Dylan's room looking for more L stuff. He ran straight to his bed and pointed out the L in his name.

And there is a lion picture on the wall!

Our last craft of the day (after doing his L Dot sheet) was creating a ladybug. I showed him how to use the glue stick on the back of the dots and he concentrated SO hard. It was really cute to watch.

The movie of the night was The Lion King. I love watching the opening sequence with Dylan because he gets so excited seeing all the animals. When the baby and adult giraffe came onto the screen (as the song says, "...and blinking step into the sun") Dylan said, "Awww! A baby and mama giraffe. Dats so cute!" What a nut!

Caterpillars + Cookies = C Day!

Welcome to C Day!!

The first thing Dylan wanted to do on C day, was "Dots." I'm telling you, those things are a success. So we did two Confessions pages. The first one was a simple dot page.

Confessions activity

The second one was a letter search. I had him "dot" all the Cs on the page. He got most of them on his own. He only needed help with three of them. I was so proud! he was pretty proud of himself too.

After that, I told D that I had a special book for him.

I loved If you Give a Mouse a Cookie when I was a kid, so I had to get it from the library for him. And there was a HUGE copy! He was pretty excited about the really big book! We read it a few times before we took a break for snack time. I told him he could have a cookie and a glass of milk like the mouse did. He said, "Great! I want a straw like the mouse too!"

[Side note: Do you notice my shoutout to baseball? Since football season ended yesterday, it is now time for me to get excited about baseball season! Opening Day is right around the corner! Go Cardinals!]

Dylan has always been a HUGE Eric Carle fan, so it was obvious that we would have to include the Very Hungry Caterpillar in our C Day. In the afternoon we read the book, watched the animated cartoon, and had a caterpillar snack.

I saw a picture of the caterpillar snack on Pinterest, but (of course) mine didn't turn out as perfect as the one online. It's kind of hard to see in this photo, but he had an apple slice body, a Babybell for his head, and cut up fruit leather for his antenna and legs. Here's a link to the original source. Maybe if you make it, you'll be more successful than I was.

However, Dylan liked it so much that he wouldn't eat it. Every time I took an apple slice out, he would grab it and put it back. He just wanted to look at it. So eventually, I had to take the whole snack apart so he would eat the apples and cheese. I love that even if my craftiness isn't successful, my son still loves it. He is so supportive.

This evening we went out for dinner with Mom & Bob and I told Dylan he had to eat something that had a C in it for C day. Before we got to the restaurant he said, "Mommy! C like Cheese!" So, naturally, I agreed to Mac & Cheese at dinner.

I had so many more activities to do today, but we just didn't have enough time. Maybe when the month is over, we can go back and do review days where we do games and crafts that we missed the first time around?

*That is actually Dylan's Longhorn from TX,
but he calls it a cow...so  he was included in the photo

Super Bowl = F-F-Football Day!

Practicing our tackling skills for football time!

As I mentioned earlier, we jumped ahead to the Letter F for Super Bowl Sunday. We planned to spend the day at Mom & Bob's house, but we started some F activities at our house first.

Dylan officially loves the Do-A-Dot stuff. He asks to "do dots!" So we started F day with the F dot page.

F Dots

Then he asked to color, so I got a coloring sheet out and he spent quite a while perfecting his frog picture.

More Lefty Action

Dylan passed out in the car on the way to my parents' house, so I spent his nap making snacks for the big game with my mom. She made sloppy joes and I made guacamole & sausage dip. Gotta have football snacks on the ultimate football day! Think Finger Food qualifies as an F food?

When D woke up, we got back to the F stuff. Dylan worked on a sticker collage of "F"ootball helmets.

And then he had me color some "F"ish with him. We were also being watched by some "F"rogs

Then it was onto another Confessions upper vs lower case letter sorting activity. He did this one a few times throughout the day so that he could show off a little bit for Nonny and Pa.

It was Super Bowl Sunday and as gametime approached it was time for us to get into a sports mindset. We, obviously, had to take a photo* with our football stuff. (Notice that all the teams we root for are represented. We are wearing our Pats jerseys, we have a Bears football, and the Falcons "Football Mike.")

*Dylan may or may not have been singing and was way too busy to smile for the photo.

And later while the adults were watching the game, Dylan played a little "F"oosball. (Although I am certain that he isn't very clear on the rules of the game)

F Day was a success, but there were some Football crafts/activities that we didn't get to. Maybe I'll save them for our first football day of next season. Maybe that way, he and Daddy can do them together!

A Southpaw D Day?

Day two of our Alphabet month brought us to the letter D. Yes, I know that D is not the second letter in the alphabet. So take it under advisement that we will not be going in order. I have reasons behind the madness, I swear.

Southpaw Coloring

I had actually planned on doing B today, but some of the things I wanted to do weren't possible today, so we skipped ahead. So today was all about D!

After our morning tradition of breakfast, GMA, and coffee (guess who gets what?), we did a little coloring to start off the D festivities. I was a little surprised that Dylan wanted to color with his left hand. He favored his right when coloring yesterday, but he was in a Southpaw kind of mood today, I guess. I wonder which hand will dominate tomorrow?

Next, we bundled up and headed outside (despite the snow) for an excursion/field trip. We headed to Dunkin' Donuts because, well, I figured that we had to considering it was D day. Appropriately, we even found Ds on the doors!

Dylan decided that he wanted a chocolate donut. It doesn't take much to make a 2 1/2 year old happy - a donut with sprinkles will do the trick!

Once we got back home it was time for some more Confessions activities... We did Duck mini-puzzles and a Dinosaur puzzle.

We had just enough time for a couple books (Dinosaur Opposites and I Love My Daddy Because...) and a Donald Duck cartoon before naptime.

