The Smith Family Adventures

We had a lot of fun studying Ff this week. One day this week as I was talking to Elias, I asked him what words he knows that start with F. He named the words we had studied already (flowers and friends). Then I asked him if he knew any more words that start with F. He said, “F is for fuh….fuh….fuh….kangaroo!” Well….at least he knows what sound F makes even if he isn’t really connecting it with the beginning sounds of words yet.

Saturday: F is for Flowers

Elias filling the pots with potting soil…or “we’re doing dirt!” as he put it.

Saturday morning my husband went fishing so I was home with the boys. I took Elias to the Fred Meyer gardening section and allowed him to choose some flowers to plant in deck pots for our balcony. He had a lot of fun picking out flowers. Later that evening after my husband was home to watch the baby, I took Elias out on the deck and we potted the flowers together. He loved it! Every day since then, he has wanted to water the flowers. Unfortunately, it has been raining so he hasn’t had much of a need to water his plants!

Adding some more soil after we potted the plants.

Smoothing out the soil to get it ready for plants

Watering his plants

Elias wanted to show his plants to the camera

Proud boy!

Sunday: F is for Fire

Sunday was Pentecost so I thought that F is for Fire would be appropriate. I made us grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and I surprised Elias with a birthday candle in each one. He was delighted! We explained to him about the birthday of the church, and then he got to blow out the candle…his favorite part!

Monday: F is for Friends

On Monday, Elias got to make a gift for some of his friends. He is part of a play group on Tuesdays. He chose a paper mache box of a different shape for each of his friends. Then, I got out our tempra paints, and let him paint away. He loved painting of course! On Tuesday, we gave them to his friends to take home.

Tuesday: F is for Frogs

On Tuesday we sang lots of frog songs. Elias’ favorite was Five Little Speckled Frogs

Wednesday: F is for Father

We sang the “Our Father in Heaven” song which is the Lord’s Prayer set to music. Then, we talked about how Father is another word for Daddy, and he painted a big letter F which will be part of a Father’s Day card for his Daddy. I won’t put a picture of the finished product so that it will be a surprise for Daddy, but here you can see him just starting out:

Thursday: F is for Food

Today we played with his wooden food. We prepared breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and pretended to eat it. We also went grocery shopping in the evening and talked about the food we were buying.

Friday: F is for Fishermen

Well…I don’t think I would be considered a Bartle if I did not include fish in some way this week. Tomorrow we will play with Elias’ fishing pole. Since it is the Bible lesson day, I am going to read him the story of Jesus telling the fishermen to cast their nets again, and they get more than they can carry!

This week was Ee week in the Smith household. Elias liked it because his name starts with E. He kept saying, “I start with E!” I think Elias can definitely hear the sounds in words, but often he only talks about words we’ve used in our study rather than applying it to new words. But he’s only two after all. He seems to be most interested in talking about the letter B and words that start with buh. Almost every time I brought up the letter E this week he either referenced his name or wanted to talk about Bb.

Ee was a difficult letter for me to think of letter of the week activities so I had to break my trend and do both long and short E. I have been trying to only do one sound per week (only short a, only hard c, etc.), but I could not think of enough words for either long or short e, so I just did both.

Here were our Ee activities:

Saturday: E is for Egg

I got out our plastic Easter eggs so that Elias could play with them again. He loved opening and closing them, counting them, and putting them in and out of the basket. He tried putting them inside each other, and mixing colors. He had a blast, and wanted to play with them all week!

Sunday: E is for Eagle

Nathan’s adult coed slow pitch softball team is called the Screaming Eagles. I decided we would go cheer on the Eagles during their game. Unfortunately, it was raining so we didn’t get to go. I couldn’t justify taking a two year old and a three month old out into the rain just for an alphabet activity. Oh well.

Monday: E is for Elmo

I let Elias watch a little bit of Elmo’s world, and he colored some pages of his Elmo coloring book. We also talked about all of the Sesame street characters and what color they are. Elias said his favorite color is red like Elmo.

