Letter X Crafts

We take a long time in doing our letter crafts these days because we are now juggling so many different learning stages and subjects between the 3 gals who are old enough for school and crafting.  But we completed a few letter X projects to add to our alphabet books and they were really fun.  

1. X is for Xylophone

 

Simple set up.  All you need is two long black construction paper rectangles and shorter different colored construction paper rectangles for the xylophone keys.  Two more smaller black rectangles for the mallets (that form your "x") and two colored circles for the tops of each mallet.  And glue.  

For extra fun and learning, You can cut the strips all different lengths and have your kiddo put them in order from smallest to biggest.

Finished products

2. X is for X-ray

 

All you need for this craft are a few simple items: white/gray crayon, black construction paper, glue, and Q-tips.  

First, trace your child's hand and arm with the crayon.  Let them color with the crayon all around the hand print if they'd like.  Then use your Q-tips as the "bones" and glue them onto the hand x-ray.  

 

Finished products!

And finally time to move on to letter Y!

Letter W projects

Long ago, sometime in late summer (yeah, I somehow forgot to post about it) we completed a few 'letter w' projects for whales, water, wolf, and watermelon. 

Wolf

 

Just a few simple cut out pieces.  A big brown triangle, two small brown triangles, the wolf fur pieces, a dark brown circle for the nose, 2 white circles and 2 smaller black circles for eyes and some black rectangles to make your angry/confused/sad/quizzical wolf face complete.  :)

 

Watermelon

Sooo easy- this needs no explanation.  But it's tons of fun and great to practice counting and shapes with the smaller ones too!  

Whale {in the water}

First I drew a few whales.  Then I let the kids paint them with grays and light blue paint.  

 

Then we just cut them out, glued them on with some construction paper water and bam!  Two for one letter W project.  The kids LOVED this one (despite what my daughter's facial expression below says) because WHALES!

 

  I can't believe it took me so long to get this post up.  It's embarrassing really, but hey, it's real life, folks!

31 Days of Gratitude {Day 10} Edgar Degas study

Last month, we studied some artists.  One of these is an artist we studied before, but with a house full of girls, he is one of our faves, so checked out books, read all about him, studied some of his work, and my three oldest ballerinas tried their hand at drawing ballerinas like Edgar Degas. 

The girls loved this idea in one of the books to recreate some of Degas' paintings with photographs.  

Our attempts were the most accurate, but the girls had a lot of fun and were really cute. 

His(above) 

Ours (below)

 

Sophie was supposed to be the ballerina sitting in the foreground, but you can guess how that went.  bahahaha! She wouldn't stay still for even a moment.  The stairs are right there and she just wanted to climb, climb, climb. 

bye, bye, ballerina!

Can you tell which 3 of the ballerinas from his painting that ours were attempting to be?

We had a blast learning fun facts, and making Degas come alive a little during our study.  So grateful for the ability to homeschool right now because for our family, for right now anyway, it is a wonderful opportunity and a great blessing.  

First Day of School 2015

I could tell you all sorts of details about all the crazy stuff I planned to make the first day of school awesome!  thrillling! rivoting!!...but we are taking it pretty easy, so while we've been having fun with our learning since "officially" starting yesterday, we aren't doing 10 Pinterest projects a day plus working through an amazing unit study plus playing fun games incessantly that incorporate math and language arts themes.  

This year we are going a slightly different direction with our homeschooling.  I'm going through a local charter school.  We are still homeschooling Kayla, but I will have an Education Specialist (ES) that gives me suggestions on various homeschooling curriculum that might best fit Kayla's learning style.  I will give her a sample of Kayla's work once a month, and in return we are able to get funding to pay for the homeschool curriculum plus we can use the money allotted to us for trips to the museum/zoo or for Kayla's ballet class among other things.  The downside is that you can't choose from religious affiliated curriculum, but that's not a problem for me.  We teach our kids about faith every day in many ways, and I can purchase some religious books/curriculum on my own to use to supplement.  Meanwhile, we might actually be able to keep Kayla in ballet this year, because OMG that stuff is so expensive (even when you find a place that is a "pretty good deal").  

I'm not going to go into great detail because we just started and this is new for us so I don't yet have much of a true opinion or feedback to offer, but I can tell you that this SEEMS like a perfect fit for someone like me.  I love to have some structure and accountability, but at the same time I like to have the freedom to do my own thing and teach Kayla in a way that best meets her needs (as I understand them through my mama lense) as well as those of our family as a whole.  

