First Week of School

Our letter for the week- Aa

This week, on Tuesday, we started our first week of school. Hannah was super excited! She went to bed Monday night telling me how she was so happy to be able to learn stuff. I love that girl!

Since Hannah is only 4 and Ellie is 2, we are doing lots of fun, hands-on activities and basing most of our learning off of the letters of the alphabet. We will focus on one letter per week.

This week we started with the letter A and learned lots about apples, airplanes, alligators, ants and more! I still don't have too much planned out as of yet, so I am sort of "flying by the seat of my pants". As the weeks go on I am hoping to get a little more organized. But we are having tons of fun so far!

"Milking" the cow.

I came across a very neat blog this past week that will really help us with our alphabet studies. We found our cute apple craft there, and an alligator craft (which I don't have a picture of, but it was pretty cute...an alligator made out of the letter A) and a coloring page to print out with the letter A and an airplane. They have ideas for almost every letter of the alphabet!

I am also using National Geographic Kids website for videos and info of animals that correspond to the letter for each week. The girls love watching those!

A is for apple

Along with our letter studies, we are using Before Five in a Row and Slow & Steady Get Me Ready. BFIAR is a super great book that has 23 classic children's books to read with your kids and activities to do/discuss that go along with each story. And I am super excited because a friend of mine told me today about a website that has a bunch of lapbooking resources, many of which go right along with the stories in BFIAR! This week we read "Angus Lost" by Marjorie Flack. The science discussion to go along with is was about where milk comes from. As we were reading that and talking about it, I had a super great idea to blow up a latex glove and tape it under our piano bench so the girls could sort of get an idea of what it's like to milk a cow. Cheesy I know, but the girls had so much fun and played with our "cow" for a long time. I even had some old milk bottles that I showed them. Fun, fun, fun! This week with BFIAR we are going to read "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" which will be perfect to go along with the letter B.

Slow & Steady Get Me Ready is a great book too that has lots of motor skill and other activities to do each week to help your child grow and develop, all the way up to 5 years old. This week I am hoping to start on the first week for each girl for their age category. 

Oh, and we are also starting back up with our sign language. We get a Signing Time dvd from the library each week and watch it in the afternoons. The girls have learned so much from those, and it is very enjoyable for them.

I think that about covers most of what we did this week for school.

Stone mill wheel at Bob's Red Mill

And last, but not least, we went to Bob's Red Mill this week to get flour and oatmeal and such and we got to take a tour of the mill! The tour got a little bit long and wordy for the girls, but we did get to see them making cornmeal and packaging stuff up and watch the fork lifts. We also got to see one of the old stone mill wheels, and some other old mill machinery.

Old milling machine...Hannah took this picture

But I think the best part for the girls was the grain table, where there were buckets and bowls of lots of different grains and flours that you could stick your hands in. I think the girls would have played there all day. Maybe we'll have to do something like that at home sometime. :)

Another pic by Hannah...art on a milling machine

Oh, we even got to meet Bob Moore himself. Hannah was excited when she saw him walk in the room where we were having our tour..."Mommy! That's the guy on the packages!"

Outside the Bob's Red Mill store

I'd say we had a pretty amazing first week of school and can't wait for this coming week!

Blessings!