Q-tip painted snowflakes

This morning we painted snowflakes as part of our winter theme.

The kids used q-tips instead of paint brushes, but on his second one Lucian mostly used his fingers.

Winter is here

Fittingly, it's "winter" week this week. Friday it was so warm it was raining, but yesterday the cold hit and we have wind chills in the -20 degree range now.

This morning I put three bowls of water outside for about 90 minutes which did not freeze solid as I thought it would. It did make ice shells though which is all we needed for painting. 

Each kid got some washable paint, a brush and an ice chunk and they were able to experiment with painting the ice, watching how the paint rain more as the ice melted and painting inside as a hole formed in the top.

More penguin worksheets

We did some more penguin worksheets today. There are so many adorable penguin crafts, but the kids aren't really big enough for them yet. Maybe next year we will spend two weeks on penguins.

First we did an ABC dot-to-dot penguin. Sutton could see the shape and just drew it without realizing what we were doing, but Lucian understood the purpose behind it.

Then we did two pages from this Do-A-Dot Penguin Pack. My color ink should be arriving today, so my pages will look better soon! I think we will do some more from this pack even after our Penguin week is over since the kids like it so much.

The kids love anything having to do with Do-A-Dot markers. I make them wear jackets/old shirts when we use them though because they do stain clothes.

If you need some of these great markers you can always get them on Amazon. That's where I got mine last year. They look like this and if you click on the image it will take you to the Amazon search for these types of markers.



This is what their worksheets looked like when they were done.

Penguin worksheets

I'm feeling unwell this morning, so I switched to worksheets today instead of a project. I think I spent more time cutting things out for the kids, than they did doing the worksheets!

I downloaded this winter learning pack and love it! It has a lot of great worksheets that we have used and will use in the coming weeks. It's free to download once you sign up. I just selected the two (actually 4) pages we wanted for today and printed those out. I'm out of color ink, so my sheets don't look as cute as they could, but the kids liked them anyway.

Cotton ball penguins

This morning we used this great template to print out penguin shapes. I am out of color ink so I had to use a marker to put the feet on. Then the kids glued cotton balls, beaks and eyes on their penguins.

Penguin feet

Today's project was to make penguins from footprints.

I painted each kids foot black. I did my own kids' twice because my mom loves penguins so she needs a set of these. The kids held each other's hands and giggled since it tickles. 

Once they dried I quickly had Sutton help add an eye, drew on the belly and glued on a beak. Then while the kids had dance time I cut each one out. 

Penguin puzzle

After almost two weeks of being off schedule I'm struggling to get us back into our routine today. I actually did have stuffed planned for last week, but we all shared a virus and didn't do much of anything except rest and play with the kids new Christmas toys.

This week was supposed to be week two of penguins, but I ended up just picking 5 of the things I had scheduled. 

Today I am easing us back into things with a simple penguin puzzle and we will read a penguin book during reading time later.