DR Stuff

Daydreamers by Tom Feelings is wonderful for its illustrations, but the lyrical text provided Drs for us to read. Dream Hop by Julia Durango was fantastic.

Activities

Drum.



Oatmeal container. Decorated with all sorts of bling. Cut a whole in both ends and strung yarn through it so it can go around Talmage's neck. The site I found the project on recommended making drumsticks, but I thought hands worked well.

Dragon.



How cool is that dragon? I found the instructions for it here. We took a 12-egg egg carton and cut it in half. We painted one half one bright color, and after cutting two egg holders (is that what you call them?) and painted that part another bright color. Then I followed the inspiration of the activity village creator and cut out flames and and nose out of other bright colors. Tissue paper for the head and body. Talmage wanted to add ribbon for a tail and I thought that was a nice touch.

On second thought, follow the link I attached for more clear instructions.

Dragonfly.



I googled "dragonfly craft" and came up with a couple ideas and then combined them for our dragonfly. Talmage colored a large popsicle stick with markers and we affixed googly eyes on the end. I used the wings you can find here and here. (The person who made the images made them large, so for them to fit on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, click on print preview and reduce the image to 30%. I also switched the paper to a landscape orientation.) I printed the wings on bright paper and let Talmage decorate them. Being a dragonfly, I thought glitter would be a nice touch. Talmage did, too.

Dress-up Dolls. I found these ethnically diverse, not afraid to be man enough to put on a unitard or a one-sleeved dress, boy paper dolls here.



Creepy looking, aren't they?

I thought it would be more fun for Talmage to color them, so I opened them in Photoshop and turned them into colorable outlines. The only problem is that in the process, I lost the little tabs to fold back on the clothing so that the clothes can attach to the dolls.







Talmage took issue with me calling them dolls. Apparently dolls are for girls. Of course the first thing Talmage did with one politically correct dress up guys was attack the other politically correct dress up guy.

Treasure hunt. dragon, dragonfly, dress, dresser, drink. The treat was gumdrops.

TH Stuff

TH was a little tricky, because TH makes two sounds--the voiced TH (as in there) and the unvoiced TH (as in three). We stuck with the unvoiced TH because that's how it's found in the majority of words. However the majority of common words (like the, there, they, them) it's voiced. Ah well.

I also realized Talmage has a speech impediment this week. For Ss he makes the unvoiced TH sound and for Zs he makes the voiced TH sound. Who knew? I'm sure that'll get cleared up in elementary school. I, of course, said my Rs as Ws until I was nine.

Books that talked about the three little somethings (pigs, bears, grasshoppers) worked well. You wouldn't believe the fairytale variations we found. We only sounded out the words that made the unvoiced TH sound.

Activities

Thermometer: We found the instructions to make a homemade thermometer here. I purchased all the required ingredients--water bottle, red food coloring, rubbing alcohol, playdough, and a clear plastic straw. We couldn't get the fluid to rise up the straw. So instead I got one of our many digital thermometers and talked about what happens when you're sick.

Thank-you note: We've been a card making factory here at the Howe home. With Valentine's this last week, we made over 50 valentines. I made him stop when we couldn't think of any more people to send them to. So he was THRILLED to make thank-you notes.



Piece of paper. Folded in fourths. Decorate with crayons and hearts and glitter. Things Tal wanted to say thank you for? Thank you to Hana for letting us go to McDonald's. Thank you to Daddy for letting Tal play Labrynth 2.

Last Name, Thousand (Tyler's story of place value): One of Tyler's classic math lessons involves number houses. Due to many hours of playing on the TI-83 (yes, our family's nerdy like that), Talmage is able to read three digit numbers, but struggles beyond that. We tried out Tyler's number houses lesson, and Tal did shockingly well. By the end, he could correctly read this number: 234,000,762,027,123.

Here is the PowerPoint Ty used. I'm not going to explain it more than that, but would be happy to answer questions.

Alpine Utah

Crazy Threes: Matching games are big at our house, so I thought we'd add a new level to your traditional matching game. I made sets of three images that I cut out and faux laminated with contact paper. We mixed them up and placed them upside down on the table. Each turn a player turned over three cards, and you had to find the entire set of three to earn that set. I was prepared to turn it into a traditional matching game, but Tal loved the threes.

For fun I used images that have to do with the concept of threes.







