Twin Tot School #23: B is for Butterfly...

Will and Wesley are 41 months old.

It made sense that after caterpillars come butterflies! There are so many fun B words though that we also used band-aids and lots of bears!

My favorite thing to do is something fun on our letter sheet to hang on our alphabet wall. For B we covered it with band-aids. I mean all kids love the chance to stick band-aids on something, anything. Plus, I got these at the dollar store! Of course, you can't have band-aids without sticking at least one on yourself, right...

I thought it really turned out fun:
This little monkey is, well a little monkey when the camera comes out:

It used to be that Wesley really got into the tot activites while Will was the more destractable one, but that really changed this week. Will wanted to do them all and worked for quite awhile. He did an amazing job on all of them too. Mommy was very pleasantly surprised. This was his first time to really do this size sort completely on his own. I got this from Confessions of a Homeschooler as well as the other butterfly pages.

This Melissa and Doug lacing shape we've had forever but it held his interest and he wanted to do it just right- a blanket stitch araound the edges. You'll notice a second grade workbook beside him as Mommy also teaches spelling and English at the same time. Oh, the joys of homeschooling multi-age kids :)

All of our favorite things to play with are these magnetic pompoms. I can't remember where I first saw this but they are just dollar store pompoms hot glued onto circle magnets. We have these hanging on our walls holding up memory verses, but they were really made for these letter magnet pages.

I've worked on counting forever with the boys but have never tried to teach them numers. I'm really trying to focus on teaching them the numbers 1-3 right now. This was the first time I've put out these pages where they put the number in the box and then count out that many objects (in this case butterflies). Wesley wasn't interested, but Will did wonderfully.

Wesley's favorite activity of late is writing. He wrote a W all on his own the other night. I'm so sad I didn't take a picture of his first letter, and of course it had to be on the Magna Doodle so was immediately erased. Jackson's was the same way 7 years ago :(

He really likes doing these letter pages because I told him the dotted lines were roads so he loves to "drive" his car around. Hey, whatever it takes, right? I tell Will to make monster truck noise to blow his nose :) On a side note, I've taught Welsey 26 letters of the alphabet and he can play Wii like a pro but I can NOT get him to blow his nose!!! I think it is my greatest failure as an educator to date because I have tried silly thing after silly thing for nothing. Oh well.... but he writes well!

This was the HIT of the week. I joined Carissa's RRSP (an amazingly cheap value you really should do) and finally got around to printing out the vocabulary cards and putting them in baseball card holders. Then they took turns (a miracle in and of itself) using the big finger (love that thing- has saved many a lesson from being too terribly boring even for my 2nd and 4th grader). I'd call out a word emphasizing the beginning letter sound and they'd point to it. They loved, loved, loved it. We ended up doing the letters A-D over and over and over. My goal now is to make up some cards of my own with personal things that start with that letter like a picture of Daddy for D. I'll do that in my bonbon eating free time :)

Our letter B craft was tearing and crumbling tissue paper (which is great for fine motor skills) and gluing them onto the butterfly wings. I heart this picture of Will's sweet hands:

He did it perfectly. He and Ashton are my crafty, crafty kids.

I was hoping he would be interested long enough to go around the outside wings, but he wanted to keep going. It turned out B for beautiful and he was Beamingly proud of it :)

No craft goes by without this girl taking part whether it be a preschool or adult craft!

This was my favorite scene from the week:

Both boys asked if they could cut so I put bins under them hoping to catch the pieces. They have been really good cutters from a really early age, but I guess that comes from having older siblings who leave scissors laying about...

I think I should start a feature called "keeping it Real" or something. So many times I read blogs and think their homeschool day is so perfectly organized and runs so smoothly that something is wrong with me as a mommy because my kids have the pointer stuck up their nose instead of doing their work. I never want to give the impression that our days are picture perfect because that could not possibly be farther from the truth so here's my keeping it real picture this week. Between crafting and learning numbers and letters everyone took a break when mommy snuck away to do laundry to take turns tying the twins to the office chair, spinning them and seeing if they could catch a football while going around. As you can see from the picture Will was horrified by the disruption:

We couldn't leave the letter B without doing what I hope is the first of many book units, Going on a Bear Hunt. I can't wait to share the fun we had hunting!

