O My!

Arthur working on an opposites file folder activity.

 I'm not sure where the time has gone, or how the month of July seems to just melt right through my fingers every year! We managed to get a few things done...like 'O' and oh was it ever fun! 

We filled our O week with opposites and octopuses and had a grand time. 

 We did a couple of octopus crafts this week. For this first one we traced Arthur's hands (minus the thumbs) right next to each other and came up with this eight legged hand print! A few Cheerios later and voila! 

I love how this little octopus turned out!

 This was one of our alphabet review games, the kids (ok, really just Arthur) try to make letters out of pipe cleaners and Popsicle sticks.

 

 More opposites review!

 Arthur is left handed which makes cutting with scissors quite awkward for him. I try to add some cutting practice into some of our preschool crafts, but he tires of it really quickly. I wonder if there is a help for left handers out there when it comes to cutting. I know they make left handed scissors, but what about cutting practice for left hands? Would it just be the same as right handed? This is something I need to research more. Chris is left handed and he hates cutting things out. Doing it seems to be pretty slow and tedious for him and I'm hoping that I can get over that hurdle with Athur.

 Our second octopus, which now hangs over Arthur's bed right by his jellyfish from letter J week. 

I love that the suckers are just circle reinforcement stickers from the office aisle at Target, it was a fun and easy way to make an awesome octopus!

 This activity went along with our opposites studies. We called it 'Sink or Float'. We started with a bowl full of odd items from around the house or outside- small rock, feather, empty TP roll, ball, jar lid, baggy clip, pen lid, snack bowl, cotton ball, marble, sponge, etc... and a tub full of water. 

 This was a pretty straight forward experiment- determine what items sink and what items float. 

 Arthur put the objects in one at a time and we made some interesting observations!

 Stella was a riot! She got so excited about this experiment that we had to leave the tub of water out for the rest of the day just for her sake! 

 We categorized the objects along the way and learned a lot about buoyancy! 

 Happy and sad were two of our opposites so we made our own smile and frown masks and we sang 'If you chance to meet a frown'. 

 

 It is so fun to get to know Arthur a little bit better through our preschool lessons. For instance, Arthur will rarely enjoy coloring anything, but he usually likes drawing. He complains about cutting, but gluing is great fun. He sometimes tells me he is just too bored to keep doing some activity that we are working on, but he LOVES to learn about animals. It is really his favorite part of our preschool week! We always learn a new animal that relates to our letter and he will eat up everything I can teach him about any kind of animal, then he will insist on 'being' that animal for the rest of the day (and usually much longer than that). 

Here he is being an octopus hiding in a sea cave.

 

 This fun opposites activity involved wet and dry. We mixed lots of corn starch with water and used our hands to try and mold it. It was pretty cool, as long as you are moving the mixture in your hands it feels powdery and dry, but as soon as you stop it melts like goo through your fingers! 

'O' my!