The Letter J

J week! 

Attempted to make jello jigglers.  I don't know what it is with me and jello, but we don't do well together!  I tried to make them in ice cube trays, but they would not come out of the tray :(

Jesus!  We talked, read and prayed to Jesus!  She enjoyed coloring some Jesus coloring pages, and has taped one to her bedroom door which she says is actually a "no boys allowed" sign....hmmm...  We went together to visit Jesus at First Thursday Adoration at church.  We sang all kinds of Jesus songs this week.

Jellyfish!  She requested to color a jellyfish page and we traced the letter J; which she was excellent at tracing this letter!

Jumping:  at Monkey Joe's!  Mommy and Daddy both got to accompany Isabel to do some jumping this week.

Juicing an orange!  This was interesting...even with buying the smaller oranges, this was still really hard for Iz to do, but she gave it a good effort!  Lots of work for a small reward.  I made her reward appear bigger by putting it in a really tiny glass:  that way we were able to fill it to the top!  And she really loved the taste of all natural, freshly-squeezed OJ!  She even requested this again!

Jellybean sensory tub!  Well this was a tub full of rice in which I hid jelly beans (tried to use colors similar to the rice: white and yellow) so that they would be more difficult to find.  She loved finding the jelly beans and even got to eat her discoveries!

Jellybean charting.   I gave Isabel a jar of jellybeans (actually I gave her way too many) and she sorted them out by color and put them on a graph that I printed offline.  We found out that purple had the most jellybeans and orange had the least!

Joy, Joy Kitties!  There is a youtube video which Isabel has loved from the very beginning and it is these little kitties "singing" "I've got that joy, joy, joy down in my heart"....so we watched that and sang along.

We also prayed the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary.

The Letter I

I is for Isabel! :)  Hooray! :)  We finally made it to "her" letter!

Here is what we did this week:

Painted with food colored ice....I loved this idea, but...the ice was cold, so she was not super-into it because it was too cold for her and even after I wrapped each ice cube in a paper towel she was still just mildly interested since the colors were not very bold.  Be sure to use watercolor paper!  It works so much better than regular paper for this project.  However, afterward we turned the art into the backdrop for her Letter I which we did with a bingo dabber.

Observed our colored ice melting....

Ate ice pops.....

Completed an insect adding worksheet (using insect stickers).

In the kitchen we baked Irish Soda Bread.

She made an igloo using cotton balls and a paper cup....this didn't turn out so great either.  I wanted to use marshmallows, but all we had were the multicolored ones.

We colored pictures of iguanas and did our Letter I tracing sheets.

She did an inchworm craft by coloring an inchworm picture.   Then we cut it out and glued it to a piece of scrapbook paper.  Then she collected various leaves and glued them on to the branch!

We went to the library and chose only books that began with the letter I or were letter I themed!  So we came home with a book about iguanas, insects, I-spy, Issac the Ice cream truck, I snack on igloos, etc.

I was also for itching....compulsive itching of her nose and all over her body began this week...not sure what to make of it yet, but if you look closely at her nose in some of the pictures you will see the areas that she has scratched! 

First Ever Camping Trip!

Memorial Day Eve, we packed up to go camping after Mass.

Isabel was very excited as this was her first-ever camping trip!  We decided to try out Holly Point Recreation Area at Falls Lake and were very pleased with the campsites there.

Isabel was so excited.  She loved playing in the tent.  She walked Greta around the campsite on her leash.  She helped fetch water from the pump.

The kid went barefoot through the campsite almost the entire time we were there...try as we might, we couldn't keep shoes on her.  She was born to tent camp!  I thought she would have difficulty sleeping in a tent with all the night noises and no fan!  She did ask if we had a fan and of course we didn't ;)  But when it was time to go to sleep, she went right in and went to bed without any complaints!  I couldn't believe she didn't need me to lie down with her until she fell asleep!  So Rob and I got to spend some time sitting out by the campfire all by ourselves!  Ahhh....just like the old days!

Other highlights of our trip were making smores (or at least roasting the marshmallows...Isabel was not interested in eating a smore).  Swimming in the lake, telling stories about "ghost bunny" (her idea, not mine), catching a frog that came hopping into camp (how lucky!...actually after we caught it, she exclaimed, "Thank you God for letting us catch this frog!!!" and of course just making each meal was a "production"!
The one thing I didn't anticipate was having to constantly tell her to take her voice level down a few notches!  She talked the entire camping trip and would get so excited or so bossy towards Greta that we'd have to remind her that there were other people camping near us.

Here she is poking her head out of the tent.  She pointed out that the door looked like the letter "D"!  Go Iz!

Pretending to sleep in her sleeping bag!  She slept all through the night, except for one time when she bolted upright talking about Jesus.  (I think Daddy had woken her up that time with some snoring).

Eating peanuts while waiting for the food to cook!  (Note the bare feet).

Food preparation the old-school way!

New day, no shoes.

Greta had a good time too!

Look what hatched!

Last week we had an amazing discovery!  The 2 cocoons we had found about 2 months ago had hatched...and they weren't cocoons after all!  They were egg cases!

Can you guess what kind of creatures came out???

Praying mantises!

Yes, she was brave enough to hold the stick which the egg case was attached to...and if you look closely you can see that there is a baby praying mantis on each end of the stick....and boy do they move fast!

Then we released them back into our garden!  Look closely!

Tadpole to Frog Update...

BIG discovery today in our household!  Tadpole now has 2 back legs and *drum roll please* 2 front legs!

Yesterday he was only hanging in there with 2 back legs and one front leg.

Hooray little guy!  Now you've progressed to the next picture on our "growth chart"!

Soon it will be time to say "goodbye".

In other news, I've ordered Isabel's homeschool curriculum for next year from Catholic Heritage Curricula!  I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas Day!   For those of you not-in-the-know, we have decided to start homeschooling her starting in August!  (She would otherwise be in the 4 year old preschool class).  She had her last day at our church's preschool this Wednesday and while she did just great, I was in tears!  Although I feel very confident about our decision to homeschool her next year, it is still difficult to leave a preschool program with which we were so very pleased!

It's hard to say "goodbye".