We had a wealth of B books and could've spent another few weeks doing fun activities!

Please check out all the other great Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1.

Weekly Wrap Up...

Well, this week did not start out like I planned it! The twins had the stomach virus. Right now Will's tonsils are giant and coming out next week so for him to be getting sick was not a good situation. I stayed awake watching him. Needless to say, Monday ended up being a sick day. We were so lazy, but Ashton did set up a really nice restaraunt which had her writing menus and orders. That counts as school, right? We did watch a lot of "How It's Made" on the science channel. That counts too, right?

Oh well, hopefully next week will be better!

Twin Tot School #22: C is for Caterpillar...

Will and Wesley are 40 months old.

We are moving right along in our letter curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. We did lots of activities from there, but apparently I didn't get many pictures. However, this activity was a huge hit. The big kids were even eager to get in on the crafting:

God knew I'd need two little brothers to keep them from fighting over one, but it sure was a surprise to me!

It's a success if Will actually participates!

One big letter C plus some pom poms, eyes and pipe cleaners give you a darling caterpillar C!

We also went to their first library story time. They did well considering how, ummmm, not toddler friendly (to be nice) the librarian was...

but we were thrilled to find their favorite books- CLIFFORD!

And C is for Clifford! We had also just gotten hair Cuts and it made Wesley look so much older, sniff, sniff...

The best part of C is for caterpillar week was that we got real caterpillars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The boys were fascinated and had to see them several times a day. Then they were in awe when they went in their Chrysalis:

How intent is sweet Will????

He'd sit and watch them forever. I can't wait for him to see them emerge as butterflies!!!

I also made up a silly caterpillar song and love to see them tickling each other:

We had a fun week of caterpillar fun. Go check out what other tots are up to at Carissa's blog.

Pick and Draw...

I put one of the kids' Christmas gifts in their workboxes, Pick and Draw. It is this awesome card game where you draw cards from different categories (like face, nose, hair, eyes) and draw a character using those features. It's amazing how many different ways the characters come out.

I also admire how the creator of the game uses it as a chance to tell kids about how

creative God is!

Now, being the good homeschooling mama I am I had to add a little more to it (the directions suggest you can too) so each time they drew a character they had to make up a name and some silly facts about them.

I also appreciated the drawing tips since I don't have an ounce of artistic talent to share. For example, if you shade the lower set of teeth in it looks like they are talking. Who knew?

The only downside I see is running out of paper since Ashton wanted to keep all her characters. The second time we played I got smart and had them fold a sheet to make little squares for each character. I didn't take pictures of my creations, but I had the best time playing with them!

I love good ole' "Gum Drop".

This lady was kind of crazy.

Although we need to work on spelling "bored", I did think he made this guy really look bored.

I highly recommend getting this game. It is so affordable and one of those rare things all ages can play together. Next time I think we're going to write some adventures for our new friend- yeah writing practice!

In Their Free Time...

The other afternoon I was reading some blogs (shocker I know). I always love reading the geography posts at Confessions of a Homeschooler (and plan on using her curriculum with the twins when they are a little older). I showed the big kids their boats they made for Thailand. We aren't studying that now. In fact, school was over for the day but they apparently inspired. They went to work in the kitchen. I was busy and didn't really watch exactly what they were doing. I was amazed by their creation since it was done completely by their own initiative and through their own creativity since they found all the supplies themselves as well.They both made their own boats and actually helped each other without fighting (gasp). What good is a boat without a launching party complete with Roman maiden and excited little brother?
Mission successful- the boats floated perfectly!

I absolutely adore when they are creative on their own. That's what I want for them. Sure, it makes my house even messier (if that's possible), but it's so worth it to see them doing something non-electronic :)

Of course, now I also have two giant boats hanging around my house, but at least it makes great decoration for the schoolroom!

