More Letter Activities

Recently, the boys and I have had fun with the letters R and N. I wish I could take credit for these ideas, but they were all Pinterest treasures that my sister and I uncovered. Our favorite R activities were focused on the theme of rainbows and colors...

First, I had the boys stamp rainbow fish pictures. Cody and Jaden dipped the end of celery stalks into paint and then decorated their fish. It was too difficult for me to manage the paint, the celery, both messy boys, and a camera, so I didn't get any process pics, but I am including their final products. I thought they turned out so cute! Surprisingly, Cody was my careful kiddo who made the first picture and really made his stamps look like scales. 

Jaden seemed to enjoy the activity as well but was more interested in decorating the whole page.

Another day, we made rainbow rain! We filled a vase with water and then made a "cloud" of shaving cream on top. The boys chose which colors of food coloring to squirt into the cloud. Then, using pipettes, Jaden and Cody acted as the rain, squirting water into the shaving cream cloud.

Using the pipettes was good practice for their little fingers! The boys stayed very focused on the task.

After a few rounds of squirting rain, the water began to seep through the shaving cream, taking the food coloring with it to make... rainbow rain in the water below! Very fun.

This rainbow salt tray activity captured Cody and Jaden's interest much longer than I had anticipated. Cody and Jaden loved seeing the rainbow colors appear as they made brush strokes in the salt.

I didn't even ask the boys to make letters in their tray, but both of them started forming letters at some point in their playtime. I will definitely have to bring this activity out again for future writing practice as they enjoyed it MUCH more than using a marker or pencil.

On the same day, we did a Color Hunt outdoors. (And by the way, these pics are from November. Yes, we are still wearing short-sleeves and sandals. Crazy, this Texas fall!) Anyway, this color hunt was one of my favorite letter R activities simply because of my boys' excited reactions as we did it. First, I gave them a clipboard and a paper that depicted 8 different colors. Cody and Jaden's job was to find something outside that matched with each color on their paper.

 

I told them to choose a crayon and then circle each color as they found it. Interestingly, both boys were insistent on changing their crayon color for each circle so that their crayon matched the color they were searching for. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they were being a bit particular since their mommy shares the same trait! :)

Jaden and Cody were SO excited whenever they found their sought-after color. Most of the time, they didn't move on to search for a new color until I came over to rejoice with them and see what they had found. Our yard was filled with many eager cries of joy that afternoon.

Halfway through their search, Cody and Jaden paused to share their findings and help each other out. So cute. :)

For our letter R page that we are adding to our slowly-growing tactile alphabet book, we glued on rice and strips of red construction paper. Cody and Jaden (the only one pictured for this activity) are making a little progress on their cutting. We still use the training scissors exclusively. I love how both my boys use their tongues to help them concentrate! :)

We did a little math activity one day with rainbow matching cards. The dots on the opposite side of the rainbow were very tiny for Cody and Jaden to count, but they got most of the matches correct right away.

My other favorite R activity was our rainbow scavenger hunt. The website handsonaswegrow.com has a wonderful printout to use so that pre-readers can follow scavenger hunt clues on their own. By using color strips and picture-clues, Jaden and Cody were able to independently complete the scavenger hunt from start to finish. I simply love this idea!

The boys were quite proud of themselves!

Then, we used the color strips from our scavenger hunt for this rainbow Fruit Loop activity. The boys rolled a dice to determine how many cereal pieces to glue onto each color strip.

Of course, the Fruit Loops were fun to snack on, too! :)

Their final products made for colorful decorations in our kitchen for quite some time.

In addition to rainbows, we also looked at robots with the letter R. For this activity, Jaden and Cody again used a dice to build various parts of the body for a robot.

This fun game we found at www.733blog.com.

Finally, we pretended to be robots! Each boy helped me tape robot buttons onto themselves.

We took turns "pressing each other's buttons" and doing whatever the button said to do. All of the button-commands were large motor actions like, kick your leg, bend your knees, jump up and down, or walk like a robot. Cody and Jaden enjoyed wearing the buttons as much as they liked doing the actions (or perhaps even more so!).

For the letter N, we used noodles to make our tactile book page. This was a fun activity because Jaden and Cody were able to break the noodles down into smaller pieces on their own.

The boys are not big fans of projects that make their hands sticky, so their noodle-decorating mostly involved dropping the noodles from a safe height onto the glue-covered N.

Another day, we simply played freely with noodles! Cody and Jaden weren't too excited to stick their hands into the oil-covered noodles, but they loved exploring with various kitchen utensils.

After the noodle free-play, we painted pictures with noodles. Both boys thought this project was "kind of silly." Mommy thought their abstract results were kind of fun!

