Letters F and G!

Hi everyone! I hate to admit that our projects (and obviously this blog) have taken a back seat to life. We have still been working on letters and doing crafts, here and there, but not as consistently as we were. With our vacation and the holidays and sicknesses things have been pretty crazy around here, which I am sure most of you can relate to! We are also remodeling our basement and I've been working on Aidan's birthday party so I have been super busy. Actually it's 8:00 pm on Sunday evening and this is the first time I've sat down to relax ALL weekend! I cooked dinner for my family yesterday to celebrate my mom's birthday, the boys especially loved the cake- that I did not cook. ;)

Those smiles are my favorite!

The last few weeks we have worked on the letters F and G. Here are the projects that we did...

F is for-

FROG!
We painted a paper plate green then folded it in half. Then glued legs, a tongue, and eyes!

FLOWER!

They painted the bowl (they ask to paint everyday) then we put a yellow circle in the middle and I cut the sides to make the individual petals. I forgot to take a picture of the end results. :(  

FISH!

We took blank CDs and glued some jewels on it. Then cut fins out of vellum- so they would be a little see through, and added some lips and an eye. I think this one was my favorite craft so far they turned out so cute!

FLAG!
I am ashamed of myself for not cutting out stars for their flags! I really didn't think too much of it until I hung them on the fridge and thought that wasn't the best way to teach them about the American flag, so we will have to work on it again.

G is for-

GRAPES!

I cut out the G then had the boys glue on the "grapes" and leaves then we curled some strips of paper for the vine.

GIRAFFE!

Aidan and Landon got to paint again so they were happy boys! They also are obsessed with the little puff balls they put on the "horns".

GUMBALLS!
No paint but lots of glue for this one, they like that stuff too!

and finally...
GRAMMY!
We did this craft for Grammy's birthday. I bought a 500 piece puzzle (so the pieces would be small) from Dollar Tree for $1, Landon painted the puzzle pieces red and Aidan painted the popsicle sticks white!

Thanks for making it this far! Hopefully I will have more posts coming up soon!

Letters D & E!

It has been a few weeks since I have posted, but we have still been doing our projects! We started going to story time at the library this week too, which was a lot of fun! We will be doing that in the upcoming weeks as well. For now here are some of the things we have been working on...

D is for:

DOG! I cut out the letter D, a circle for the nose, an ear and rectangle collar for each of the boys to glue together. I also had some shiny circle pieces (I really don't know what they are called or what they are actually used for :)) that I thought would work perfect for the tag! 

 They were being silly!

DUCK! For our duck we used yellow paint for their hand prints, an orange marker for the feet and bill and a googly eye. Simple enough. :) I also helped them finger paint the work "duck"!

DAD! What is more important of a D-word than Dad?! Both of these boys are blessed with amazing daddies so we made them a little paper weight out of salt dough. I googled the recipe and I wasn't really thrilled with the results, it didn't turn out very smooth on top and the bottom is still soft. I plan on making some Christmas ornaments out of salt dough and will be trying a different recipe for those. (If you have one that has turned out great please share!) 

I printed a coloring sheet with the letter D and a dolphin on it for another day but forgot to get any pictures ooops! I honestly don't know what moms did with their children before the internet. There are so many great resources, especially Pinterest! 

E is for:

EYES! We glued a bunch of googly eyes (from the Dollar Tree) onto our letter E! I haven't been using my Cricut to cut out the letters. It's really just as easy to cut them out myself, they aren't perfect but as long as the boys can tell what letter it is my job is done! 

EARTH! We do so much with capitol letters I realized we needed to start doing some lowercase as well. I saw this "earth" craft on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect!

EGG! I felt a little weird doing an Easter egg craft so close to Halloween but I don't think it really mattered to them. :) 

Next week I plan on taking a break from our letters to work on some Halloween fun. You will have to see what we come up with!

Letter C!

This week was the letter C! I have to admit, I always have great intentions about taking pictures, but a lot of times I get so wrapped up in the stuff we are doing that I forget. I also am notorious for walking out the door and forgetting my camera. I am trying to get better about it, but you'll see one day this week where I forgot to get the camera out until after we were done, whoops!

