Down 20 grams.

Well yet another GI appointment for Isabel and over the last 2 months she has not gained, no of course not!  She has lost 20 grams.  Which is not much, but I was looking for a half pound gain.  Very frustrating for Mommy, not so much for her nurse practitioner.  She wants to up her periactin back to 1 tsp every day (we had been down to 1 tsp Mon-Fri only) and remain on prevacid.  We go back to her in June unless her weight drops in the meantime.  But the NP was not at all concerned that she had lost a little. 

Isabel has battled a really ugly cold for 12 days but is now finally well!  Amen!  Of course, she passed it off to me first....so the last 2 weeks have not been much fun to say the least.  During this time I didn't really think that her appetite had been down really, so I'm not sure about the weight loss. 

She did get to go to school this week and today they had an Easter egg hunt in the grotto behind our church.  It was a gorgeous day and I did take pics; will post those soon! :)  I was glad she got to enjoy a little bit of Easter fun since she had missed out on school ALL of last week.

The Letter C.

This week we worked on the Letter C.  We did both the hard C sound, like "cow" and also the soft C like "centipede".   I think instead of moving on to D next week, we are going to do the sound "Ch"...there are so many "ch" words....church, chapel, chips!  Which makes me a little sad because I have some really cool things to count during D week, but I guess I can practice some patience!

First, we started at the chalkboard and came up with:  crab, colors, camel, couch, caterpillar, chameleon, cat, cow, cross, carrot, cocoon, circle, cactus, (ice) cream, among others.  We worked on tracing C in colored sand...I was surprised that she was not as into this as I thought she'd be.  She really wanted to draw her finger all around and make dots and just barely did the C shape one time.

We did some cutting practice...on jagged and curvy lines.  Her ability to cut has very much improved over this year in preschool!  She had very little strength in her fingers to be able to really maneuver the scissors at the beginning of the year.

Izzy had a cold this week (how appropriate!) so we talked about "covering our cough" and other manners during an illness. 

We've read Curious George, Christmas Cookies, Cracker the Crab, The story of Creation (several books), and some Cat books this week, and I was much better about making sure we had a set reading time for these C books!  Yay, me!

We talked about caves and where they are located, who lives inside them.  We did some pretend play, turning her Dora playtent into a cave covered with a dark blanket.  I pretended to be a bat and she was Lily the Bear.  We decided that some creatures live under things that are like caves and that they might like a cave home....for instance, doodle bugs.

So we made our own cave using an egg carton and put it right next to a doodle bug family.  We left it there with a rock on top so that it wouldn't blow away and we were going to check on them later....however, Greta happened upon it and it was history.

We made a really cool collage with camellias and clover.  First she picked clover and camellia petals from the yard.

Then we separated the petals from the camellia and let the petals and clover dry just a little (they were wet from dew).  And she stuck them onto a piece of contact paper after they were dry.  Of course, we couldn't make a camellia and clover collage without wearing a crown!

We stuck a piece of tissue paper on the back (Isabel chose light purple), punched a hole, threaded a string and wallllah!  Our camellia and clover collage suncatcher!

We had grilled cheese cut into the shape of a C, along with carrots and cauliflower...a cookie, not too many C foods that we ate this week.

I had gotten a 4 pack of puzzles on clearance from Walmart, and I had her do the colors and shapes one and it was just awful.  They are the cardboard puzzles and so cheaply made that they don't fit correctly into the puzzle board, so it is really frustrating for the both of us!  It's unfortunate because 2 of the puzzles are really beautiful, but won't get much use unless I come up with a plan to shave the side of the pieces or something to make them fit better.

We put together a Stations of the Cross book for little kids.  I bought one of those plastic photo books and cut out cardstock pieces onto which we glued a simple reflection for kids to understand about each station, and then she stuck a sticker (can you believe $store had Stations of the Cross stickers??  I know I was excited!) on each page.  Now of course, Lent is almost over, so there's not much time to use this book, but we can always pull it out next year! 

We did several worksheet and coloring pages...practicing writing the letter C.  She does not want any help when I hand her the worksheet, but I do have to give her the first instruction on where to start her pencil and where to finish.  After that, she wants to do her "work" on her own and asks me to "walk away and come back later".  Nice.

I dotted out the letters for her name.  Of course she always remembers how to do "I", but we've gotta keep working on these other letters.  Her C's are looking nice!

