December Week 2

Finally, a “normal” week with nothing extraordinary that happened. Andrew went to work (he had been out 2 weeks over Thanksgiving break, thanks to the flu turned into pneumonia) and Audrey and I spent most of our time at home! It wont be long though. Eastern Orthodox Nativity is celebrated January 7, and there are lots of things to do before then!

NUMBERS

Oh numbers. We love numbers here. This week I made a little game for us to play, which I saw here. You basically draw a little man on a piece of paper, and fill him with numbers 1 through 6, multiple times. I made two of these – one for me and one for miss A. To play, roll the dice. Whatever number faces up, say you get to look for that number on your paper and color it in. Whoever colors in all of their numbers first wins! Audrey loved rolling the dice (which, it turns out, we do not have…so the resourceful mom that I am, I went to the app store on our iPad and downloaded a free dice app. It worked just fine, I say to myself, smugly).

We also pulled out the parking lot game, which I mentioned in a previous post. This time around, with a few more months behind her, A really focused on this one. She loved driving her cars into the right spaces, and I think I will make a new parking lot page with numbers 11-20 to challenge her further. We also discovered that one of her cars, when pulled backwards on the coffee table, will roll forwards on its own. Very exciting.

CREATIVITY

Nativity is coming up. My husband could no longer hold me back. This week our tree went up! Audrey and I both spent an hour decorating it, and since then, A and the cat have spent hours un-decorating it. Needless to say, the tree has been a very exciting center of attraction as of late. We have conversations about it with every person we meet.

For a creative project this week, I gave her materials to make and decorate her own little trees! There were different ones for different days. We practiced cutting and gluing and glittering (well, to an extent..) She loved having her hand traced! (Adapted from this blog.)

First, I drew an outline of her hand on some green paper. Then I let her dot on ornaments with a Q-tip and 3 colors of paint. When the paint was dry, we cut out the hands, layered them on top of one another, and glued them on a black background. Further decorating with pom poms was inevitable.

We also experimented with ornament making. I glued 3 Popsicle sticks into the shape of a snowflake, and gave them to A to paint. Before the paint was dry, we sprinkled glitter on them. Later I glued a loop of yarn on the backs so we could hang them on the tree. THAT was exciting. In retrospect, I would wait for the paint to dry, smear a light layer of glue all over it, THEN sprinkle on the glitter. An egregious amount of shimmer has fallen off some of the ornaments.

Audrey desperately wants to cut with scissors. I don’t care for this style, but we have them now, so I suppose until I remember to buy the kind I prefer, we will use these. Basic cutting skills! I gave Audrey a few strips of paper that I drew certain types of lines on, and told her to cut on the lines. (Adapted from this blog.)

Now, that isn’t exactly what she did…but it was the process that was important! For her first time…not too shabby!

We tried bubble wrap painting too! That was a LOT of fun, but warning: it will use up a lot of paint… We later cut the cool parts out into shapes and made a little card for Daddy. All you do is tape a piece of bubble wrap (bubble side up!) on your work space, and hand your child a plate of different colored paints. Have them paint directly onto the bubble wrap. We used our hands, because…why not! Then you take white paper and lay it over painted bubble wrap. Tada! It looks so cool.

LETTERS

I made some simple flash cards to introduce her to her upper and lower case letters. I laid out the uppercase, which she is already familiar with, and gave her a pile of the lower case letters. She had to match the lower case with the uppercase. Since Audrey seems to be very interested in objects having mommys and daddys, and those objects being reunited with such parentals, this was an easy game for her to get into. We had to match all of the baby letters with their daddys.

I also introduced…the alphabet train! I found the idea here and loved the concept. I made a few changes of my own.

Instead of lower case letters only, I made my train cars have upper case letters, and the wheels lower case letters. That way we could continue to practice matching lc with uc. Also, instead of taping the wheels on as we did the activity, I cut up a clear plastic paper sleeve into pockets which I slipped over the base of each car and taped to the back. Now, we can take the wheels out of the pockets and do the game over and over!

This activity really challenged Miss A. A few letters are very similar to other letters. Letters m and w, u and n, for example. We talked about this and I decided to let her interpret which one each is.

SENSORY

What can I say. Sometimes the most simple things are the best..