Fall is Here!

 Veronika is now matching words other than her name

 As you can see, she is very proud of herself

 "That was easy"

 One of the things we work on is sliding our finger or our pointer from the word to the picture

 Our day would not be complete without singing some of our favorite songs, This month we are working on three different song books, Albuquerque Turkey, Veterans Day Song, and Five Little Pumpkins

 Here are some of our books we work on throughout the week

 

Here are some of our matching work. We match pictures to pictures, we match pictures to words, and we match words to words.

 

Today we worked on gluing! I put a small amount of glue into a little cup and let them use  qtips to "paint" on the glue

 

on go the paper apples

 Both Veronika and Gavyn loved putting the glue on their q-tip and painting it onto the tree, I ended up using several q-tips because it can soak up the glue quickly and then becomes stringy if left in the glue too long

on goes Gavyn's apples

We also did some other work that I did not get pictures of because it is a 100% hand over hand activity. 

Those activities included, me helping hold their hands to practice drawing a line from one dot to another dot to form a straight line, and drawing a circle. We also worked on copying. For a lot of kids this comes very natural, but Veronika and Gavyn missed that window while they are in an orphanage, so they do not copy or mimic very well. 

I would show them the blocks in one way, and I would help them build the same thing I did. Very simple ones, three blocks side by side, or two blocks on the bottom with one on the top, or three blocks side by side with one more block on one of the end blocks to form a "train". We also worked on using egg shakers to copy. I would shake my eggs over head and then help them shake theirs over their head. I would tap my egg on the table and have them copy that action. I would tap my eggs together and have them copy that as well. 

I was very proud of Veronika, after me showing her what I wanted, she was able to copy my movements with the shaker eggs!

Finally, it was time for snack and a nap!

Just so everyone does not get the wrong impression.... I normally post our best photos. I am working with two year olds, they have their moments. They have moments when they think we are finished when we are not, they have moments when they get up from the table or throw things off the table or just throw little fits. That is when we take a couple of minutes to sing a song, do a crazy dance, or do a finger play. Then it is back to work until we are finished with our goals for the day.

First Fall Projects

Today we started our first fall projects. With two year olds, it is going a bit differently than how I expected, but we are making it work.

Today, we did a handprint fall tree. Veronika and Gavyn really enjoyed painting.

We also made a VERY cute little craft that I will be posting later when it is complete. 

Once they were cleaned up from painting we worked on some learning work.

 This is actually a pattern activity but for now we are working on just matching the color cube to a matching color.

Next I had them match animals. Their favorite book is Brown Bear Brown Bear so they LOVE this activity. We started with only having three to match, and we have worked up to nine choices. Veronika can select the cards and place them all in the correct place. Gavyn still does one at a time and sometimes needs help finding the match.

Since Veronika is reading, I had her match words and colors to words. She did very well.

Of course their favorite thing to do is push the Easy button when they are finished! The key is to make it fun. As long as we can make it fun they will keep wanting to learn.

We love learning!

High School and Preschool

 Well, we started our homeschool highschool earlier this week. We were so excited to get started with SOS Alpha Omega. We wanted to test out one subject before diving in and buying all of the subjects from them and I am SO glad that we did! 

While I know it is great for some families it does not seem to be a good fit for ours. We will continue using it until our new books and homeschooling materials arrive but I am so relieved we did not purchase the whole set. 

 For our little ones, we worked on some puzzles, matching, and our new reading book!! We also sang several songs and acted out the motions.Another new thing we did is work with bingo dobbers. I printed off a couple of worksheets that had the letter A in upper and lower case and then helped Veronika and Gavyn fill in each of the bubbles with the dobbers. 

They loved being able to push the "easy" button when they finished their reading!

All in all it was a great morning.

Matching Games

Lately we have been working hard on matching!!


Gavyn still needs a lot of hand over hand but Veronika has picked it right up! 

Little bits here and there

Today we did not do very much, and since "school" hasn't officially started yet I am ok with that. We read a lot of books, sang a lot of songs, watched some Signing Time, and then worked on a few things at the table...

We played with play dough

Enjoyed some mess free painting...

Worked on scooping... (Veronika scooped blocks and also scooped dried parsley) 

Pouring... yes there were some spills but it was just water so it cleans up easy

and drinking from a cup

(they are use to drinking from sippy cups with straws)

We also worked on more paper tearing to work on building their finger muscles 

All in all, not a overly busy day, but a good day! 

Little Tot Preschool

The first "offical" day of school is still a couple weeks away and our 15 year old is soaking up every moment of summer he can by relaxing and not doing much unless he has to.

On the other hand, Veronika and Gavyn crave structure and love doing things so we did a little bit to prepare them for when school does become offical.

As you can see, Gavyn sometimes liked tipping out the colors instead of always placing them in the correct place. We are still learning colors, so I have to tell Veronika what color each block is, and then she can figure out which bowl to place it in. For Gavyn, I tell him the color and help him by pointing to the correct bowl. 

With Veronika only being 25 months old, and Gavyn only 23 months old, I think they are doing pretty good especially since the first year of their life was in an orphanage and they could not even sit up and had never had any therapy of any kind or any stimulation or anything! Yes I would say they are doing very good!  

After they were finished we hung their master pieces on the fridge!
Then finished our preschool time off with a song...

Gearing Up!

We are gearing up for school around here!

     

I have been making some books for Veronika and Gavyn since they have been home. I have one about things they can see around the house, letters, and transportation with colors, among several others. 

While I was getting some of Veronika and Gavyn's work printed out and ready for our first day, they were busy painting.

Since this year I will be homeschooling our son who is in 10th grade it makes sense to make a lesson plan for our toddlers, Veronika and Gavyn so they have something to do and can be learning at the same time.

Alot of what our son will be doing is computer based. He will be doing the Alpha Omega Switched On Schoolhouse program, but we will also be adding in a few things. 

Only a few more weeks!