Happy Halloween

 Last Wednesday was Halloween, so we took a break from the letter D and did some fun Halloween activities!

Of course the kids had to wear their Halloween shirts

For snack I popped some popcorn and then sprinkled some orange cheese seasoning on top.  I figured the orange made it a little festive.

B had sent them a Halloween box that had some fun crafts inside.  They each got two wooden pumpkins.  So they used markers to color one of the pumpkins and then painted the other pumpkin.

Very colorful pumpkins!

B also included these fun foam pieces to make their own jack-o-lanterns.  These were all of Jenna's creations.  She did the jack-o-lantern faces all on her own.

And these were Grant's pumpkins.  I helped him make the jack-o-lantern on the right, but then let him do his own on the other two.  :)

B also sent the jack-o-lantern drinks.  They LOVED getting to drink out of something "fun."  I let them have orange juice (again, it goes with the orange theme) and made a jack-o-lantern quesadilla for lunch.

B also sent one of Drew's favorite Halloween books from childhood, Rabbit and Skunk and Spooks by Carla Stevens.  Drew was so excited to see it!  Just skimming through the book brought back great memories for him!  :)  Both the kids really got into the story - very cute!

Then that evening was trick-or-treat.  Beforehand we stopped over at my Grandpa and Grandma Shafer's house so they could see the kids all dressed up. 

My parents came too so they could see all the grandkids.  I have to say that's the cutest little banana and owl I've ever seen! 

Group picture

 Originally I just planned on Jenna wearing one of her princess dress-up outfits and I was going to put together a Mickey Mouse costume for Grant.  Then I kept seeing Minnie costumes at the stores and finally caved and got one for her.  I just couldn't resist! 

So the dress and ears came with Jenna's costume and since it was an unbelievably cold night, she wore the black turtleneck, thick black tights, and black stretch pants overtop (along with her winter coat). 

For Grant's costume, I bought a black headband at the store and made his ears out of black scrap felt (and cardboard).  I didn't have a black shirt for him, but found one of Jenna's old ones that fit him - shh...don't tell anyone it's a girl shirt!  I found the red shorts at Goodwill and bought big white buttons to sew on.  I also bought white gloves at the store and then sewed the three black lines on them using black yarn.  I was baffled on how to make his shoes yellow.  I'm all about inexpensive Halloween costumes so I wasn't about to go out and buy yellow shoes just for this occasion.  Then as I was walking through Walmart one day I saw these very BRIGHT colored adult socks and it dawned on me, I could just use adult yellow socks and put them over his athletic shoes.  Perfect!  It was fun putting together their costumes this year and actually having them go together - not that that's a goal of mine every year, but who can resist Mickey and Minnie Mouse?!  ;)

Minnie and Mickey Mouse ready to go trick-or-treating! 

Time to trick-or-treat!  She was beyond excited this year to go.  We worked very hard on the "trick-or-treat" part and even more importantly, saying "thank you!"

Grant went to a few houses, but when we came back to the house for a quick potty break he began taking off his gloves and coat.  So Drew stayed back with him while I took Jenna out for a little longer.

Afterward I planned on making these Halloween parfaits, although they didn't turn out like the pictures.  They're supposed to be layered with crushed Oreos, vanilla pudding, and orange sprinkles.  Of course in the picture there's like an inch of orange sprinkles, but I figured that's way too much sugar.  So it's not as pretty, but it was still good.

Jenna didn't seem to mind the uneven layers.  ;)  She couldn't even take a break for a quick picture.  Haha!

Now that Halloween's over, we're getting geared up for Thanksgiving.  We're excited to have B, Aunt Cathy, Uncle Brian, and Aunt Natalie all here to celebrate with us in a few weeks!!

Week 11 - Letter D

Last week was Letter D...for dinosaurs!

The memory verse was Philippians 2:14 - "Do everything without complaining or arguing."  It's a verse Jenna already knew because she has heard it many, many (many, many) times.  :)   So it was good review for the week!

At the beginning of each week, we sing our letter of the week song using a magnetic Leap Frog refrigerator toy I picked up at a garage sale.  The song goes, "D says duh, D says duh. Every letter makes a sound, D says duh."  It's a good introduction to the sound of the letter. 

Then we follow that up with the Starfall computer game.

Lacing card - I think she was  little scattered with this one - jumping from hole to hole instead of going in order.

