We've been keeping busy with all kinds of things recently.

Here's a picture of our tornado fun from before:


More recently we've been doing some holiday related activities. I took the kids to the dollar store, and each at $10 to get gifts for their family members. They did a great job thinking about what things their family members would like, and doing the counting/math to figure out how much they had left to spend. We've also cleaned out the pantry, and donated food to the food bank, and gotten together some brand new toys that were sitting unused and donated them to toy drives. I'm a big believer in community service, and caring for others, and think the best way for kids to learn about these kinds of things is through hands on experience. (Last year they went to the dollar store with some money specifically to buy toys top donate.) And today they each has some special time with mommy to wrap their gifts. They were so excited and proud to wrap them up and put them under the tree.

Reagan has been keeping up with her workbook work on days off of school, and wrote her own letter to Santa that she put in a special Letters to Santa ornament on our tree. She did a great job writing it all by herself!

We've also been practicing counting backwards as we count down to Christmas with our advent garland. I'll have to post a picture of it... but it has a tiny knit mitten or hat or sock for each day counting down, so you can fill them with whatever goodies you wish. I got a pack of heart and star chain links in the party section of the dollar store to fill about half of them, and the kids have had a great time adding to their chains each day. They have a very tangible way to count up how many days we have counted down. Hooray for math practice!

Another math activity we have been doing is a hands on dice game that I came up with. Inspired by giant foam dice at the dollar store, I came up with a fun math game that we can play and work on math at different levels. I got each child their own set of dice (each child has a different color). We started out by rolling one die each, and counting how many dots each rolled. Then we moved on to comparing the numbers (more and less) with the one getting the desired result being the winner. Then we moved on to two die, and adding them together. And again the more and less game with the dice sums. Writing it down really gets across the educational aspect, but makes it sound a lot less fun than it is. lol