{Books We Read}

Our Ready-Made Preschool book was Harold and the Purple Crayon. Harold gets a purple crayon and uses it to draw all kinds of different things which take him on a fun adventure. Little Bug enjoyed this book. It gave me many opportunities to talk about imagination with Little Bug. We learned about fractions this week too and the book How Many Ways Can You Cut a Pie? is an excellent book to read to preschoolers to introduce the concept of fractions.

{Activities We Did}

We started this week by making Puffy Purple Paint to paint the Letter p! First we learned that red and blue makes purple. Then we followed the recipe and made the Puffy Purple Paint that Little Bug used to decorate her letter p.

{Concepts We Learned}

Harold uses his imagination when he drew all the things he drew so Little Bug got to use a purple crayon and draw something on a plain white piece of paper. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how this activity would go because Little Bug isn’t into drawing and coloring much, but she enjoyed this activity! She drew a barn with an animal by the side (middle picture below). I was impressed! Another day she was given some shapes and told to make something from them. She made a man (picture on the right) with three of the six shapes she was given.

The main academics of this week was learning the basics of fractions. Grams taught this lesson to Little Bug because I was at the CPC and I wanted to get this week’s lessons completed before we left for a long weekend trip (more on that in a minute). Gram’s was excited about being my substitute teacher that day! They painted the paper plates orange and the trim brown and then Little Bug sprinkled pumpkin spice onto her “pumpkin pies”. Once they were dry, one pumpkin pie was cut in half, one was cut into thirds and one into fourths. We talked about how the parts all made one whole pie and how each piece of one pie was the same size. Little Bug recognized that the half pieces were a whole lot bigger than the fourth pieces. We talked about how the pieces of the pie get smaller and smaller the more pieces you cut. This was such a fun way to introduce the concept of fractions to a preschooler! Grams decided Little Bug needed to make a real pumpkin pie on this day too so they made a pumpkin pie together after naptime.

Later in the week Little Bug was to make a real pizza by following a recipe. Because of her gluten allergies, I didn’t want Little Bug eating pizza this week so I had to improvise this activity. I ended up cutting out pizza makings out of construction paper and Grams had the wonderful idea of mixing red food color with the glue to make “sauce”! Little Bug had a ball with this and loved making her pizza!

Our Letter of the Week was Letter Pp! Little Bug found four pennies in her Mystery Box. I put four because she loves the number four because she is four. Anytime she sees the number four (and the letter her name starts with) she grins this cheesy grin because she is so excited. She practiced writing the letter Pp with play-doh, in shaving cream and with Do-A-Dot markers. She did the Pp page in her ABC book. She did this with Grams and found Mickey Mouse ears and really wanted to put them on her Pp page even though they don’t start with Pp! She said, “Pllllleaaaasssseeee, Grams!!”. Since “please” starts with P Grams let her glue it to the page! Uncle played an ABC game with her one day.

{Hands On Thinking Skills & Bible}

We started learning about shapes divided with equal parts. Our Bible story this week was about Joseph and how his brother’s hated him and were jealous of him. We talked about how his brother’s sold him to slavery in Egypt but God had a plan for Joseph all along because He always has a plan for those who love Him. We will learn of that plan next week.

{Mudpies to Magnets}

Our science experiment this week had the girls seeing which objects would roll down the ramp and which objects would not roll.

{Fall Craft}

I love handprint crafts! It is fun to see how their hands grow through the years. We did this Pumpkin Handprint Craft and it turned out so adorable. Little Bug’s is on the left and Sweet Pea’s is on the right.

{Road Trip!!}

Friday of this week we left for a long weekend trip to go see Rebecca! Little Bug and Micah had an absolute ball together. They play so well together. Sweet Pea warned up to Mr. Luke and kept wanting him to spin her around!

It goes without saying that we wish we lived in the same city! The “babies” aren’t really babies anymore and it’s hard to believe it’s been nearly three years since we all met because of these two babies!

We arrived home on Tuesday and Wednesday was spent in Laundry Land. We did not do Ready-Made Preschool the rest of the week (break week) and when Little Bug heard of those plans she was heartbroken. (She seriously cried.) The tears somewhat dried up when I explained to her that her workboxes were still filled with fun activities for us to do this week, but that we were just not going to be doing our Ready-Made Preschool. I guess I will never be able to take a for real “break” from school with Little Bug since she literally cries if I tell her we aren’t doing learning time today! Good “problem” to have! I also took an unintentional blogging break, which explains the silence on the blog this week. And now, we have entered my favorite time of year…Thanksgiving and Christmas!

- Elaine