Holiday Fun

We are getting pretty excited around here about Christmas. We've been singing and dancing to many Christmas songs. Our favorite is "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". The Christmas tree has been a great resource for learning this week. We have talked about patterns as we look at the lights and created our own patterns using color cards. We have been having circle time by the tree instead of in the playroom, and they are really enjoying reading all of our books under the tree.
Some of the books we have read are "Stories of Santa...Up on the Housetop", "Once There was a Christmas Tree", and "Rudolph". Of course anything that comes on a commercial on TV they all say "I want that. I want that." It wakes them up first thing in the morning and they get so excited.
The weather is so cold so we haven't been able to get out much, but yesterday we did get all bundled up and head out for about 10 minutes just to run out our energy. We then came in and had hot chocolate and enjoyed our books under the tree. They are agreed it was too cold to play outside.

Things we continue to work on...
*dressing ourselves after going potty
*independently washing our hands
*cleaning up our toys (although they are not making into the right bins they are all working together to try and put everything away)
*clean up after we eat and wash off their place at the table
*throwing our own trash away and putting dishes in the sink
*taking turns with toys
*playing the memory card game
*ABC's and numbers to 10
*putting on our socks and shoes
*color cards and working on our names

Here are a few pictures from before it got so cold...


Fun dancing and a litte Ring Around the Rosie




Practicing our balance







Our names in sidewalk chalk

Picture Post

Whew we've been busy! I've tucked my children in for the night, and I'm listening to Diane Sawyer tell me about how children are learning and being raised in China. They have some amazing 2 year olds!

But so do I...and here are some exciting things we've been doing with our 2, 3, and 4year olds:-)


**Building with our letter and color blocks**

**Snack outside on a beautiful day**

**Pattern blocks**


**Celebrating L's 2nd birthday**


**Race cars**



**Forming the letter "P" with our play doh



**Reading**


**constructing houses for our animals**




**And of course lots of blowing bubbles**

Leaves and Weather

This last week we focused on leaves and the changing weather. Here are some activities we did...

*Pressed leaves into playdoh
*made patterns with stamps....we are practicing the ABABABAB pattern of what comes next
*Practicing all of the letters in our names with letter charts and drawing boards
*Reading Autumn Leaves - Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf -Apples and Pumpkins ( I can't figure out how to underline sorry)
*Water play - washing dishes, washing toys, and cleaning up our own messes at the table
*We have done lots and lots of indoor music activites since the weather hasn't been the greatest. We love Raffi "Apples and Bananas", playing "Red Light, Green Light", using pots and pans in our marching band, using shapes on the floor to understand our own personal space, and pretending to be various animals.
*Made apple cider, homemade applesauce, and had a pretend fire listening to silly stories.

Sorry for the pictureless post...computer has a virus and pictures are apparently taking up too much space...don't worry it will be back to normal for the next post:)

Fall Fun

We've celebrated several birthdays lately. Both W's turned 3. E just turned 4, and next month L will be turning 2. That means lots and lots of yummy cupcakes and treats.

For E's birthday we decorated our own cupcakes. The kids had so much fun!





I took my kids up to Amicalola Falls last weekend, and they collected some great fall foliage for us to do many activities with this week.

So far we have catagorized everything...



We have used them for sensory games like "What's in the bag?", is it rough, soft, hard, prickly...





We hid acorns and small pine cones and went digging for them in the sand box...



And we've had fun on our numerous art projects...





And we have had tons of reading time...

Some of our favorite books are "The Littlest Pumpkin", "Ten Timid Ghosts", and anything having to do with Halloween. We have built forts and I've put all of our Fall, Halloween, and Thanksgiving books into a basket so we can read them as often as we like.