We also did a color patterns worksheet I made up.  I had a ton of these small little stickers and was trying to figure out what to do with them...they would be good for a chore chart or something, but I made a little color pattern worksheet.  Had no idea if she would do well on this or not....and the first one (so simple b/c it was only 2 repeating colors) she was very lost.  But once it clicked in her brain, she got the 3 repeating colors without any problem!  I was pleasantly surprised!  I think I will make these again since they were so easy, and what kid doesn't like to put stickers on a page!  We only did 4 because I didn't want to overwhelm her, but I think I will add a few more next time just to try.

The only other pretty cool thing we did was color mixing.  I wanted to show her how mixing certain colors could create a new color.  So we used Red + Yellow food coloring to make Orange.  Blue + Yellow to make Green, and Red + Blue to make Purple!  These was a messy venture as I wanted her to be able to be "hands on" with everything and mostly do it herself.  From pouring the water, to squirting the drops, to stirring it up...she did!  I think she really enjoyed it...and she was very surprised that 2 colors could in fact create a different color.  Her face lit up when she noticed purple!  But at the end she of course had incredibly stained fingers...don't do this project the night before church! ;) 

She looks very intent (below) but I promise she is not mad!  That is her "I'm really concentrating and really into this" look!  It's so interesting to watch her when she gets into "the zone" and I remember from working at the Montessori school that kids her age do this when they are really focused.  She looks so serious!

Look at those fingers!  What a mess, but what fun!  Nothing like watching the color spread out from the drop!

The Letter B.

Oh I had so much planned for "B" week, and we just did not get to everything I wanted!

Here is a rundown of what we did do!

Letter B coloring and tracing sheets.
Coloring with Blue, Brown and Black.
The Bible coloring page and discussion about what the Bible is.
Beavers!  What the eat, their Buck teeth and how they use them!
B Foods we ate:  banana chips, burritos, beans, bean dip, blueberry cream cheese, Annie's bunny cookies, bagel breakfast sandwiches!

Gluing Beans onto the letter B!

Bee count and graph book...we counted the number of bees and then put the corresponding number of buttons on the graph....she is really good with this through number 6, then starts to lose interest with counting all the numbers from 7-10.

We wrote out lots of different words that begin with the Letter B on our chalkboard and attempted to draw pictures of them as well.  We start this at the beginning of the week and leave the words and pictures up and add to them throughout the week as we think of them!

We had our fair share of Bug catching...like this friendly little ladybug.  Don't mind the dirty "marker fingers", Mom, we washed them once we came inside.

I was disappointed that I did not get to fit in all the "B" books that I had picked off our bookshelves for this week.  And truly, I only had about 5 books, of which we read just one!!!  But Isabel is very interested in reading the Bible for almost every story time, so who can argue with a Bible story, especially on B week?  :) 

Our book selections for B had been:

Baa Baa Bedtime

The Belly Button Book

I like Bugs

and an I Can Read! Phonics book:  Biscuit and the Box

Alas by Thursday it was Daddy's Birthday, we just lucked out that a Birthday happened to fall on B week!  So we blew up and bounced balloons!

Blowing out the candle!

This year, instead of baking a cake, we made the old favorite, Dirt Cake...complete with gummy worms and some tissue paper flowers for full effect.  It was a delicious and a fun and different treat...and best of all, Isabel was able to keep it a surprise from her daddy!  Along with the "B" gift we got him, a front porch BENCH!

To end the week, Isabel got to go on her very first Bike ride!  And boy did she love this!

Reptile and Amphibian Day!

Yes, let's face it!  My little girl is really a tomboy.

Today we went to Reptile and Amphibian Day at the NC Museum of Natural Science and she had a blast!

We all know that Isabel is very eager to touch pretty much any living creature.  So petting a snake is no big deal for her.

But at nearly 4 years old, I didn't think she would ask to hold one!

And then another one! 

In fact, we didn't get to pass a "pettable" snake without her noticing and if she DID happen to notice that we overlooked one of the poor critters, we would have to get back in line to pet it.

She got covered in dinosaur tattoos and reptile stamps...

One of the animal handlers LOVED her sea turtle shirt and pointed us to the REAL sea turtle on the 1st floor.

Outside was a very adorable pony to pet!

She got a ride back to the car from Daddy!

And waved to all her followers, showing off a little more than just her cute personality! *blush*

Nursery Rhyme Olympics!

Wednesday was "Nursery Rhyme Olympics" at preschool.  

Each station had a different nursery rhyme theme...of course I can't remember any of them 

except for Baa Baa Black Sheep.

I was in bible study for half the morning, so I missed the first 1/2 hour of the olympics.

But the pictures below will show you what I did see!