For the last couple of weeks we have been focusing on Christmas activities during our school time.  Unfortunately, we did not end up with much learning time in the past few weeks, so we did not get to very many of the activities I had planned.  Maybe next year!  Here are a few of the activities we did manage to squeeze in.

She made a hand/foot print reindeer.  She got really upset today when she found it in the trash and we had to pull it back out to play with!

We made a reindeer snack with a square cookie cut in half, raisins, jelly bean, pecans and peanut butter.

For this game Mikayla would choose a magnetic number and place that many ornaments (pom poms) onto the tree until she had the tree filled up.

I put magnetic letters in a stocking and she pulled them out one at a time to identify.  She was able to say each letter!  After each correct identification we would both say "Jingle Bells"! 

We also did a really neat nativity storyboard with her handprints.  I can not remember where I saw it, but basically it was four handprints, each turned into an animal that represented the nativity story.  A donkey for Mary heading to Bethlehem, a cow for the manger and stable scene, a sheep for the shepherd and a camel for the wise men.  Then in the middle of the four handprint animals was her fingerprint to represent Baby Jesus.  It was a great learning tool for her to retell the birth of Jesus.  Of course we played with Christmas stickers and did a few other crafty activities that I did not get a picture of.

I am not sure what the coming weeks will hold for our learning time because we will have the twins we cared for in August living with us again.  They will be with us for a month so I don’t expect to get much learning time in!  We will see though.  They are both walking and running and what not now so it will be more like having triplets than it was before!

We spent the last two weeks studying the Letter G off and on.  We did a lot of crafty activities.

Felt gumball machine game.  The idea behind the game was that she would roll two dice and count out that many gumballs to place in the gumball machine.  However, she struggled with counting both dice together.  She wanted to count each dice individually.  We eventually shifted to using just one dice, but by that time she was through playing.  She wanted to just "dress up" her gumball machine (which partially inspired my Felt Mr./Mrs. Potato Head game I made her for Christmas).

Letter G Grapes.  We took a bottle cap and dipped into purple paint to make a grape, then she stamped onto the letter G.  When she was done we glued a green leaf on the top.

We are way behind the blog world on this game, but we balanced marbles on top of golf tees.  She was excellent at this and was able to complete in no time at all. 

We then scooped marbles into a bottle.  This was a little harder for her.

We played a feely bag game.  I took one of her wet bags and put one object at a time inside.  She had to close her eyes and feel what the object was and then make a guess.  She did great and only missed a couple.

We made a picture of Grover by painting a cutout blue and then gluing on the other body parts and letters to his name. 

I wrote letters onto a strip of paper.  Then she rolled two dice and counted over that many letters to identify the letter.  We ran into the same problem with counting two dice at once.  She tends to be a little stubborn so she wouldn’t let me help show her how to count them together!  We ended up dropping the second dice and just playing with one.

Handprint giraffe – it was really cute until she smeared the red paint across his face!

Final letter G Grapes and a gold glitter letter G.

Another letter G giraffe made from foam and the spots are her finger prints stamped.  She had so much fun with this one that she spent the next hour (literally), cutting and tearing scraps of paper to make her own giraffes.  We ended up with a whole pile of "giraffes" by the time she was through.

And of course we had to finger paint with green paint!

As you can see in most of the pictures, Mikayla loves her art apron her Mimi sent her.  If we paint, she wears it for the rest of the morning!  Mikayla says, "Thanks Mimi".  For our cooking lesson this week I wanted to make guacamole, but living an hour from a grocery store hindered us from getting our supplies.  We settled for a Letter G lunch instead – grilled cheese, grapes and goldfish. 

For the next couple of weeks we will focus on the Christmas season.  We will also throw in a few "winter" activities just because they flow well with Christmas, even if we aren’t experiencing the cold here!  We have a lot of "distractions" in the next few weeks, so I am not sure how much learning time we will actually get to.  But we will do our best.