Time for the Terrificness of "T"

 The Tea Table and the toy Tiger in this of course are the two "T things" shaped like their big and little t's.... the girls like to figure out which objects in each chalkboard are the capital and lowercases of the letter in question.

 And their chalkboards are on the right!

 Totally adorable.

 They also did some chalkboard designs for "T week" on the chalkboard side of their craft table.

 The 9 year old created a teepee as well all on her own to go with her American girl doll.  She really likes the American girl doll Kaya and has been listening to those books on CD recently.

 We hit on a cooler day to go to the arboretum and the children's garden that has a skywalk with info about all the trees along the edges of it.  We traced leaves and wrote about trees in our visual journals.

 They had fun with putting these in different shapes to create their own "garden maze" of sorts.

 And of course finding and reading as much as we could about trees!  They also have this pretend hollow tree with a spiral staircase in and around it which is pretty fun for the kids... see video below about how fun that tree area is!

 "T Week" happened to be the time when we started doing "Life of Fred" math together.  My oldest two do it together and the 4 year old just sort of plays along and enjoys it but doesn't get what it's all about.  Well, they learned about Archimedes in the Life of Fred and when we were at the children's garden they got to see an invention that he came up with! 

 How do you get water to go up hill?  You use this device of course.  ;)  We'll visit the water section again for sure during "W week"  :)

 My 9 year old has expressed interest in learning more about counting money so I got her a special game with coins and my 7 year old has expressed a great desire to learn how to tell time.  SO, I got this "Time Telling Game" which has turned out to be very exciting for them.

 Also, their Grammy got them all (even the 4 year old though she's not in the picture!) watches so they can practice telling time!  In a very short time they've come quite far in knowing how to figure out the clocks around our house!  Now at random moments the 7 year old with announce what time it is.  She usually gets it right too!  But if she doesn't it's not a big deal to explain the time and how to figure it out.

 More pictures of my decorating and organizing.  That wall used to be just the dark color of the wood.. also the inside of that cupboard that's open used to be the dark wood color.  It looks a little yellow in this picture, but it's not.  It's just a marble looking white.  I'm getting carried away with the chalk boards and covered that white board with chalk board paper.

 I couldn't remember if I posted this or not, but chalk board paper is now on the little black table for the two younger kids... this is in our living room.

 They are having a lot of fun with that chalk board.  It does get dusty, but personally, I'd rather have the dust then the smell of a white board or the more difficult things to clean up that are art related.

 My 9 year old impressed me greatly with this picture!  The school she's been doing has helped even with her drawing abilities not just her writing skills.  :)

And, random... what happens when Grammy gives us her snail and then later realizes that said snail had laid eggs in her tank and now there are about 30 teeny tiny snails all over?  You adopt them as well!!!  The girls named the mamma snail "Roxie" and the baby snails "The Rockets"  .. So, say hello to the Rockets.  ;)

 Drinking some morning tea while doing her work today.  We've had a lot of tea parties recently and morning tea with school has been nice for everyone.  Here, my oldest is just finishing one of the books in the B series.

And as these were helping my oldest so much with her drawing and observing skills I thought I'd start my 7 year old as well!  She just started the 3rd book in the A series today.
This series is on sale right now actually and you can see them here - www.dyslexiagames.com 
Personally, I like how it's teaching good skills for penmenship and so on without it just being more writing.  It's fun and good for your brain to figure out how to complete the pictures!