Winter Activities Week 6

We got to EVERY ONE of the planned activities last week! Here is the line-up for this week:

Math Activity
The Monster Math game was a huge hit. Ray suggested that we try using cotton balls as our monster “food” and the kids loved it! Joe would throw them in the box and Jake (my own little monster) would rip them apart and try to eat them.

When the boys get bored with this monster, we are going to make little bugs out of construction paper and pipe cleaners and see how many we can fit in Joe’s bug house.

Joe has also been playing a few math games on his Kindle. One is called “Mighty Shapes”. He sits and plays it calling out “Square! Circle! Rectangle!” with such excitement. It cracks me up!

Language Activity
The ping-pong alphabet game took a twist when Joe decided to throw the balls at their matching toilet paper roll instead of dropping them in the hole. At first I was frustrated, but then realized that we were achieving the same goal of letter recognition and matching and Joe was having fun so I just kept handing him the ping-pong balls.

This week, we are going to create an “alphabet rug” out of the dot letters Joe made a few months ago. We saw a family playing on the alphabet rug at the library last week. The mom would call out a letter and the kids would have to race around to find it and then stand on it. She then had them spell their names by standing on the letters. Joe was having so much fun watching and trying to join in on the fun.

Science Activity
Ice volcanoes! This started out as a dud because I read the instructions too quickly and just assumed I knew what I was doing. You know what they say when you assume…but after I re-did the set-up, it turned into a really cool and fun sensory experiment. Both kiddos (and I) had fun playing in the mess.

This week we are going to play with some kinetic sand that my uncle got Joe for his birthday. It’s supposed to be great for developmental skills and the perfect “indoor sand” as it stays clumped and won’t spread all over. We’ll see about the spreading.

Bible Study
We checked out a bunch of Berenstein Bears books from the library. I love these books. They are wholesome stories and help teach lessons from the bible. We’ll be reading those all week as well as singing Jesus Loves Me and reciting The Lord’s Prayer. 

Craft Activity
This week we will be doing a fun Valentine’s Day craft. The boys, with a little help from me, will be making (secret) Valentine’s cards for their grandmas.

Sand, paint, tiny scraps of paper…bring on the fun!