San Antonio Trip

 Over spring break, our family traveled to San Antonio. We bought season passes to Six Flags so we could enjoy the FiestaTexas theme park in San Antonio AND the Hurricane Harbor waterpark near us this summer. We spent parts of two days exploring FiestaTexas.

Some rides, our family did all together, like Bumper Cars and the Gully Washer.

The Gully Washer was a great way to cool off, although poor Adley ended up getting the most drenched and wasn't happy about it at all! Thankfully, she still found a smile for the end-of-ride photo.

During most of our time at the park, Jason took the boys on the larger rides, and Adley and I stuck together on the younger kid rides. We were able to hop from ride to ride fairly quickly and try out quite a few rides-- Up, Up, and Away,

the Barnyard Railway,

Buckarooz,

Rambling Road,

and (not pictured) Adley's first roller coaster experience-- the Streamliner Coaster. She loved the speed of the roller coaster!

Jason and the boys, unfortunately, didn't have as much luck experiencing a variety of rides. Both days of our visit were extra windy, so the park shut down quite a few of the higher and faster roller coasters. The park was packed with spring break travelers, too, so the lines were very, very long. The boys had a good attitude though, and honestly, didn't really have a base of comparison. These three still enjoyed all they got to experience. Some of their favorites included the Road Runner Express, the Boomerang,

and (the boys' favorite) The Daredevil Dive.

We got in on a small amount of entertainment-- listening to a mariachi band,

and watching a show called Neon: Absolute 80s.

On our first evening, we ate at a tasty pizzeria. This restaurant randomly brought out pizza dough for the kids to mold and play with as we waited for our food. 

On our second day in San Antonio, we spent the first half of the day in Six Flags, ate a late lunch in the car, and then toured the RiverWalk. Since we weren't too far removed from St. Patrick's Day, the river was still slightly green.

We stopped for an ice cream treat along the River Walk.

Before heading back home, we toured the Alamo. This tourist hot spot was super busy and was only allowing people in if they had advance reservations. We were happy that we had ours! Our crew enjoyed walking through the historic battle site. 

Fun times in San Antonio!

Letters UVW

 Adley's letter learning activites are reaching the end of the alphabet. Here are three letters we studied in the spring...

LETTER U

It was a little difficult finding a fitting U word for Adley's tactile letter book. We ended up choosing the word UP. Adley cut and pasted "up arrows" for her letter U.

Then, she decorated a umbrella pic with her watercolors.

We had to add raindrops, too, of course!

We talked about the word UNDER next. Adley climbed UNDERNEATH various objects around the house.

One more umbrella activity tied into a great letter lesson.

First, Adley spun the umbrella and then chose a lowercase letter from inside.

Then, she matched each lowercase letter with its uppercase version. I took out some of the easier letters to make the matching task a little quicker.

LETTER V

For letter V, Adley cut pictures of some vegetable favorites and pasted them on her tactile letter page.

Continuing with the vegetable theme, Adley painted a picture using only vegetables!

Then, we had fun with some vehicles. Here, every vehicle had a number taped to it. Adley's job was to park the vehicle in the row that contained that same number of stars.

This was a fairly easy activity, because the number of starts increased in order. Adley soon realized the pattern and stopped counting the stars! She still enjoyed driving the vehicles, though.

Next up was doing vehicle races down the stairs. Fun!

You can't talk about the letter V without looking at volcanos! We started by watching a couple of kids' youtube videos about volcanos. Then, Adley created her own volcano picture. 

We also experimented with baking soda & vinegar to simulate a volcano.

LETTER W

Adley started off this letter by doing her sound/cover worksheet. Any word that started with W, Adley marked with a green dot painter, and the non-W words she stamped with red. Using two different colors was all Adley's idea.

For her tactile letter book, Adley cut out letter W words from a magazine.

Then we did a weaving craft with ribbon. Adley had a great attention span for this activity. It turned out pretty cute!

After reading "The Watermelon Seed" book, Adley painted a watermelon, using a paper plate.

W is also for water, so we did a few water activities...

testing whether objects sink or float in water,

doing a water volume experiment...

and playing in water beads.

I was suprised at how many fun activities we could try out using these letters. Adley thought it was great!