A word of explanation on the bottom two pictures on the third page: that's a bishopric, see (with three members of it), and Star Wars is a trilogy. At least it is at our house, where Tyler elected to show him the original three and pretend the more recent three never happened.

Treasure hunt. thermometer, three, thank you note, thumb. The treat was a Heath bar.

CH Stuff

Do you have any idea how many books feature chickens? A LOT. We also found books that emphasized chocolate and chicks.

Activities

Chocolate Chip Cookies. If you'd think there's going to be a picture to accompany this, you'd be wrong. That's because most of them went in the garbage. Apparently you have to update your baking soda every once in awhile. I think the baking soda I used has been with me since Provo--six years ago.

But Talmage loved mixing the dough. Still a success.

Countdown to Valentine's Chain. You know, not enough people countdown to Valentine's. This chain kicked of a chain of Valentine's preparation events including the homemade production of roughly 80 Valentine's cards.



Okay, this isn't really the chain we made. But we cut apart the chain before we took a picture of it, so I'm including a picture of this infinitely cuter chain.

Cheetah. All right, so I took the picture before I got his ears attached. Whoops.



I wasn't TOTALLY certain of the base color of the cheetah, so we looked online. Tal wanted to be very certain we got the precise yellowish brown color. Then we improvised the rest of the cheetah. With googly eyes, of course.

Choo Choo Train





This was a fun activity in the properties of different paints and painting strategies. We used your standard tempera paint for the trains, using a single stroke for the cars, Donald Crews style. For the wheels we spun the brush. For the smoke, we played with watercolors, painting first with water and then dabbing the pigment.

Tal got really interested in why different paints worked differently, so we had a discussion about pigment and binder.

Treasure hunt. chair, church, checkbook, chain, cheese. The treat was chocolate covered raisins.

SH Stuff

Well, ABC Stuff can't just end. And besides, now that we're kind of reading, I've found that there are a whole bunch of sounds we need to learn outside of the ABCs, not to mention vowel combinations. So this week is SH week. SHHHHHHHHHHH.

Our letter sound activity has changed a bit. Now we make the sound of all the featured letter combinations in the book, and we also read one word per page.

Nancy Shaw's sheep books, particularly Sheep in a Shop and Sheep on a Ship were great Sh books. But Talmage's and my favorite was She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain by Jonathan Emmett.

Activities

Shirt. I was excited about this for weeks in advance. I bought a T shirt from Michaels for about $3.00 and these iron-on letters. My vision was just to write Talmage, but Tal recently learned his full name. Anyone see any problem with having your sons full name plastered on his T-shirt as we go about the town? And then what if I posted a picture of that shirt on the World Wide Web?



Shrinky-Dinks. Did you have any idea that this craft sensation, popular in the early 80s, still existed? I didn't, but now that I know, I'm ECSTATIC. Santa slipped some robot shrinky-dinks in Talmage's stocking, so I did a little research and found the blank shrinky-dink paper at Michaels. Hooray!



Follow the instructions included with the paper.

Sheep This project was inspired by a sheep I made in Mrs. Bush's first grade class. The idea stuck with me 23 years.



I cut out several different shapes: large cloud shape for the body and small cloud shape for hair out of white paper; medium size oval for the head and four rectangles for legs out of black paper. Tal then glued cotton balls on the white pieces, and I assembled the sheep as shown.

I suggested we add an eye (you know, a sheep in profile). Tal laughed and said sheep have two eyes. Very conceptual of him.

Shell Box (or CD or magnet; anything you want to cover) Hee, hee! People who specialize in seashell decor are funny. One person recommended adding shells to "ratchet up the beauty" in your house.



I used a spare box I had saved and covered one (short) end with Elmer's glue. Tal squeezed a bunch of glue and I used a paintbrush to spread it so the entire end was covered with a thin layer. Tal then chose seashells (that I purchased at Michael's) and we hot-glued them to the box. After he finished with the shells he chose, we poured sand over the end that sticked to the Elmer's glue layer.

The beauty in my house is FOR SURE ratcheted up.

Shapes

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Simple enough. Playdough. Made shapes. We talked about how many sides a triangle has versus a square and a circle. We talked about the difference between a square and a rectangle.

Treasure hunt: shampoo, shirt, shoes, shorts, shower. I couldn't find a treat that started with sh, so I used a Hershey's chocolate bar.

Z Stuff

Animal Strike at the Zoo by Karma Wilson provided plenty of zoos, zookeepers, and zebras.

