This week was a very short week since it was Thanksgiving Week and we left Wednesday to go visit my dad’s side of the family. This week and next, we are not doing Ready-Made Preschool and will be doing other learning activities, holiday crafts and spending lots and lots of time with family!! I guess you could say we are taking a two-week break now and will pick back up with Ready-Made Preschool starting December 9th. Then we will have two weeks and break again for Christmas (for a week) and then we will have one more week and our first semester of homeschooling will be complete! That is hard to believe, but I didn’t expect anything less because time seems to fly by these days!

{Monday}

We got caught up on Hands On Thinking Skills because we had not done it in a couple weeks. We finished the Dividing Shapes into Equal Parts section and after our break we will be ready to start learning about the next concept.

We worked on some Fall printables. Little Bug did Bushel of Letters where she matched the picture to the correct beginning sound on the apple bushel. She also played Apple Numbers of which she did NOT want to play. I, however, wanted to use this game to see if she could recognize numbers 11-20. We’ve been working on numbers 11-20 a lot during Ready-Made Preschool and I wasn’t sure if she could recognize all these numbers. So I made her play the game….and she knew them all, no problem. This is typical Little Bug. If she already knows something, she doesn’t want to do it. Then I also made her put the numbers in order (of which she didn’t want to do – stinker) from 1-20. Again, I wanted to see if she could do it and, again, she had no problems whatsoever doing it.

I don’t push Little Bug to do things like this because I don’t believe that is what preschool should be but I really wanted to know if she can correctly identify the numbers 11-20! She does. Moving on now, Little Bug. (Turkey!!!)

After making her do the number games I let her pick her own activity for the remainder of Learning Time that day. She chose to play with her Melissa & Doug Animal Stamps. Stamps are a favorite activity around here. Pup was asking to go outside, so I decided to take her since Little Bug was busy with her stamps. I came back in and found Little Bug had stamped her face!

I was moving laundry from the washer to dryer and told Little Bug to pick her naptime book and go get on my bed (where we like to read every day) and I walked in the room and she just looked so cute sitting there waiting for me with her book….and her snack! Have you noticed this girl usually has a snack with her at all times during Learning Time?! She eats lunch and then is hungry by Learning Time which is RIGHT after lunch.

Oh my Little Bug! This girl is…….such a turkey and I love spending my days with her. She really is at a fun age right now. And that was Learning Time on Monday.

{Tuesday}

Tuesday I decided to take some pictures of our Morning Routine which includes our Bible time and reading books together. During our Bible time Monday and Tuesday we read about the Israelites crossing the Red Sea! On this day we listened to the song that went with the story we had read in 100 Ways to Know God Loves Me and Little Bug was dancing to the song. During book time, Little Bug wanted to listen to one of her books on CD and Sweet Pea was looking at one of her Little People books. Usually during book time they each pick a few books and then we sit together on the couch and read them all! Because of plans later that day, we went ahead and did Learning Time in the morning. Little Bug did Apple Print Awareness activity where she pasted the words to make a sentence and then she painted a green apple on the page to go along with the sentence. She played a Count the Pumpkins game (with numbers 1-10) which was very easy for her. She made herself a challenge mid-game when she told me she wasn’t going to count the pumpkins, she was going to just look at them and know what number it was! She was able to do this for numbers 0-6.

{Thanksgiving Games}

Instead of more crafts I decided we’d play some fun Thanksgiving games together! We played Turkey in the Bag. It was easy to make and fun to play for both girls. I wrote the lowercase letters on a square piece of paper and drew a turkey on one square. Then I put about 8 letters in the bag and the girls reached in to pull one out. If they pulled out a letter we sang the Leap Frog letter sound song that went with the letter. If they pulled out the turkey they had to gobble around like turkeys! We played this game multiple times and for some reason, Little Bug loved singing the songs as LOUD as she possibly could. This game was a great game for letter sounds review!

The next game we played was a Turkey Number Game. This is a graphing game and it was also very easy to make. Little Bug and I played it together first. Little Bug rolled the die and then put a counter on the graph for whatever number she had rolled. The first number to fill up its column won. Number three won. When we tried to play this with Sweet Pea it was a little chaotic and the girls wanted to play Turkey in the Bag instead!

{Thanksgiving Trip}

Wednesday we left for our trip to spend Thanksgiving with my dad’s side of the family. For many years it was our tradition to get together with this side of the family for Thanksgiving. Our last Thanksgiving together was in 2010, when Grandpa still lived in his house. It was sad to not be able to go in that house, but the time spent with family was just as special. This year my dad’s youngest brother and his wife hosted Thanksgiving at their house. If you’ve been reading my blog for many years you might remember that this is the brother that nearly died from a brain aneurysm in January 2010. He has made a full recovery and is literally a walking miracle. I very much enjoyed getting to stay with my aunt and uncle during this trip. My Uncle David is 8 years younger than my dad but their mannerisms and the things they say are identical and it cracked me up all weekend long!

Thanksgiving Day we were all together (my Grandpa, his three sons & their wives, his 6 grandchildren, 3 spouses of those grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren). If you can peek down on Earth from Heaven I know my Grandma was smiling big on that day seeing all her family together. It doesn’t seem possible she has not been with us for the past 17 years.

We all enjoyed that day…..getting to meet the newest member of the family - my cousin’s 5 month old baby girl, chatting and catching up with everyone, playing games, watching football, playing outside (that would be Little Bug even though it was literally freezing outside!) and eating delicious food!

Towards the end of the day together we took some very special pictures together. We took a picture of the whole group (don’t have a copy of that picture yet). Then we took a “cousins picture”. This time there were three new members: Sweet Pea, my cousin’s husband and daughter!

I love the picture of my Grandpa with his three great-granddaughters! We also took a four generation picture of my Grandpa, my dad, me and my two girls. I am glad to have that.

Friday we got to visit with my mom’s brother, his wife and their two children. It was great seeing that side of the family too! It was so nice to be able to talk to my cousins (in 10th and 8th grade) and hear all about what they are up to these days! I love seeing family. I’ve been blessed with a great bunch of people to call my family.

{Something to Celebrate}

It has been a fun process for me to watch Little Bug learn her letters and the sounds they make. This week, she took a giant leap towards getting ready to learn to read and it is SO FUN to watch my own child crack the code of learning to read!

While we were driving, Little Bug suddenly said, “Mommy! I know how to spell mop!”

I said, “Oh, yeah?” and waited to see what she was going to say next.

I looked in the rear view mirror and I could see the wheels turning in her head.

She said, “M-O-P. That spells mop!!”

I was beaming. She was beaming. I will always remember that moment!

Then I said, “I bet you can spell pop too!”

Again I could see her thinking this through and in no time she said, “P-O-P! That spells pop!”

I’m certainly not going to push her to start learning to really read, but this is VERY exciting to me and I will keep encouraging her to crack the code of learning to read!!!

- Elaine