Lila Doll Review

The Wee One has two goals in life:  To be a bakery (yes, a bakery) and to be a mom.  For Christmas she asked Santa to bring her a pacifier doll.  Santa spent countless hours reading reviews of dolls and putting them in and out of her Amazon cart.  Finally, with a week to Christmas it was do or die for that pacifier doll, which she had not stopped talking about.

Here is what we, Mr. and Mrs. Clause decided would be the perfect doll:

Corolle Lila

Those Corolle dolls get me every time with their sweet smell and cuddly bodies and then I look at the price.  It's a good thing I had a major coupon for Creative Kidstuff or I would still be looking.

When she threw up her hands and screamed, "Pacifier baby!"  that is when I knew I nailed it...or so I thought.

We are almost 3 months removed from Christmas and while she loves her pacifier doll, Carly, it is not her go-to doll.  The Wee One still has a soft spot for Ladybug's first Coroelle doll.  She is often annoyed with the crying and turns Carly off, which is totally fine by me - You've never heard a parent say a toy is too quiet.  The pacifier and the bottle are easy to insert in the doll's mouth, but I wish the pacifier would have come attached to the wrist or with a clip. We ended up using a ribbon to tie the pacifier to Carly's wrist after I spent hours (hours!) searching for it.  The doll is a good size, soft, and smells divine.

Overall I think this doll is a good doll and far less annoying than a lot of other interactive dolls.

Rrrr, I'm Gonna Eat You - March Work

This month we have been talking about food chains and dinosaurs.  Honestly, I am not too interested in dinosaurs as a stand alone topic and neither is Ladybug, so to appeal to more than one person in this family I have attempted to combine the two.  

We started the month talking about herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores and the dinosaurs that fit into each category.  The dinosaur toob has been a great resource for this month.

Each time I have introduced a dinosaur I have given a fact sheet and a coloring sheet from Enchanted Learning.

Match the carnivores with the picture and name.  Each dino has their name on the underside.  We also discussed features that made the carnivores alike.

We have also talked about the animals that are not extinct.

After Mister and Ladybug had a good grasp of what eats what we moved on to who eats who with food chains.

Simple Food Chains 

Apparently a cactus grows in the savanna.  Mister and Ladybug pick a producer and two consumers to make a food chain.

More Complex (Complete) Food Chains

Chose the pictures to make a food chain and label the omnivore, carnivore, or herbivore.  

Art

How to draw a dinosaur!

Math

Number writing practice because who doesn't love a white board?

Fill in the missing numbers on the dinosaur eggs.  This was defiantly a challenge activity for Mister and Ladybug.

Game for two

Literacy

Dinosaur egg sight words (Mister's word) .  Ladybug is reading Biscuit books (her choice) and Mister is reading sigh word readers.  

Sight Word Soup - This game is played like Scrabble Soup, but with sight words.  Each sight word is written on a card and a chip.  One person picks the top card and shows the sight word.  The players put in their spoon and scoop out sight words written on wooden circles and blank circles.  When they find the the sight word they call it out and put it on their board.  When the cards are all gone the person with the most wooden sight words wins.

Practical Life - Name Writing

The Wee One

Two of the things on her shelf

Sensory

Dino feet prints

Dinosaur eggs

March?  Not so much in the tundra, which is why we are still in our pajamas in some of these photos.  I mean it's hard to get out of them when the windchill is still hovering around 0.

C is for...

I have been feeling a little bit guilty because I haven't been as focused on letter sounds as I was with the twins.  She knows more than I thought, but it's no where near what the twins knew at her age.  Granted she knows more about numbers, one-to-one correspondence, and science than her siblings and her interest in letters and phonics has only recently emerged but that mommy guilt is an awful feeling.

We attempted letters in the fall when she first showed interest, but her enthusiasm was short lived so I backed off.  Now that we have started again we have covered CMAT with a focus on the sounds of the letters rather than the letter name.

Letter C

Powder Puff  Clouds

and a Cupcake

There are no more sprinkles left on her cupcake. Smelling leads to eating and eating leads to a bare cupcake.

Cloud Writing

I must remember to tape the handles in the future.  

Writing Practice

We have work to do on that grip!

Car Painting

Cookie Monster Counting

Cookie Eating for my my own Cookie Monster

These were 20 minute oatmeal and raisin cookies and if I could remember where I found them I would give you a link.  

