Z

Z is for...

Zoo!  Jase definitely had the most fun with this last letter!  We're all done with our alphabet!!!

Y

Y is for...

Yak!

X

X is for...

Xylophone!

W

W is for...

Walrus!

V

V is for..

Vase!

U

U is for...

Umbrella!  We're nearly to the end of our alphabet!

Brainy Baby Goodies

We were SUPER lucky to win one of the giveaways over at 1+1+1=1 for their 1,000 Subscribers Celebration. We won an Animal Puzzle game, where each animal has 3 separate puzzle pieces to match up, and on the opposite side is the name of the animal that you can use to learn how to spell.

It was also the perfect prize for Jase, seeing as how he loves animals and has been working on his letters and just beginning to spell, now.

Something a little.. odd happened, however, and when we received our prize in the mail, it ended up being 5 Personalized CD's to children that I have never heard of before. Somehow our prize got messed up with someone else's order! I contacted Brainy Baby right away to let them know what happened and WOW, their customer service is absolutely amazing.

Not only did the lady that I worked with apologize over and over for the confusion (hey - this was a giveaway! it's not like we were missing out on too much!), but she insisted on making it up and having us choose an additional item from their website. I went ahead and picked the similar Numbers memory game that they offer, since numbers are the next thing that I want to start working on intensely with Jase. I'm keeping these saved for Christmas, though.

So, you'd think that'd be enough, right? Obviously not in her opinion! When we received the package, not only was there the Animal Puzzles and the Numbers Memory Game, but she sent Jase a Brainy Baby T-Shirt (which you can see him wearing in the photo above) and 3 of their books for Preschoolers (1 of which is also being saved for Christmas)! Like I said, the customer service offered at Brainy Baby is so incredible. Go check out their website to see all of the awesome products that they have!

Now, I'm going on and on about how amazing Brainy Baby is, but none of this would have even been possible without the amazing family over at 1+1+1=1 for hosting such a great assortment of giveaways! We are super, super thankful for their kindness - so be sure to check them out! They always have some really amazing ideas for toddlers that I love to use with Jase.

T

The Letter T! For T Day, we made a Train. Jase decided that the cars of the train were holding animals, so he drew cages to keep all of the animals in.

Jase also helped his Grandma make Taco Dip. After stirring up the mix, he...

Spread dip and the lettuce...

Sprinkled Cheese and Tomatoes...

and made one big clump of black olives =]

S

The Letter S! For our S Day, we made this Snake. We also read " Secret Seahorse" by Stella Blackstone, but moved quickly onto our next letter, so we didn't do much else besides our Tracing and Find a Letter worksheets that we do for each letter.

By the way - each day, we've added a letter to our letter chain when we finish up. We erase the letter from our whiteboard, say "Bye Bye S!" (or whatever letter it is), and then add that letter to this chain, and it's getting quite long! I picked up the cute letter stickers that hold the paper chain pieces together from Michaels in their $1 section. Jase has a fun time trying to find the letter of the day in all of the stickers (and hasn't seem to caught on to the fact that they are all in order.. lol) I plan on using the letter chain possibly as a review of the entire alphabet once we finish all of the letters up.

Q & R

Q is for Quail! We really didn't do anything else for Q, so we combined it with...

R for Rabbit! We also made a Rainbow by going through a bunch of magazines and cut out items of individual colors and then he glued them on in the appropriate areas on the rainbow. He did such a good job at it, and I really like how it turned out. I was expecting it to take just an hour or so, and we ended up doing it in 3 different sessions of 2+ hours each, so be prepared to spend a lot of time on this project! Also, have a lot of magazines on hand - this took about 10 magazines, and towards the end I ran out of Family themed ones and had to switch to fashion magazines, which led me to saying, "No, let's not put bras on our rainbow.." along with a bunch of other.. "adult" themed items..lol.

P

Wow, were really behind with our posting. Hopefully I can catch us up a litle bit today. For P day, we made a Penguin and read the book "Penguins, Penguins Everywhere!". I also came across this yummy recipe for Peanut Butter Patties over at Glamour Moms. Click on her link below to go see it - I strongly recommend it! It sounded like quite a bit of icing, though, so we cut the recipe in half for the filling part and still had some left over, so unless you like a lot of frosting, you could probably do the same!

Last, Jasey has been really interested in photography lately - he always wants to use my camera and go around the house and take pictures of everything that he can. Since it was P Day, we went on a walk to the Park and I let him take the camera along to work on his Photography. Below is a collection of what he has picked out to be his best pictures.

O

Yesterday's (2nd) letter of the day was ..

O! Since we combined 2 letters in the same day, not many other exciting O activities happened.

Also since we did N and O on the same day, I combined all the books we read onto the same carousel. Ignore the "Q" sound box - it was the closest Amazon would let me get to an "O" ;)

N

Yesterday's letter was..

N! Can you tell what our letter is? We had to get pretty creative this week, but Jase is really having a lot of fun adding new elements to his letters lately! He's really doing good at all of his letters now, so we will probably pick up the pace and start doing at least 2 a day - especially when they are easy letters like O (which I will post in just a minute!).

If you've never been over to her site before, you should really check out Katie's Nesting Spot - we just won one of her giveaways for Chiquita smoothies and we are so excited, especially since I would have purchased this item either way, now we get a couple for free! Check our her blog at:

M

Yesterday's letter of the day was..

M! (oops! We are a little late in posting!) We "stole" this idea directly from -

so I gotta give them credit for how well it turned out!.

