Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Between snow (twice!), a week away for fun and Thanksgiving and just life in general we've had a busy few weeks with our little family!  In all honesty, I've been kind of uninspired about the Alphabet Adventure lately and am hoping that actually being at home for a few weeks in a row will help get me on track.

Anyways...for those of you following along, here are some highlights from the last three weeks of Alphabet Adventure:

Letter H:

Letter H Week was exciting for Henry as H is his favorite of all of the letters.  He has been able to write an H for quite some time now and he loves to spot it everywhere.  (He loves to say "H for Henry!")

During H week we read some fun books, including one of my favorites "Hippos Go Beserk" by Sandra Boynton.  (Her books are all hilarious.) 

I don't have any pictures but we made a "Hug" to send to Uncle Chewy, who is away at college.  We got one of these "hugs" in the mail from a friend when Henry had his robot surgery and I thought it was such a cute idea.  We traced Henry's Hands (another H word!) and cut them out.  Then we "measured his hug" (his armspan) with a colorful ribbon.  We attached the hand cutouts to the ends of the ribbon and we had a Henry-sized hug!

This week Henry got to have some letter and number Spaghetti-Os.  He got a kick out of looking at what he was about to eat.  In this picture he was saying "What letter?!"


For his letter H craft, we made an H out of handprints.  Henry really liked this because I let him make a mess after we got his nice handprints done.



He ended up touching his face after painting his hand red.  He looked a little like a Halloween haunted house extra.


Letter I:

Poor Letter I week was pretty lame.  We were busy getting ready to be away for a week and I just wasn't inspired (incidentally an I word!).  We had plans to make ice cream at home (science class style with the salt and ice) but never got around to it.  We did read some I books, including a Clifford book called The Ice Race.  We made our Letter I craft while at my parents' house so I'm actually in a picture:

Letter J:

J week took place when we were at my parents' house for Thanksgiving so we didn't really do much (not that being home helped out H or I week!).  Henry did get to help make a special Jell-O treat:


We also made a neat J Craft inspired by Henry and Grandad's special book "Pout Pout Fish" that has a page where the title character meets a jellyfish.  We made a Jellyfish J using construction paper for the body and yarn for tentacles.  Henry enjoyed making it and the final product is pretty cute.



Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Alphabet Adventure: Letter G

Poor Letter G week got interrupted by a hurricane and so it was pretty relaxed and, honestly, pretty lame.  Silly storm kept us from visiting goats at the local farm, the big ghost cutouts at the local park and since we were back and forth between our house and Eddie's grandparents I didn't bother much with putting together G activities for him to explore throughout the week. We didn't even take any pictures of the things we DID do.  (Or so I thought...)

Thankfully with Halloween falling in this week we could take advantage of things like Ghost shaped Peeps for a tasty treat.  I had also gotten a set of little plastic bag ghosts from the Dollar Store that we made while hanging out with family.  (Basically just white plastic bags you stuff with a newspaper ball and hang up with twist ties.)  We made them and hung them around the room where we spent most of our time at Eddie's grandparents' house. 

We spent the last part of G week at my parents' house in NC.  Turns out that my mom did snap some picture of Henry with Grandad that we can put here to show some G fun! They helped Henry use glue (another G word!) to put small pictures of Grandad's face around a letter G we printed out.  It's a fun addition to our craft alphabet. 


Henry and Grandad played the piano together:


And of course they spent time cuddling and reading Pout-Pout Fish, their favorite.



Thanks, Mom, for the pictures!  Here's to hoping H week is a little more constructive and well-documented!

Alphabet Adventure: Letter F

The Alphabet Adventure continues though I'm a little behind on the blogging of it.

Letter F week brought some fun activities though I missed out on taking pictures of some of them.  His everyday activities (the ones I leave out for him to play with on his own at his leisure throughout the week) included:
-We played with Phonics Fish that we had found at the local high school's yard sale for a dollar!  He is obviously too little to really understand any of it but I liked that they were fish and he could pick out the letters on them.
-Fishing with a magnetic fish puzzle. (This was a freebie we picked up from someone in a neighborhood getting rid of stuff a long time ago.)
-He has a little playset called "Forest Friends" that includes a plastic mat with a forest scene and a bunch of plastic animals.  He wasn't interested in the mat but did like putting the animals in the ladder basket on his play firetruck.

Also without a picture is our lunch date to Burger King for French Fries and then visiting the fish at the local pet store.  (Though he was more impressed with the cage of mice since they were flying around the wheel.)

Now onto things we did that I have photos of:

Henry had his first experience with stamps and ink pads.  He did remarkably well with them (read: he did not make a HUGE mess).  I had picked up an F stamp and a flower pattern stamp at Michael's a long time ago in the clearance bin!


I introduced Henry to Eric Carle's The Very Lonely Firefly via YouTube video.  (We read a lot of books so I don't feel bad throwing in videos.  YouTube is awesome!)  We watched it a few times during the beginning of the week and then later in the week we made a glowing firefly craft.  (And by "we" I mean, I made a glowing firefly craft and Henry played with it.)  Once again, glow sticks come in handy!  Henry really liked this little firefly.



Another fun part of F week was the colored ice fish I made.  (Thanks to IKEA for this easy activity.) I filled the tray with water, put in a small drop of food coloring in each and stuck it in the freezer.  I pulled them out on a bath night.  Henry really enjoyed playing with the ice fish in the container at first and then experimented with them in the bath water.  We had bubbles in the tub so the food coloring from the melting fish left little colorful trails. 




Hurray for F week!