Letters C & M (my favortie week so far!!!)

First of all let me say a BIG thanks to ALL the AAHHH-MAZING mommy bloggers out there who dedicate so much time into sharing their ideas for the rest of us!!! Because of these ladies I'm able to do so many fun learning activities with my boys & they inspire me to create some things on my own!

We began last week reviewing the letter C. I took this time to introduce Brady to the CH sound as well because we are about to cover that in our reading lessons. We also talked about how the letter C can also make a "S" sound like in the words City, Celery, & Cereal. Brady thinks the letter C is a tricky Cat! (dont ask)

Last year I read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to the boys & ever since then it has been a BIG hit in our household! Both big boys can quote it word for word! So they were pretty ecstatic when we read it during "school" time & made Caterpillar C's!

Rylan was incredibly impressed by the little fuzzy Craft balls we used. So I came up with a "Tot School" activity that I'll post tomorrow! :)

We also made Chocolate Chip Cookies in the shape of the letter C. This was quite messy, but of course that made the boys love it even more! Rylan sang the Cookie Monster song, "C is for Cookie, it's good enough for me" the whole time :) I wish I would've gotten it on Camera, but my hands were covered in gooey dough!

While our Cookies were baking we read the book, "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie." I HIGHLY recommend all the "If You Give A..." books!!! We also took time to talk about their Cousins & named all of the ones whose names started with a C: Caleb, Connor, Cameron, Christian, & Cody; Brady was a little upset that his Cousin Kaelin's name started with a K & not a C.

We also discussed how Jesus is the Christ & though I know the deep meaning of Christ is above his lil head, I still enjoy planting the seed in him & sowing it, because one day he will understand & that is the ultimate goal!

Our other C activities included lots Counting with our addition, playing with Cards, eating lots of C foods: Cookies, Carrots, Chips, Celery, Chicken, Corn...bet you can guess which food was Brady's favorite!

The boys even had a lunch of Chicken, Chips, & Corn while they watched Cars. I was informed this day that I was "The Best Mom EVER!!!" :D

Brady couldn't have been more thrilled to begin the letter M when he saw we would be doing our Math lesson with M & M's!!! He sorted them by colors & counted them, did his addition with them, made patterns & shapes with them & we even brought the M &M's into our language lesson & traced our M's with M & M's.

I used to have a M & M Math book from when I taught 4th grade, but have seen it since then :( I will have to purchase it again because my students LOVED it!

We spent that afternoon reading "If You Take A Mouse To The Movies" & which led us to watching the Movie "A Mickey Mouse Christmas" while we ate some popcorn & M &M's with Chocolate Milk. (Notice the Mixing of C's & M's??? ;P) We also purposely Made a Mess so we could Clean it up. For dinner we had a special M Meal of Mini Meatloaf Muffins & Mashed potatoes. We also played ALL of their Musical instruments & made up silly songs together.

We focused our Bible story to Moses & the 10 Commandments & made our Mt. Sinai out of the letter M, added some clouds & of course Moses too!

We reviewed the Commandments & gave examples of each (with the exception of adultery) & I explained to my best ability what Mercy was & that even though we often make Mistakes, God shows us Mercy & He forgives us; which is why we should show Mercy to others.

Letters O & T with addition

Last week we reviewed the letter O & made some super cute Owls! Rylan joined in the fun this time!

They painted their O's added a triangle with 2 green circles for the eyes. This was also an opportunity to teach Rylan some colors & shapes, though he didn't care for it as much as he did the painting! I had to pry the paint brush out of his hand!

Our O food was an orange of course! Brady wasn't too keen on trying an Olive! We talked a lot about the Ocean & our vacation to the beach when saw a lot of different sea creatures up close! Too close for me! A baby shark swam 5 feet away from were we were! We also looked in books & talked about the different animals that live in the Ocean. After we made our Owls we learned a new word: NOCTURNAL because most Owls sleep in the day & hunt for food at night. Another new word was OAR. It was in his dictionary & he couldn't understand why they put a paddle under the O because paddle starts with P! He cracks me up sometimes with his simple logical sense of things.



Brady also reviewed the letter T & made a cute Tree in the shape of a T.

He colored the Trunk & branches, then used a sponge to paint green leaves on it & before the paint could dry, he added fake grass we bought a while back to add some Texture!

Brady came up with a Ton of T words! As you can see by his list some of his VERY favorite Things start with T. Trains Thomas & Toby made the list & Brady wasn't too happy I ran out of room to write Tow Mater from Disney's Cars :) Our story came from the Bible, we Talked about the Trees in the Garden of Eden & the 1st sin. Brady remembered most of it which makes me happy! We also Talked a lot about Trust & Telling the Truth. Our T food was his favorite vegetable, a Tomato! I had considered working on Telling Time for math, but I didn't want to interrupt our addition that we had already started.

As you can see he did VERY well on his on. I like to buy the $1 workbooks to assist with our Singapore book we typically use. Brady likes it too because as he says, "I get to work with my friends." Meaning his favorite characters. :)

He also uses his Cuisinaire Rods to help count the numbers & then add them all together. I'm amazed at how quick he caught on. I'm hoping he's good at math & likes it. I never did! One of my main goals in homeschooling is to make learning fun so here's to praying I can find fun ways to teach the stuff I don't like so much.