We've never shown a picture of it, but we're taking all of our letters and making them into a border along the wall - here's how it's coming.

Halfway done!!!

For M day, Jasey made Muffins all by himself! All I did was Measure the Milk and put it in the oven when he was done - he stirred it all up and scooped them out into each cup - I didn't have to assist him at all! I was sure a proud Mommy!

Mmmmm!

Here's the books that we've read most recently -

"Marshmallow" wasn't at all what I was expecting, and was definitely too long to keep Jasey's interest the entire time. He really seemed to enjoy "K is for Kissing a Cool Kangaroo", however, and since it covers the entire alphabet, we can read it anyday that we want! Of course, we still have the favorites on hand and read them over and over and over.

Muffin Tin Monday - Making Faces with M's

Today's theme for Muffin Tin Monday was "Faces", so I tried to incorporate that with the letter of the day - M!

First off, there was Macaroni and Cheese with a Ketchup and Mustard smiley face (it's a lot harder to draw with Ketchup and Mustard than I thought it'd be! lol) Then there was Marshmallows, Maraschino Cherries, and Mandarin Oranges. I told Jase to use those 3 things to make any face that he wanted. Here's what he came up with -

I was so impressed that he did it all by himself, without any guidance what so ever!

He didn't like the Maraschino Cherries, but he ate everything else! I wanted our last picture to be a picture of a "Milk Moustache" face but he didn't want to be messy, so that didn't turn out :(

If you want to see what other households are doing for Muffin Tin Monday, click on this button!

L

Today's letter is...

L! Jase had a blast putting a bunch of hair on his Llama. We also made some Lasanga, and Jase helped me put on the layers, and then Lime Sherbet for dessert.

As a non-L related trip, we went to go see some hot air balloons. Except, it got rained out, so we only got to see a few :( And most of those were tethered to the ground. Oh well!

K

Today's letter is...

K! We definitely haven't updated for awhile, but were back in action again! For snack time, we ate some Kiwi and Grape Kabobs (pictured below).

Our K books are waiting for us at the library, so hopefully we can get there tomorrow while they are still open to pick them up. After we got done with everything else, Jasey still wanted to do more crafts, so he got to pick between a Kangaroo or a Koala Wreath. You can head on over to http://www.dltk-kids.com/world/australia/maustraliaanimalswreath.htm for the instructions to it. I decided to use tissue paper instead of rolls of paper and I really like the look of it a lot more - looks just like leaves! Here's how ours turned out:

Let us know what you think! =] We love to get comments! (I'm not sure if anyone else was having problems leaving comments - I received an e-mail telling me that there had been some problems, so I disabled the word verification - hopefully this helps!)

Tone Matrix

I wanted to share this excellent website that will fascinate both you and your children. It's called Tone Matrix and it's incredibly simple to use. My 3 year old LOVES it, and I've heard feedback from people even saying their 2 year olds can't get enough of it.

It's a simple 16x16 grid that you can click each square to light it up. Once the square is lit up, it will produce that tone, ranging from low (at the bottom of the screen) to high (at the top). Left to right determines at which point in the "song" this tone will play. It's so confusing to explain, so really - just hop on over and try it out! It takes any jumbled up piece of nothing and makes it into something you'd hear from a symphony. The link to this webpage is: http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Let me know how it goes with your little musicians!

By the way, at the beginning to show Jase how it worked, I set up a "beat" for him, as you can see in this video. Then he draws a .. rocking chair. haha.

J

Today's letter is...

J! An extra special letter, because it's the first letter in Jase! Jasey spent the weekend at my parent's house, so grandma and grandpa had to help him with his J activities. They made Jello Jigglers, Jack Cheese Sandwiches (I believe - did these ever get eaten?), and my favorite - Strawberry Freezer Jam! Jase was obviously a big help in making the jam...

Adding the Strawberries...

and then the Sugar...

Stirring it all up (two bowls at once!)

Pouring them into containers, annnddd...

All done! (Complete with his cheesey smile. It's impossible to get him to give a normal smile lately.) Best of all, you don't even need to get out of your Jammies to do it =]

---------------UPDATE:---------------

We went ahead and added a little more to our Jellyfish - it now has a face (a little hard to see) and some water to swim in!

I

Today's Letter is...

I! After making this Ice Cream I, we had a bowl of Ice Cream and Jasey got to decorate it with all of the sprinkles that he wanted. Which was a lot. We didn't have a chance to get to the library lately, so "Isaac the Ice Cream Truck" is still waiting for us there - too bad we won't get a chance to read it for I Day, because they've shortened their hours and they just don't work as well with us.

H

The continuation of the letter...

H! I already had posted our Muffin Tin Monday to show what H foods we ate for H day.

We also worked on decorating the House, so below you can see the two paintings that Jase did, to add to our wall in the dining room. My aunt had given me the center picture(s) as part of a graduation present, as well as an entire matching bed set that she made herself. I've always wanted to decorate an entire guest room around these, so hopefully when we move, these can hang in a bedroom instead of our dining room.

Here's the books that we read today - "Hector's Hiccups" was waaayyy longer than I expected it to be - I had a sore throat by the end of the book by making the hiccup noises. I didn't realize that it wasn't a preschool-ish book until we started it. "Ho for a Hat!" was another H book that we read today, it was..different, but we probably read it 4 times, so it must have been pretty decent. Jase especially liked the "guest appearances" of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Toto.