Peter Pan Week

During the week of 27 Feb- 2 March we were busy doing activities relating to the book Peter Pan. Here are the two main books that we read:

The children really love the story of Peter Pan and so they were very motivated to participate in the activities. Some of the things that we did were as follows:

• Peter Pan preschool printables from Homeschool creations. These printables included included tracing, identifying initial sounds, graphing, identifying rhyming words, measuring height of clock towers, reading a short story, pre-writing activities and matching the digital time with the analog time on clocks. Go here for Peter pan printables from Homeschool Creations

Joshua doing the tracing activity

Jed tracing. The crocodile is trying to get to Captain Hook.

Jed doing the graphing activity

Making the characters into popsicle stick puppets

Taping the popsicle stick to the character

All the popsicle puppets

•  Playing the Tick Tock game, where the children are the actual tokens and they move around the gameboard identifying the time on the clock that they are standing before they can throw the dice again. The boys loved this game and we are very thankful to Living Life Intentionally for the great game.

Here's Joshua playing the Tick Tock game with Google looking on

• Making Big Ben from popsicle sticks and a mason jar lid or CD for the face of the clock.

•  Making a Peter Pan dagger. It was apparently Peter Pan week 2012 in Britain too during the week that we did our Peter Pan theme. J.M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan gave the copyright of his book to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Every year they have a fundraising week and do things relating to Peter Pan. I was able to get the template for the Peter pan dagger from their website.

•  Frequent reading and re-reading of the book.

•  Lots of fun dressing up and taking turns being in character. The favourite characters were aptain Hook and Peter Pan. The characters of John and little Michael were also explored.

John in his nightgown with his glasses, hat and umbrella.

Little Michael in his night clothes and his teddy bear.

•  Going on an expedition like John and Little Michael did with the Lost Boys.

John going on an expedition

John and Little Michael playing "following the leader" as they enjoy their expedition.

•  We also enjoyed a Peter Pan movie night and watched the original animated Peter Pan movie. Of course no movie night is complete without pop-corn !!!

The Snowy Day

Jed: 5Yrs  1 Mnth / Joshua : 3Yrs

As part of Before Five in A Row (BFIAR) we did "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats. The book follows Peter as he enjoys a snowy day and has numerous adventures. The boys loved the book and also enjoyed the activities that went with it.

We included the following in our exploration of this book:

• Playing with snow on the kitchen table
• Having an expedition to the frozen creek and shovelling the snow off the creek to find the ice below.
• Making tracks in the snow like Peter
• Having an indoor snowball fight
• Playing with shaving cream and pretending it was snow
• Decorating snowflakes with glitter glue
• Painting a picture of Peter and the snowy tree

Joshua painting the snow for the background for his picture

Jed painting the snowy background

Joshua in his fort with his sock "snowball"

Jed hiding out in his fort

Joshua in action throwing his snowball

Jed enjoying the snowball fight

Joshua painted his hand "brown", like Peter in the book

Jed's brown hand

Joshua's handprint

Jed's handprint

Playing with shaving cream "snow"

Getting hands all snowy - without the "cold"

The clean-up

Playing with real snow

A baking tray full of snow

Superman making tracks in the snow

Decorating snowflakes with glitter glue

Jed's snowman

Joshua's picture of Peter using a stick to hit the tree

Jed's picture of Peter using the stick to hit the tree

We all really enjoyed the hands-on activities that went along with this book.

Websites for more ideas:
Delightful Learning
Creekside Learning - The Snowy Day

Sick in bed

For the last three days, I been watching the world from my bed. I've been sidelined with a horrible flu and have not been able to do more than grunt and groan and drink ginger ale. My body aches, my head hurts and I'm coughing like a hyena. But despite being ill, I'm aware of God's grace and all the blessings that he bestows on us. Maybe these few days in bed have been what I needed to reflect and be reminded again of God's love.

Days are long, years are short

 Well it's been a while since I posted. Well a "while" is not quite accurate but I'll leave it at that. I've been settling into my resolutions for this year and increasing my blogging posts was one of the things that I want to do. So here's a post for today. Just some pictures of Jed and Josh. I'm really trying to enjoy my days with them and treasure their childhood. Some days are more successful than others. Today was a good day, however, despite water messed all over the kitchen floor, toilet paper reams spread throughout the bathroom and refusal to wear winter boots. It was fun nevertheless and I am reminded that sometimes the days are long but the years are short. Jed will be turning 4 tomorrow and I can't believe that he is so old already. Only 14 more short years before he is out the house, I pray that God will help me consider and treasure the moments we have together.