Tikki, Tikki, Tembo

I had ordered the book Tikki, Tikki, Tembo from the library, but for some reason they took such a long time sending it out that we didn't technically read the book the week we did these activities. But, we did watch the Scholastic DVD, which was the book read word for word.

Alexa and I made Chinese lanteerns one afternoon out of construction paper and ribbons. She definitely is more of a crafty person than Jared.

Another afternoon we made name pictures. I wrote their names in glue,  and then they poured glitter over the glue.

One really fun, but very long and messy activity was making cookies from scratch. It was from a really, strange recipe so the dough was very crumbly, still I was able to shape the dough into letters of their name and even had leftover dough to shape the word Daddy for Steve.

Caps for Sale

We did quite a few activities with this book. One day we set up a hat store. I put hats in different places around the room, gave the kids small purses with some coins inside and they each took their cart (a stroller in Alexa's case) around the room selecting hats they wanted to buy. As soon as they walked in the room, I'd call out, "Caps for Sale. 50 cents a Cap."

 

I drew a picture of the peddler and cut out little caps. Then they took turns gluing the caps on the peddler's head in the order they appeared in the book.

During the week we also watched a version of Caps for Sale on DVD.

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

I didn't get as many good pictures for the activities we did with this book, but it was a fun book for me and the kids. We went on a walk around the block to find "magic pebbles" like the one Sylvester found in the book. This went ok until they decided to run away from me and wouldn't come back. This is a big issue that we're trying to work through. One of them will say, "Quick, Hide!" when I come towards them and then take off running. It's difficult to take them places by myself that aren't somewhat contained because they tend to run away from me at some point and won't come back when I call them. We've been instituting punishments for this lately because no amount of reasoning, requesting or pleading will persuade them to come back to me when I call. Oh, well. It's a work in progress.

Anyways, later that afternoon we painted the rocks and pebbles different colors: red, green, pink and blue. Then we set up bowls, and they really enjoyed separating the rocks by different colors. I didn't know if they'd like that since it's a thing they liked to do when they were much younger, but they still did. It's kinda how they like to bring up their baby board books and look at them again even though we are currently reading Charlotte's Web out loud.





We also read Spinky Sulks by William Steig and Fish is Fish and The Wingdingdilly which are books about being content with who we are.

Picture Book Activities - Bread and Jam for Frances

Bread and Jam for Frances was a favorite book this summer. I think their favorite activity was making bread from scratch and then spreading jam on it after it had cooled. They have watched me bake bread several times in the bread machine, but this is the first time we made any by scratch.

We also checked out a couple other Frances books (they had already been introduced to Frances with Best Friends for Frances) including A Baby Sister For Frances and Bedtime for Frances. Even though it was a board book, they like re looking at and reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We read a nonfiction book about badgers. This will be on a different post but we also made up a menu for our pretend restaurant, decided what we would serve and how much things cost.

Picture Book Activities - And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street

I found a great book online about a year ago called Picture Book Activities. It basically introduces a picture book and suggests different activities that relate to the book. For those of you who are familiar with it, it is similar to Five in a Row. So far, the kids have been very excited about the different activities the book suggests.

This week we read And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss. In the book the little boy talks about being in a parade and seeing confetti. I made some pretend confetti and threw it around as they rode their bikes around. We also tied ribbons to the bikes beforehand and they pretended their bikes were floats. I think it's hard to see it in the picture above, but Jared is dragging around a ribbon around the yard.

They are 3!

April 29

My babies turned three! They are such little kids already. They talk so much. Once in a while I’ll count how many words they use in a sentence. When they were younger, I’d worry a bit about their speaking. While Alexa had close to 400 words by age two, she or Jared still weren’t putting two or more words together besides phrase that go together like all done, hi ma, or oh no. Then within a month she was putting together four to five word sentences and Jared was doing the same about two months later. Now more often than not I’ll notice her using eight to ten words in a sentence and Jared six to eight words. They both string many sentences together, and I’m imagine they’ll be speaking in paragraphs really soon.

For the fun of it, I used to keep a log of all new words they’d use. Unfortunately our hard drive crashed a few months again and I hadn’t saved the info. At that time she had around 1,700 words and he had about 1,500. I imagine she now is well over 2,000 and Jared somewhere close to their too.

Since I did a huge cleaning this past weekend before everyone came over, so I wanted to do a lot of extra things with the kids this week. On their birthday, we made a jelly roll. It turned out pretty good. We made it to go along with reading Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. There’s a book called Pre School Activities. It’s sort of like the Story Stretches book where you read a picture book and then do related activities. Last week, they painted in the bathtub using shaving cream dyed with food coloring.

Let’s see, we read Grandfather Tang. I’m able to request things from other libraries through interlibrary loan, so other libraries have literacy kits where there will be a book and then a related toy with it. This book has a bucket full of tangrams. They play with a small set of tangrams, but I wasn’t sure how they would like to hear a story where I made a different tangram picture for each page we read. They loved it!

Their aunt game them My Very First Science Kit this weekend, so we played with that some. They really enjoyed mixing the color tablets in the water and watching the bubbles fizz. Then they played with mixing red, blue and yellow colored water to make purple, orange and green. Alexa was so intent on pouring water from the cup into the test tube. Lots of spills the first few times, but I was surprised how well she did just within a few minutes of practice.

