Emmi turned 4 this passed week and with her bunches of presents I got her something that I thought she would enjoy with us for school  It’s not just any old dry erase, although they are the greatest “blackboard” in my opinion.  :-)  You can buy all kinds of color markers for them and they aren’t as messy as chalk can be but chalk can be fun too…lol.  But, I got her this dry erase book I found at the store.  There are a few different pages and mostly it’s for kids who are learning to write, but there are letters already printed on some of the pages in different ways that they call “fun letters”  here is an example:

And this is just one page, you can flip to the next and you will find more letters, up to the letter Z of course.  Plus, there is an “about me” page where you can write in your child’s favorites and information.  For older children there is cursive letters too and a place to “write a story” which is where we did our practice for numbers.

If you are looking for a fun alternative to your regular chalkboard or dry erase board, keep your eyes opened for one of these…lots of fun!

Okay we all know what happens when Thanksgiving comes around and there are children in the house…turkey hand prints!  Yup, you got it and we are going to be doing it this week for sure!  Just simply grab some paper that will fit your child’s hand prints on it and go ahead and trace the hands.  You can do it for them or sometimes I like to do some extras and have Emmi trace her own too just for the practice of tracing and learning the coordination.  Then you can either draw on the eyes or glue on a wiggley one, whatever you like better.  Emmi loves the wiggley ones.  and don’t forget to color the fingers for the “feathers”.  :)

We are going to do some schooling this week but the holidays are always lighter than the rest of the year.  Gosh I feel like we’ve been slackers because the holidays give us so much extra time off but we make good use of it.  Enjoying time with the family is always great.  What are you plans for the holidays??

Hope everyone has a joyous Thanksgiving!

A week for a new letter and number.  We are learning I and 9 now.  We’ve done some coloring pages and we have been practicing  our numbers when we are at the grocery store.  :) I’ll say, “where are we going?” and she will have to tell me what number isle we are going into before we keep shopping.  She loves it…lol.  The simple things that amuse little ones..haha.  Tonight we found a tip online about the letter I to make an igloo.  So with a white piece of paper and her new ruler, I held the ruler and Emmi drew lines with her ruler.  She was so proud of herself making straight lines.  After we did the lines I cut up the paper into strips and then she cut them into squares for the “ice”.  Then we took a piece of blue construction paper and some glue and we made an igloo with a doorway.  Afterwards she had me draw a polar bear and a man in the doorway…I’m so not an artist..lol.  But, it was fun.

Another fun school game we have been playing that I would highly recommend is called “Franklin Goes To School”. It is a great board game for preschoolers and children up to age 8.  The questions vary for the age of the child to make the game harder for the older children, which means you can play as a family too!  The way I played with Emmi was she would spin and we would do the question but when it came to my turn and I went, she would “help me” answer my question too.  So she had double the learning and tons of fun!  You will def enjoy it!

We started these great worksheets today that you cut out the patterns make something fun.  First we did a house where you cut out the shapes…great way to remember shapes.  It really put a fun spin on it.  Once we did that, we glued all the shapes where they were suppose to be according to the directions.  And we moved on to another one to practice cutting.  The second one was a mountain scene (both of these can be found at: http://www.eslkidstuff.com/CraftsTour.htm and there are more available too for members).  We cut out the mountain scene and once we were done with that I put a spin on it by bring out a piece of poster board.  Then I told Emmi to pick where she wanted the house, the mountain, the clouds, sun and trees.  She glued them all on where she wanted.  And to be continued as tomorrow we will color the pictures and perhaps add more…you’ll see all the pics then.  ;-)

Update:

Here is the picture for this project…we got so wrapped up in other fun stuff I forgot to post this.  As you can see I helped…lol.  You have must love my Santa and his reindeer..haha!

Wrapping up October was fun with Halloween.  We drifted away from our daily school routine a bit and brought it back this passed week.  So I decided to skip a lot of the extras and double up on our letters and numbers.  No new shapes or states though.  I didn’t want to bring in too much.  So, we did a few work sheets that were fun this week, concentrating on the new letters and numbers (G, H, 7, and 8).

These were great worksheets that we did to learn the differences between capitals and lower case and also different things that started with the letters as well as learning the sounds of them.  So we colored them in and talked about the what else started with G, like ghosts and Halloween.  :-)  Many of our worksheets were like this as well as practicing drawing them together.  We didn’t forget our other letters we have learned so far!  :-)

We also did other worksheets this week that had to do with the number 7 and 8.

Here is one where we got to practice all the numbers.  I know that 9 and 10 are on here and we didn’t dwell on them but did practice them since they were there and she didn’t want to leave them out.  :-)

Then I found this fun one and we got to sing and do numbers at the same time!

To find these and other great worksheets go to: http://www.eslkidstuff.com/Worksheets/

Finally…I am settled in my new virtual home.  :-)  Sorry for the setback…if you noticed the old post then you have at least found me at my new PERMANENT home here.  I know it set me back on some posts but I’ll catch you up.  Not much too exciting with Halloween hogging all the fun here!  lol  But, we did have a great time trick or treating…hope everyone else did as well. Emmi was a princess.  She had a great time.  We collected a lot of candy, which was fun.  The weather was a little hot here but that is normal for us.  And now with the time change we are trying to get used to that.  :-)