July Stuff

In all of the excitement to go to the US for six weeks, I forgot to post this before we left. 

We use letter tiles to spell words.  Even Ryan can do this and he loves spelling the names of people he knows.

Legos and blocks are always favorites.  The boys worked together on this project, which made it a special one.  Anything they can build together without fighting is a miracle!

One of the books Justin read suggested making an x on the floor and throwing beanbags on it.  We added numbers on the tape as well.  Ryan just called out the numbers the beanbags landed on.  Justin had to add up the totals.  The beanbags are different colors and different shapes.  That must make the activity an entire math lesson for Ryan. :)

Ryan kept getting really close to his X.

If you have ever read The Big Orange Splot you may recognize this as Mr. Plumbean's house.  The boys enjoy the story and had fun making the house as well.

Ryan is hysterical to watch as he makes his way through the tires.  We continue to go to the petting zoo to see the animals and to play on the playground.

My boys are superheroes!  Thank you to Alicia for the fun surprise. :)

I line up an alphabet with a mix of upper and lowercase letters and Ryan has to match the mommy letters to their baby letters.  It is also a good activity to make sure we have all of the alphabet pieces before we put them away. :)

Fir some reason it is hard to sing the ABC song while wearing sunglasses.  I guess it is all of the coolness in the way.

Building The Alphabet

Justin has loved letters since he was about 19 months old.  Right now he is frustrated that his fine motor skills are not good enough to write letters and words the way he wants them to look.  I found some pages from a Handwriting Without Tears workbook that I had from when I was teaching.  I didn't have the wooden sticks that go with it though.  I solved the problem by making some out of cardstock and laminating them for durability.  In one of my classrooms I know I used cheap vinyl placemats to make the pieces that I needed since we didn't have enough of the wooden ones.  I have also seen people sell them on ebay for reasonable prices.

Once I showed him what to do and told him to look at the numbers to know what order to put the pieces in, he had a fun time with the activity.  Of course he wanted to show me after he built each letter.  That meant the activity didn't really buy me any time away from him, but maybe in the future.

I figured that I needed four big lines, 3 short lines, 2 big curves, and 2 little curves, but I made extra pieces while I was at it.  That way if I lose one or two I am still okay.  It also means that TB can work along side his brother, which of course he wants to do.