N and O!

For letter Nn, we read books about nests, numbers (counting), names, and nature.

Before making our narwhal handprints, we looked at pictures and videos of narwhals online.

 We went as a family to a local nature center and went for a nature walk.  The highlights:  the taxidermy wolf in the center, watching chipmunks scurry around, and investigating cattails.  Ever since then, Sam likes to "bless nature" in our prayers and asked to go see nature again.  He's a outdoorsy guy at heart, just like his daddy, and has been since he was born when he loved to stare at the leaves on trees.

 I guess we were in a silly, open-mouth mood during our dot marker letters for Nn.

 Tracing Nns.

 Tracing lines.

 Color word matching and coloring nets.

Stringing noodles onto yarn for necklaces.  Sam strung a bunch, but did not want to make a necklace.

 Anna was more than happy to model her necklace.  She started the AB (green,yellow) pattern all on her own, and I just helped her continue it after she got a few on the string.

 Sam loves to sort things, so I try to incorporate this often when we do letter stuff. I dyed the noodles the night before.  It is super easy- all you do is put some food coloring and rubbing alcohol in a ziplock bag, then noodles.  After shaking to distribute the color, you lay them on paper towels on a cookie sheet to dry.

Since Sam didn't want to use the noodles for a necklace, we wore other necklaces around the house. This picture makes me smile.

Sam and Anna also love using playdoh, so we used number stampers this week in our playdoh.

Sam and Anna also ate nuts and lots of noodles.  You could say they are noodle nuts. :)

We did dot marker names- and Sam and Anna surprised me at how well they stayed on the lines.Seriously, I have kindergartners (5 year olds) who aren't this precise when I do this activity at the beginning of school.  All the letters we've done must have really built their eye-hand coordination with the dot markers.

We also did name puzzles.  This wasn't too hard for them because they have short names.  We did it together, I had them match the letters with a sample page, and then they did it on their own a few times.  Sam was being a little silly-excited when he did it all by himself without help, as you can tell.


For letter Oo, we read books about oceans and octopuses as well as owls.  I also read This Old Man and There Was an Old Lady to Sam and Anna.

 Octopus handprints.  We counted the legs to make sure we had eight.

 Sam and Anna made ocean scenes with our foam stickers.

 Dot marker O and o.

 Tracing lines.

 Tracing Oos and coloring objects that start with o.

 Color word matching and coloring.

We ate olives and spaghetti-hotdog octopuses!

 We spent lots of time outside, as usual.  One different thing we did was read our new library books outside.  45 minutes later, I had to tear the two of them away (because my back started to hurt) from sitting and reading books.

Octopus size sorting.

 Octopus counting.  Anna is clapping for herself because she put 4 on the mat with the number 4.

We didn't watch much of the Olympic coverage on tv (because Sam and Anna just don't watch that much tv), but we did color the Olympic rings. 

We didn't make these this week (they were made a month ago at our county cultural festival), but we took out our Olympic crafts to wear since the Olympics fell during our O days. The bottom of the "torch" is a water bottle with the bottom cut off, wrapped in foil.