Last week

Well, it seems that Mama Monkey is really good about completing the blog at the beginning of the week. Not so much by the end of the week. Honestly, I'm not even that good about getting the dishes done by the end of the week! I'm usually having too much fun with my boys.

Here are some of the highlights to the end of our week. We did a lot of tracing practice. Big Monkey really likes using the dry erase markers on the laminated tracing pages, so I ordered some fine tips in multiple colors for us to try out. So now we can stop using Mama Monkey's calendar dry erase markers.

Big Monkey also did the scarecrow do-a-dot printable several times. Did I mention that I love my laminator? My do-a-dot markers even "erase" from my laminated sheets if I wipe them off before they dry all the way. A little dry erase cleaner never hurts either. We're trying our best to save some trees over here in Monkeyville.

So we tried a little "science" with our weather theme. I read somewhere about this activity describing how rain works. You take a bowl with a little water and a cotton ball and talk about how the water evaporates into the clouds (dip cloud into water). Then when the clouds get full and heavy and can't hold more water, the water comes out as rain (lift cotton ball up for water to drain like rain). Um, yeah, it did not work like this for us. When I picked up the cotton ball one little drop of water came out, IF I was lucky! Look at Big Monkey's face in the photo - he was so unimpressed that he wouldn't even pick up the cotton ball for the photo. I had to! Oh and he kept telling me again that the cotton ball was stinky.

The sensory bin was my friend this week. Baby Monkey and I caught a cold Big Monkey got at the beginning of the week. No matter how mild the cold was, I had no energy. The sensory bin offered me several hours of keeping Big Monkey entertained while I either rested or did things like cook dinner. We went back to our "fall" sensory bin with red beans, white beans, and silk beads. New additions including small plastic slinkys and a small glass baby food jar with lid. He loved loading up the baby food jar with beans and then pouring them back into the bin.

The letter tiles were also a lot of fun, and a good second use for our Scrable game. Big Monkey matched up the tiles to the letters on the scarecrow page. He liked using tiles.

We also made a "sun" out of construction paper. Big Monkey turned it into a circle with triangles glued all over it, but it is still displayed in our front window.

Next week: Thanksgiving! Since we have a lot to do this week, there may only be highlights, but get ready for lots of turkey crafts (hopefully).

Snow!

So Tuesday we repeated a lot of the same activities as Monday. We added the book "Weather Words" as well. It was quite a bit over Big Monkey's head, but we looked at the pictures and talked about different kinds of weather in our own words. It was fun. Then we went on a playdate with Big Monkey's best friend, whom we will call Ladybug. They had a great time together. They haven't seen each other in awhile, so it was a nice change.

Today we talked a lot about snow in addition to our worksheet work. Turned out to be a fun day. We don't get snow where we live, so Big Monkey has never seen snow before. So we made snow today!

We started with the less exciting stuff. We did "how many crows are next to the scarecrow." We made it through 2 numbers before Big Monkey quit and moved on.

Then we tried some pattern practice. I had Big Monkey try to copy the pattern card. Nope, that didn't last at all. So we put it away and tried some tracing. He likes that, but is always done very quickly.

Then we tried the "what is different." He did okay with that. Got some of them right, not others.

Baby Monkey practiced his crying and walking skills.

Then we tried cutting practice by making a snowflake out of construction paper that we had painted a previous day. The paper was a little too thick for Big Monkey to successfully cut though, so I helped.

Then we did some bead pouring and moved into the kitchen. We talked about temperature. I put together 3 little bowls. One with ice water, one with warm water, and one with hot water (not burning hot, but hotter than warm). Then I had Big Monkey touch each one and tell me which was which. He did great with this.

Then we made snow! I have an ice shaver and I froze the ice last night. He was very excited about this. He touched it, put the snow in the little bowls and watched it melt in the water, and ate it. I liked this activity. While a little messy, nothing stained, and it kept him busy for a good half hour. I could have kept him busy longer if I had frozen 2 blocks of ice. It's also a good hydration tool. I might do this on other days when I just need to get something done. We are currently having a meltdown over being done with our school activities. I'm going to have to really start to get creative and it looks like school is going to start taking several hours if he wants more than what we have been doing lately!