Letter of the Week – Bumble “B”

I’m still playing catch-up, I think we did this one last week.  We already had a couple of Bee books at home so no trip to the library for us:

This is a cute book about a grandfather and his granddaughter who go chasing after bees to find their hive in a tree.  Along the way others from the town join in the chase.  I stumbled over quite a few names – I never did figure out the nationality.  It has a nice moral at the end – reading a book is just as good of an adventure as running around outside.

This book was a gift from Grammy for Jacob’s last birthday.  It has moving pictures so you can see the bee’s wings flapping, the dog running, etc.  It’s a cute simple story that teaches us that bees help the flowers and trees grow so we shouldn’t be afraid of them.  The last couple of pages list a bunch of bee facts.

Here are the boy’s making their Bumble “B”s from No Time for Flashcards:

Johnny working away.

Jacob loves the glue.

Our little observer.

Johnny is at the perfect age for these crafts 3 1/2.  Jacob usually gets frustrated at some point and has to go to his room to cool down for a little while. 

Our Newest Family Addition

Zoe is a one year-old Chihuahua.

Letter of the Week – A is for Alligator

 

I was inspired by my friend Monica to start doing  “Letter of the Week” crafts with my boys.  She led me to a wonderful site, No Time for Flashcards, which is full of craft ideas, book suggestions, songs, and so much more.  A couple of weeks ago we made an Alligator A:

 

To go along with the Letter of the Week theme we read two books about Alligators:

We loved this book so much that I ordered it for our home library.  It’s about an alligator who comes creeping, creeping, creeping up the stairs and into the children’s apartment.  The children are scared at first, (Who wouldn’t be if they were faced with a real live alligator?), but in the end they pluck up their courage and tell the alligator to GET OUT!  Now whose scared?  I love books like this where you can really put a lot of drama into the reading and the boys loved running away from the alligator.

 

The boys loved this book.  After we took it back to the library Johnny still asked to read it.  I didn’t care for the ending.  In the book Kristen’s parents accidentally bring home a baby alligator instead of her baby brother.  Then they bring home a baby seal.  Then a baby gorilla.  Finally Kristen has to go and get her brother.  I realize that soon enough my kids will think that they are smarter than me, but I don’t care to read a book to them over and over right now that promotes that.  So that’s why we won’t be adding this to our collection.  Oh and it’s not available new from Amazon anyways.  :)

We also read through this alphabet book:

There is a different animal for each letter of the alphabet.  Even xoona moth for x.  The illustrations were beautiful, but I read or heard somewhere this week that it’s better to save books where the letters aren’t in a clear typeface for when they are older.  This book incorporates each letter into the illustrations.

Also I discovered that we own a toddler ABC Bible:

We read about the angels appearing before the shepherds for the letter A.  They have a short 4 line story for each letter along with hand motions.  Then there is a short poem.

The following weekend we took a field trip to see an alligator.  Sort of.  We decided to drive out to Tempe that Saturday and have lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.  The boys got to see the mechanical alligator biting at the coins out front.  They thought it was neat.  I had forgotten how it feels like you are eating inside of a Disneyland ride at that restaurant.

 

Bowling

Yep that's what we did today. We went with our Moms of Faith group and had a blast! Johnny did not want to leave. I had to promise him that we would go again when we visit Aunt T in Vegas.

All ready to bowl!

Johnny got a spare!

Jacob's ball got stuck halfway down the lane.

Myanna slept through all the fun.

My Princess

Friday Morning.......

........Johnny and Jacob decided to get up at 4:30 and Myanna got up at 5:00. Here is everyone at 7:00:

3 cups of coffee later we went to Berean for storytime at 10:30. The boys laid on me the whole time. They perked up after lunch at McDonald's and didn't want to go home. :) It's now Sunday and I can't remember if we got a nap that day or not.

Summer Reading - Week 1

We headed over to the library on Tuesday after music class. I already had 2 books reserved for the boys and then I let them pick out 2 more each. Here's what we ended up with:




The boys and I love this book! They make choo choo noises while I read it. It's also good for learning colors and the names of the different types of train cars. I will be adding this to our home library.





I thought this would be a hit especially with Jacob since he loves dogs, but it was just okay.









Love it! Jacob grabbed this book because of the elephant. It's just a simple board book with photographs of different animals and their names. I was surprised at how many Johnny knew since it goes beyond the typical dog, cat, chicken and has a penguin, owl, and fox among others. When he got to the hen he called it a "cock-a-doo" which was cute. If we didn't already own several similar books this would be one to add to our library.







I didn't mean to, but I reserved this book from the library. We own two other Jesse Bear books that I really love (Better Not Get Wet, Jesse Bear! and Jesse Bear, What Will you Wear?). This book was cute, but I really like the way the other Jesse Bear books have unique internal rhyming schemes and they are just fun to read. Now this would be a good book to go along with learning about different family relationships or if you wanted to create a family tree with your child. `


I am so not a fan of Seuss. Jacob liked the zebra on the front of this book. I let them choose a few random books when we go to the library. I only put them back if I think they are offensive (like the one around Halloween time with the witch stirring the cauldron). But I think I'm going to have to skip the Seuss section from now on. This book is about the 20 or so letters of the alphabet beyond Z. It was hard to read, and the boys were so not interested either. Except for one page with a picture of about 20 nutches in nitches and Johnny pointed to each one and I had to say "nutch in a nitch".




The boy's both love this book. I'm not a fan of books with TV characters. Jacob picked out this book and Johnny immediately stole it from him. It's neat in that it goes through all the steps of getting ready for bed - brushing teeth, going potty, etc. What's funny is that it asks what song you sing at bedtime and Johnny answers with this song that I can't figure out. I'm not one to sing him to sleep. :)`