And now she knows....

.... her A, B, C's! Well, most of them ;-) We did our final letter this week and made a lovely orange and purple (her color choices) zebra for her final alphabet project. We played the same games we played week one and she's doing so well! Recognized 18 letters, she only knew 3 when we started!

I stopped posting updates a while ago, because I really don't think anyone out there is reading, but I'm glad to have this for myself, to look back at where we started off this school year. I'm probably not going to update this blog again. I'll grab what I want for scrapbook journals and then blow it up....

If there are lurkers out there who want me to keep going, speak now, before it's too late!

Week 21

One of the cutest craft projects yet! She worked hard on this one and was very careful with the coloring, I cut it out and she glued on the parts in the right places. This little tiger has personality!

Week 20

Our Focus:

Finally! S week! We've been waiting a long time for this letter. It's the one letter in her name that she has a hard time writing on her own. They usually end up backwards and often have a few too many curves. I thought this snake we made for her alphabet craft would have been fun, but it ended up being a little tedious. I printed and cut out this snake shaped like the letter S. Aislinn colored it and glued it to the construction paper. We should have stopped there, but I thought it would be fun to add String to our S Snake. I'll give her credit, she put on about 50% of the string before wandering away. The rest was added by yours truly.

Week 19

Our Focus:

She's following in her brother's footsteps and flying through all of my planned activities and begging for more. We're getting through 2 or 3 letters each week! This week's alphabet project was tons of fun. We made a Rainbow out of Rice! Color dry rice with food coloring and glue to paper! It's just that easy. And yes, it's just that messy too. We did this project at playgroup instead of at home. The little ones love it!

Week 18

Our Focus:

I thought Q would be a hard one, but it went surprisingly smooth! She loves writing the letter, "an O with a tail." For the first time she wrote some on her own, after practicing on her tracer pages, normally I only have her do two of each letter on her own and let her trace the rest. She was making Q's all over the place! Her writing is becoming very smooth and fluid and she's writing her name on her own (although the S is still backward with an extra bump).

Our alphabet project this week was a felt Quilt glued to paper. I just wish I had more colorful felt on hand...

Week 17

Our Focus:

This week big brother, Liam, helped out with Aislinn's preschool. He sat with her and helped her out with this week's worksheets. It was really too sweet, and he was a great teacher. That is until he got bored. Aislinn has a LONG attention span and outlasted Liam so Mommy had to take over for the last few pages.

This is one of my favorite projects, he's so cute! And notice his feet. I thought they should be orange, she thought they should be yellow, so she did one of each!

Week 16

We talked about all of the different creatures that live in the ocean this week. She surprised me with all the animals that she came up with. Perhaps she's been watching a little too much Spongebob.... When she worked on her octopus project she asked me what color octopus are. Hard question to answer! She ended up giving each leg a different color, too cute!

Feeling better

Aislinn's chinny, chin, chin is feeling much better! Here's a shot after she was able to stop wearing the bandages. And now it's nothing but a little pink scar. Thank goodness it healed well!

Boo-boo chin

I have such a brave little girl. The poor thing was running around in my bedroom when she fell down and smashed her chin open on the hard floor. It happened right as I was getting ready to start our bedtime routine. So instead of getting into jammies and brushing teeth we were applying pressure and assessing the damage. It wasn't a deep cut but it needed to be held closed while it heals so I send Daddy to the store for some butterfly bandages. He got there right as they were locking the door. Thank goodness the person on the other side was nice and let hubby in anyway to buy the bandages. I got her cleaned up, patched up and a few minutes later she fell asleep in my lap. She did such a good job and sat still while I fixed her up. She can't stand bandaids so she is not at all thrilled with her new chin adornment.Here's the sleeping princess all snug in her bed after the ordeal. (Yes, she wrote her name on the headboard a few months back, I really should scub that off...)

This morning after a bandage change. She wasn't trilled....

Week 15

Our Focus:It took a few weeks to finish this week's work. We've been busy with all kinds of things, birthdays, spring cleaning, helping Grandpa B clean out his basement, etc. We finally finished and had a good time :) For our alphabet art project this week we made a paper man, to tie into our letter of the week we used a NUT for his NOSE! I think he turned out rather cute...

One credit done!

I've finished my first course! My average is 100%! It was just an easy one credit course, truth be told I hope things become more challenging as I continue. Now I have to wait until my next course comes in the mail...

Kitteh update

She's made it through the first week and she has a name! Ciera is all snuggled up next to me after a long morning of playing with Aislinn and Diego. She also met her Auntie Donna, Uncle Dennis (my sister and BIL) and my niece, Megan, who took quite a liking to her. She's so cute and she LOVES to cuddle.

We had a bit of a rocky start with Diego. Based on his reaction to her I would guess that he's never seen a cat before. He was scared stupid when he met her, tail between the legs, shaking and shivering. Then when he built up the courage to interact with her he was WAY too rough with her. So, after a week of training, patience and a muzzle he has learned that having a kitty friend can be fun!