My favorite activity was doing an N is for nose smell test. I filled 6 small containers with strongly-scented foods (like lime, vanilla and vinegar). Initially, I made the mistake of using a powdery substance (cinnamon) and Cody sniffed a bunch up his nose. The poor kid was not a happy camper. So, we stuck with liquids and solid foods after that. :) I started by showing the boys each item and letting them smell each sample.

Then, the boys tried to identify the smells with their eyes closed. This was an easy, but fun, activity for them.

After they did a few trials, the boys happily held up the containers to my nose for me to test. Their favorite substance to test on Mommy was the vinegar because of the scrunched nose reaction I gave them. Cody and Jaden just laughed and laughed and continued to give me the vinegar. :)

We continue to love our letter-based fun!

3 1/2 Years Old!

At the start of December, Jaden and Cody reached their 3 1/2 year old birthday. We celebrated the occasion with chocolate frosted cupcakes that were decorated on one half with sprinkles. Then, we lit three and a half candles (the half candle was just pushed down into the cupcake) and sang Happy Half Birthday.

That's all we did in the way of celebrating. The boys loved the excuse to have a special dessert!

Cody's post-cupcake face made him look like he had a little goatee! :)

Three-and-a-half has overall been a fun stage for our family. Cody and Jaden really have made the transition into little preschoolers and seem quite far removed from the toddler stage. One of our favorite things about this stage his been the boys' constant desire to create and imagine. They absolutely love acting out various scenarios with imaginary characters (like ambulance drivers, policemen, firefighters, doctors, or a mommy and a baby). We love seeing how their little minds process through games such as these! Below are two pictures of the boys being garbage men on their tricycle. The boy in the back (in this case, Cody) periodically jumps off the back to gather garbage, then hops back on the tricycle.

Here is a video of an indoor garbage man game.

Another big favorite has been the "pet store game." Each boy becomes a pet and either takes a book or a group of magnetic letters to make a sign, identifying which animal he is. Then, when Mommy or Daddy enters the room asking to buy a pet, the "pets" will make animal noises and tell us how much we need to pay for them. It's quite elaborate as you can see. :)

Cody and Jaden continue to adore books and being read to. Their favorite series include Arthur, Curious George, and Fly Guy books. They have also recently started to enjoy beginning chapter books, as long as the books contain pictures on most every page. One set of chapter books they particularly enjoy is the Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo about a large, toast-loving pet pig. I originally got these books from the library thinking the boys would listen to only a couple chapters at a time but they surprised me by listening to the entire book (15-20 minutes) in one sitting. They wanted to listen to the whole book again several times that week! We have devoured the entire 6-book series and are huge Mercy fans! :)

The boys seem to enjoy the letter activities that we have started this fall. They can easily recognize their capital letters and most of their lowercase letters too. Jaden and Cody can even write a few letters and can somewhat form the letters to their names. They don't have a long attention span at all for writing or coloring, though, so this is a work in progress. :) The boys like trying to identify letter sounds by playing the "What letter does (this word) start with?" game. The boys can both count to 39 but then need help with their multiples of 10 after that.

When we attend library storytime, Jaden and Cody have only recently begun actively participating in the activities (finger plays, songs, rhythm sticks, etc.). They used to be comfortable simply sitting in my lap and watching other kids. Now, it's fun to see them follow directions from other adults. The two videos below are obviously not from the library but show a similar type of direction-following activity. The action rhymes in the video are taken from the High Five magazines. Only Cody was in the mood to perform for the camera on this particular day. :)

Cody and Jaden are hands-down each other's best friend. They love playing together and are almost always interested in the same activity. At times, the boys can stay happily occupied together for 30 minutes or more without any kind of adult intervention. These are the moments when having twins truly is a special joy. We love seeing our boys get along well and enjoy each other's company. Of course, the boys are far from perfect. Some days, conflicts will arise from the silliest thing (like who will sit on which side of Mommy's lap for storytime). But, we are constantly trying to teach Cody and Jaden skills for resolving conflict, reminding them to use their words and good manners to share feelings, and encouraging them to ask questions of each other rather than being physical. Some days we have quite a LOT of practice in this realm! Overall, though, the boys are happy being brothers, and we are so thankful having two! Here are the boys singing a rendition of "Jesus Loves Me" together.

Jaden and Cody's preferred activity is still playing with any kind of vehicle, especially their matchbox cars. They also enjoy building with blocks and Duplos. Many times they build with a special purpose-- to make a garage or road for their cars or a home or cage for their dinosaurs. Cody has recently developed a special love for putting together puzzles. He particularly enjoys larger floor puzzles and can assemble most any kid puzzle independently and fairly quickly too! Both boys enjoy playing basic kids' games like BusyTown, Hullabaloo, Spot It, and any time of memory/matching game.

