Letter of the week: Aa

I am getting ready for this week and, since its fall, have decided to do the letter A so that we can do apple and autumn. Using index cards I wrote "I see a/an/the" (one word on each card).  Now I am printing pictures off the internet of words that begin with the letter A: angel, ark, animals, aardvark, alphabet, acorn, ant, acorn, apple, and ape.  I will put one picture at a time at the end of the sentence and let Lillian "read" the sentence.  The first couple I will need to demonstrate, then we can do a couple together, and then she should be able to read the sentence on her own by the third day or so.
I have also gathered up some Arthur books for us to read.  I am planning a trip to the orchard to get some apples and we'll be making apple ring (flatten biscuits, put a little cinnamon, butter and sugar on them, top with an apple ring and bake.  Easy for kids to make!  In addition, we can cut an apple in half to see the star shape inside, examine and count the seeds, and do floating experiments with the apples.
Another activity we'll do is play matching the alphabet (an "a" word!) - simply matching uppercase and lowercase letters.
We went out in the woods this past week and picked up acorns in preparation for this weeks activities.  We can also use the acorns, along with the apples, to do science (float, magnifying glasses, etc), but in addition we can use them for math: adding, subtracting, cover up a number and have her tell me what number is covered; they can be used lots of ways.
I have an apple cutting sheet to provide cutting practice, and am making a large apple cut out so we can write fall words on them as we think of them the next couple of weeks.  This way if she wants to write about a fall activity she'll have the words to refer to!
It's such a fun time of year and there's so much to do its hard to get it all in!

P Week

We are currently making a list of P words.  It is an ongoing list that we add to each day through out the week.  Lillian loves thinking up words to add.  Often we will be out and about or in the van when she thinks of them so they don't always make it on the list, but at least she's thinking about it all the time.  At the end of the week I will tape her list to the wall so it is handy if she wants to refer back to it.  As she tells me a word I try to draw a little picture beside the word so she has a picture clue too. 
We read If You Give a Pig a Pancake and then we made PINK PANCAKES in the shape of a P.  The kids enjoyed them and it was easy to do. 
We have also read Peter Pan and we have Pinocchio out to read tomorrow. 
Another fun activity we did was to pick up PERSIMMONS and then we made PERSIMMON PUDDING. The kids always love it when they get to cook and they were a great help and enjoyed the activity. 
Lillian was sick this week so we still have one activity left to do: PAINT PUMPKINS!  This is fun to do outside and is easy.  I will incorporate math too by getting a variety of sizes and colors of pumpkins so we can sort them different way, group them, add them, and graph them. 
For snack tomorrow we are going to have PEANUTS.  It is fun to get these in the shells for the kids to break.  Most kids don't realize peanuts come in the shell.
Our last activities will be to make PATTERNS using our pattern blocks and cut out shapes I have and to read a fill in the blank chart about PETS.  Then we will make a PICTURE of our PET. It's going to be a busy weekend!