"d" week

This week at "Planker Academy," we're focusing on lowercase d.  It's been a fun week.  Take a look...

We made lower each lower case d with dots (Mason's had a dozen and Colton's got a little dirty)...

...the d had a door.  AND inside the door was a dragon...

...Colton's had a dog inside too :-).  

We've been having lots of fun with dominos...

...sometime we can stick with finding matches and other times we count the dots but to be honest, they spent more time this week just building and playing with them and I'm totally fine with that too.  Colton's really good at putting them away neatly :-).  

We also spent some time decorating pumpkins for the coloring contest at the Fresh Market...

...cutting was the biggest hit of this project.  I wasn't surprised.  

Speaking of decorating, the boys also decorated the house for Halloween a bit more...

...cute, huh?  Thanks Grandpa Teddy and Mimsy for all the goodies.

We had some sensory fun with a doughy dinosaur dig...

...thanks to the measured mom for the idea.  She's got tons of great ones over there.  You can find the recipe for the dough there too.  Cornstarch, old sunscreen, and green food coloring went into ours.

After we got bored with the dinosaurs, the boys decided to make some footprints.  Fun times...

With soccer season under way, we've also been working on our dribbling...

...and passing...

We also made some fun Pinterest-inspired donkeys...

...which ended up looking a bit more like pigs, especially with the legs that the boys insisted were necessary :-).  They sure do love anything that involves paint and didn't they do a lovely job with the smiles?  Fine motor skill development at work here for sure!

Probably the most fun thing the boys did all week was another "dig" for dinosaurs activity...

...we simply froze little dinosaur toys in water inside a pan and they had fun trying to get them free from the ice.  We seriously had to repeat this activity at least 5 times.  Who would have thought??

Other letter d activities included lots of books about dinosaurs, ducks, dragons, dogs, even doughnuts.  Oh, and we also had lots of play dough fun.  It was a great week!

"D" week with a bonus lowercase c

We breezed right through lowercase c along with uppercase C last week since they look the same, ones just smaller.  Why can't they all be that way?  We did, however, neglect to make our lowercase c for our alphabet books so we made sure to tackle those this week as well.  The boys seemed to think it was necessary since every other letter so far had a partner.  We decided to go with a cat theme.  Mason clearly has Halloween on the brain but was worried people might not know it was a cat, thus the speech bubble to appease him...

...and Colton is a stickler for things being anatomically correct it seems.  He insisted on pink inside the ears and 4 legs for his cat...

...cute, right??

With lowercase c completed, we were ready to move on to uppercase.  D is for DINOSAUR...

...the boys are always happy to have a chance to cut...

...and sometimes cut everything they can get their hands on once they get those scissors in their hands.  We decided to take a tip from our friend Aunt Sheryl and make some fall leaves with the scraps.  It was fun!

We also made these fun DINOSAURS...

...using this template for inspiration. 

We also had fun with DINOSAUR tracks with some play DOUGH...

...this activity actually got repeated several times because it was such a bit hit.  They started making tracks with all kinds of things and really had a great time with it.  

D is also for DUCK who we love to visit...

...especially now that we are back on the bikes again...

...don't they look ready to conquer the world?  Love them!  

D is also for DUNKIN DONUTS which the boy DEVOURED....

...and I DRAINED every last DROP of my DARK roast...

...it was the perfect afternoon pick-me-up.  

D is also for DIGGING...

...by the way, this little concoction is really fun...8 cups flour mixed with 1 cup baby oil mixed by hand and then played with to your little heart's content.  The boys LOVED it!!  Thanks to the Preschool Journey for the idea.  

Our field trips included 2 trips to the library to restock our stash of books...

...can you tell we're excited about the new season?   We also got some good DINOSAUR, DOG and DRAGON books to stick with the theme.  This list of suggestions was a great starting point.  You know us, we always veer off the path a bit and I'm absolutely ok with that.

We also made a trip down south to visit the sea life at the River Center...

...and Loggerhead Marinelife Center...

...and constitution park for the first time.  How great is this playground??....

...the picture seriously doesn't do it justice.  It is the best playground we've found in this vicinity by far.  We had fun just hanging out for a bit....

...and we will DEFINITELY be revisiting this park every time we're down that way from now on.

Can't wait to see what excitement we can find for lowercase d.  Stay tuned!

Enjoying the "Cooler" Temps

As I sit here and type this, it's raining buckets outside.  I think my yard may soon resemble a lakeI feel bad for the guy who does our yard work...aka my husband.  Poor guy! Gonna be a mess to clean up.  At least everything will be green...and muddy...haha.

Thanks to the Hurricane Bertha, which thankfully isn't really much of a threat, we had a bit of a "cool" front for the last 36 hours or so and you better believe we took advantage of it.

After church yesterday, we hit up the waterpark for some fun in the sun...

...thanks to the overcast skies, it was relatively uncrowded there which was completely fine with us... 

 

...we had a great time and left just before they cleared the place for lightening...perfect timing!   It was lunch time anyways.

After naptime, the storm had passed and it was cool enough to brave a little run with the boys... 

...I had been missing our Sunday afternoon shake-out runs and enjoyed the return of them, if only for a week until the cooler weather returns.  We made sure to hit up Walgreens along the way for some coupon action with the Haribo gummy worms...only 49 cents a bag--SCORE!

Along the way, we also saw the cutest momma duck with her babies no doubt enjoying the cooler temps as well...

We finished off our weekend with some quality time with Dad once he was home from drill.  The boys always love trying on his gear on drill weekends...

...they're so proud of their army dad.  Can't blame em.

This morning, we headed off to our Monday morning play group.  The highlights for the boys were the fire engine puzzle...

...and the stories.  They were the oldest ones there today and also the only ones who seemed interested in the books today...

...you never have to ask them twice if they want to read some books.  

After the playgroup, the rain still hadn't hit yet, so we took advantage of the miler temps and headed to the park to burn off some energy... 

...mission accomplished!  Check out their new "cheese" face...

...ha!  They are such goofs!!

Since we were at the beach playground, we made sure to check out the beach for a bit too... 

...never a bad decision to stare at God's beauty for a while.  

We made it out of there and home before the rain hit.  I managed to get in some PiYo...

...I'm officially on month 2 now and it kicked off with Sculpt which is NO joke!  I love it and keep coming back for more.  It's incredibly challenging yet incredibly addictive and energizing.  You've got to try it if you haven't already.

Afterwards, I enjoyed lunch with the men in my life and now the boys are napping.  Time to tackle some laundry when all I really feel like doing is curling up on the couch with a book and some tea while I listen to the rain.  Maybe I'll have time for both...wish me luck :-)