Activities

Zebra

I bought the wooden zebra at Michael's for a dollar or two. We decided that zebras are black with white stripes rather than white with black stripes.

Zoo Number One



What's cooler than Magic Grow Capsules? The safari edition made an awesome zoo.

Zoo Number Two



Simple enough. I bought zoo themed stickers from the store and we made a zoo scene on a piece of paper.

And the Actual Zoo.

All right, several snowstorms this week made a trip to the zoo impossible, but next time we go to Hogle Zoo, I'm counting it.

From Ascot to Zipper.

Tal and I have had issues about getting dressed the last couple of weeks. Namely, I would like for himself to get dressed. But I realized that I've never really taught this skill to him. Hooray for ABC Stuff!

I got a laundry bin and put in a variety of seasonal clothing. Then I would describe imagined weather conditions and activities. As fast as he could, Tal would pull out a corresponding outfit and put it on as fast as he could.



Zucchini Bread. An idea for next time.

The treat was a PEZ dispenser. I thought of Twizzlers, too. And last summer in Washington, I found a candy bar called Zero.

Y Stuff

The If You Give a (insert rest of the title here--Mouse a Cookie, Moose a Muffin, Pig a Pancake, you get the idea) books by Laura Joffe Numeroff worked well.

Activities

Yellow Painting. We painted in yellow. I mixed three shades. For future reference, you only need a very little bit of red mixed in lots of yellow to make yellow-orange and a very little blue mixed in lots of yellow to make yellow-green.





Woven Wall Hanging Using Yarn. Why didn't I weave during W week? I don't know.



I took a paper plate and cut seven slices into it. (You must make an odd number of cuts for the weaving to work.) We then wove by moving in and out around the circle. Periodically we added craft beads. The beads were Talmage's favorite part of the project.

Yak



The templates can be found here, here, and here. Color, cut, and paste. Done, done, done.

Treasure hunt: yard, yogurt, you, year, yak, yarn. The treasure was York peppermint patty.

X Stuff

Well, it's a new year and ABC Stuff is back on the agenda. I asked Talmage this week if he wanted to do ABC Stuff and I got a resounding "YES, YES, YES, YES!!!" The last time I saw any enthusiasm for the project was back in July, I kind of got a lukewarm response in August, and did a bit of arm twisting in September before abandoning my efforts all together. The biggest shame of all of this is that I've largely abandoned art projects without the motivation. The upside? You wouldn't BELIEVE the amount of irrelated stuff you can get done when your son plays computer games all day!

Tyler got an Ipod Touch recently, and Talmage loves it. LOVES it. We have a two hour screen time rule at our house, and we've been quite impressed that Talmage likes to save his screen time until Daddy gets home with his Ipod. That means no TV, computer, or the like until 5 or 6 pm, so I am again aware that I need to do some mothering. Hence the reigniting flame in the ABC burner.

I've tried to preference the sound a letter most commonly makes in ABC Stuff. I've been able to make it work so far, but X threw us for a loop. When x is at the beginning of a word, it doesn't really make the "ks" sound, so we had to improvise.

For Christmas I bought the Dr. Seuss collection for beginning readers, and we got a lot of mileage out of Fox in Socks this week.

Activities

Ox: The simple yet enduring paperbag puppet.



You know, it wasn't until I did this project that I realized that I don't really know what an ox is. A male cow? Then what's a bull? Is it a whole nother species? So I did a little Wikipedia research. Fascinating stuff. An ox is "a castrated male (occasionally a female or in some areas a bull) kept for draft purposes." I didn't tell Talmage though. I decided to wait until he's five before I explain castration.

Here and here are the templates.

The Gingerbread Man (featuring a fox): I printed out the story from this website. Talmage watercolored the pages. We then bound the book together with string.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the final page in the book:



Xylophone:



I broke my own rules, since this starts with a Z sound. What can I say? English is difficult.

Talmage colored in this template, this template, and this template. He was very particular about his colors. Have I mentioned that he's a CRAZY perfectionist? He is.

X is for safety: I liked this because Tal practices writing the letter X, and he learns not to poison himself. Win, win!

We printed off this sheet. Then we put an X through the items we don't eat.



Treasure hunt. fox, ox. That's it. The treat was Trident sugarfree gum (with xylitol). Or Twix! Why didn't I think of Twix! And I just found Airheads Xtremes at the store. And to think, I went with xylitol.