The afternoon was filled with more D stuff! We did another Do-A-Dot page:

More Southpaw action

A Dino size sorting game:

And when it was time for dinosaur coloring, he asked me to color with him. He also knows that pink is my favorite color, so he gave me the pink crayon and told me to make my dinosaur pink. Sweet...but kind of bossy.

We made the venture to his room again to look for D stuff. We didn't find as much as I thought we would. We ended up with Scout the dog, his Daddy Doll, and his doggy.

After dinner (which included Dinosaur chicken nuggets) we snuggled up to watch Dumbo. I think Day 2 of alphabet month was a success. Considering that tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, we are jumping ahead again and making tomorrow F Day! Don't judge me when I use finger food and football in our lesson tomorrow. It's not laziness, it's fandom.

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On a side note: 6 years ago today, Josh and I were at the Orange County Courthouse in flip flops exchanging vows in front of two wonderful friends (Drew & MC).

Happy Anniversary to the man who gave me the most amazing thing in my world - our son.

Feb 1st is "A" Day!

I know that it has been forever since I wrote anything. Our upcoming month is going to be full of learning and adventure, so I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to start writing again. 

I decided that February is going to be Alphabet Month in the Sitko Home. Dylan has almost mastered his letters (except for E, G & J for some reason) so I thought we could take it a step further. Thanks to Pinterest and some other amazing websites, I have found an incredible amount of activities and ideas to last us the entire month. For my other mom-friends out there who are looking for a great resource for educational kids’ activities, check out http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/. It’s pretty much amazing and I printed off tons of stuff from there.

[Disclaimer: I know that most people aren't going to care about every little activity we did today, but some of my Mommy-friends might like some ideas, and some of Dylan's grandparents might like to gawk over him a little. The rest of you can stop reading now. I promise to not be offended. And please forgive my obsessive attention to detail. ]

Today is A Day!

We, obviously, started off our alphabet month with A! When I told Dylan that today was “A Day” he jumped off his chair and said, “Yay! I so happy!” and did a little happy dance. He didn't have a clue what “A Day” meant, but he was already excited. It made me really excited about starting our alphabet adventure. My main focus today was teaching Dylan about lowercase a. He recognizes A immediately, but we hadn't worked on any lowercase letters yet. 

One of the printouts/ideas on Confessions was Do-A-Dot sheets. Perfect for comparing A & a and working on his dexterity. It was his first time using Do-A-Dot painters (mine too!) but it went better than I expected. We were both pretty happy with it.

Do-A-Dots get an A rating!

Our next activity was capsule growing animals.

I remembered thinking they were awesome when I was a kid, so when I saw them in the dollar bin at Target, I couldn't resist. I had no idea that those little sponge animals would be the hit of the day. He played with those simple, sponge animals for hours today!

Onto another A project! We teamworked and made an A alligator. But first, Dylan showed me how to make an A:

"Look, Mommy! It's A!"

Dylan wasn't extremely interested in putting the alligator together himself, so we compromised on him telling me where to put all the teeth. Once we were done, he loved the finished product.

A for Alligator

Chomping Dylan's head!

Our last morning activity was, yet another, Confessions one. (I'm telling you, there are so many great ideas and activities there!) Dylan was pretty good at putting the ants in order by size. We did it a few times. He called it his "Ant Puzzle."

Before naptime we read a library book (Alligator Boy by Rylant & Goode) and watched the Letter A episode of Sesame Street. And, thankfully, there was a little something in it for both of us (yes, that is Ryan Reynolds as the Letter A).

I figure that every single craft/activity can't be a screaming success...and we had one of those today. 

I saw a post on Pinterest that showed an Ants in my Pants craft. It seems so simple - tape 3 Q-Tips together and paint ants on a cut out of pants. Well, it didn't look awesome, and Dylan was tired of it pretty fast. But he said he liked it, so, whatever.

Time for another Confessions activity - apple puzzles. My kid may not be quite up on his colors enough yet to name every single one, but he can sure pair them up like a champ.

Next was an airplane. 

This time, Dylan was all about putting the pieces on by himself. We colored it later (after the glue dried) with colored pencils. He liked using the pencils a lot, but they didn't show up very well. I think he either thought the pencils made him look like a big boy, or he thought they were magic wands. Either way, he enjoyed himself.

We took the adventure into Dylan's room to look for all the A stuff we could find. Dylan found the A on his wall (the one I painted for his name above his bed). We quickly came to the realization that he doesn't have an alligator or ant or any A animals, so we decided to just get all of his Animals! If you have ever had the pleasure of getting stuck in Dylan's room playing, you probably had to play with all his animals (he is kind of obsessed). 

After we took the photo he rolled around and tore the pile of animals down. But he immediately wanted to rebuild the pile and take more photos. 

My favorite find from Confessions was perfect for my attempt to differentiate upper from lower case letters. the apple tree had apples with A's and a's on them. He had to match up his apples with the ones on the tree. Awesome!

Today's snack was brought to you by the Letter A! 

Can you tell we watched Sesame Street today? Dylan had apple slices, apple sauce and apricots. I knew that the apricots weren't likely to go over well, but we tried. At least I enjoyed them. 

I had also rented a movie from the $1 area at Family Video. I can't even remember the name, but it was an animal movie and it turned out to be pretty cute. So, our finale to A Day was an A movie before bedtime.

I know I went a little overboard today, but I really wanted to get Dylan excited about our Alphabet month. He already told me that he wants to do another letter tomorrow. I'm so proud.

*We were planning on going to the "A"irport to see "A"irplanes take off today, but it was so cold that we decided to stay inside in our warm house instead. Oh well.