Ocean Week 1 and 2

Well Ocean week started two weeks ago, and we are still struggling to get started.  For some reason we just aren't home that much anymore.  These girls keep us busy with their school, and social activities.  At this point I'm debating whether or not to drag ocean week along for another week, or just let it go.  We have butterflies ready to hatch soon, so I was thinking of doing a bugs and butterfly theme while that was going on.  We'll see how tomorrow goes.  

Alli is wearing her hearing aides, but not really talking.  I'm a little worried, because it seems she should be learning some words by now.  She is getting a lot better with sign language thanks to the signing time DVD's.  I have realized that she learns much better through iPad and TV.  She's been having speech therapy twice a week since September and it just doesn't really seem to sink in much.  She likes playing the games, but totally ignores the sign language.  Then you put a signing time DVD on and she's doing all the signs right along with the show.  It wasn't until she found an animal app with sounds on the phone that she started repeating actual animal sounds.  So I figure this is just how she learns.  She must be really visual and tactile.  Which makes total sense when you have hearing loss.   

In Keira news she is starting to talk up a storm (book, ball, fish, duck and maybe water), in her own way of course, and she is walking!  Not full time, but definitely walking.  Several times today I have come into a room only to find her walking across the room all by herself.  She's a late walker compared to her sisters, who both walked at 12 1/2 months.  Keira is 15 months, but all that chunk must be hard to carry around so she deserves a break for being a little late.  :)

Anyway here are a few photos of our Ocean unit so far...

The girls were very excited to see the new theme when they came home from school, Emily especially, played with the felt set for quite awhile.

Then she moved onto making a craft.  This one is a mermaid.  It wasn't long before we headed outside to play.  

                          We started off with some fishing..

                    Then moved into the big pool to cool off

Not ocean related, but we finally got our relaxation grotto, thanks to Matt moving his work stuff downstairs.  :)  I love it here!   

Water play is over, and we've moved onto the magnetic ocean puzzles.

I finally got Alli to try an activity, and she is humoring me, by putting glue on one piece of paper.  

So she matched one animal, and then spent the rest of the time gluing her hands and then picking the glue off.  Paper projects are just not her thing.  

 Emily is loving this math counting and measuring game we are doing.  So she is measuring ocean animals and recording how long they are.

We used math links to measure, so she counted each cube and that's how long the animal was.  She loves counting activities.

                                    Meanwhile trouble lurks...

Alli decided to hang out a little longer and "color" a jellyfish.  

Then we moved onto celery painting the rainbow fish!  Remember that celery we used for rainbow week?  Here is the rest of it.  :)  

                    Trying her hand at little celery stamping...

Another counting game.  Count each animal and put a clothes pin on the correct number.

                                   The next day's set up...

Keira started off with the do a dot markers, and quickly was banned for eating them...

Emily doing another mermaid craft, which involves sewing and I have no clue how to sew.  She learned a little bit in Montessori school, but couldn't quite remember.  There is another fish project that requires sewing too, and I'm going to have to get Matt to show us how to do it.

I made an ocean in a bag for Keira.   Which they all liked, and Emily even made her own bag, and took it to school to show everyone.  This was really popular, but Keira and Alli both wanted to get inside.  I have the top duck tapped, but Keira got inventive and bit through the bag which of course sprung a leak.  And then it had to be confiscated.  

 Working some do a dot activities.  In this one she is supposed to follow the arrow to the end of the page.  It doesn't just go in rows either you have to pay attention to what direction they are going in which was a little hard for Em, as she sometimes got on a roll and didn't always follow the arrow.  

Marking which animals live in the ocean

This do a dot page you need to follow the blue whale to the end.  I had a whole stack of these pages, and Em just blasted through most of them in no time at all.  

Alli actually tried the rainbow fish celery painting, but it didn't last long before she was mixing up the paint and painting herself.

                              She just loves to get messy!

Once the finger painting and clean up was over, I set up this tub with water, droppers, cups, spoons, and trays.  

Playing with the ocean puzzle

Earlier in the day I had set up this contact paper and pattern blocks area, and this is what Emily made.  Pretty cool!

 I set up an invitation to play with Plah Doh and some gems, buttons, and seashells.  Both girls really liked this one.  Of course Alli just rolled hers up and tried to stick it to her clothes.  In this picture is Emily's rainbow fish.  

                             A little creature Emily made.

Another hot day, so out by the pool we went.  Emily sunscreened herself in case you didn't notice the thick white paste on her arms.  lol!

                                         Bathing beauty

So that was about 3 days worth.  I have a lot more pictures to go through, but this post is very long so I will do those another day.

