Fun for "F" week

Here's our chalk board for the week.  People say that I'm a good artist, but I never "feel" like I am.  Honestly, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing... and I just start.  In this case I started with the shape of the fish.  I get some ideas from children's picture dictionaries or from alphabet books.  The large "F" was originally a flower, but that didn't seem to make as much sense as the flag.  My 8 year old helps me think of words that start with "f" and we just keep adding until there isn't any room left.

 I neglected to get a picture of my oldest's chalk board.  She did a lovely aerial view of a frozen river with the two sisters from frozen and then wrote the word frozen with icy letters.  I'm happy to see my 8 year old being excited about words and books now.  Last year, you know, she was miserable with school and after a year of backing way off on the reading (As in, not making her do any!) it's amazing to see how much better she is!  No we hadn't practiced reading at all, but when I had her read again over a year later she read much more smoothly and quickly.  She just needed to be a little older.  Her brain needed to develop and then it became easier!  Now she's been reading for 20 minute chunks a day for the library summer reading program and she's able to finish three or four days worth of reading when last year she probably could only do one or less in that amount of time (yes torturous back then!)  Biggest thing is that she doesn't hate it!  It's not her favorite thing yet, but she's making progress and interested in continuing.

The weekend before "F" week actually started with a fun day in the country with our small group from church and the girls got to go fishing for the first time!  They all caught a fish too!  The middle one was the only fish we kept though because we couldn't throw it back.  The hook was too far down it's throat.  She was a little sad that we couldn't throw it back and I didn't want to waste it so I decided we should try to fillet it and bbq it!

The littlest and her friend wanted to touch the fish and eventually wanted to touch the eye ball (it was totally dead at this point and had been in ice.)  No one there new much about cleaning and filleting a fish so my husband and I just sort of winged it.  He looked up some info on his smart phone and we just did it!  I never would have tried to do that even 7 years ago.  I must be getting much braver with age. ;)

"F" week started out with a new window display.  This is great to keep them busy and happy while I get some other things for their school set up. 

 Things that I can't really take pictures of that we did were the many "f" books that we read.  Basically anything that has something that starts with "F" -- we mostly focused on frogs, flowers, and fish.  We watched a pretty show on Netflix of flowers.  So, they got to see the flowers blooming all sped up and it had lovely music.

My 3 year old was excited about her fishing pole from the dollar store.  I didn't get a picture of her using it in the pool, but she had a lot of fun fishing and it matched the theme of our week so we went with it.

And again with the fishing pole now while wearing a frog floaty.

Elephant for "E" week and a Dolphin for "D" week... we got these along with the frog floaty just for fun.

 While we drive to a place or while we are talking through out the day we sometimes talk about what words we can think of that starts with the letter of the week.  We had a fabulously fun freaky froggish Friday with fun flowers and fortuitous face paints. 

This picture is just for the Aunt and Gramma that might want to see their new swimsuits and the middle one's new goggles.  They said she now can swim like a frog under water because she doesn't have to plug her nose.  ;)

Her favorite fish floaty that had a hole in it and she could only use this once.

On Thursday we went to the arboretum with Grammy!  This branchy tunnel is always really neat.

The frog fountain seemed like a fitting place to stop and play!

They got a bit wet, but it was so hot that day that it didn't matter at all.  This picture reminds me of "The frog Prince" which we read this week along with some other fairy tales.

Sniffing a flower

Their children's garden was pretty fabulous and chalk full of educational areas

One area was the parts of a flower and they got to put together these giant flowers! 

All complete!

The next flower they got to put together was a hibiscus.

The flower puzzle all done with some real hibiscus flowers behind them!

A display showing the parts of a flower

Pointing at some tad poles

Checking out the fish in one of the ponds

 Besides reading some books on frogs and flowers the girls watched some "Magic School Bus" shows on netflix about frogs.

The end of "F" week was some fun with face painting.  I didn't really plan this actually.  At least not in advance.  My husband got facepaint to use at work for some dress up thing they were doing for fun and I happened to see a fabulous face painting book at the library that I grabbed.  So we got some fun ideas. 

The middle one in process by the Daddy.

The oldest in process.  Her Grammy did hers.

Everyone worked on Daddy's head!  He's getting a fish and fishbowl.

She was so excited to work on Daddy

The owl mask all done

The teddy bear all done.

I put flames around my eye to be all festive with the kids.

So, after all the face painting we basically just went to the store and then they all wanted the face painting off.  But then thought it would be fun to have a flower instead.

Adding a flower to the teddy bear.

And a flower for the little cutie watching frozen for her rest time.

Super fun origami project.  You can find the directions here, and there are some ideas for how to play games with them.  They actually jump!  They even flip and sometimes they jump high and sometimes they jump far.

The game we played was to get the frogs to jump over the "water" to the "lilypad"-Even the little one was able to do it!

Our cat "Fluffy" thought the frogs were pretty fun too.  She played with them a bit more before the video though.  Now she's being all cool about it.
Of course, one of our books for this week was from animal antics  (It's too bad I'm not getting paid for advertising for them!)  They are super great books!

Another good fairy tale to look into is "The Fisherman and His Wife" -- here's a video of it  Here is an old translation of it, but there are many versions of this old tale to find at a local library or online (Even readings of it on Youtube!)
  This is one of our favorite versions.  I like the theme in the story as they learn to be content in this one with what they have already and we liked the characters illustrated as cats since we incorporate a lot of cats into our school because of my daugher's interest in them.