What I will tell you is that I signed up on the late side to do this, so we are a little "behind" in the sense that the charter school officially started last Tuesday, though I deemed yesterday as OUR "official" first day.  And we currently have no curriculum because I was late getting our paperwork together for the school, so we are using the first several weeks to just sort of review and do a lot of less-structured learning.  We are doing a lot of reading and discussing of story themes, characters, setting etc.  We are doing a lot of grabbing awesome library resources and gobbling that stuff up.  We are doing a lot of handwriting practice writing letters to family and friends who live far away.  You get the idea, we are doing just fine, but are excited to see what this new experience will be like.  Rest assured that you will see more homeschooling posts this year letting you know how we are faring and commenting about different curriculum options that we are trying out as well as religious supplements that we feel are a good fit, so stay tuned.  

In the meantime, I thought I'd give you an idea of how many pictures I like to snap when I take "group pictures" of the girls and how funny they are and the ridiculous faces you get in every single photo shoot.  Keep in mind that many of these happen with a few seconds of each other.  Scroll on. 

Mom cuts off the chalk writing 

Kayla blinks

and general ridiculousness

Still cut off the chalk writing...

Kayla decides to change her hand position...

and everyone plasters on a smile. 

Getting closer to capturing all of the chalk writing...

Kayla, the ham

And then I said, "Put your hands up in the air!"

Finally got all the chalk writing in the shot! 

What is Kayla looking at?

Ava blinks. 

Sophie?

and then everyone just looks like they just got onto the Scare Floor of Monsters Inc. 

except Sophie.  Sophie?  Soooophie??!

Yep, I told them, "Ok, now jump!  Keep jumping"

and then I snapped pictures.....

and got these

squatting down for another jump

Elise, the cheeseball.

Ava's form is awesome! I see volleyball in your future, darling. 

Crazy. Silly. 

Elise is sorta channeling Marilyn Monroe. 

Oh dear...

More of that. 

And they've landed.  

Hope I got a shot in there that works.  

Sure. 

So there you have it.  

Happy First Week of School !

Pinterest Project: Grill Time

I met Bobbi at a Catholic women's blogging conference in April, and I just discovered that she has a Pinterest Party link-up similar to an idea that I used to do every once in awhile here on my blog (no link-up) where I'd try things I pinned on Pinterest just to make sure that I actually used some of the amazing ideas I was pinning.  

This week at Sprouts, cilantro was 3 bunches for $1, so I grabbed some and went looking through recipes on Pinterest to find recipes that used cilantro.  First I found this pin for a Thai Cilantro Grilled Chicken that I'd pinned long ago. Here's the link straight to the recipe/website. 

I have tried the chicken recipe before and it was good, but I felt like it needed a sauce the last time we made it, so since we had a bunch of cilantro and strawberries were also on sale at Sprouts this week, I searched for a cilantro/strawberry salsa to top the chicken.  I found this pin. With the pin, it gives a very simple "Strawberries, avocado, red onion, cilantro, fresh squeezed lime or lemon juice, with salt and pepper to taste!" description, which I used to whip up my own quick concoction.  I never even opened the actual recipe, just chopped up avocado, strawberries, and cilantro (no onions) and squeezed half a lime into it with a dash of salt and pepper.  It was delicious and perfect with the chicken.  (Note* click here for the actual recipe which actually has more than that description noted. It's probably very delicious too, but I can't attest to that since I did not actually follow the directions).

Cilantro Thai grilled chicken with a strawberry avocado salsa. 

Served with zucchini and grapes. 

I also checked out this tactile pin that I had pinned awhile back this week.  E is really touchy feel-y, so I thought it would be the perfect way for her to work a bit more on her number recognition.  Straight to website here. I just used Elmer's glue and markers for mine.  The girls love them!  

What great finds have you pinned on Pinterest lately? 

 Join the link-up herewith yours or just add some fun links in the comments.  

Letter V crafts

We took a break from our alphabet book crafts over Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it's taken awhile to get back, but here are the pages we just added for Letter V to our alphabet book.  

These are my almost-4-year-old's pictures

1. Vegetables - Just cut out construction paper veggies and let the kiddos glue them on.  

"Look, Mom! It's Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato!"

This is why the picture could not be completed without all the vegetables having faces...

 

Merida apparently wanted to watch us work on Letter V projects.  And really, it's quite fitting, since she's a Viking and all...

2. Volcano- I saw this project on Pinterest--too cute!  Make a big red V, glue it to a piece of paper, color in brown to make it into a mountain, and make some lava spewing out!

These are the 2 year old's pictures (her big sis added the faces for her)

3. Violets and Vase- Draw a vase.  Let the kiddos paint stems green and then stamp violets (we used both Q-tips and those round paintbrushes) in purple.  Add some yellow dots in the center of each violet and paint some blue water in the vase as well. 

These are my Kindergartener's projects

And we accidently timed our Letter V study around St. Valentine's Day, so we made a bunch of homemade valentines today and filled them with sweet messages and Bible verses to send to friends and family.