Hands and Feet Day 2

I was trying to decide if I should do school or not today (it's Valentine's after all, and my husband's day off, so I was reluctant.  Plus, I am exhausted.  I feel like I haven't had a second to breathe in the past two weeks.  But my sweet baby loves it so much, so we did it.  (I was originally supposed to do this stuff last week, so I didn't plan a super fun Valentine's day thing like I normally would have.  I feel kinda bad that I didn't.  Maybe I'll do something fun on Saturday (tomorrow I work and then we have a play date with Brooklyn's "boyfriends" from Logan).  Brooklyn won't know the difference.

So, today for school we did our spiral review with the letters we've done so far.  So we used A-E today.  We started with reviewing the letter E and the page she colored on Tues.  Then we played memory with the cards I made a few weeks ago.  She seriously LOVES this game.  And she is getting better at not cheating as much.  I'm trying to be lenient since she's only 3, but I want her to learn that we play by the rules and it's okay to lose at the same time.  She is getting awesome at identifying A-C and sometimes D and E.  So I feel like the further we get into this, the more she'll remember.  I'm less worried than I was at the beginning.  (And I realize I didn't address the d vs. b thing yet, I'm not forgetting...)

After we played memory 3-4 times, I took one set of A-E and taped them up on the wall.  We got her pink bouncy ball and I would call out a letter and she would throw the ball at the letter.  She seriously thought this was hilarious.  (You can see the letters on the wall in this picture.  I found the idea here.)

We played that for 5 mins or so and then she was ready to move on.  So my original plan had been to do the Alphabet Olympics we did a couple of weeks ago.  But in our new preschool, they use zoophonics.  Same general idea.  You say a little chant with the name, sound, and an animal, and do an action.  "A /a/ alligator A /a/ alligator" while making alligator mouth motions with your arms.  I'm not sure if I can share all the chants since you normally have to pay for zoophonics, so I'll just remind you of the Alphabet Olympics link, since it's the same thing and free!

After that we read LMNOPeas by Keith Baker.  It's really cute and goes through all the letters and different things you can do that start with each of those letters.  And these little peas are doing them.  It's pretty cute.

Then on to our "Hands and feet" stuff.  Today we started by taking pictures of ourselves, mostly just our faces.  Fortunately daddy was home today so we even got a picture of him (all sweaty on the treadmill).  Then we printed them out real quick and cut out just the face.  We then glued them to the top of some butcher paper and traced that person's hands and feet on the paper.  I did Brooklyn and Syd's, she did mine and daddy's.  Then she drew our bodies, arms, and legs, and we have some family portraits!  They are not hanging in the kitchen under the window.  :)  (Original idea found here.)

 (Don't worry that I have a bandaid on my cheek in my picture.  I just got a biopsy done yesterday to check for more skin cancer).

Daddy ended up with only 3 fingers on one hand and 4 on the other and his feet, well, Brooklyn tried really hard.  And if nothing else, she loved making them!

The rest of the schedule was supposed to include making shadow puppets using these helps and these shadow box theaters, but it was already late and I needed to finish our totally romantic Valentine's day dinner, so we might just skip that or I'll find another day to fit it in.

So now that dinner is put away and dishes are done (and tummies are a bit too full), I guess we'll finish hands and feet week by painting our nails.  What girl doesn't love that?!?