Pumpkin Patch Shenanigans.

I'm keeping up with my trend of being a day late and a dollar short. My life is just a bit busy at the moment, and since it looks as though it has no intention of letting down, we'll just move on.

We recently went to a local pumpkin patch/farm with a bunch of our friends from church. This has become an annual tradition for our family and something that I look forward to every fall.
(You can click here to see our trip from 2013, which also includes links to all previous years as well... all the way back to 2009!).

When our group decided to go to a patch we'd only been to once before, I was a little sad we weren't sticking to our traditional place. But also knew that the place the group had picked would be better suited for Tyler, who is an animal lover extraordinaire. The kid LOVES animals. He kept squealing in delight going up to the goats and pulling their faces close to his (1. GROSS. 2. Thank goodness these goats were so patient. No one lost fingers).


In case you get our Christmas card this year and wonder why we didn't get professional pictures done, this is why. Tyler Paul wants nothing to do with sitting still.


Tyler was the only one who asked to ride the ponies. I convinced Connor to ride, but he seemed like he was doing it to amuse me more than out of desire.


The corn pit was a huge hit with all 3 boys. I should just dump loads of deer feed into a big pit in the backyard. This kept them entertained for HOURS.





Drew and I took the big boys on a wagon ride while Drew's mom stayed back at the corn pit with Ty. The big boys LOVED getting to feed the cows tortilla strips.

they're serious about their tortilla snacks, y'all.

I would pay money to see the front side of Brayden's face in this pic. I can tell his jaw is wide open. I think he was probably second guessing his decision to get so close to that nasty cow tongue! ;)

We spent a little bit in the pumpkin patch. Honestly, by the time we made it to that part of the farm, all 3 of the boys were just a tiny bit pooped. It's a wonder I got a picture of just the bigs by that point.




(not quite sure how he grew up so quickly. Someone tell him to stop; this is obviously not ok).

So grateful we had another fun year at the pumpkin patch. The only thing I regret is that we didn't get a family picture this year, or a picture of the boys with their Mamaw. But considering no one got lost in a corn maze and no one had a goat bite a finger off, I'm calling it a good day.

10 Kinetic Kindergarten Sight Word Recognition Activities.

In case you're wondering, the first two months of Kindergarten have gone quite well. I think I've had to adjust more than Brayden, who has fallen into the routine and changes better than I could have even imagined. He absolutely LOVES school, LOVES his teacher (we do too!) and LOVES learning.

One thing that I was not prepared for was the amount of creative energy I would need to exert in the afternoon, which has historically been the lowest point of the day for me. I have to sift through the paperwork, the folder and the lunch box, and then try to organize a 15 minute activity for Brayden to do. Thankfully our Kindergarten teacher gives a lot of ideas and guidance on how to direct our time. But in talking with my friends, I have found that this is not the norm. This leaves parents to have to sift through all of the online ideas of sight words and letter recognition on their own, or do nothing at all.

So I thought I would share with you a few of the ideas that we've used to help Brayden master his sight words. Brayden tends to be a kinetic learner, meaning that if we incorporate some type of movement with his learning, he tends to learn and retain the information better. Here are a few ways that we've incorporated movement with learning.



1. Fill a ziplock bag with finger paint (roughly 2 tablespoons). Using tape, secure the bag flat against a table or countertop surface. All your child to draw the letter or sight word with their finger. Brayden LOVED this, but I did have to carefully watch him, otherwise I'd find him trying to poke holes in the ziplock bag.

2. Fill a casserole dish with salt or flour (salt's less messy IMO) Allow your child to draw their letters or sight words in the medium of choice.

3. Sight word/Letter garage. This was probably Brayden's most favorite way to learn. I used several pieces of letter sized cardboard and taped them together in a trifold. Then I wrote down all of Brayden's level 1 sight words, and would call out a sight word and have him "park" his Hot Wheels in the garage space. The great part about this way to learn is that it can also be used as a simple list. Sometimes Brayden just wanted to use a pencil as a pointer, and point out the words.

4. Play sight word HORSE (the basketball game). Our teacher actually gave us this idea. She recommended having the child bounce the ball to each letter in the sight word, then shoot once it is spelled, yelling the sight word out as the shot is made. We only tried this once with Brayden. Surprisingly, he wasn't as interested and asked if we could do the hotwheels garage instead.

5. There are A LOT of printables and worksheets out there on the internet that you can take advantage of. Brayden is hit or miss with worksheets. Somedays he LOVES them, and some days it's like pulling teeth. My favorite sight word worksheets were actually created (and free to download!) by Confessions of a Homeschooler. You can find the worksheets HERE. The reason I like these worksheets so much is that (a) the quality with which they are made is great (b) they involve a variety of learning mediums, including sight, writing, cutting and pasting. I feel like this covers all your bases in the learning department so that your child learns thru various methods.

