Friday, February 22, 2013

Photo Catch-up!

Rowynn and her letter sort! She is slowly learning some of her letters and she really enjoyed doing this sort.

Aunt Sissy & Ro a few weeks ago when we went in to Louisiana.

My kids have the best Aunt ever!

Words can not describe how much I love this little stinker!

She was posing for me. Such a ham!
 
Papaw & Row! My parents came to visit in January and we went downtown to visit the candy store, some antique stores, and of course Babes!

Waiting at Babe's.


In front of the candy store.

The girls and I made cupcakes for my Dad's birthday. He turned 50 at the end of January!

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Words their Way

With help from my friend Maile, I've been doing some structured word work with Finley. We're using Words Their Way to teach word families. So far Finley has learned to spell the words in the -AT word family (cat, hat, rat, bat, sat, mat, pat, fat). We are also working on -AD (Dad, Sad, Mad, Pad). Maile has been great in getting me started on a good schedule with Finley for word work. She made this little checklist that we've hung in Finley's word work area to help keep us on track. The first word family took us about 2 weeks to complete (we didn't do it everyday). On average we will spend 1-2 weeks per word family.  
 
 
 
 
Here is Finley's word work area. I hang her words in the pocket chart, we have our checklist, and a bulletin board to display work. I've also taped some work to the wall. We have our magnetic letters in a fishing bait box (thanks again Maile), a cookie tray, pencils, our Melissa & Doug stamps, her journal, and a folder with work to be completed. 
 
 
 
When we started out, I made a bubble map with our last name in the middle. And then we talked about how we belonged to the same family because we all had the last name. Even though we had different first names, our last names were the same. Just like in word families, the beginning sound is different but the ending is the same. This obviously wouldn't work for every family (some families have different last names) but it was a concrete way for me to teach Finley the basic of word families.
 
After our "Davis Family" bubble map, we did an "-AT Family" bubble map. Finley did great at this! 
 
 

 

Here is some of her practice with the words. The top sheet is where she glued the word, stamped it in uppercase and lowercase, glued the matching picture, and then wrote the word. Then I wrote the words randomly on a piece of paper and had her circle the word as I said it. Good practice recognizing the word and fine motor practice (circling the word). Then I wrote a column with the words in all uppercase and another column with the words in lowercase and had her match them. We probably won't do this particular activity with each word family, I just wanted to give her some more exposure to the words.
 

 
Building her words. She loves doing this! 

 
This was a roll and graph game Maile sent to me. I wrote the words on a cube and she rolled it and then graphed which word it landed on.


We have a few sets of Bob Books and she loves that she can read these simple books. This one had most of our words in it and she was so excited to really read them!

 
This was her "spelling test." After all our fun with the words I had her spell the words orally and then write them down. Later I wrote down the words she spelled in marker just for my reference. I couldn't believe how easy all of these activities were. Just a few minutes here and there and I've got a 3 year old who is spelling and writing (other than just her name)! Crazy! She has been crazy in love with the fact that she can spell. She has been using stickers to spell out her words during free play, writing them on the white board at church, spelling them out with the magnets on the fridge, and pointing them out in books.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

A visit to the fire station

My girls love fire trucks, especially sweet Rowynn. I've always wanted to take the kids but never really looked into it. So about a month ago I did a little research and learned that you could take tours of local fire stations for free. So I asked our friends the Sraders if they would be interested and booked a tour for last Saturday.

If you are local, you must take your kids! We had a lovely time. The firemen gave a brief presentation on safety and answered our questions. They were very friendly and patient and super nice. They then took us on a tour of the station and let the kids try on the gear and climb in the truck. At the end they passed out stickers, pencils, coloring books, and plastic fire hats. This was a completely free activity (we did bring cookies for the firemen) and the kids loved it. How cool!?!

We are about to do a community helpers lesson so this was a fun way to kick that off.



 



 


 




 



 

 
 
 
 

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Valentine's Day 2013

I'm all about holidays and celebrations. We all have things that we are good at, and one thing that I really enjoy is making holidays and everyday milestones exciting and memorable. I am big on traditions and family celebrations! So of course Valentine's Day is celebrated like crazy over here!
 
All the kiddos have these cute bags that hang on their chair. The night before Valentine's Day we stuck in cards and special treats. That morning they opened their treats and we all enjoyed a special breakfast.
 



Card, (plastic) gold coins, princess crayons, and sucker for the girls

They also got cute little hats to wear, although Ro refused to wear hers for the picture!

Kyle made us all cinnamon rolls for breakfast!

Emerson eating his card! Silly boy!
 The girls enjoyed making hearts for their Grandma & Grandpa Davis. When we went to see them a few days after Valentine's Day Finley was excited to give hers to Grandma and Rowynn was very insistent that she give hers to Grandpa. It was so cute!
 


Cheers!! Our mid-morning snack of heart cookies and pink smoothies!

And of course we had to paint our nails festive for the special day!

Kyle came home with balloons and flowers for the girls and candy for me. Sweet boy!!!

Daddy with his three little Valentines!

The girls decorated the table all by themselves and we enjoyed steak, salad, and mac-n-cheese (all cooked by Kyle) for our special dinner. Funny how things change when you have kids. No more going out on Valentine's Day....it is now a family holiday! 

For dessert we enjoyed fondue. The girls loved dipping strawberries, marshmallows, and bananas in chocolate. Mommy & Daddy enjoyed it too!
 
My sweet babies!!! Love these kiddos!!
 
 

Finley, Rowynn, & Emerson
Valentine's Day 2013

Monday, February 18, 2013

More Valentine Fun!

 
Since the girls don't go to pre-school I decided that we would make some special Valentine treats for Finley to take to dance class and Awanas, and some to pass out to some of their little friends.
 
I found these adorable printables on this blog. Super easy to make. We passed these and the bear treats out to her dance friends and the bear treats to her Awana buddies! 
 



I picked up these cute wands in the party section of Wal-Mart and had them ready to pass out to some sweet girls that came to play on Wednesday.


My friend Laurie mentioned on her blog that she made chocolate play-dough for her preschool class and I just knew that my girls would love that! I've made play-dough before but never chocolate play-dough. It smelled AMAZING! The girls loved putting little "chocolates" in empty candy heart boxes and in their cupcake tins. Finley grabbed a popsicle stick and enjoyed making lollipops.





We also made and decorated heart-shaped cookies. The decorating process looked a little like this, "spread the frosting, lick the spoon." And repeat.



We also made some treats to give James, Remi, and T. Chocolate dipped marshmallows and strawberries with sprinkles!

 
 
The girls loved making little cards for their friends. Rowynn insisted on adding frogs to her cards! So RoRo!