Today is his first day without a leash or muzzle and he's doing great. He does have his remote color on, but so far he hasn't needed anything more than a warning buzz.

Maybe when she wakes up from her nap I can get some pictures of them together.

I'm a college student!

I'm a student again! I just got off the phone with admissions and I'm a student! I'm doing a happy dance, I can't wait to get started! I will soon have my Associates Degree in Early Childhood Education! Woohoo!

We gotts a kitteh!

awwwwww, love at first cuddle!

Playing with Daddy's fingers

"I am so cute!"

Peek-a-boo!

She has such neat markings.

She has no name yet, but we're leaning toward Ciera (pronounced Key-rah)

Week 14

Our focus...

I thought this was a cute little project. A monkey template to glue onto an old CD. Aislinn was upset that it didn't have a body or a tail. LOL We also made a mailbox paper craft to add to our alphabet paper craft wall.

Week 13

Our Focus...

We played a fun listening game this week. I took 6 empty cups and filled them with different things like loose change, car keys, goldfish crackers, etc. Then I would have Aislinn listen while I shook the cup and she would guess what was inside. She had such fun with this! After we played for a while she played again with her father and then got bit brother to play too.

Here's our paper plate lion craft. I love how she made the ears two different colors.

Aislinn was so into school on Friday that I ran out of materials to use! So, I got out the flash cards and counting chips to see if she would understand the concept of addition. She picked up on it right away! She would put down the counting chips by the card...

And then count them up!

Daddy (the math teacher) was very proud!

Kitty Wanted

We had a fun time yesterday at my niece's 5th birthday party. Crafts galore, cupcakes and ice cream! After the party died down and most of the guests had gone home we let my SIL's cat out of the bedroom to play for a bit. Hubby was lovin' on her kitty and told his sister that he wanted to bring her home, she joked back that he could, if he could sneak her past her 5 year old first....

About an hour later we were packing up to go home. I helped Aislinn with her coat and asked her if she was ready to go. She said, "Yup! I just have to get my kitty first." Oh no, my litteral minded 4 year old thought we were taking the kitty home! I told her, "Oh no, sweetie, that's Danielle's kitty, we're not taking her home." We are planning on getting a cat soon so I let her know that we will find our own kitty but that didn't stop the tears.

My poor baby girl, her heart was broken.

The hard part is the shelter we want to adopt from is only open until 4:00. Hubby and Liam aren't even home from school until 3:30...

Anyone have a friendly kitty that needs a home?

Week 12

Our Focus:

Our letter project this week was a paper kite. It was a pretty easy paper project, but it involved cutting and gluing so she loved it! We did a review of her numbers this week, it looks like she has them down pat, with the exception of number 10. We made a very cute number caterpillar project, she put the pieces in order all by herself! She even noticed that if the 6 was turned up-side-down it looks like a 9. What a smarty pants!

I was playing blog catch-up today, so there are a lot of new entries, make sure you keep reading! More coming soon, we're almost done with week 13!

Snow Day!

My tech junkies on a snow day......

We manages to get them outside for some winter fun. Daddy made a cool snow fort AND a sledding hill out of the huge snowbank! Peek-a-boo Aislinn!

Liam pops out to say, "cheese!"

Diego got into the fun too! He loves to pull the sled.

This is the doggy smile that inspired me to go out and get him a harness for even more pulling power fun! I had him out again today and with the harness he can pull both kids! Now we need a bigger sled....

Week 11

Our Focus

We had fun this week! Aislinn took a journey to the store and bought some oranges for juice! We talked all about how oranges grow while we squeezed each one by hand. The juice was soooooo yummy!

Our fun project this week was this picture of jeans! I had some spare denim fabric so I traced out a shape for her to cut out, we added a button and some decorations with markers and ta-da, jeans! We glued them to construction paper so we could add them to the project wall.

She is doing so well in school. She had the concept of phonics, our main focus is on starting sounds in words, but we did one worksheet with rhymes and she picked it up right away. She has her numbers 1 through 9 down pat, but the two digit numbers are still a little confusing.
I love watching her catch on to new concepts, it's so rewarding, I love this job.

Dawgawn Fun

"What are YOU looking at?""Nothing Boss, nothing at all, I wasn't looking at anything...."

Nahhhhh he's not like that! He's a big ol' softie! He's a big ol' goofball too!
From top to bottom: Aislinn, Liam and Diego

Week 10

Our focus:So far this has to be my favorite project this school year! We did ice painting! Here's her finished project:

We poured paint into little paper cups and placed one craft stick into each cup. The cups went into the freezer (along with a not that said, "do not eat.") and two days later we pealed off the paper cups and painted with the frozen paint! Here's my artist at work...

This project is getting framed, that's for sure.