Multitude Mondays - Week Twenty-Three

371. another week with Daniel off... yeah!!!

372. the arrival of football season

373. which means, somewhat cooler weather on the horizon to enjoy more time outside (The weather right now is incredible! Too bad it won't last, though. But such a blessing to have it it all.)

374. a new playgroup (Random... a girl sent out an email on a normal neighborhood message board I am on about start a playgroup for those wanting to homeschool in the area. Um, yes please! She has two children, ages 3.5 and 1 year. And they are Aggies! Talk about prayers being answered.)

375. getting through a no-spend month (It was very difficult. We couldn't figure it out, but our money still disappeared both paychecks on top of curbing extra purchases. We contributed it to higher bills during the summer and higher gas costs. I definitely think it was the Lord's timing to encourage us to have a no spend month in August because we would have been putting things on our credit card, if not.)

376. a second successful week of homeschooling (Our energy is still high, which is such a good thing.)

377. this pregnancy flying by (Because who really enjoys being pregnant? Not me.)

378. a successful start to reading lessons (I can't believe we are doing this right now. As long as Emily is receptive, though, we will continue. We are working out of the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Today we read our first word... am.)

379. cooler weather means a cooler house, which means the AC running less :)

380. finally getting Emily's room together... after a year of living in our house

Letter B

Another week has passed here at the Wetzel household, and this time we learned all about the letter B! Emily has always loved butterflies, so she was especially excited to see almost every activity this week revolved around them. A lot of these are the same activities from last week, only with butterfly graphics. Repetition is the key to learning at this age, even when they have mastered the skill. In the beginning, I thought she would get bored, but in all reality, how many times did you do the same puzzle as a kid?

I have had a couple of friends ask how much work this was, or say I am way more on top of things than they are. I just want to let everyone know that all this took a lot of work. I have been researching things on and off for the past year and have spent the 6 months printing everything out, laminating it all, and planning out our activities for each day. Nothing like this gets thrown together easily, but it has definitely been worth it all!

Again, if not mentioned, all these ideas and printouts came from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Day 1: We added another letter to our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree. Olivia just HAD to be in the picture, as well. If only she would have smiled.

Letter B tracing. And a headband for the day.

Sorting big B and little b with some help from a little sister who really doesn't help at all.

We have already learned numbers 1-10, but she often gets 4 and 5 confused, or forgets what they are altogether. The next couple of weeks I am planning on going back over the numbers 4+ just to make sure she has them down.

And we are getting more and more comfortable with free handing letters and numbers. Her fours are coming along nicely!

The following is such a simple activity for preschoolers. You really can do it with any manipulative and a regular muffin tin. Just put little numbers in the bottom and have your child count out the correct number. I happened to pick up some "b"utterfly silicon cupcake holders at HEB for $1. I couldn't pass them up. We will definitely be using these again -- they were a hit!

Our weekly puzzle...

More counting practice...

And to conclude day 1, we made a bird feeder that I saw on Pinterest. Unfortunately, our pesky squirrels tore it to pieces over night.

Day 2: We made a B collage with stickers. It would have been smart here to use buttons, but buttons aren't cheap... stickers are.

And, of course, Olivia had to get in the action. We start on those fine motor skills early.

More B handwriting practice. Another resource I found on Pinterest!

Size sorting. Emily knew small and large, but medium was a new one. And I want to make a special shout out to our friend Candace who gave us the most AMAZING flower bow this past weekend. We are constantly looking for outfits to wear it with!

This has been all over the internet, so I don't know who to attribute it to. I ended up using an idea to use $1 hair gel, food coloring, and glitter. Only, I didn't use glitter. I should have. We have already gone out and bought some glitter for next week. It just makes it a little easier to see. We practiced writing all of the letters and numbers we know and Olivia got her own bag to squish around.

Our weekly cutting practice. Gotta keep up with those skills.

This was another idea I saw all over Pinterest. I just used stickers and hand drawn lines. Emily didn't seem to care that it wasn't any fancier.

I promise we are going to get Olivia a haircut this upcoming week.

A butterfly numbers game! Emily was playing against herself, which is nice because she is guaranteed to win. This was the first time to use a die, so it took a couple of tries to figure out how to keep it on the table.

End of day 2 brought coffee filter butterfly painting. I don't know where this idea came from, but it seems to be a basic go-to craft for butterfly making.

Day 3: This was an activity I forgot to post from last week. We rolled out "snakes" and practiced forming the play dough into different letters. We love play dough in this household. It is generally a daily activity for us all. We have been making homemade play dough lately, which is so much fun and smells lovely. I will post the recipe soon.