Rainbow week all wrapped up

Well here we are at the end of Rainbow week part 2.  I find that two weeks for each theme seems to be working out best.  We tend to have some days where we don't work on our theme at all, because we are just too busy.  We had doctor appointments, school, play dates, and activities all week, so finding time to do our theme work isn't always easy.  Plus Keira is going through some major clingy phase right now, and it sure makes it hard to get things done.  But we do the best we can, and did manage to get a few more projects done.  

In Alli news she is still a little resistant at first with the hearing aides, but the good news is I can put them in both ears now, and she will wear them!  It helps a lot if she is distracted of course, and there are still times she rips them out pretty quickly.  But we have had many long periods of her wearing them, so I am hopeful once again.  Plus yesterday while watching signing time, she was really interested in doing the signs, and trying to say some of the words.  Yay Alli!!

Update:  I had this post all written out with pictures and captions etc   Unfortunately somehow my computer shut down and didn't save any of it.  So I'm attempting to rewrite this post. But I'm so frustrated because I had written so much and it was such a long post.  Anyway, let's try this again...


Our first activity was creating a rainbow, while learning about color mixing.  Emily added blue, red and yellow to the water with uncolored water in between.  

Then we rolled up a paper towel like a snake, and draped it in all the cups.  Eventually the colors start creeping up and into the uncolored water making orange and green.  

    We read a book on how rainbows are made while we waited.

                                      And, It worked!!  

Alli actually joined us so I gave her a do a dot page to do.  She only used one color lol!

It didn't take long for her to get bored, so I gave her the Elmer activity again.  I think she glued maybe pieces of paper on, then spent the rest of the time gluing her fingers together.

I tried this shape activity with her, but she either wasn't interested or it was too difficult.  I think she can do it, because she can match just fine, so matching shapes shouldn't be too hard I wouldn't think.  She still has glue on her hands, and you can see she is still messing with that.  She was too fixated on that glue.  

                                           Meanwhile...

                               Looks like it's break time!

So the girls went to bed, and I took the opportunity to set up another experiment.  This one takes awhile so I wanted to get a head start.  The celery is supposed to take on the color of the water it is in.  It's pretty cool.  The blue and green did the best.  Red and orange were weak and muddy looking and so was purple actually.  Yellow didn't really show.  :)

While the celery was cooking, Emily appeared.  She was in bed, but apparently Alli had escaped.  I heard Alli in the living room, but thought Matt had let her out, thinking there was no way she would sleep.  Apparently Emily told Matt she was just going to go get Allison and bring her back to bed, but instead she saw me in the kitchen and asked to do an activity.  Well thinking she was out legitimately I said yes.  Come to find out later when Matt came out looking for them, that that wasn't the case.  Whoops!  Anyway we ended up doing this pipe cleaner noodle color matching rainbow activity.

Once the noodles were on the pipe cleaners she made a rainbow

Then Alli showed up, and started to put noodles on the pipe cleaners too

                                "Look mom, it's a purse!"

The noodles were soon abandoned, and she started to try and put the pipe cleaners in the Styrofoam.  It was a little hard for her, they kept bending.

                             I love that concentration face!

She was getting frustrated, so I gave her some colored craft sticks instead and that worked much better.

Emily decided to add on to her rainbow, with flower noodles.  

The next day we did some colored ice and salt.  I gave them the colors, a paintbrush and a syringe.  Alli painted a little bit, but mostly made a mess with the paints.  

Emily was pretty interested but she really only wanted to use yellow her current favorite color.  I kept trying to get her to try mixing the blue and yellow to make green but she wasn't too interested. 

Keira got her own ice, but wasn't allowed any paints because she consumed her project.

                                    Starting to mix a little bit...

                   And then, just dumped the whole thing in...

While we still had our colors out, we made a rainbow "xylophone"
She made orange, green and purple on her own, but color mixing. 

   Playing "jingle bells" on the xylophone... She got some right notes.  :)  

 I let Keira have a turn, but quickly took it away as she was determined to knock the glass down.  :)

And then we used our colors again, for some more color mixing and baking soda/vinegar fun.

 I tried to give Keira something to do.  I thought she might try color sorting but she had other ideas.

So, again Emily made the orange, green and purple.  Right now this is just baking soda and liquid water colors.  

                      Then we added vinegar with syringes...

                        And Alli ended up staying a lot longer to play.

                                  Our celery experiment!  

                                          Meanwhile...

                         
                            A tea party to finish off the night.

That is the end of rainbow week!  Next up Ocean Week!