Before Five In A Row: Caps For Sale

LittleBear really loved the illustrations in this book. He kept pointing out the church steeple and yelling "Bells!" (He LOVES hearing bells chime from the church in the neighborhood or Pat Neff Hall on Baylor campus.) He asked to "Read Please" multiple times every day, so I think we found another winner with this book!

Since last week was a bit tough and we didn't get to everything school-wise, I decided to incorporate more games and play-type activities this week, in the hopes that it would be more fun for LittleBear (& I). Here is what we had planned:

Day 1-
Read Book

Color Monkey Mask
Go over Monkey Colors
Balance pillows on our heads
In honor of Daddy's love of all things Monkees, we also watched this video, which LittleBear enjoyed clapping along to.

Day 2-
Read Book
Who's Hat Layer Book

Sing Five Little Monkeys
Introduce money (I made a money worksheet like the one from Delightful Learning)

Day 3-
Read Book
Mustache play
How many Monkeys?

Thumbprint tree using this tree

Day 4-
Read Book

Money Size Sequencing
Play Barrel of Monkeys


Our discussion of money on Day 2 was very brief and we didn't even end up using the sheet I made up because he just didn't seem interested...I'm ok with that. Everything else, he really seemed to enjoy and did multiple times. I really wanted to do a "monkey" themed snack, but LittleBear is allergic to bananas and peanut butter which seemed to be in all the monkey themed snacks I found so we just snacked on our usual items. LittleBear also played a lot with his alphabet and number puzzles while telling his monkey what the different letters and numbers were.

LittleBear seemed more comfortable with me taking pictures, so hopefully we've got a better photo gallery this week:

Week 5-Caps For Sale

Inspiration, ideas and printables I used for Caps For Sale can be found at:
Before Five In A Row manual
Delightful Learning
Homeschool Creations
Pinterest

Treat Night with LittleBear

Usually we ignore Halloween in our house, but there is one exception...Baylor's Faculty/Staff Family Treat Night. The kids of faculty and staff get to walk through a dorm and interact with the students. We don't get to interact with the students very often and Mommy really likes to sew costumes, so we try to take the opportunity where we can! This year we went to Russell Hall, which happened to be the dorm Mommy lived in oh-so-many years ago as a freshman at Baylor. We even saw her old door! LittleBear tends to be on the shy side, but once he realized there were candy, cookies and even a popsicle involved, he became more bold. The students all loved him! So here he is...

Judge me by my size, do you?


And no, the costume isn't perfect, but literally the only time LittleBear would wear it was tonight, so Mommy had to guess on the proportions...she was off a bit on the ears :) It was still fun!

LittleBear Visits the Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend, we all visited a "pumpkin patch" at (read: collection of pumpkins for sale in the yard of) a church near our house. LittleBear has learned the word "pumpkin!" Here are some pics from our visit:

Before Five in a Row: The ABC Bunny

And we're back! This week we read "The ABC Bunny" published in 1933 by Wanda Ga'g. LittleBear loved the book and asked me to "read this please" several times when I hadn't planned on it. (Side note, I have to say that we wouldn't have found many of these books that he's liked so much, so a big hooray goes out to Before Five In A Row).

Well, this week "schoolwise" was met with some highs and some lows. Some of the highs were as follows:
- He LOVED the youtube video of the book with the song.
- The Activity Card was fun, but we spread it out over two days...it seems he didn't have the attention span for it all at once :)
- He did really well with putting the number symbol on the number word (got most of them himself the first time!).
- he also liked drawing on the bunny tracing pages

Some of the lows were as follows:
- He hated mommy playing the ABC Bunny song on the piano.
- He also lost interest in matching up the upper and lower case letters and the ABC scavenger hunt. Granted, it could have been the day and this is supposed to be an introduction to school type activities, so I'm not taking it too hard.
- This was just a really hard week attitude and obedience-wise which makes everything a challenge.

Here is what we had planned this week:

Day 1-
Read Book

Watch the ABC Bunny song on YouTube

Animal Classification Cards

Do the ABC Bunny Activity Card

Act out as many of the bunny's activities as you can

Alphabet upper and lower letter cards

Day 2-
Read Book
Build A Bunny

Put the leaf letters in order

Match uppercase and lowercase leaf letters

Number matching

Day 3-
Read Book
Bunny maze

Bunny tracing page

Order- Corinthians 14:40...Talk about order in God's creation. What did God do first? Second?

Make Creation poster or folder

Day 4-
Read Book

Play ABC Bunny song from the book on the piano

ABC Hunt

Go visit bunnies at the feed store!

We didn't get a chance to do the Creation Poster/folder, but we at least attempted everything else. Hopefully next week will go better. We did do some other fun things like an alphabet puzzle my mom found for .70 at Michael's as well as some foam alphabet and number puzzles I found at the Dollar Tree. We also played "bunny ball" (which involves tossing the bunny back and forth down our long hallway) and made towers with our ABC Blocks.

LittleBear did NOT want his picture taken much this week, so the photo gallery looks a little sparse this week:

Week 4-The ABC Bunny

Inspiration, ideas and printables I used for The ABC Bunny can be found at:
Before Five In A Row manual
Homeschool Creations
Delightful Learning

LittleBear at FLIPS Gymnastics

On Friday morning, LittleBear discovered FLIPS gymnastics for the first time...and LOVED it! They have an open gym once a month on Friday mornings where kids can come and play for an hour and a half for $3 or $5 (depending on their age). It was definitely worth it!

He was all over the place for the full time. I think his favorites were the short running trampoline, the balance beam and the pit filled with foam blocks. Needless to say, his nap that day was much longer than usual :) We will definitely try to go back next month!

Hula Hoop!
Monkeying around on the uneven bars:
They have parallel bars too!

Diving into the foam pit with trampoline floor:
Tossing foam:
Jumping on the Springy floor:
He loved this thing:
Running Trampoline!
Here's a short video of him on the running trampoline (sorry it's sideways!):

Family Garden: Produce is Coming!

Garden This Week

The garden is still doing well. Actually, it's doing better than ever! The weather cooled off a bit and the plants are definitely happier for it.

I spent some time out there this morning and cleaned it up a bit. The two tomato plants (cherry tomatoes and regular tomatoes) are now in cages and the basil plants have had all their flowers picked off. I also planted zucchini and peas in an urn that are beginning to sprout. I still haven't seen any broccoli, but I just don't have the heart to pull it out, so I'm going to leave it in and see what happens.

Box #1:
Box #2:
Box #3 (sadly falling apart- hey, it was the free one I built at a home depot workshop):
*NEW* Urn #1:
We have six honeydew melons, one cantaloupe, lots of green beans and a ton of sweet bell peppers growing. Here are some random shots from today:

Cantaloupe melon:
Green Beans:
Happy Basil:
Cherry Tomato Plant in 54" cage (this plant is taller than me when it stands up straight):
Soon-to-be orange bell peppers:
Soon-t0-be sweet red peppers:
Cherry tomatoes and blossoms:
Golden Honeydew:

Fall Break!

This week LittleBear has been on a fall break of sorts as we have enjoyed a visit with Auntie D all the way from Hawaii!! We will probably take another break next week as we wrap up our fun visit with Auntie and then pick back up with "school" the following week.

Thank you for coming to visit Auntie!!!!