February Leftovers

A little of this and a little of that from February.  By the way it was really cold last month, which meant zero motivation to get dressed and less laundry for me!

Practical Life

This was a great activity to practice the pincer grasp.  

Math - What is Valentine's Day without candy heart activities?

Sensorial

Candy heart sorting.  How many do you think were ingested during sorting?

Literacy - A lot of sight word practice this month.

The Wee One's letter practice - Letter M

Art - Watercolor coffee filter hears

March - Rrrr I'm Gonna Get You!

Long time no see.  Lots of stuff, to get technical, going on over here and it has left me with little energy to do anything other than veg when I have free second.

Mister and Ladybug are loving the Magic School Bus chapter books and we are reading about food chains and food webs.  Mister has taken to dinosaurs to the "delight" of his sisters so we are combining the two this month.

• Green rice
• Fish aquarium plants
• Pom-poms for rocks - Our rocks are under a few feet of snow and frozen to the ground.
• Blue petri dish - lake
• Big rock - mountain
• Blue paper - river
• Pipe cleaner - waterfall (Mister's idea)
• Dinosaurs
• Funnel
• Spoon

I was informed that I forget the source of all energy: the sun.

All About Money - Part 2

Here are the final activities for the month of January.  Overall I think it was successful and challenging for Mister and Ladybug.

Math

This was done as a group activity because it involved mixing coins.  Often kids will count all the coins by 5s or 10s without looking at each coin.   We started off with easy, single type of coin counting before moving onto two harder coin counting.  

The next are activities are either independent work or one-on-one work depending on how Ladybug or Mister's knowledge.

3-part matching

File folder game matching sticks to the correct pocket.  

Money Mix-Up.  Each coin bag had a slip of paper with an amount and the correct coins had to be matched to each bag.

Literacy 

We put literacy on the back burner to focus on math.  While Ladybug hemmed and hawed all month, Mister was very excited.  The next two activities were done in order.  The first was matching words to pictures and it became increasingly harder from there.

Fill in the missing letters and stamp.

Stamp and write - two challenge words

Practical Life - Penny Cleaning

• Dirty pennies
• Salt
• Vinegar
• Water
• Paper towels

Mister and Ladybug enjoyed sprinkling salt on the pennies after they were dipped in vinegar and rubbing to see the changes.  You could also mix 1 teaspoon of salt in 1/4 cup vinegar and drop the pennies in for about 10 seconds.

Art - Design your own money

I hope you found something you liked and can use this month!

More More Money

The Wee One, who is only 2 years younger than Mister and Ladybug, feels frustrated that she can't do the same activities so I always try to give her some things along the same thing.  I am amazed at what she picks up from Mister and Ladybug's work, but I want her to feel successful at her work on her level.  Here are a few money related activities on her shelf.

Money transfer

Money imprints - First she used her hand to make the dough flat and then used a roller.  

Where does it go?  For some reason the Wee One loved this activity and she made me make more cards.  She had to match the coins to correct pattern.  As an extension we counted each type of coin.

Making A Piggy

What I am going to say you may not believe, but I promise the next activity is not a huge mess to clean.  I mean it's no bigger of a mess than most things we do and to tell you the truth I asked myself what I was thinking doing this with two 4-year-olds and a 2-year-old.  

Papier-Mache!  (DUN DUN DUN)

If you didn't immediately click out of this page then check out these cute piggy banks made from tea boxes.

Ingredients - Just in case you haven't papier-mached since elementary school

• Equal parts flour and water
• Torn paper - We used paper bags
• Box or balloon to papier-mache
• Big bowl

After we mixed our flour and water until we had a paste mixture, I showed Mister, Ladybug, and the Wee One how to put the strips in the mixture, remove the excess, and place on their box.  The Wee One was hesitant because she didn't exactly love the feeling of the flour and water, but she came around when she saw her siblings have a blast.

Was this a bad choice for pictures?  Again, don't be afraid of the mess because it wipes up easily.  I also stuck them in the shower for easy kid clean up.

These took at least 4 days to fully dry and harden, but they were amazed at how hard the boxes were.

After the boxes have fully dried I cut a slit in the top for coins and a flap on the bottom to remove the coins.  They painted them and let them dry for another day.

We added a nose, eyes, ears, and a tail for a finished papier-mache piggy bank.

And in case you were wondering about the girl's fashion we had chose your own clothing adventure.  She was very creative.

Enjoy!