June Happenings

June is the middle of winter here.  It is weird not to be doing "summer" stuff.  I don't like that the days are shorter, but I do appreciate the warm, bright sun.

Justin looking at the frosting on his knife.  We decorated star cookies with yellow frosting and sprinkles to celebrate him being able to read 100 words from the Dolch Word List.

Ryan couldn't read the words, but he got to decorate a cookie too.  He knows his alphabet, so I guess that should count.

We made Flubber.

The verdict was that Flubber wasn't as much fun as play-doh.

Our chain to count down the days until we go to the US to visit family.  Justin helped me staple the chain pattern. Ryan was excited that the chain made an "M" for Mommy.

Ryan with a rabbit at the petting zoo.

One of our favorite playgrounds here.  Now you see why we are so excited to go to the US to visit.  I wouldn't let them play on something like this there.  Here, despite missing bolts, broken boards, etc., it is a real gem.

The boys are using monkey finger puppets to play Angry Monkeys.  Very similar to the Angry Birds game, but they do much better with their version than they do on the ipod.

An obstacle course for the monkeys.  It includes sballs with spikes, giant spiders, fence with spikes, and several other challenges.  Justin loves to take ideas from videos or games and make them his own.

The boys made this for Rob for Father's Day.  Wooden box from JoAnns plus tissue paper and glue equals a box for Daddy to put his keys in at work.  Ryan did the lid and Justin did the rest of the box.

Since it is winter here, we read the book The Mitten by Jan Brett.  We laced a paper mitten and put the animals inside it to retell the story.

Here are Justin's animals and part of his mitten.  He chose a pink mitten since pink is still his favorite color.

I laid out clothes for the boys to wear, but they got the wrong piles.  Two years apart and they still get their clothes confused.

Fathers Day 2011

Justin playing on the wii with Nickelodeon wii fit game.

Ryan LOVES typing on the computer.  He likes hearing each letter name as he hits it on the keyboard.  He also really enjoys the alphabet part of starfall.com.

Justin uses a picture dictionary I made with my kindergarten class.  It saves me from having to spell the same words for him over and over as he types them in.

Justin wanted to pretend it was winter and have some hot chocolate.  I told him that it was winter. Just because it isn't snowing and we aren't wearing coats doesn't mean it isn't winter.

Justin likes his hot chocolate to 'warm down' a little bit so it is cold.

We played a game with instruments.  We laid several out on the floor.  Two of us would cover our heads with a blanket while the third person would play one of the instruments.  The blanket would come off and they would have to guess which instrument they heard.

I made an overlay for the intellikeys so Ryan and Justin could retell the story of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by typing simple sentences on the computer and hearing them read back.

We missed a couple of weeks of swimming lessons because the heat pump was broken and they had trouble getting it fixed and back up to temp. Once that problem was solved, we started making up lessons, meaning three times a week instead of only two!

Justin is getting better about getting out of the pool on his own.  It took him a long time to learn.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Thursday was a busy day for us!  We made some frosting for our sugar cookies.  Since they were pumpkin shaped, we experimented with red and yellow food coloring.  Amazing!  Those colors mixed make orange when you use food coloring just like when you use paint.  How did Mommy know that? I had planned ahead and made the boys smaller sugar cookies to frost.  There was a lot more eating than frosting going on on their part of the table.

We did a pumpkin cutting activity (fold pumpkin in half and cut only on black line) and a sequence the 5 pumpkin sheet.  These are Ryan's.  He obviously needed assistance, but he had fun and is very proud of his accomplishments.

 Justin did this sort by size sheet.  I think the large and medium are pretty close to the same size.  He initially made a mistake when sorting, but caught it and was able to self-correct before he glued them in place.  He wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't insisted that he sort first, THEN glue.  He didn't want to break it down into steps, but I knew that it was probably a good idea for him to do that.

 Justin also did the color the shapes the correct color.  He went through and did all triangles first, then circles, etc.  I thought he would do one pumpkin at a time.  He also added corn for the scarecrow.  He definitely will still have plenty of skills to master when he starts school.  He likes to color, but not in the lines. 

Friday the boys were so excited for the Embassy Halloween party that we voted to skip school.  AFN was showing some Halloween cartoons and the boys were into watching them, talking about the party, and making sure their costumes were ready.  Halloween has been fun.  I don't know if we will enjoy the Thanksgiving activities as much.  I will do my best.