C is for:

CORN! I just cut out a shape that looked like a corn cob, popped some popcorn and let them glue the popcorn on. I think they had more fun eating the popcorn than doing the project! Landon was even trying to pull a Billy Madison and use the glue as a yummy dipping sauce! :)

CUPCAKE! I baked some cupcakes and let the boys decorate their own! We also did a cupcake coloring page. This was another day where they liked eating better! Next time I will probably try a lighter color icing.

COW! We glued some black spots, ears and horns on a paper plate to make our cows. (As you can tell all of our projects are super easy to prepare!) On the crafts that don't have the actual letter involved I write the letter as large as I can on the back so they are still learning to recognize the letters too.

CATERPILLAR! This was the day I forgot to get out the camera. We took puff balls and formed them into the letter C and added some googly eyes!

Some of the snacks/food we ate this week to go with the letter C included: CHEESE CUBES, CANTALOUPE, CUCUMBERS, CHIPS, CHERRIES, and CELERY!

Letter B!

This week the boys and I worked on the letter B! We look forward to doing our crafts each day, it is the perfect break between playtime and lunchtime. You will notice that Landon participates in the pictures every day, it's actually hard to get a picture of him where he is not saying "cheese" because he LOVES the camera! :) Aidan is the complete opposite! He has always hated having pictures taken. On a very rare occasion he will look at the camera and smile, most of the time it involves bribery, and if he asks to have his picture taken I make sure to snap a few (after I compose myself from the shock of him asking). Anyway, here are some of the projects we made this week.

B is for:

BEE! We painted paper plates yellow, then added black stripes and wings I cut out of vellum. I took off their shirts so they wouldn't get paint on them. For a snack they had BANANAS. I even threw in a picture of how Daisy -or as Landon would say "ZeZe"- spends most of her day, she loves to see whats going on in the neighborhood (and bark about it!), plus I'm sure she is thrilled that she doesn't have to stay home by herself all day now!

BLUEBERRY! We used blue circles I cut out with my Cricut and popsicle sticks to make the basket. I also made Blueberry muffins for breakfast, and they were delicious! This is one of the days Aidan didn't want his picture taken.

BUTTERFLY! For our butterfly I printed out a coloring sheet. Here is the link for the website: http://animationsa2z.com/coloringpages-animal-letters-b.php . I made BLUE jello for their snack that day.

BEACH BALL! We decorated the beach ball that I printed out with tissue paper of different colors, they had a lot of fun with the glue!

Letter A!

Now that Aidan and Landon are home with me throughout the week I want to make sure they are learning something new each day. The first thing we will be working on are our letters; we will be focusing on one letter each week. This past week we worked on the letter "A". I am trying to incorporate crafts, books, snacks, etc., that begin with the letter. Here are some of our projects!

A is for:

ACORN! Brian, Aidan, and I went hunting for acorns at Brian's parents' house for this project. (I also used some for my fall decorations!:)) Our snack for the day was ANIMAL crackers.

ALLIGATOR! I got this idea from Pinterest. I have a Cricut Explore machine so I used that to cut out the A, then cut some triangles for the teeth. Super easy- even without a Cricut, it wouldn't be hard to cut out the letters! 

ANT! If you google "alphabet worksheet printables" there are THOUSANDS of options, completely free! This one was an ant so for our snack we had "ANTS on a log", yum! 

APPLE! I used my Cricut for some help with this project as well. I cut out a rectangle and an oval for the tree, then some small apples for them to glue on the apple tree. We read Chicka Chicka 123 and had apples for a snack!

The best thing about all of these projects was that I was able to do all of them with out spending ANY extra money! I have an abundance of card stock, from my scrap booking days, so the paper was on-hand. I also planned what we would be doing before I went to the grocery store so I was able to add the foods into our normal list. I do plan on going to the Dollar Tree this week and picking up a few things but it will still be very inexpensive! We are doing the alphabet in order so next week will be the letter B!

What kind of projects do you do with your preschooler/toddlers?