W is for Winter, W is for water

Ok, here I am again, catching up on preschool posts!!
We tried stations again this week. Mostly it went well.

Station 1 was matching capitals and lowercase

 Station 2 was counting objects.  They could choose whatever object they wanted.

 Station 3 was working on number recognition by covering dots with pom pom balls

Station 4 was building words.  I wrote "winter" as well as each of their names on a paper and then they had to use the alphabet beads to make the word.

 These stations seemed to work pretty well, though by the time they get to the fourth station, they are pretty much done.

We played a game on my newly discovered and much loved website, 2teachingmommies.  I thought the game was fun, but they had a hard time matching the dice to the correct number.  Definitely a skill we need to work on some more!

 I let them use q-tips to paint w's and their name.

 I gave them each 3 colors and they had fun mixing the paints to make different colors, most of which turned out brown.

We read a bunch of winter books, but I guess I forgot to take pictures of them! We also had a snowball fight with cotton balls, pretended to ice skate, and talked about what happens in winter where we live (no snow!)

Stations Day 2, we did a number puzzle (all the printables came from 2 teaching mommies)

 labeled snowmen

 made patterns...

and practiced counting.  (This was a little too hard for them to do independently) 

W is for Water
 The second week of preschool, we tried stations again.
Station 1 was the snowman game.

 Station 2 was w rubbings (I taped some w's on a cookie sheet- sandpaper, toothpicks, Popsicle sticks and a few others )

 Station 3 was mitten number matching

 Station 4 was sink or float.  This was an epic fail on my part.  Duh, it's like I've never taught before.  Because nobody did what they were supposed to.  They just watched whoever had the water station and asked me when it would be their turn for the water.  Give one kid a bowl of water.  What was I thinking?

 Some quick thinking on my part meant everyone got to play in water.  Luckily, my daughter was more than happy to share her fishy toys!

 We read about water

 We talked about the water cycle and observed what happened when water got hot (watched the steam and observed the condensation on the lid).

 And made our own clouds with cotton balls - when it got too full, it started to rain!!

 colored a picture of the water cycle

 We explored how water can make music

 We also played with ice and observed what happened when we held it in our hands.  We did a lot of playing with water and ice and learning about how water can change from ice to water to steam.  We did some fun dancing where we pretended to be ice, then water, then steam.

What I keep in our church bag

Here's a few things I keep in our bag to keep my little one quietly occupied during church.

-Our collection of fabric "paper" dolls.

-A quiet book.  I looked in to sewing one of these, but the time was just not worth it to me.  Plus, once you make it, you can't really change the pages.  I instead opted for a 3 ring binder, some page protectors, and pages from our church's children's magazine.  There are stories...

 ....and pages to color with crayon.  Some of the mazes and things, I let her use dry erase crayons or markers and then we can use that page over and over again.  Plus, when she gets tired of the pages, I just swap them out for others.  Since the children's magazine comes every month, when we get a new one, I rip out any pages I think would be good for the quiet book and keep them in a folder.  Not as cute as a true quiet book, but a whole lot faster.

 I turned the scripture hero picture at the end in to a puzzle. (mounted on cardstock and laminated, of course!)

 -of course there are coloring books or notepads and crayons (which I keep in a crayon roll like this one - http://thepleatedpoppy.com/2010/05/crayon-roll-tutorial/ ) I don't have picture of mine, but that's the tutorial I used. I also made one for color wonder markers.
-Some file folder games that are church related

 -Matching games - like this Popsicle one for colors.  I also have a few memory games with about 8 matches in each game.

- I spy bag

- and finally some of these magnet tins - http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Ark-Magnetic-Fun-Tin/dp/B004LC31YU. 

I try to swap things out to keep it fresh.  Everything has a pretty low profile, so I don't feel like I am toting a ginormous toy bag to church every week! 

Living room before and after

We've lived in our house for about 5 1/2 years.  For 4  1/2 of those years, I have wanted to paint the living room. I've just never gotten around to it.  We had known the color for a long time, it just was a matter of getting to it.  My in laws were coming for a visit, and we decided we'd get it done before they came.  As in the week before they came.  Did I mention it was also Halloween week? Don't you start major projects before you have company? Crazy as it may have been, I am so happy with how it turned out!

Here's the before before - our living room circa 2009.

Here it is in 2010 after I redid the mantle decorations and added some curtains. 

 Most of the paint was a neutral "Oatbran".  It wasn't a huge change, but better than the builders' flat cream that showed every mark and was just in general "blah". The new color shows off our trim so much better. Here you can see the corner of the entry, half painted (new paint on the right)

And the dramatic after- our accent wall! (plus Christmas decorations and the hubster).  

 I love how much prettier the fireplace looks!

Quilt top done!

I finally finished my daughter's quilt top!! I really think it's coming together nicely!

(Just please don't look to closely because you will see my 50,000 mistakes!