Puppy Week: A Kindergarten Unit Review

I have used HomeschoolShare for lapbooking resources several times with David and have really been pleased with the results.  Our favorite of all time had to be the My Father's Dragon lapbook!  He still talks about that one.  Amazingly, I never got pictures of our completed book.  The site is free to join and has a lot of free printables for lapbooks, notebooks, and unit studies.

HomeschoolShare has some new Kindergarten Kits coming out soon and I had the chance to try out the "Playful Puppies Kindergarten Kit" set with Elizabeth.  She really enjoyed it and I took lots of pictures!  Elizabeth is 4 1/2 years old.  Not old enough to be a public school kindergartner, but we're starting kindergarten this year at home anyway.  She is more than ready!

Disclaimers: "Playful Puppies Kindergarten Kit" was given to me to review & test out before the final version was released on HomeschoolShare.  I didn't have all the books recommended for the unit and didn't have a library trip scheduled either, so we made due with what we had.  Also, I love the light in our dining area, but it makes backlight in all the photos, so I apologize for the darkness of the activity in the photos!  And finally, my printer was just about out of color ink, so the printouts are a little dull.  I went over the edges of some things with a marker so they'd be easier to see.  If you have a good ink cartridge in your printer, your printouts will look much better than mine.

Here's all the puppy & dog books that we had.  We read these as we were going through the activities in the pack.  Also had an informational book about dogs that somehow missed the photo.

Going over the days of the week, she decided to count them.

This was the cutting page, but she wanted to trace the lines first.

Then I cut the page into strips for easier handling.

This was really good practice for her because we haven't done a lot of cutting.  Unless you count her bangs.  Doesn't that look lovely?  She and her brother did that.  At least they were working together, right?

Anyway, Elizabeth loves coloring, so the same size/matching activity was right up her alley!

The next activity that she really loved was the

A-E-I-O-U Game.

She could have kept playing this for hours!

I liked that these were lowercase letters.  She identified the vowels, put them in alphabetical order, and identified them by sound.  This opened the discussion of long and short vowel sounds also. 

Then she hid the bone and had me try to find it, except that she always left a little corner of the bone card peeking out... and she thought that was hilarious!

We used our hodgepodge of ABC magnets and a cookie sheet for her to copy some words.  This is  beginning spelling & reading skills.  Then we talked about the sounds that each letter makes and slowly let her sound out the words.

The smile was after sounding out a word, when she realized that she had just sounded out a word!

Doggy, Doggy, Where's Your Bone? had her place the missing numbers on the chart.  The instructions recommended printing the missing numbers on sticker paper, but I didn't have any.  That would have been really fun to use, though!

She was proud that she made it all the way to 30!

We love nonstandard measurement activities, and this one was no exception!

The bone ruler and 3 puppies came in this activity.  She measured each puppy, measured them stacked up, sorted them by size, and then found other things to measure.

Her plate is 6 dog bones across.

The eraser is almost 2 dog bones long.

The little trampoline is almost 7 dog bones tall.

Her foot is 5 dog bones long.

We compared her foot to my foot.

Baby Sarah's foot is 3 dog bones long.

The last thing I got pictures of was the One Stop Puppy Shop Game.  Once again, the games are her favorite!  We used real money, but paper money is included in the kit if you want to print it and use it.  I wrote on the coins with a Sharpie how many cents they were.  We talked about the value of each coin or bill.  We matched the coin to the puppy supply it would buy.  (For example, the quarter is 25c and it will buy the frisbie.)  Then we rolled dice to play the game per the instructions in the kit.  She loved this!

We had a lot of fun with the Playful Puppies Kindergarten Kit!  I'd highly recommend it!  Other Kindergarten Kits will be available soon, free of charge, on HomeschoolShare!

Oh, and look... We did the Playful Puppies Kindergarten Kit just in time...

That's our new puppy, Daisy!

August ONE

 Another month has flown by!  Kids are growing, growing, growing.  We've been slowly picking school back up and are starting school back in full force this month.  By September ONE, programs will be going also and fall will be busy and fun.   I have some reviews coming up and some summer events that I still want to blog even though they're over.  Hopefully I'll get those things done this week.

David was holding Sarah and asked if he could look at her face, so he turned her facing him and began to talk to her while she laughed.  So cute!