Size Sort

So this week I had an epiphany...Grant enjoys matching the letter disks to the letters on the paper.  In the past I've given him either the capital or lowercase page while Jenna gets the opposite.  Then I dump out all the letters for him to find the right ones.  Then it dawned on me - that's pretty overwhelming for him to look through 26+ letters (I have duplicates of some letters).  So I just picked out the ones he needed to make the word "dinosaur".  To my amazement he was able to find and correctly place all the letters on the word without my help.  I'm not sure why it took me so long to think of this, but it makes sense to start out small and work your way up.  He was proud of himself for doing it all on his own as was I! 

Jenna's getting good at finding the letters and correctly matching them.  And she's discovering similarities about the letters.  For instance, the lowercase u and lowercase n look the same, just flipped upside down.  And the n and h are similar, except the h has a longer line.  The l and the t are also similar, but the t crosses in the middle.  So it's been neat seeing her make those connections.

Prewriting practice

Dinosaur puzzle

Letter hunt

Wikki Stix

Early in the week, we made dinosaur eggs.  I mixed together flour, dirt, sand, salt, and water.  Then we stuck little plastic dinosaurs in the "mud" and rolled the mud around to completely hide the dinosaurs.

We let the "eggs" sit in the cold garage for a few days to harden.

Then we went outside and broke open the eggs.  Thankfully the eggs weren't rock solid and really just required a little squeezing to break away the dirt from the dinosaurs.

Jenna LOVED it!  It's funny how surprised she acted each time she "cracked" one open.

And of course Grant enjoyed cracking them open too!

I pulled out the play dough we made a few weeks back and Jenna rolled it out to look like mud.  Then she took some extra little dinosaurs and had them "stomp" around in the dough.  She enjoyed making tracks, and we looked at the different footprints of the dinosaurs.  Then I also showed her how to make a fossil imprint of their bodies by pressing them in the dough.  Lots of fun!

Body Movement - making the letter D with their bodies.  Grant's face cracks me up!  Looking at the picture you'd think he was mad, but he loves doing these each week. 

Do-a-dot markers

He's so proud of his creation!

Coloring page

Patterns - She was able to do the bottom pattern on her own, but the top one threw her a little.  The ABC pattern made it a little tricky, but it was good practice.

Poke page

Color puzzles

Since it was D week, we decided we just had to make some homemade DONUTS!  We've never made homemade donuts before, but I recently saw a super easy recipe on Pinterest and thought we'd give it a try.  You just take Pillsbury canned biscuits, cut out a hole in the center...

...fry them in about 1/2 inch of oil on the stovetop, flipping them over when one side browns...

(looking YUMMY!!)

...then dip one side in butter and coat with a cinnamon/sugar mixture.  Repeat for the other side.

My helpers!

I wasn't sure how this would go - surprisingly enough, neither Jenna nor Grant are big donut fans.  We've gotten them donuts a few times thinking it's a special treat and then they'll take one bite and not like it.  :(  So I figured that might be the case this time too, but they both surprised me.  They each devoured their donuts and wanted more (although we just stuck with one - two donuts might have been a bit of a sugar overload!)

The finished product!  Drew loved them so much, we actually just made another batch last night. 

Dinosaur alphabet lacing

Pattern Blocks

Letter Writing

Cutting Practice page

Capital/Lowercase letter sort

Clip cards

For her ABC book, I thought she could punch out a bunch of little dots from construction paper to then glue to the letter D.  However, I didn't realize how difficult the hole punching part actually is - plus, to get enough dots to fill the D took a lot of punching.  So I did the hole punching and then she sprinkled them on top of the glue on her paper.

I always try to find foods that start with our letter of the week to eat during that week.  So for lunch one day we had dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, a few Doritos, and Danimals yogurt.  I also found some dinosaur-shaped cookie/crackers that the kids ate for snack. 

Letter D maze

Adding the letter D to our coconut tree

When Jenna was a year old, I signed her up for a Music and Movement class at the YMCA.  The teacher gave us a CD of all the songs we sang in the class, and one of the songs just happened to be, "Dinosaur March."  So I pulled out the CD this week and we marched around the house while singing, "We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching.  We are the dinosaurs, now what do you think of that?  We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching.  We are the dinosaurs, we make the earth flat."  Then in between the chorus they have the "dinosaurs" do different things like pretend to eat and lay down on the ground for a nap.  Jenna loved it! 

We also watched an episode of "Dinosaur Train," which is a show on PBS. 

Overall it was a fun letter D week!