Fall Part 4 in Review

I don't know how some bloggers do it.  They somehow are able to create amazing curriculums for their preschoolers AND get gorgeous pictures of their children doing said activities.  I find that I have to be extremely hands on with Noah in each of his activities.  I wonder if this is because he isn't yet three, and this is just the way kids at this stage are.  Or, is it that I'm having him do things that are slightly harder than he is ready for?  Or, maybe it's just that I have a toddler as well as a preschooler.  Or, maybe it's that I don't want to pull out the big camera (my beloved little point-and-shoot took a bath a couple of weeks ago).  Whatever the reason, you will find that I did not get many pictures this week.

Despite the lack of pictures, Noah had a VERY productive week.  We got through most of our "boxes," and he has learned his letters by leaps and bounds this week.  This is largely owed to the DVD we checked out at the library: Leapfrog Letter Factory.  I had read about how great it was from the blog, 1+1+1=1, and she wasn't kidding!  Noah has become much more familiar with upper and lower case letter recognition AND the sounds that each letter makes.  I wouldn't be surprised to find that if I let him watch it for another week, he would have the whole alphabet figured out.  (Too bad it's due back in the library on Tuesday!)  He asks to watch the "frog movie" a couple of times a day.  It's only about 35 minutes long, but I still have to limit his screen time!  I will admit that we have been watching more and more movies lately as our afternoon outside time is becoming more difficult with the time change.  It's dark by 4:30!  I need to find better activities for the boys to get their wiggles out for after nap/quiet times.

Here is what we accomplished this week:


First, I'm glad that we moved math time up to Monday.  I felt much more refreshed and ready to do our leaf book than I would have by the end of the week.  This mama is tired by Friday!  Noah enjoyed making the leaf book too.  He had fun counting the leaves and helping me glue them on to the construction paper.  He also enjoyed decorating his title page with bug stickers.  I don't know if I'll ever get around to laminating the book (although I got my laminator this week!), but it seems to be holding up as is.  I just stapled the ends to make it into a book.

Noah also got to try his hand at lacing.  This is still too advanced for him, but he wanted to match the colors of the laces with the lacing shapes.  As a side note: he LOVES color matching, and he does it all the time when he is playing independently.  I often find him putting his duplos into color rows (which he calls trains - Thomas is the blue row; Percy is the green row, etc.) or in color towers.  I do need to get a picture of this at some point because it is such a big part of his life right now.

Tuesday was our MOPs day.  For whatever reason, he's becoming more attached to me on Tuesdays and doesn't want to be left.  He did it last week too.  I was just across the hall from him doing MOPPETS then, so I know that everything was fine.  I guess it is just one of those stages that comes up at different intervals.  Zach is doing better, though!  We didn't get to any of our other Tuesday activities.

Wednesday we succeeded in doing our Handprint Turkey Craft.  I really wasn't sure this was going to happen, but it did!  And, it came out pretty well!  I painted Noah's hand with the paints and he "stamped" his hand onto some cardstock.  I had him do it twice since he still had a lot of paint left over on his hand from the first go around.  After we got his hand cleaned up, we touched up the picture a bit.  What do you think?

We also made a "Goodbye" card for his preschool teacher.  He enjoyed coloring the card, but I don't know if he really understands what was going on.  We also read our music book and talked about all the different instruments that were mentioned.  I want to review this more, especially since we were very interrupted in our reading by a certain 14 month old.  =)

On Thursday we said goodbye to his preschool teacher on his last day of school.  I know he enjoyed it so I hope that I can find other social things for him to do more every week besides just MOPs.  Both boys did the fingerpainting that afternoon with ketchup and mustard.  They loved it!

I knew that we would get to the alphabet boxes even if we switched it to Friday!  Noah loves doing alphabet things since we got the Leapfrog DVD and the Alphabet Bin from the library.  On Friday morning we did our alphabet puzzle, and he was excited to pull all the letters from his name out and spell them out on the floor.  He even started talking about what each of the letters was and what sound they make.  He didn't know all of them, but I'm sure he knew at least half.  I think last week he only knew about 3 or 4 letters outside of the big ones (N, O, A, and H!). 

Mama was also excited to try out her new "toy" that came on Friday.  I couldn't wait to laminate the Alphabet Game and play it with Noah.  The new laminator was super fun.  Noah liked watching me put the paper through.  He kept wanting me to do it again and again.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any more laminating pouches to appease him.  The Alphabet Game didn't work out as well as I hoped.  We made it about 2 turns each before I landed on "N."  Then, it was all over.  Mama couldn't do "N"!  Only "N"oah can do "N".  Mama can do "M".  He then wanted to find the rest of the letters in his name.  Try as I might, I couldn't steer the boy back to the "right" way to play the game.  He enjoyed it anyhow.

Daddy and Noah had fun making their "Great Air Machines" for Science Saturday.  Basically, they put two sponges in a ziploc bag, sealed them fully with duct tape except for a little space where they put in a straw.  They could then squeeze the bag to blow air out of the straw.  Noah enjoyed blowing objects across the kitchen floor.

Can you find the little piece of green straw on the floor that he is blowing?

We had a great week!  I can't wait to see what we get to do next week!