Tuesday: E is for Endangered

I read Elias some stories about Endangered animals. I tried to explain to him what endangered means, but I don’t think he really got it. We chose some of the animals that we read about, and searched for pictures of them on the internet. Then we printed them out and Elias colored them. He chose a tree frog, a manatee, a panther, and a gorilla.

Wednesday: E is for Elephant

We went to the zoo! Unfortunately, it was raining on this day as well, but I figured that we are in Oregon after all and we aren’t afraid of a little rain. Elias had a blast at the zoo. He knew we were going mostly to see the elephants, so every time I tried to stop at an animal on the way he just said he wanted to see the elephants first. After we had watched the elephants for a good long while, he named some other animals that he wanted to see. His favorites (besides the elephants) were the polar bears, the otters, and the leopards.

Lily playing with a ball!

Eiias watching the elephants

We witnessed an optical illusion while viewing the giraffes.

Thursday: E is for Elias

I couldn’t resist using Elias’ name for one of his words this week. I bought a canvas and let Elias choose some paint colors at the craft store. Then I used masking tape to spell his name on the canvas, and let him paint over it. When it dried, I took off the masking tape so that his name showed. The tape did not work as well as I had hoped. There are splotches of paint underneath where the tape was so the borders are not smooth. I will have to go over the borders in black or dark green paint before we hang it on his wall, but I think it will turn out pretty cute in the end. Elias certainly had fun painting it!

Friday: E is for Elijah

Our Bible story for the week was about Elijah. Lots of good stuff, and the stories are relatively new to Elias .

We had a lot more fun this week as we continued our alphabet study. At one point during lunch, I asked Elias what letter starts the word “dove.” He replied, “D says duh duh dove.” I think he was partly just mimicking some of the things I say. But the point of this whole thing (along with having fun) is to make him more aware of letter-sound correlation, and I think it is starting to help.

Here is what we did this week for the letter Dd:

Saturday: D is for Dinosaur

Elias loves dinosaurs so I wanted to be sure to include this one. We had a dinosaur book with magnetic dinosaurs we had purchased a few months ago. We didn’t know exactly what we were saving it for…so we gave it to him to play with during quiet time today. Elias loves asking what the name of each piece is. He also enjoyed placing the pieces in the book, and hiding them in the rocking chair.

Sunday: D is for Dove

Pentecost is coming up in a little over a week. We made a slightly early Pentecost decoration! I printed out four dove templates, and got out a variety of red, orange, yellow, and gold art supplies for Elias to choose from. He made fiery doves to hang around our house. Elias must have been in a coloring mood because he chose to decorate two with crayons and one with markers. He did add some variety, though, and glued some puff balls onto the fourth one! He used a lot of glue so I had to let that one dry over night. I tried a few different ways of hanging the doves, but settled on a garland of sorts. Elias wanted to use the fiery pipe cleaners so I connected the doves together with those and hung it on our wall. At breakfast time most mornings this week, Elias has commented on his doves.

Monday: D is for Daddy

I couldn’t resist D is for Daddy, especially since Elias doesn’t get to see his Daddy much on Mondays. (Nathan has class at PSU until after Elias is asleep). We drove down town and had a picnic with Daddy on the waterfront during his lunch break. The weather was gorgeous, and the extra time with Daddy was priceless.

Tuesday: D is for Drum

I had planned to make and decorate a drum together on this day out of a recycled can or something of that sort. However, we did not end up doing it. Both boys napped until pretty late in the afternoon, and once Elias woke up, I didn’t really want him banging on a drum with Simon still sleeping. I figured skipping one day out of four weeks so far wasn’t bad…and we can make a drum another time.

Wednesday: D is for Dump truck

We played with Elias’ dump truck today, and played outside in the dirt. Lots of little boy fun!

Thursday: D is for Dinner

Elias made place mats for our dinner table today. I told him he could decorate them however he wanted, and he chose water colors. I did not take pictures of them, but they were very simple. Elias water colored a few pictures, and I covered them with clear contact paper on both sides. Voila! Place mats for our dinner table that can be easily wiped and cleaned!

Friday: D is for Daniel (and the Lions)

Tomorrow will be our Bible story. I chose Daniel and the Lions. Elias already knows this story so he will have fun hearing it again.