S is for Snowman - lesson plan & activities

I thought I would go in alphabetical order for the Letter of the Week with John, but I even just on our second week I changed my mind! :) So, we moved right along to letter S this week because I wanted to do a snowman/winter week while we were still in the winter season. And how appropriate is it that it SNOWED today in Texas!? John has been reading his 's' books this weekend about snow and snowmen so it was perfect that he got to play in the snow today and make his very own snowman with Daddy!







Here are my plans for this week:



I used some activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler and I found a super cute unit from Musings of Me. Mrs. Home Ec also had some great snowman ideas that I am borrowing this week!

Here is what I added or how I will modify:

1. Snowman Numbers: I printed out #1-10 and we will count out big marshmallows to match each number. Then we can eat them! I hope John likes marshmallows since he hasn't had them before. :)

2. Spell Snowman: I am again printing out two copies of 'snowman' for John to practice matching the letters to make the word. We did this with apples last week and I was impressed that by the end of the week John knew what the word was when he saw it or if I spelled it outloud for him. I left the word up on his pocket chart and one day he saw the word apples on a book and ran back to the pocket chart and said 'A-P-P-L-E-S apples!' I was so impressed! (my snowman word is at the end of this post!)

3. Winter crafts: My sister and I had thought about signing our kids up for an arts & crafts class at a local rec center. But we figured we could do our own crafts for way cheaper. So she is coming over this week so the kiddos can do a winter craft together. I am so excited! I happened to find this site over the weekend with a bunch of great crafts. It will be hard to choose just one!!

4. 5 Little Snowmen: Using the 5 Little Snowmen poem from Mrs. Home Ec, I printed out 5 snowmen, laminated, and added magnets. I will use these on the fridge while we read the poem so we can take off the snowmen along with the story. (my snowmen are at the end of this post!)

5. Play with Winter Clothes: just like it sounds! I am going to take out some hats, gloves, and scarves for us to play with. Maybe we will dress up his stuffed animals? Have John practice putting them on and off all by himself? We will see what he does with this one!

6. Snowman Snacks: We are going to make snowmen with the marshmallows, pretzels sticks (arms), and chocolate chips (eyes, mouth, buttons). We might be able to do this with a banana too!

7. I am using the letter s & pegs again this week. John did well with it last week and enjoyed trying to get tall towers with the pegs!

We will play with white play-doh, a Mellissa & Doug snowman stacker, practice pouring our snow (white beans), and listen to the song Frosty the Snowman. I also signed up John for a class called Kidokinetics at the rec center and I am so glad I did! He really enjoyed it last week since he basically got to run around for 45 minutes! Plus I just kind of forget you need to teach the kids how to do things like step side to side, gallop, take big long steps, etc.

Books we are reading:




Extras if you want them:


Want MORE snowman ideas? Check out Hart 2 Hart. They did some super cute stuff too! Love her snowman meals! (and everytime I read her blog, I am amazed at how much they get accomplished! I think it would take us about 3 weeks to do all that stuff. I am hoping she doesn't have a 5 month old to take care of as well so that way I don't feel too bad!! hehe!)

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Dinosaur Birthday Party!!!

John had his dinosaur party last month and I am just now getting to posting about it.(I am totally blaming it on the holiday shenanigans...not that I have been lazy...) We had so much fun at his party!

I created these invitations using Photoshop Elements and then printed them at Walmart. Or was it at ArtsCow??? Either way, I printed them as photos, stuck them in envelopes, and off they went. I love being able to create unique and personal invitations rather than just picking up a pack of generic ones from the store. Plus I just enjoy using photoshop! :)



Against my better judgement, I caved and had two parties again this year. One was for John's playgroup and one for just the family. (Someone please hold me to just having one party next year!!) For the party for John's friends we had some stations set up in the backyard. We were SOOOO lucky that the weather was perfect- high 60's in the middle of December! Awesome!! I wanted something very relaxed so the kids could walk around the backyard and play as they wished rather than have games where everyone had to play at the same time. I think the kids had a blast!

Each kid got an 'adventure bag' so they could take goodies from each station. They stopped at the Dino Dig, Dino Crafts, Dino Egg Hunt, and took rides on the pet Dino.





















...some kid's ideas of goodies were interesting...

Being that the party started at 3, the food was fun snacky stuff that consisted of yummy cupcakes (with toppers that I made on photoshop), dino shaped nuggets (Tyson brand...and they were yummy too!!), chips, veggie straws, candy, juice, etc. I was going to make cute food labels but you don't really need labels when there are only 3 different foods on the table. haha!

I decided not to go crazy with decorations and just focused on preparing each station. I felt like last year I was super consumed with the airplane party so I made it easy on myself this year and used last year's bunting...and that was all! Although it wasn't as fancy as some of the parties around the blogosphere, it worked for us.

Now I just need to start thinking of a theme for Matthew's 1st birthday! I only have 7 months! ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

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CD Suggestions?

In our house, we listen to Laurie Berkner Band often. I love her songs! :) But I want to try some new CDs out. Everytime I go to the library I get so overwhelmed at all the kid CDs they have that I usually walk away without checking anything out. So, does anyone have a CD their kids love to listen to? Any good suggestions for me?

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Letter A Lesson Plan & Activities

This is our first week trying out my new grand plans of using the Letter Of The Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. So I thought I would start sharing my weekly lesson plans and anything I am creating and adding in on my own.

Here are my plans:



What I added to LOTW:

**Spell Apple** I will cut out one of the 'apple' words and leave it whole. Then I will cut up the second 'apple' so that I have all the individual letters cut out. Using the first 'apple' as a guide, John will match up the letters to spell out apple. We have done this a couple times using a pocket chart and he really enjoys it!

**Feed Apples to Horse** Check out this post on the directions!

**Peg Letters** I bought a set of these foam letters and stacking pegs off craigslist. Unfortunately when I got home, I realized it only had 25 letters. Boooo. {note to self: check items CAREFULLY before buying them off craigslist!} Regardless, we will practice putting the pegs in the holes on the letter a! I like that it is a set of lower case letters so we get some practice with both types of letters.

**Sorting by Size** After I cut out the different sized apples, John can sort them into three piles: small, medium, and large

**Pick Apples** I have some apples die-cuts that are for bulletin boards (I got them a while ago at the Dollar Tree), so I will write lower case and upper case a's on them and hang them on the wall. John will pick the apples off the wall and sort them into two different baskets.

**Fingerpaint** I found a coloring page online (sorry- don't have that one to share!) and we will finger paint using our new paints from Aunt Em (yeah!!) and on our new table from Santa. (I am hoping to get to the store before Friday to get some oil cloth and make a cute table cloth because I am so worried about our new table getting all dirty right away! haha!)

**Books** I checked out several apple or 'a' books from the library and we started reading them over the weekend:
1. How Do Apples Grow?, Maestro
2. Our Apple Tree, Nashund
3. Apples, Gibbons
4. Apple Tree, Saunders-Smith
5. Ten Red Apples, Hutchins (John loves this one!)
6. Picking Apples, Saunders-Smith
7.The Aunts Go Marching, Maurie J. Manning (this one is cute and I am going to try to make some type of activity to go with it!)
8. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Martin

The other activities (fine motor and real life) are pretty self-explanatory! :)

Here are the files I made. Feel free to use!




Did you do any activites or ideas to share for the letter A? :)

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