Play dough and then do-a-dots! Thursday started out right! Again this worksheet came from Beginning Reading.

Another letter path worksheet from the blog Tons of Fun. We also had to mark big E and little e, since those are the most important letters in the alphabet.

Butterfly lacing...

Gummy bear graphing. This was probably our most favorite activity of the week! We learned how a graph works and talked about how to properly read the graph without counting the bears out. We also talked about how we visually see which color has the most and least. I have seen this activity all over the internet and definitely want to start including graphs in our activities every week, or every other week. I figured gummy "b"ears were appropriate and just made a simple graph in excel.

I wanted some kind of writing practice for the 3rd day, so I made this worksheet at Handwriting Worksheets. You can input your own information so it says whatever you want it to. Perfect!

Day 4: We started with letter matching...

Patterns. We are finally picking up the concept.

Butterfly number cards...

So easy to make!

This game is from Mama Jenn. It is suppose to be used with a specially made die you buy called an education cube. You can put different inserts it specific to your game/activity. I just used a regular die and we counted spaces. It still was appropriate because of the bird on the game board.

Shape tracing, along with an early morning snack.

Olivia couldn't get enough of the cinnamon sugar. She is definitely a double dipper.

And we ended this fun week of learning by making handprint/footprint bumble bees!

We are taking formal learning off next week since Daddy will be home from work. Check back in two weeks for our letter C activities!!!

Pizza Faces

One of my mom's favorite activities is cooking in the kitchen with children. She cooked with me, she cooked with my cousins, she cooked with friend's children, and now she is getting the chance to cook with her own grandchildren. Every time we go to visit she has some new recipe she wants to try and last trip was especially exciting... pizza faces!

The recipe called for making faces on pita, but I insisted on using pizza dough. You want to know the secret to the easiest pizza dough in the world? Go buy some raw dough from your local pizza shop. But you have to go to a local shop, not a chain. Doughs are generally made the day of and kept in the refrigerator. Basically, it is the same dough you would make at home only without any work. I don't care how few steps and how easy homemade dough is to make. If you have to knead it or it takes longer than 5 minutes to be ready then it isn't worth. Why go to any extra work if you can buy the same stuff already prepared? Moving on...

Here are some pictures from the fun activity. The girls are still talking about it! I suggest you try it with your kiddos soon!!!

A is for amazing applesauce

When we were learning all about A last week, we made applesauce in the crockpot. This is an old recipe that I use to make with my mom. I knew it was good, but I forgot exactly how much I loved it. Unfortunately, it didn't last long, especially when Daniel discovered it. Note to self: double recipe next time!

We are getting into apple season, so I just wanted to pass along the recipe. It really couldn't be any easier. I peeled the apples and cut pieces off the core. Then I gave Emily a plastic knife and she cut the apples into smaller chunks. She also measured everything out and mixed it all together. I love cooking with her in the kitchen, but hate many recipes because they seem to cause too much of a mess with little kids. (I am a clean freak when it comes to that. I know, my kids are missing out on many opportunities. They can deal.) This was the perfect recipe that she could pretty much do all by herself and didn't require much clean up. Win, win for both of us!

Slow Cooker Applesauce

6-8 servings

8 apples, quartered, pared, and chopped (any variety will work, but we used red delicious)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup water

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Cook on low for 5-6 hours. After allotted time, mash the apples with a potato masher right in the slow cooker. Cool and enjoy!

Multitude Mondays - Week Twenty-Two

362. a fun weekend visit with one of Daniel's oldest friends (dating back to birth) and his family

363. a large Sunday family dinner at our house (along with a farewell to Daniel's grandparents who are moving to Florida)

364. getting to visit with an aunt and uncle of Daniel's who came in to help his grandparents move

365. finding amazing recipes on Pinterest that wow

366. stocking our pantry and kitchen with items from Daniel's grandparents (We scored so much, including a lot of olive oil, way too many cans of diced tomatoes, and 200 ziplocs. I still can't figure out how they had room for everything, but we will take whatever they are passing down!)

367. a great last prep meeting before this new year of my mother's group starts... I'm getting so excited!

368. waking up extra early today (I am always amazed at how much I get done when the girls are still sleeping. Today I had a blissful 2 hours before they woke up.)

369. that my activity bags arrived to the party in time (More on this to come. It is such a great idea and I can't wait to share!)

370. a good first week of homeschooling packed with a lot of learning

Letter A

Well, we just finished our first week homeschooling. I think we all had fun learning about the letter A. I was worried the first 5 minutes into it that Olivia would be too much of a terror (that is her middle name) but I quickly learned how to somewhat manage her. All in all, it was a pretty good week and Emily is all ready to learn about the letter B next week.