Twin Tot School #21...

Will and Wesley are 39 Months Old

I fell in love with all of Erica's letter curriculum at Confessions of a Homeschooler and was so excited to begin using it with the boys. After lots of printing, cutting and laminating (and loving every minute of it) we were ready to jump in. I'd like to give her a plug here. At first I just printed them from her website where she offers them for free, but you have to download each thing separately. Then I decided to just go ahead and buy it. I mean it's only $10. Let me tell you it is worth every penny. Downloading it all at once is so much faster. Besides I was happy to support her and give something back since she so generously shares all she makes.

I don't think it matters what order you teach the alphabet (believe me that is hard for me to admit because I am very into going in order). Therefore, I decided to start with D is for dinosaur since my boys are so into dinosaurs. I got our trays all set up with all our activities.

Their favorite activity was sorting capital and lower case D's. This is the first time we'd done anything like this, and they did great!

I also got lots of great stuff from 1+1+1=1's dinosaur tot book. I love how Wesley is really thinking about this size sequencing!

Often, they want to do the same activity at the same time which means I get to referee. As soon as they saw the Dinosaur Train color matching from 1+1+1=1 they both wanted it. We all LOVE that show (thanks to that show my Ashton is always coming up with a hypothesis about something!). I held up a color and they had to decided which one of them had the character that matched that color.

Confessions of a Homeschooler also has these uppercase letter printables that are perfect for decorating. We chose to decorate them with dino tracks! The boys walked their plastic dinos in paint and tracked on their D.

I'd just bought a book of paper plate crafts (see widgit below) and was thrilled to see it had the cutest dino you could make out of those cheap-o paper plates. The boys did a great job painting them. They are getting so big!
I printed off a dinosaur from Making Learning Fun. I gave them paint trays with Q-tips for each color. They used the Q-tips to carefully paint in each circle. This was hands down their favorite thing we did. Mommy loved it because it was pretty mess free. We have got to do some more of these.
Another blog I enjoy is Tired, Need Sleep. She has tons more dinosaur activities that I can't wait to try next time around. I'm kind of figuring we'll go through these letters now that they are 3 then repeat them with more in depth activities the next year.

Of course, school always includes playing with big sissy. She teaches them to use their imagination and I absolutely love to listen to them. Watching how well she interacts with them makes me so glad we homeschool and they get to spend all day together and not just a few hours (well, most days any way :)

I can't wait to show off my new school room (as soon as hubbie paints that last wall-grrrr). By far my favorite part are my gutter book shelves. I always use one of them to house the twins' Tot School books. So, this week it showcased our favorite dino books:It's so surreal to me to be reading these next 2 dino books to my TWIN boys because I used to have to read them EVERY night to their big brother back when I just had one child. In fact, I still have these books memorized! I highly recommend Dinosaur Roar. When you read each page in a different voice it makes it even that much more fun!

Sandra Boynton is one of our all time favorite authors so of course we would love her dinosaur book. Again, funny voices are a must.

An hour doesn't go by that these two aren't playing trains. Mommy was proud of this track. Why is building those things like the hardest geometry puzzle ever?

And why can't I be rich enough to have an entire room devoted to train track......

We even took some time to watch Dinosaur Train on PBS Kids. Sissy helped them play the games. They thought they were big boys getting to be on the laptop!

Another great part of our new school room is a place on the wall to hang their work. They were so excited to see their work hung and tripped over each other to be the first to show Daddy when he got home!

I made up a silly little song for them to sing, but they ate it up. It especially seem to really help Will who sang it for everyone he met! Ignore my singing and focus on their cuteness!

Aren't they cute?

You're probably thinking my children are perfect little genius angels (haha-sarcasm here!).

So, in order to keep it real, here's my absolute favorite picture of the week:

Yeah, he gets that from his Daddy- hee hee!

Make sure to go over to Carissa's blog to see what others are up to.

Here are all the bookds we used. Hopefully, this will help me remember what we have when we revisit D next year!