H is for Hippo and K is for Kite

Today is a two for one post - you get two weeks smooshed into one post. 

Two weeks ago we did H is for hippo. I didn't take very many photos, so this first week will be short. I had hoped to take the boys to the zoo where the hippo is, but it rained on the day we had planned to go. We've been before, so they've seen the hippo. He mostly sleeps in the water by the fence. That's about it. Instead of the zoo, we opted to watch hippo UTube videos on the iPad. Strangely, the boys enjoyed the video of the hippo chasing a reserve ranger in Africa the most. Sigh, boys... 

While Big Monkey practiced cutting, Baby Monkey tried cutting an old gumball craft from last week. He wants to do everything big brother does, which gets interesting when it involves scissors, glue, paint, or push pins.  

 

We fed the hippos! Each hippo got fed the number of beads that corresponded to the number on his belly. We had a good time with this. Best counting activity we have done in a long time.

We moved on to some fine motor skills practice by lacing beads onto pipe cleaners. Baby Monkey went from beads to trying to stick the measuring cup to his face.

Which then turned in to putting the bead container on his head...

 And of course, Big Monkey had to join in. They actually ran around the room with these on their heads for quite awhile.

Color puzzles this week involved words. Big Monkey had to match the colored hippos to the right word, which were also colored the same color. He really matched color to color, but it allowed him to see what the words look like as well.

Last week we did K is for kite. I had hoped for a breezy week in November when I scheduled this, but alas, we had rain on the day it was windy and calm weather the rest of the week. So we couldn't fly kites. We'll have to do that again soon.

It's tough to get photos where both boys look excited. Here Big Monkey looks happy and Baby Monkey looks a little less than happy, but not upset at least.

 

We practiced some size sorting with our triangle stand. The boys love that thing, although you can see that Baby Monkey has bent it from trying to use the triangle as a tunnel, step stool, and who knows what else. Mama Monkey says "don't do that..." a lot. 

It seems that we always have at least one rough day each week where Baby Monkey just does not want to cooperate. He'll want all my attention and likes to sit and pout. 

Big Monkey did prewriting practice with the dry erase markers.

And of course Baby Monkey had to do the same thing. I tried to pick a dry erase marker close to the color of his pajamas since he almost always ends up with at least one mark on his clothes somewhere. Dry erase markers may wipe off dry erase boards easily, but they do not easily wash out of clothes. 

Big Monkey practiced some fine motor control with the giant push pin.

Yup, so did Baby Monkey. This was his first experience using the big push pin. Usually I tell him, "ouchie, it will poke you." So when I gave him the pin he kept saying "ouchie" as he poked the paper. He did a really good job. He poked along the letter K three times before he decided to go postal and just start randomly poking everywhere on the page. No blood was shed though! 

 We read Curious George Flies a Kite. My boys love Curious George, but the original stories often make me chuckle or even cringe sometimes. I'll have to be sure to share the things I see as we read the stories. Flies a Kite has a part in it (the original 8 stories are long and often have 3-4 sub stories in them) where George sees a man with a fishing pole. George refers to him as "the fat man" twice. Needless to say, this has prompted conversations of how people come in all shapes and sizes and that typically we shouldn't refer to someone just by the way they look on the outside.

We tried using clothes pins on yarn for counting this week. Big Monkey was not as in to it as feeding the hippos last week.

I broke down and let Baby Monkey play some preschool apps on the iPad one day because he kept throwing everything Big Monkey was doing on the floor. This allowed Big Monkey and I to quietly work together, but of course it was also a bit of a distraction.

Yup, that is a red dot sticker on my kid's forehead. He stuck one to each of our foreheads that morning. Not sure why. We had fun with this project. It was color matching. Big Monkey had to match the same colored pipe cleaners to the kite. I thread them through a hole I punched in the bottom of the kite. Then he had to gather all the same color bows for the tail. I wrapped the pipe cleaner around each bow for him. He tried the wrapping part, but ended up bending the bows and getting frustrated. So now I have about 8 kites of different colors in my office on the floor as the boys wanted to play with them.

We are taking the entire week of Thanksgiving off from school. It's nice to have the break and allow us free mornings to play, explore, cook, and just be. So there probably won't be another post for about 2 weeks! 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Be safe and enjoy the time with family and friends.