6. This isn't exactly kenetic, but we have had good success with it so I thought I'd share. Our teacher actually suggested this as a way to practice letters. Create small flashcards with your letters/sight words on the cards, and then lay them flat on the ground, facing up. On top of the cards, lay a reward (a small candy, like an M&M, or a penny). For each sight word or letter that your child gets right, they get to keep the prize. Brayden LOVED this game, as candy is a BIG treat in our home.

7. Draw the sightwords on the sidewalk with chalk, and call out a word, having the child run and JUMP on the sight word.

8. Use a dry erase marker to write sightwords on the back of a cookie sheet. Then give your child magnetic letters (I found a set of magnetic alphabet letters for $1 at Walmart in the toy section) and have them "fill out" the words with the magnets.

9. Our teacher gave us this idea: Write the sight word on an index card with white crayon (I found that this turned out better if I wrote the word instead of Brayden), and then have the child paint on the index card, revealing the sight word. This was one of Brayden's favorites, and I'm convinced it was this along with the hot wheels garage that helped the sight words "click" with him.

10. If we were having trouble with a word, Brayden and I would make up a song to spell & say the word, and would sometimes clap. This engaged him with both movement and sound (I think he is also an auditory learner, so a lot of times I would combine the two learning styles).

One thing to note: a lot of times I would chose the most boring way to work on the words. Then on the ones that he struggled with, I'd use one of the more fun ways (paint, hot wheels garage, etc) to work on the harder ones. This kept him engaged for the entire time we were working (we'd work no longer than 15 minutes). Also, I split up the words into groups of about 6 at a time, and then when he'd conquered that group, I'd move on to another group, als reviewing the first group he memorized. When we first started, I was trying to do the entire list at once, which was frustrating for all involved. Breaking it up helped Brayden feel like he was accomplishing something, and didn't discourage him with a large amount of failure during one sitting. The pic on the left is of Brayden on Friday after he recited his sight words. His teacher has a "race to the moon" for all of the different levels of learning (capital letters, lowercase letters, letter sounds & sight words).



Do you have other great ideas to teach letter recognition and/or sight words to your preschoolers and Kindergartners? Be sure to leave a comment if you do...I'd love to hear them, and I'm sure my readers would too :)

(This post is linked up with The Mommy Club on Milk & Cuddles)

Five on Friday.

Well, I tinkered with the idea of blogging every day in October (apparently there are blog hops that give you prompts or help you develop a theme to go with the month). It sounds fun. But it's just not in the cards for me right now. I figured I would give you a little glimpse into our world this week though... Five on Friday Style.

{ONE} Drew was gone all last week on a business trip and unfortunately was delayed an entire day thanks to all of the drama in Chicago last Friday. On Sunday when he was loading the kids in the van he opened the door and said "WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED IN HERE?" My lone response was "we survived." That pretty much summed up my week last week (which included one of my children putting a rather big piece of cardboard up his nose and casually telling me it was stuck there. Imagine learning that bit of information in 5:30 rush hour traffic.... I'm just thankful that we got said piece of cardboard out AND that I was able to coach my son through the process without getting in a wreck.)

{TWO} Tyler has mastered climbing. To the top of our tree house. He's so proud of himself. I feel like I am so numb because other moms freak out slightly when they see this picture and I'm like "whatever, man." (I do stand closely by though... I don't trust him alone up there). I also thought that I should blare "Climb Every Mountain" from the Sound of Music. That kid will indeed climb every mountain. He is about as determined as they come!

{THREE} I recently downloaded Timehop. Baby Connor makes me into a big puddle. WHY DO THEY HAVE TO GROW SO FAST!!!!???

{FOUR} We're big fans of tubed yogurts for the kids lunches. It's just easier and cleaner than sending it in a bowl. The boys were DELIGHTED to find out I had stocked up enough Go-Gurt to redeem the UPCs for these awesome yogurt sleeves. They're neoprene and keep the yogurt cold in their lunches (we freeze the tubes too). I'm fairly certain that the rebate is still going on, so if you have TMNT fans in your house, you should get these! I've already had two moms at the preschool ask where I go them from... and have I mentioned that they're FREE?!

{FIVE} And finally, we survived a middle of the day tornado warning without daddy this afternoon. It was quite interesting since I didn't even hear the sirens until Drew had called to tell me that I was under a warning. After I strapped the helmets on the older two boys, Connor said "we should take a sad face picture since there's a tormado".

Thankfully, the bad weather brought in a bit of a cold front, so it's finally going to feel like fall (I'll probably regret saying this once the cold weather is here to stay). The unfortunate thing though, is that our football game on Saturday morning is going to feel like we're playing in Antartica. Wish me luck on that one! ;) Hope y'all have a great weekend!

I'm linking up for Five on Friday on A. Liz Adventures.