We're Going on a Bear Hunt

Oh!  Was this book ever fun!  I'm sure most of you know the synopsis of the book, but the actions and motions that went with this book just made it come alive. 

We watched the author, Michael Rosen, do a great reading of his book.  The kids absolutely loved this video!  Each time we watch it we end up talking with a similar accent! Ha!

 We read books about other bears and their habitats.

Here he had to trace the bear to his cave.  These are great pre-writing activites.  I got this activity and more from this site. 

 We did more practice with patterns.  Abby is getting quite good at these!

This is a K4 book I bought from Abeka book.  They had a book preview (not really sure what they call those things, since you can't buy the books but only order) but I went because I could get free shipping.  I ordered this ABC 123 book, along with a k4 writing book that we won't be starting for awhile, and lots of little readers.

We had a full week of activities, but alas, I didn't take that many pictures.  We made of book of all the places the family had to go through, practiced with sequencing cards, did math graphing and more.   

This upcoming week I am hoping to do Angus Lost.  I think with everything I have planned it will take us two weeks to get through everything.  We shall see!

The Big Green Pocketbook

In The Big Green Pocketbook the little girl runs errands with her mom and fills her pocketbook with all her memories of their outing.

William is a color pro, but he likes to color with markers, so we made a book of green things.  He also collected a pile of green toys.
  

 He made his own green pocketbook.  This was made out of colored foam.  Next time I'll trace a pattern out of stiffened felt.  The foam wasn't the best choice here.  I did make another green pocketbook out of paper so they could each have one, and it served as a great listening guide - I had pictures of each of the many memories the little girl gathers on her trip and when we read each one they added the pictures to their pocketbooks.     

"Old MacDonald had a farm, A! E! I! O! U!" 

One of the stops the little girl made with her mom was to the ice cream parlor.  So, we did this fun ice cream activity.  William doesn't really recognize many of the numbers yet, so I thought this would be another fun thing to do to help that along. 

In this activity he had to count the number of pictures and circle the correct number. 

Find all the Bs!  I walked away for a second and when I came back he had found every single "B" in the mini story.

A math/graphing activity.  Count the number of caterpillars and color the correct number of boxes.
This page was easy.  When there were more bugs on the page he got a little carried away and occasionally would color more boxes than necessary.

Princess Abby decided she wanted to do some graphing too. 

There were more activities that we did with this book but I failed to take pictures of everything.  Sometimes it is just easier not to be all paparazzi with my kiddos! 

Wow

Look what I pulled out of our garden today!  John has been watering the garden the last few days, and obviously it's been at night.  It had been about 4 days since I had been out to the garden, and boy was I surprised to see this baby! 

The one on the left is a normal sized zucchini, and the powerhouse one on the right is about the length of my arm.  I'm running out of recipes...twice baked zucchini potatoes, zucchini brownies, zucchini bread...need more recipes! 

Play With Me (Continued)

We started this book last week and have continued with it and it's themes this week. 

This is the first narration we have done, and aside from my incorrect spelling (opps!) I'm quite proud of this page. 

Abby is doing quite well with her colors.  Not always spot on, but she's getting there! 

The purple page on the left has pictures that were completely cut out by William.  He's getting so good at using scissors.  We also learned a bit about the parts of an insect. 

My Girl

 She has an eye for fashion.

Loves to read.

And is desperately trying to be "big" like her brother...yes, she's wearing panties here.  (I understand your confusion.  They do appear to look a bit like boxers...or something.)

Applesauce!

This past Monday I took the kids on a very, very spur of the moment adventure - apple picking!  I know what you are thinking: apples aren't until fall.  Oh, so incorrect!  There are actually two varieties available for picking now (at least in our area) - the Golden Delicious and the Braeburn.  Last year I made applesauce from only Gravenstein apples, and the taste was, well...store-bought to say the least.  I was excited that I would be able to match some sauce from two varieties this time.  The taste is much better this time around!

The kids had so much fun picking the beautiful fruit.  There were many apples low to the ground so they had no problem picking.  We ended up picking almost 70 pounds!

William was my helper for the afternoon.  He washed almost all of the apples for me and kept my colander full!

I have a picture of the final product, but go figure.  It's on my phone.  Just imagine a counter full of applesauce jars!