T is for…Thrift fairy and St. Therese.  After reading Serendipity’s Flower Fairy story, Joseph and William colored pictures of the fairy.  Joseph also did some copywork from the poem that is in the Flower Fairy book (which he did while listening to the Flower Fairy CD).  Then we looked up the actual wildflower in our field guide.  We read about Saint Therese in our Alphabet of Catholic Saints.  Joseph did some copywork.  We also used the picture from the book to practice the letter formation.

T is for…the letter T.  We practiced letter formation using the Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book, Do A Dot, Gray Block paper, and Pin Punch letters.  We listed as many words as we could that started with the beginning sound /t/ and then the boys got a little adventureous and decided to list words ending in /t/…excellent letter-sound practice for William.

T is for…tessellations.  It just so happened that one of our RightStart lessons this week was about tessellations.  So we made tessellations using squares and then rectangles.  Joseph tried using octagons and found out that he couldn’t do it.

T is for…tracing.  Joseph loves the Rod and Staff preschool workbooks.  There are quite a few coloring pages in there, so he traced around the outside edge of the pictures and then colored them in.

T is for…trees.  For art apprecation, we studied paintings of trees and then using their pastels, each child replicated a painting (William’s are the first two drawings; Joseph’s is clearly labeled as his).  We also studied trees for science using Tell Me Tree and A Tree is a Plant.  We then taped paper to the trees in our backyard and did bark rubbings.

T is for…Tell the Truth.  We’re still using these great coloring pages and we’re including one each week along with a virtue story.

T is for….tye dye.  We didn’t actually get to tye dye our shirts yet because Joseph and William want to wait for Grandma Cindy to arrive, but we did make it to Hobby Lobby to pick up the t-shirts (and a onesie for Roo!).  While we were out, we also went to Target…just because it started with T.

T is for…trains and treehouse.  Joseph is big into Thomas the Train right now, so this was a great week for him…such a great excuse to play with Thomas and all his trains.  We also dug out the old Playmobil treehouse and played with it.

T is for…tangrams.

T is for…telling time.  We practiced telling time again and again and again.  And, of course, we could not practice time without Usborne’s Telling the Time book.

T is for…Tikki Tikki Tembo.  This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, so I introduced it to Joseph and William at the beginning of our week.  It sparked their imaginations.  They spent the rest of the week taking turns being Tikki Tikki Tembo and Chang and falling in the well (a pile of cushions on the couch).  Then one of them would put a hat on and pretend to be the old man with the ladder.  Lots of imagination!

T is for…tea!  We made southern sweet tea to enjoy with lunch this week.

In our book baskets this week (I’m choosing one book from each basket to have Joseph do a narration and illustration of):

Science (trees):  Tell Me Tree; A Tree is a Plant

History (Trail of Tears): The Trail of Tears

Favorite T Books:  Tikki Tikki Tembo; There is a Bird on Your Head!; There Was a Crooked Man; Ten, Nine, Eight; Thy Friend, Obadiah; The Tiny Seed; There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly; Ten Apples Up On Top!; The Three Questions; The Tushy Book; Take Me Out to the Ball Game; Teammates; The True Story of the Three Little Pigs; Today is Monday; Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes; Time of Wonder; To Market, To Market; Twelve Hats for Lena