We staged this month's photo on the couch again.  Tried to get one happy photo and one silly.  I think both are both, though.  : )

Rebekah was finishing off our popcorn snack.  And, after a lot of trial & error, I was able to get one photo with the kids piled up on me!  : )

love!

How Do You Dry Your Clothes?

 Wow, that's hot.  And it's been this hot for weeks!

It's easy to get sick & tired of being hot.  Of having no rain.  Of having your grass, garden, and landscaping die.  Of having your electric bill climb.  It's so easy to complain.  Of course, if it had been raining for three months, we'd be complaining about that, too!  If it was a cool summer, some of us would complain that we wanted some "swimmin' weather"!

My back yard clothesline full of kitchen linens

As I was hanging out towels in the hot, dry wind, I was reminded how blessed I am and began to thank God

• for the people who dirtied these towels and napkins.
• for the view I have, even though the grass is dead.
• for the little hands that would help fold when I got back inside.
• for the paper towels I didn't have to buy.
• for the food that was prepared in the same kitchen.
• for the people that have given me those towels and napkins - Godly women in my family.
• for my husband that built the clothesline for me.
• for the air conditioning when I walked back inside.

I'm sure there was more.  That was a big load of towels!  I actually had more towels than I had clothesline, but that's OK - by the time I had the line full, the thin napkins were already dry!  I was able to take down napkins to hang the rest of the towels!

And that's how I dried my clothes this week.

Bananas!

"Look at me!"

Doesn't it look like she's taking a self-portrait?  : )

I err on the side of waiting longer before starting my babies on solid food.  Sarah is no exception.  She has been exclusively breastfed for 6 months and appears to be doing well.  She started taking interest in things that are going towards my mouth, so I figured it might be about time to start solids.

 I'd say, based on her grabbing the spoon and pulling it into her mouth, that she was ready to eat!   Mmmm... Aunt Sissy, she loved that mashed up banana!  Then Rebekah turned a little green & she wanted to eat mashed up banana also!  Time to pull out my baby food cookbook and the Baby Bullet!

Four and a Half Cupcakes

I love cupcakes!  When I stumbled upon a recipe for Pink Lemonade Cupcakes in the Big Book of Cupcakes, I thought this would be perfect for Elizabeth's 4 1/2 birthday.  This year we stayed home, shared our cupcakes with Grandpa, and played on the slip & slide.

Elizabeth has grown so much since 3 1/2, as have the others.  It's amazing to look back and see them!  She doesn't look like a baby any more.  She looks like a beautiful little girl.  And she loves cupcakes, too!  She enjoyed the lemonade cupcakes, but has already requested chocolate for her 5th birthday cupcakes.

Happy Four and a Half!

So hard to wait!

It's the 4th

Happy Fourth of July!  My second favorite holiday!  It's full of fond memories of camping, family, fireworks, homemade ice cream...  Here is our little firecracker in the dress I forgot to put on her Sunday morning:

 It amazes me how much I love her!

We'd already started getting ready for bed when Dad reminded me about doing sparklers with the kids.  Yeah, I've been off today.  I actually got Rebekah out of bed so she could go outside & burn her hand.  Of course we stayed on the gravel since it's been so dry. 

Happy 4th!

July ONE

 The First Day of July!  

Rebekah was crying because she wasn't holding the kitten. So...

 That's a good little cat.

His name is Steel.

On this first day of July, Dad went to a birthday party for a coworker.  I got the babies in bed early after a long week of VBS! and wanted to enjoy the finally-not-sweltering-temperature outside, so the 2 big 'uns and I walked down to the pond, which is just in the back yard.

Now I am really not good at getting the hooks out and this guy had gotten 2 of them stuck in the corner of his big mouth.  After a few minutes, I started to worry that I was gonna kill the thing by having it out of the water and not being able to get the hook out, so I started praying to myself about it.  I didn't even realize I was talking out loud.  Elizabeth asked me who I was talking to, so I explained that I was asking God to help me get the hook out and that the fish not die, and I continued working with the hook and with the prayer.  Finally it came loose!  Whew!  Thank you, God!  - Thank you that I did not forget to thank you when the little ears were listening! - Then Elizabeth said, "Wow, God sure is strong, isn't he?"  And that, my friends, was the BIG catch of the day!

Then David got my camera and had himself a good time.

There was lots of giggling as he took a few self-portraits

and then turned the camera around to see his picture.

 

 Then I told them I'd take some goofy pictures of them together.

Wow, that turned out to be a good evening!

See how the kids are growing every month here!