Just after the boys turned 3 1/2, we asked them a few interview questions. The following videos give you a taste of both boys' personalities and favorites. In case you can't understand or hear them, the boys' answers are all listed below.

Jaden's Interview

Name -- Jaden Schleicher

How old are you -- 3 and a half

Who are your friends -- Cody! Joshua, Holden (last two are boys from Sunday School)

Favorite thing to do -- play with cars and trucks

Favorite color -- blue and yellow

Favorite food -- peanut butter and jelly

Food you don't like -- tomatoes

Something you like to do with family -- play with them

What you want to do when you get bigger -- to play and play and play and play

Favorite book -- Arthur

Where do you like to go-- to the pool in our neighborhood

Favorite dessert -- cupcakes

Favorite animal -- I don't know what animal

Favorite song to sing -- Sanctuary

Something you are good at -- taking care of my piggy

Something you are not very good at -- reading my piggy stories

What do you like to do with Mommy-- go to playground

What do you like to do with Daddy -- play with Daddy

Favorite game to play -- Busy Town

Here is Cody's 3 1/2 year old interview in two parts. You'll notice Jaden's voice in the background of video 2 (please you wipe me, Mommy!).

Cody's Interview

First and last name -- Cody Schleicher

How old are you -- 3 and a half

Favorite thing to do -- play with my laptop in the car

Favorite color -- red and yellow

Favorite food -- pizza

Food you don't like -- soup

Something you like to play with family -- BusyTown

Favorite book -- Happy Birthday Mr. Snowman (I think he made up this title...)

Favorite animal -- my teddy bear

Favorite song to sing -- O Come Let Us Adore Him (his name for O Come All Ye Faithful)

Something you are good at -- "I'm very good at basketball."

Something you are not very good at -- tennis

Favorite dessert -- Oreos

Something you like to do with Mommy -- play with BusyTown

Something you like to do with Daddy -- play with my bus

Who are your friends -- Jaden, Abby, Elise, Ryan, Nathan, Ian, Ryan, Aunt Kim, Uncle Matt

We love seeing how much our boys have progressed from 3 to 3 1/2 and are excited for their growth and development yet to come! We continue to be humbled by the gift that these little boys are to us. We love you, Jaden and Cody!

Boll Family Visit

Just before Thanksgiving we had the joy of hosting some dear friends from Montana at our new Texas home. Our connections with the Boll family date back to our college days, so this family's visit was very special! It was so wonderful to spend parts of three days with them catching up and showing them around our new home. The Montana guys relished in the warm Texas weather while Jaden and Cody had their naptime. Jason loved the chance to toss around a football with his good buddy.

After Jaden and Cody woke up, we took the Bolls on a quick tour of our new church and then visited our favorite tire park. Noah was a pretty good climber!

Seven-year-old Noah and (almost) five-year-old Micah were wonderful playmates for Jaden and Cody. The four boys loved building, pretending, game-playing, wrestling, and playing hide-and-seek. They got along quite well during our time together.

The adults, of course, had some fun bonding times too. We cherished our time just lounging on the couch visiting but also played a few games as well. Jenn and I didn't get a picture of it, but we enjoyed a late night out on the town, watching the final Hunger Games movie. We had been movie partners for the other three movies in the series, so it was only fitting that we watch the last one together.  Jonathan and Jason bonded over late-night video games and a breakfast favorite, Cracklin' Oat Bran.

Our main outing during the Bolls' visit was to Galveston beach. Even though the November weather was a bit cool for playing in the water, we still enjoyed our experience. Noah and Micah had never before seen the ocean, so we figured the trip had to be done. The boys seemed to be impressed! 

Noah, Jenn, Jonathan, Micah

The seagulls were quite pleased that we remembered to bring along some bread for them. Within seconds of tossing the first piece of bread, we had TONS of flying friends!

Jason and Jonathan, of course, tossed around a football....

... and we all took some time to wade through the gulf waters.

Noah collected a few seashells near the water, too.

 After getting wet, the wind was a bit cool for everyone, but we all warmed up a bit during our picnic lunch.

After our beach visit, we drove over to the Galveston ferry. The boys loved watching the cars load and unload.

Then, we all took a ride on the ferry. We LOVE that this experience is free! I'm not sure if it was the cooler weather, the time of day, or the season of the year, but the conditions that day were just perfect for seeing dolphins in the waters. We saw so many, we lost count! It was great that the dolphins were so easy for all four boys to spot.

Cody and Jaden loved that Noah was willing to be goofy with them along the ride. :)

Our only complaint about the Bolls' visit was that it was far too short. We cherished our time with these dear friends and were so thankful for their visit! We love you, Boll family!