Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate Week For Us

My son has recently become obsessed with pirates. I think it all started when we went to Disney World (makes sense, right?). He asked if we could do a pirate week and I'm glad he did because it was a lot of fun. 

We turned the sensory bins into treasure chests by adding necklaces, beads, stones, and jewels.

Later, I hid the treasure chests and drew the kids treasure maps to find them. I was impressed that my kids could for the most part interpret my not-so-skilled depictions.

With glue and feathers we made pirate parrots. My daughter insisted on wearing a pirate scarf and making a pirate face in this picture. 

We turned our airplane into a pirate ship. I was really proud of this because the wheel actually spins.

We practiced making x's for X marks the spot.

I attempted making a wind tunnel so that we could pretend it was a cannon and the balloons would shoot out of it. I think if we had a big powerful box fan it would have been a lot more effective. Instead of the balloons shooting out, they kind of meandered. It was still fun. 

My son dressed up in his pirate costume almost every day. 

We counted syllables in our weekly words and marked them with jewels.

We also did a do-a-dot page with jewels.

We made a felt flag banner, but the kids used the skulls as masks for a while.

And finally, we made pirate t-shirts out of freezer paper and paint.

I think they turned out pretty cute!

It's a bird, No it's a Plane

I've decided I'll let the pictures do most of the talking, and add only a little bit of commentary.

For plane week, we had plane crafts including clothes pin/popsicle stick airplanes, tin foil airplanes, painted airplanes, and dry erase jet trails.

We talked about some aerodynamic vocabulary.

We found some cute flight books, including this one.

 We went to the local air and space museum.

I let the kids take pictures, and it was interesting what they found important.

Finally, my favorite project of the week was this cardboard airplane.

I Heart Valentine's Day

Soooo, I guess it's been quite a while since I've posted considering that the last post is a Thanksgiving post and now it's Valentine's Day. Time sure does fly. 

Unfortunately my daughter woke up sick this morning, so we haven't had a very thrilling day. However we have done quite a few Valentiney (is that a word?) things this week as preparation.

Early in the week we set up a Valentine station in the living room. My kids spent lots of time coloring with markers, decorating with stickers, and creating lovely cards.

Everyone had their own mailbox, and we kept leaving each other notes.

 I also printed off several Valentine games from Pinterest.

With our playgroup we went to visit a Retirement home. This was the most special thing we did this week. The activities coordinator got a group together for us and when we got there we sang them some songs, handed out Valentines, and talked to each person individually. I only snapped one picture the whole time (I was really enjoying talking with those we were visiting and got wrapped up in it), and this picture looks kind of goofy because the kids were singing "Once There Was a Snowman" and they had all just melted to the ground.

We went to a cookie painting party.

We graphed conversation hearts. 

 I forgot how disgusting those things are! How to people keep buying them? Yuck. My kids have major sweet tooths, and they were only interesting in eating three of four.

Finally, we put conversation hearts into different liquids to see what would dissolve them fastest. This is how they looked after about an hour. 

My the next morning, the only hearts that had totally dissolved were in the vinegar. We're still waiting on the others.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day with those you love!!

Sweet Apples

It was Apple Week at our hour this last week. We did a lot of fun different apple activities. Here are a few of them.

My favorite thing we did all week was an apple tree collage. I cut out the apples and the leaves and my daughter cut up the bark. It was great cutting practice and very relaxing for both of us.

I took a piece of poster board with an outline of a tree and taped it to the window. My plan was to cover in with contact paper, but I was fresh out, so I just used a whole bunch of strips of packing tape layered up against each other. It made the perfect sticky surface and was only slightly more work than contact paper.  

My son was very excited about the apples (I used all sorts of paper, glitter paper, holographic paper, and other craft paper), but that's about where his interest ended. My daughter continued on sticking on leaves and bark, but lost interest when she got to this point:

I thought it looked pretty the way it was, but I decided to leave out the materials for several more days. I'm glad I did because after a week, this is what it looked like. I did end up helping with the trunk because my daughter asked me to, but the rest was mostly her doing, with a little help from her brother. She made me laugh because she was bothered by the apples and bark my son put on the side of the tree. She ripped them off and put them in a more 'appropriate' place.

 

For an outing we took a trip to the grocery store to pick out several different kinds of apples. My daughter washed them.

My son sorted them.

We all tasted them (and appreciated the stars in the middle). Unfortunately the one we liked the best had already lost its sticker, so I'm not sure what kind it was, but it was delicious!

Painting an apple tree was much more appealing to my son than the collage. That boy sure loves to paint!

 

I also found a bunch of apple printables on Pinterest. There are all sorts of wonderful packets if you search long enough. 

Raining Cats and Dogs

Each day this week we talked about a different animal and had a snack to go with that animal. On doggy day, we made dog bones out of pretzel dough. On kitty day, the kids were ecstatic because I let them lap milk from a bowl.

On bird day we tried sunflower seeds. My little guy refused to try them. His logic was pretty sound. He said, "I'm not a bird. I'm not eating that." My daughter on the other hand dug right in and even asked for seconds.

We did an animal sort of Farm animals and Zoo animals. For some reason, blogger thinks that this picture looks better sideways because it refuses to let me put it on any other way.

We also did an animal sort of all the 'animals' at our house. Turns out we have more bears and elephants than anything else. How did we end up with so many stuffed elephants?

We also took all the plastic animals out to play in the rain. It seemed a little Noah's Arkish to me. Fortunately, it didn't flood.

 

We had some other fun activities, including a trip to the zoo where we acquired another toy elephant.