September Stuff

The month of September was busy, and it was over in the blink of eye.  Here's a peek at some of what we did.

 Reagan went to see One Direction with Allison.  They had a great time.

Reagan's soccer team.  She has teammates named Tyler, Collin, and Katelyn, and they all spell their names the same way our children's names are spelled.  How funny is that?

 Kate started taking swimming lessons at the Barrington Y.  She LOVES it this time and really looks forward to going.  Her teacher is wonderful.

 Kate and I went to a zoo class where we learned about giraffes.

After the zoo class, we spent some time with the goats.  Kate enjoyed feeding, brushing, and loving them.

 It was just about this time that a zoo employee told Kate she was giving out a little too much love.

 Reagan saw an orthopedic doctor at Boston Children's and we learned that she has extra bones in her feet.  She is doing physical therapy to help with her ankle pain.

 Spirit of Somerset was fun!

Disney on Ice was a birthday present for Kate, and she was very happy to share that experience with Reagan.  We had a great time!

 Reagan started playing the cello through the school strings program.

 Public Safety Day fun!

 I love Kate's corner kick.  So cute!

 Reagan is playing in a weekly field hockey league at Moses Brown in Providence.

 Magna Tiles are awesome; they are played with often here.

I took this picture looking into the top of Kate's Magna Tiles tower.

Kate enjoys patterns.  We have tons of these little erasers, and she used them to make a few different patterns.

We ended September with an early start on Halloween horrors!  Almeida's haunted hayride had some of us in stitches laughing, while some did not find it funny at all.  A few tears were shed that night, but it was fun to have a big group and overall it was entertaining.

Fine Motor Skills and Patterns - Turkey Style

One of my husband's most vivid memories of the New York City Marathon is of a woman in Brooklyn passing out orange slices to the runners.  She said something like, "This is how we do it Brooklyn style".  Why am I telling you this?  Well, I want to add the word "style" to every sentence now and you can see that in the title of this post. 

Anyway, I made a turkey because it is almost Thanksgiving (as if you didn't know that) and because it seemed like a good way to sneak in some fine motor skills and pattern work for R. 

First, I placed a bowl on a cereal box and traced around it.  Then, I happened to have one piece of light brown craft foam so I placed a cup on it and traced around that for a smaller circle.  (Craft foam isn't necessary.  Another piece of cereal box cardboard or some brown construction paper would work.)  I cut out both circles.  The large circle will be the body of the turkey and the smaller circle will be the head.

Next, I hot glued googly eyes, a craft foam triangle beak, and a slightly trimmed red balloon snood onto the small circle.  Then, I hot glued the small circle onto the large circle.  I also hot glued pipe cleaners that I cut to make legs onto the large circle. 

Squeezing clothespins is a great fine motor skills activity.  From what I have read, squeezing clothespins strengthens hands and helps preschoolers develop the muscles needed for proper pencil grip and control.  Clothespins also happen to be very appealing to R, and probably most kids her age (4).  I found the colorful plastic clothespins at Dollar Tree a while ago, but I see them there all the time.  Any clothespins would work (you could even paint the plain clothespins different colors or hot glue feathers onto them!), but when I saw these in the drawer, I thought they would make nice feathers for a turkey.

I am so long winded today!  So, the point of this turkey is to have R create different patterns of "feathers" around the turkey and to work on those fine motor skills. 

Hanging Up the Laundry

Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash by Sarah Weeks is a silly book that we love to read over and over again.  If you are not familiar with Mrs. McNosh, she hangs up everything within her reach when she is hanging up her wash - the mail, the dog, false teeth, a turkey, and more! 

R glued a piece of yarn to a blue piece of construction paper and we used glue dots to attach a few clothespins.  R found some stickers of silly things to hang on the clothes line, and then she drew a picture of Mrs. McNosh.

R hung up a dog, a piece of candy, a turkey, and a turtle!

I then had her continue the pattern of clothespins until she used all of them.

Do you do any fun learning activities with clothespins?

A little more green

We did not get to all of the St. Patrick's Day crafts I had planned this year but we did manage to fit in a couple more activities today.

This pattern activity is from the First School website, and C and R both enjoyed completing the patterns.

I bought these Shamrock cut outs and stickers from Oriental Trading Company for R's birthday party this past weekend and we had a few left so C and R completed them today.



We are ready to move on to Spring activities and hopefully some warmer weather!