It's a small world

One of our favorite things lately is small world play.  He loves to pick a place and we spend an hour or so collecting everything we need and building him a little world for hours of fun.  Usually he's so invested in it that we don't finish nearly everything we plan.

This time, we wanted a pumpkin patch!

All pumpkin patches deliver by train, right?




He was literally in the middle of this before I got the tracks put together.  There's a petting zoo on the right (we added a mud puddle for the pigs later) and the pumpkin patch is in the middle on the left of the table.




This is a terrible photo (we added this later) but it's my favorite part! This is our cinnamon stick apple orchard :)

One adventure after another!

Fort building




 and over-ripe tomato bowling!




Writing,




 Music lessons,







Steam Engines,



Caboose rides....




and *maglev trains!  It's been a full week :) How on earth is it only Thursday?



*For those of you who spend less time in a train museum than I do, a maglev train is powered by magnets and floats above it's track rather than running on wheels using a more traditional fuel source.

A little fall fun

At the Nature Center






Making apple trees on the light table and talking about changing seasons




Then he got mad that his tree didn't have any roots, so we had to fix that :)




A little math, too!




And a contact paper tree with some pretty leaves to decorate and redecorate.

Overheard last night

Dad:  It's time to brush your teeth.

Chipmunk:  I don't want to.

Dad:  But you have to take care of your teeth so they stay healthy.  Do you want them to all fall out?

Chipmunk: YES!!  They're going to fall out anyway.

He's decided that he's ready

...and he let me know.

We make things available to the Chipmunk and let him know to bring them to us when he's ready to look at something new.  He's been talking about building words and reading for a while now and he's definitely recognizing and sounding out some words.

Today, he brought me his letter box :)

He chose the words and asked me to help him sound them out.  I only corrected when something was really off.




More words!




A Proud Chipmunk who won't stop spelling for me to take his picture :)




*sniff sniff*

down....

Down.....




 Down....




Down.....



PLOP!

Bloogs blowing by!

"Think of black water.  Think up a white sky.  Think up a boat.  Think of bloogs blowing by."

Dr.  Suess



Empty cardboard box leads to cars, ramp building, boats, crayons, and a request for someone to draw "bloogs blowing by".  And an afternoon of fun!

We pulled a few carrots today

We're still really enjoying our garden :)

We decided today to pull up most of our carrots to make room for some fall veggies.  We put in seeds for broccoli, brussel sprouts, and lettuce.

It's kind of a miracle we got to bring any of them home.




Can't complain about that!!

Turtle tracks

We decided this morning that we needed more time at the beach!

The Chipmunk dressed for the occasion - he loves crabs :)




Some sand, shells, sea glass, and animals and we were in business!




He made turtle tracks in the sand and had a long, wonderful play.

Back to business

We had a wonderful holiday weekend and a great break and the little man was ALL business this morning!

His new magnet puzzle was a big hit...it's double sided and the other side is a skeleton.


"I think this is me. Is it me? IT IS ME!!"

 


He wanted to draw some letters...I think his pencil grip is improving!




I managed to sneak in a little counting and number recognition.




...and a PILE of books about mountains and caves.  Here we're using our TOOB animals to talk about who might live in that particular mountain habitat.  It seems the bear has just caught a fish :)



He was a busy little guy this morning - we also took a long walk with the dogs, watched the hummingbird family at the feeders, took care of his baby doll for a while (her name is Fred), and played trains.  It's never dull!