"a" week

We're into week 2 of our homeschool adventure and still going strong.  This week, we're continuing our letter A theme with a focus on lowercase a.

We kicked off our week with a lowercase a apple craft...

...Colton was more into playing games with the markers than coloring.   "Look mom, they're all twins... 

...and I can color with two hands at once...and did you know these markers double as stamps...

...I'm realizing coloring is really just not his thing these days.  Looks like patterns are though :-). I'm going to follow his lead and let his interests guide our activities.

Here are our finished products...

...like I always say, process not product.  I had a good gut check with this one in trying to decide if the colors of the apple were important.  If it's art, blue apples are totally appropriate.  If it's supposed to be realistic, blue isn't acceptable.  I decided to let this one go into the art category this time.  This is such a learning process for me.  

We also had some fun with some letters and play doh...

...we simply used the plastic letter magnets like stamps in the play doh and the boys had a great time with it.  I see some spelling fun in our future with this activity.

We took two field trips to the library this week.  On one visit, we had fun with the big magnetic letters...

...see the patterning thing he's got going on these days?  They've also been having fun with things like the number 6 and the letter M and all the other letters that are other symbols when you turn them upside down.  They had fun rotating the sandpaper letters as well to see what other letters they could find.  Lowercase b and d were fun ones :-).  

Coloring may not be high on his list of favorites, but Colton never turns down a chance to paint...

...he had fun mixing yellow and blue to make green.  This one's for you, Oma!

The boys surprised me on Wednesday and were very into working on their tracing skills...

...I took a cue from their interest and let them have at it.  I'm not sure how much to stress proper handgrip and don't want to make it feel like work to write but don't want them to develop bad habits either.  I need to look into that more.

Wednesday also found us playing with some play doh...

I had plans to put apples on the apple tree and roll out "snakes" to turn into letters but quickly found we needed work on making balls and snakes out of clay first so we spent most of our time on that instead.  I'm sure it's good for their hand strength and fine motor skills to tackle those tasks.  We'll keep working on it.  

Part of our daily routine includes a devotion.  In case you're in the market for a good devotional book for your little ones, we're really enjoying this one...

...the boys and I are working on praying for others each day too.  Their little prayer requests are so sweet.  We pray for our cat each day :-), our family,  and our little friend who's moving to Texas.   

Other highlights of the week included legos with Dad...

...lots of books, and lots of car play.  We've also had some fun with ABCMouse on the Ipad and a leapfrog DVD...

Today I play to let their interests be our guides.  I'm hoping to get in a nature walk, lots of reading, and some tangrams.  We've also got a trip to the grocery store planned which always lends itself to lots of conversation and learning as well.  The world is our classroom!