This week was a lot of fun. I wanted to focus on Colors because Timmy is having trouble with Red and Yellow.

I made some colored rice and it was a major hit {and a major mess}. Surprisingly there’s still some left in the container. This kept my kids quiet for a long time. We had a bunch of white rice because one of our dogs had a stomach bug. So with the uncooked leftovers I divided it into 4 ziplock bags, added white vinegar and food coloring, then spread it out to dry on a cutting board. Was dry in 30 minutes. It was too easy.

For our field trip we went to the zoo. I had Timmy tell me the colors of each animal and count how many were in each enclosure. Something I didn’t know this zoo had was a huge indoor sand box set up for fossil digging. That was fun and we also practiced some C’s in the sand. The highlight of the trip for the kids was the snakes and the meer cats.

We practiced C’s on our whiteboard and Timmy did an awesome job!

We separated fruit loops by color. Gracie ate them as we went.

Next we did some bread painting. This was really fun for the kids. It’s just milk and food coloring painted onto bread and then we toasted it with some peanut butter and ate up. Timmy is already asking to do it again.

The book that we read every day was Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes. I love reading one book for the whole week because by the end if the week Timmy can read the whole book to us for bedtime. We read some other color books we had in the house too.

We separated colored Pom poms into their colored cups. Timmy used tweezers and Gracie did her own thing.

This wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be. I spread koolaid powder in card stock and had Timmy use a water gun to make a picture. The problem was that purple koolaid looks more black than purple so it just looked like dirty water. Timmy loved the water gun though.

I think the most successful learning of the week happened on the twister mat. We sorted the colored Legos onto their matching colored circles and after we played Timmy’s version of the game which is jumping from color to color.

Thousands of robins show up in our yard the same time every year. I think we are one of their stops on their winter flight south. They eat all the pink berries and are on their way a few hours later. Timmy was fascinated by them. While Grace napped we laid on the driveway and bird watched.

This week we also added some new pets to the Dube household. My brother bought us an Ant Farm. I think we’ve all been amazed by their hard work.

For second semester I’m testing out incorporating the Before Five in a Row curriculum. I bought it planning to use it for Grace in September but she wants to be apart of school time and I really like the idea of focusing on one book a week.

Every morning we read our bible story. This week was about Joseph and we are going to keep talking about him next week for our colors theme. Then we did our calendar. We usually only sing the days of the week but Timmy has that one down so I added a months song and they both loved it. Gracie thinks she is playing a big part pointing to the months as we sing. Timmy can recite them all except he totally skips November and December and pronounces May like Nate. But for the first week of learning it I was pretty impressed. I’m noticing his favorite way of learning is through song. For weather since Snow is part of our theme we talked about what kind of clothes you would wear on a cold day versus a hot day. Then we played cold day dress up with jackets and gloves.

I tried to talk about different seasons but I think I lost him with that. I had them each take turns doing the calendar. I’ve really seen a big positive change in sharing this past week.

For music this week we focused on the song Rejoice in The Lord. We brought out the instruments and really played our hearts out. Timmy is really good with rhythm. His favorite instrument this week was the triangle and Grace is all about the drums. Timmy picked this song right up and I love hearing him sing his Jesus music throughout the day when he’s playing 😍.

Every day we read The Snowy Day and then followed it with a themed activity.

The illustrator uses water colors and tissue paper like art in the pictures so I gave the kids tissue paper squares and paint. They were both amazed at how a little bit of water spreads fast on tissue paper. I painted S’s and then they put tissue paper over it and watched the S bleed through. Timmy thought it was magic.

My sister bought the kids fake snow and it’s totally awesome. It’s cold and doesn’t stick to your hands. I let the kids help measure out the water and powder. We made handprints in the snow, we practiced making S’s and used Legos to make houses and I showed them how a plow works. Doing it in the house probably not my best idea but they really loved this.

Our field trip wasn’t much of a field trip we just went to Storytime at the library. I was really happy about Timmy’s behavior while we were out. I’m hoping it’s a sign we are out of that phase.

Bonus we found a frog in our bird bath. They were both happy just staring at him.

Timmy made us all lunch one day. He watched me to make sure I took a bite. It was hard because I watched him make them straight on the counter while licking his fingers 😝 but I did it. No way I was breaking his heart.

On Friday night we broke out the telescope and did some star gazing.