For the first part of April we focused on Flowers and the letter G. One of my favorite activities was going on walks in the warm weather and watching the flowers grow - we could watch their progress almost from day to day. Unfortunately, the "April showers" finally caught up with us and we haven't spent much time outside in the last week or so. boo.
We made "Das ganz grosse G" (the really big G) I have included some detail photos so all the artists out there can fully appreciate the majesty of this G.
We made a Blumen Garten (Flower Garden) and a Gemuse Garten (Vegetable Garden)
We bought some flowers to actually plant, however as mentioned above, the weather hasn't been cooperating. We also found some sprouted apple seeds in our apples the other day so we decided to plant those as well. I hope they grow!
Birthday in German is Geburtstag and we definitely had many of those to celebrate, although due to time constraints and crying children, we had to celebrate them in different ways. Happy Birthday to Tante Heidi, Grampy, Grandpa Bob, Grandma Carolyn, and Papa! Papa said he didn't want anything for his birthday - not even a celebration, so the kids and I made a huge "Happy Birthday Papa!!!!" poster and taped it to his office door. Then we hid chocolates all around his office. We made a special birthday dinner and his gifts were some honey roasted peanuts, the remaining chocolates we hadn't hidden, and a birthday card I made him. So you don't think we are THAT cheap, Derek and I also bought him a Blend-tek a few weeks ago. That wasn't cheap at all.
Here are just a few more flowers we made. The flowers inspired Joshua to create something else. I asked him what it was and he said, "well, it's this one and this one and this one," pointing to the pom poms and cotton balls he glued on. Note: these flowers were going to be daffodils but I forgot to draw on the yellow petals behind the muffin tin cup so instead they are just muffin tin cup flowers. They are also supposed to match our poem below.
And Joshua (and I suppose Abigail to some degree) learned the following flower poem (Gedichte) minus all umlauts (the kids learned the umlauts, but I haven't figured out how to type them in with blogger):
Das Blumchen schlaft in Garten
Tief in der Erde Schoss
Der Regen klopft und weckt es:
"Wach auf und werde gross!"
Das Blumchen reckt und streckt sich
Wachst hoch und schlank hinauf
Die Sonne kommt und warmt es
Bald bluht sein Hutchen auf.
Da freut sich unser Blumchen
Es wiegt sich froh im Wind
Und schwenkt sein gelbes Kopfchen
Und grusst ein jedes Kind.
Translation in a nutshell - a happy yellow flower, with the help of some rain and the sun, bloomed in the garden and looks like its greeting all the children as it swings in the wind.
And of course some books. We were a little less academic and more pre-schooly in this subject, so we didn't get into too much depth of how the seed opens and grows, but we did talk about it and I think with the reinforcement of watching our apple seeds grow and discussing it, the idea will solidify.
We made "Das ganz grosse G" (the really big G) I have included some detail photos so all the artists out there can fully appreciate the majesty of this G.
We made a Blumen Garten (Flower Garden) and a Gemuse Garten (Vegetable Garden)
We bought some flowers to actually plant, however as mentioned above, the weather hasn't been cooperating. We also found some sprouted apple seeds in our apples the other day so we decided to plant those as well. I hope they grow!
Birthday in German is Geburtstag and we definitely had many of those to celebrate, although due to time constraints and crying children, we had to celebrate them in different ways. Happy Birthday to Tante Heidi, Grampy, Grandpa Bob, Grandma Carolyn, and Papa! Papa said he didn't want anything for his birthday - not even a celebration, so the kids and I made a huge "Happy Birthday Papa!!!!" poster and taped it to his office door. Then we hid chocolates all around his office. We made a special birthday dinner and his gifts were some honey roasted peanuts, the remaining chocolates we hadn't hidden, and a birthday card I made him. So you don't think we are THAT cheap, Derek and I also bought him a Blend-tek a few weeks ago. That wasn't cheap at all.
Here are just a few more flowers we made. The flowers inspired Joshua to create something else. I asked him what it was and he said, "well, it's this one and this one and this one," pointing to the pom poms and cotton balls he glued on. Note: these flowers were going to be daffodils but I forgot to draw on the yellow petals behind the muffin tin cup so instead they are just muffin tin cup flowers. They are also supposed to match our poem below.
And Joshua (and I suppose Abigail to some degree) learned the following flower poem (Gedichte) minus all umlauts (the kids learned the umlauts, but I haven't figured out how to type them in with blogger):
Das Blumchen schlaft in Garten
Tief in der Erde Schoss
Der Regen klopft und weckt es:
"Wach auf und werde gross!"
Das Blumchen reckt und streckt sich
Wachst hoch und schlank hinauf
Die Sonne kommt und warmt es
Bald bluht sein Hutchen auf.
Da freut sich unser Blumchen
Es wiegt sich froh im Wind
Und schwenkt sein gelbes Kopfchen
Und grusst ein jedes Kind.
Translation in a nutshell - a happy yellow flower, with the help of some rain and the sun, bloomed in the garden and looks like its greeting all the children as it swings in the wind.
And of course some books. We were a little less academic and more pre-schooly in this subject, so we didn't get into too much depth of how the seed opens and grows, but we did talk about it and I think with the reinforcement of watching our apple seeds grow and discussing it, the idea will solidify.
We are going to be doing plants/flowers for May (we did water and mountains in April - loosely... April was kind of busy for us, so we didn't do a lot of structured preschool). April showers bring May flowers :) That kind of thing. I needed one more craft for May, and I think we will do the muffin cup daffodils. Those look super cute and fun :)
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