It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Seriously, I look forward to school starting like some people look forward to Christmas! I love the scene in You've Got Mail when Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are savoring the nostalgia of "a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils" and Scotch tape. 

Today's post is a follow-up to yesterday's post about Selah's "school" activities. We finished up a few more projects yesterday so I decided to take a picture and show y'all what we did!

(clockwise from top left:) Owl matching cards, cutting lines, cupcakes, popsicles, counting hearts, pompom sorter

The owl matching cards are just that: cards I decorated with owl stickers in matching pairs.

I drew simple lines on several index cards that Selah can cut with her scissors - a simple motor skill activity. I'll replace these with more as she cuts them up.

The cupcakes are versatile like the sorter. She'll use the pompoms as sprinkles to decorate the icing. For example, I'll say, "Selah, can you put three orange pompoms on the white cupcake?" and other simple directions like that. This teaches counting, colors, sorting, following directions, and even some simple math later on.

The popsicles each have two sticks in them that she'll match to the correct color - one labeled with the English color word, and the other labeled with the German word. Obviously, she's not reading yet, but following the whole language method of teaching, she'll at least learn to recognize the words.

I suppose the counting cards are self-explanatory.

And the sorter I already told you about, so that's that. I have some more language arts oriented activities that I haven't gotten finished yet. I'm also going to cut shapes from the various colors of felt to teach (naturally) shapes and colors. Plus, they'll just be fun to play with!

Kaity was a big help in getting the popsicles and cupcakes together. She loves to sew, so after I drew the patterns and cut out the felt pieces, I showed her what I wanted done. She took over from there with needle and thread, doing a neat job!

As for the big kids' schoolwork ... in a coincidence that hasn't happened before they are both studying the same topic: American History! I hope to take advantage of that with some joint activities. Jeff and I both LOVE this topic and I can't wait to go through it with both kids.