A lot of photos follow, but I know some people (mainly, a certain grandparent) are dying to know what we have been up to all week. I didn't get a picture of everything, but a majority of our activities are listed below. Most of the print-outs come from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I was immediately drawn to her bright, cheery, hands-on letter of the week curriculum, plus I liked the fact I could prepare everything this year and re-use it for all our other children. All of her activities can be printed for free individually, or you can download them all at once for a small fee. For all other resources, I will list the link.

We started off this homeschooling adventure by reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Emily just thinks this book is hilarious, so it was exciting for her to finally realize what the big palm tree was doing in our school room. One letter up, 25 to go...

I agree with a lot of people that young children don't need worksheets, but this kid absolutely loves them. She wakes up from naps begging to do them. The dollar store has become my best friend, in this regard, because they have so many preschool workbooks for c-h-e-a-p. This "letter A" writing practice is from Confessions of a Homeschooler, though.

Each day we generally end with some kind of craft, or coordinating snack time, such as "a"pple tasting. We did it a little early the first day because we made homemade applesauce. I must post the recipe because it is so good!!! Emily had a blast helping and did a lot by herself. I'm glad I thought of giving her a plastic knife because it worked perfectly.

This idea comes from Totally Tots. I already had everything cut out, and Emily just assembled it. We will be doing this for every letter, then putting them around the top of our school room to admire.

Miss Olivia had to get in a picture. Talk about someone needing a haircut. That is just embarrassing!

Day 2... I asked Emily if she wanted to get dressed. The first day I made her change so we could start off the school year right. The second day she had the option, which she declined, but she did tell me she needed a bow for pictures.

An "A" collage. If I had planned ahead, we would have used apple jacks or apple seeds. But I didn't. Sequins are just as fun.

More handwriting practice. She just LOVES tracing.

Cutting practice -- a weekly activity. She has become so much better since we started in the spring.

Our first file folder game -- worms in my apples! This idea came from Mama Jenn. I left all the apples blank so I could write whatever number I wanted to on them. We learned the numbers 1-9 this summer, and we finished up with 10 this past week. I figured that not all my children would be at the same point when playing this game, so it would be better for me to adjust each year.

Handprint apple tree via I don't know where. Sorry about that one. But, I have found so many fun handprint activities (most from Pinterest -- I love you!) that each week we will be doing one to coordinate with our new letter.

Day 3... still going strong. We pulled out the do-a-dot markers, which are always a hit. This letter search comes from Beginning Reading.

And check out those freehand a's. I'm so impressed. After a couple of meltdowns, I learned this summer not to push her writing freehand. I forget sometimes that she is still really young. I offered, not expecting anything, and she jumped at the chance. We have grown so much!

Emily loved this fun worksheet from Tons of Fun. Such a cute idea, and I'm glad I didn't have to spend time making something this creative. Gotta love free printables!

Apple lacing. They say lacing is one of the best activities for preschoolers. We have finally learned how to go in order through the holes. Mostly.

The beginning of the summer I printed off a whole bunch of number worksheets. My plan was to go through numbers 1-10 before school started, one per week. I missed my goal by one week, so I am pretty pleased. This worksheet is from Kid Zone.

We started off the beginning of the summer following the directions by putting an "X" on the ones that didn't fit. We then progressed to squares, and now we are at scribbles. Whatever. I believe this worksheet is from tlsbooks.com. So many free worksheets!

Whenever we finish learning a number, we decorate one to put up on our number wall. I will have to post a picture because the numbers make a colorful addition to our schoolroom.

Actually not getting into trouble...

More number practice. I can't remember where I got this idea from. Ideally, you would use red, green, and yellow skittles to count, but I knew that would mean I would end up eating the bag. Although Emily loves candy, she has someone to moderate how much she eats, unlike me. Plastic beads work.

Olivia was happy until she wanted in on the action and was told no. Poor girl. I did give her a few beads to play with and attempted to keep them out of her mouth the whole time.

Everyone getting in on the action. Who doesn't love do-a-dot markers? Well, Mom, when she discovers that Olivia has been marking her whole body.

Another "letter A" word search. And no smile for the camera. She really doesn't like cheesing it up, unlike our youngest.

Our last activity -- more cutting practice. She did such a great job cutting out the apples and gluing them on the tree. I had visions of this being a disaster.

Well, that is it. A fun week of letter "A" activities, and a long, boring post if you weren't interested. Next week, letter "B" and lots and lots of butterflies!