They loved playing with the fishing game Grammy gave them. The larger version runs on batteries. They fish rotate in opening up their mouths and then you have to hook them with a fishing pole. There is also a smaller wind up version with a magnet. Another thing they had fun with was the slinky. They did try to get it to walk down the stairs a few times, but mostly they just ran around the house, each holding onto one end, screaming their head off. Needless to say, by the end of the day it was all stretched out, but they had a blast with it at the time.

A huge hit was the cardboard castle Uncle Andy bought them. It is about three feet tall, so they could climb inside it like a real castle. They colored it for a long time. I think it won’t be here for long, though, as Jared had jumped on top of it so many times already.

When Steve came home we went to eat at Culvers. We were able to get a booth (which was hard because the place was packed since it just opened about a week ago) which helped since they do not like to sit very long and it helps to contain them somewhat. Halfway through the meal, however, Jared was sliding under the table. A worker gave them a sample sundae for their birthday, and they looked so proud carrying them to the car.

We stopped at Jewel to pick up a small cake before heading home. They were very excited about the presents. It’s funny because this past Christmas Jared went into tantrums just at the mention of opening presents. He refused to open them for a while on Christmas. Anyway, it was nice that we could open them slowly, unlike the rushed way we did it with family this weekend. They loved their new books, and we had to read most of them right away. I went to the thrift store and was able to pick up 16 books for $10.50. Buying books at thrift stores is probably one of the greatest resource tips I know for unschoolers besides the public library. I’ve also picked up extremely inexpensive craft supplies like yarn, doilies, fabric, and ribbons. Since we still have our VCR, I often find some VHS tapes for .25-.50. I’m sure if I look more closely, I’ll be able to find games there, too.

The Melissa and Doug wooden castle was probably the biggest hit. It came with tiny puppet king, queen, prince and princess, two horses, a tiny treasure chest, bed and two chairs. They also received about six other figures from the same set for their birthday. Steve and Jared worked for a while on Jared’s new 100 piece Safari Melissa and Doug puzzle. We had bought a Wedgits set for Jared since he had loved the sets at the Field Museum so much, but it turns out that Alexa plays with it more. Jared also received a set a pattern blocks, Alexa a ballet flannel graph set, and they each will share a play space shuttle and astronauts.

They were pretty tired that evening and went to bed around 8:30. Turns out we didn’t even need to buy a cake since they had forgotten that we had even bought it!

Fall 2008

Fall 2008

I have about a month’s worth of blog posts to get up, so I’m going to just write in short check list for the some of the highlights from the fall, winter, and spring before their birthday. I hate to make it so matter of fact and would love to comment more and share what I thought about some of the things we did, but I’ll never get up to date. I really, really, really want to record more of our unschooled life to look back over through the years and to share with other families, so I have to figure a way to be more efficient at this and hopefully improve at making my posts more interesting to read as well! I hope to very soon post pictures because I love reading other blogs that post pictures along with what they are posting about.
So, here going our fall highlights:

Playing in the leaves

Making a dough sculpture by sticking leaves, sticks and rocks in the dough and letting it harden

Reading Blueberries for Sal and then eating blueberries for the first time, making blueberry muffins from scratch, and counting our blueberries

Carving pumpkins and lighting our pumpkins every night a week before Halloween while singing Happy Birthday, pumpkin (they came up with that entirely on their own!)

Reading Make Way for Duckling, Lentil, Frog and Toad series

Halloween costumes – Jared, pirate, and Alexa, pirate princess – trick or treating will all the grandparents, great-grandma and Aunty Cheryl and Uncle Zach

Museum of Science and Industry trip – climbing inside the combine, the Idea Factory, the Plane and Train exhibit – and watching the baby chicks hatch

Blackberry Farm – Riding the carousel, riding the train, painting pumpkins, looking at the farm animals

Cooking – Alexa helping me by cutting carrots, garlic and onions on her own, Jared stirring and mixing

Annie obsession – Watching the movies about seven or eight times, singing Annie songs while at the dentist where everyone in the waiting room could hear!

Music we loved listening to – Glen Miller Orchestra, Andrea Bocelli, James Taylor, Credence Clearwater Revival, various classical CDs

Garfield Park Conservatory trip – splashing in the puddles in Monet’s Garden, watching the fish in the coy pond.

Naming different countries and states – they can locate dozens of countries and can locate most the states

Puzzles – Jared stated to really love doing puzzles. We have a forty-eight piece United States puzzles and within two weeks he could put the entire thing together without any help

Rolling trucks down the hallway

Walks in the Cermak Woods – getting within fifteen feet of a family of deer, throwing stones in the pond, running through a flock of almost a hundred geese.

Bounce City – celebrating cousin Owen’s first birthday

Music – playing on guitar, lots of singing, playing on Steve’s guitar, playing the keyboard

Wonder Works trip – Riding the floor vehicles, “digging for dinosaur fossils” by finding pretend dinosaurs buried in clay, exploring the wigwam, playing in the tree house