Letter P

We are starting school on September 1st.

Which means we are running out of time to finish Alphabet Summer.

At this point, any activity that starts with a letter we haven't done is game.

Grasping at straws here people.

So when I spied Andrew and Josie picking pears off our pear tree, I whipped out her workbook and we wrapped up Letter P.

Andrew even threw in a Life Science Lesson and they talked about all the bees then watched them for awhile.

This one had 5 different kinds of bees on it.  

They were fighting eachother.  It was pretty interesting!

I doubt we will actually get through all our letters, but hopefully we will cross a couple more off these next couple weeks.

S'Mores

This past weekend, Josie and I made marshmallows.

And there's only one thing I like about marshmallows.

S'MORES!

I'll be honest, campfires in August are not the best idea.

But it crossed 2 more things off our Summer List and we followed it with a long night swim so it wasn't too unbearable.

The homemade marshmallows were a campfire flop.

Turns out you need all those preservatives to prevent a gloopy, melty mess.  

We got lucky though and I found a bag of real marshmallows in the back of my pantry that only recently expired.

I love S'mores!

All Natural

A few months ago, Andrew and I fell off the healthy eating bandwagon.

And we fell hard.

McDonalds, Chick-fil-a, and twice a day ice cream.

I started trying to coupon and while I was still able to get a lot of healthy food using them, I also found myself stocking our cabinets with a ton of cheap convenience foods and snacks.

It didn't bother me at first, but lately I've been feeling sluggish and when I put my jeans on for the first time in months they were a bit too snug for my liking.

So we are trading in our coupons for a strict grocery budget and going back to our bi-weekly treks to Whole Foods.  

We even tried Trader Joe's this past week and loved it.  

Now, please don't mistake us eating "healthy" for us eating "diet."

Our goal is All Natural.  

Case and point, Andrew's favorite part of us going back to this kind of eating?

Ben & Jerry's is all natural.

Basically, I want to be able to pronounce the ingredients in our food.

I'm also trying to make more of our food from scratch.

My first project?

Marshmallows.

Not sure why I picked this sticky project since Josie's the only marshmallow fan in our family other then she's the princess and likes them so I make them.

And I'm happy to say, I knew what all the ingredients are and actually had them on hand.

Now, not all of these are all natural.  That baking spray is probably as far as we can get from it.  

Baby steps.

My little helper was very all natural.  Frizzy hair and all.

They were actually very easy to make and not at all as sticky as I thought they would be.

And while I still could only stomach one, Josie assured me they are very, very good!

I'm considering Letter M crossed off my list for Alphabet Summer.

Here's the recipe we used: MARSHMALLOWS

Letter J

Anytime we are working with the letter J, I know it's going to involve JELLO.

I hate JELLO.

It stinks and makes a huge mess and tastes gross.  And at some point someone told me that it's made of whale bones or something and now I hate it even more.

But every other member of my family loves the stuff.

Andrew slurps it up like it's made of chocolate and now both the kids have followed suit.

So for Alphabet Summer's J Project, we whipped up some JELLO Jigglers.

I should have let it cover letter L too since it's such an act of love for me.

It was Gabe's first JELLO experience.

And I'm a Mom Blogger, so of course the event was fully documented.

B, S, T, W and X

Over the past couple weeks, my well laid out plans have been thrown out the window.  

Other things have taken a much higher precedence over getting Alphabet Summer done.  

We'll be doing some traveling and spending lots and lots of time with family, but we have snuck in a few letters and I know I'll be able to improvise to get even more squeezed in.

So here's a few that we've done.  Some planned, some winged.

B for Blueberries - We were going to go to the big Blueberry Patch but it's not looking like that will fit in.  Lucky for us, we planted a couple blueberry bushes last Fall and they are producing more then we thought they would this first year.

S for Squid - We decided our Giant Squid Project could count as our letter S work.

T for Tornado - This kinda sorta worked.  We were supposed to use a smaller water bottle, but I thought bigger would be better.

It wasn't.

The tornado did form, but it was hard to see and my arm hurt from twisting the thing!

W for Worm - Josie found a worm that she named Caterpillar and carried around for a few days.  Sounds like a good W activity to me!

X for eXplorer Walk - This one was planned.  We went to the nature park by the house one night and walked the trail through the woods.  Josie found some cool things to add to the Nature Table we are setting up. 

We are headed up to Minnesota soon so I'll be improvising a few while we are gone and hopefully learning a lot about the state in the process.  But mostly, I'm hoping to teach her the value of Family Time and the importance of holding them close.

2011 Summer List

We have officially started our Summer List!

Lots of good stuff this year.

Are you planning anything special?

Here's our list:

Make Marshmellows
Zoo
Fireworks
Homemade Ice Cream
Bike Ride
Noah's Ark
Bonfire
Beach
Minnesota
Stone Mountain
Smores
Backyard Camping
Pick Berries
Pudding Pops
Bowling
Movie Theatre
Catch Fireflies
Forts
1:1 Date Nights
Homemade Pizza Night
Giant Bubbles
Board Game Day
Braves Game
Soccer Sign Up
Farmers Market
Grandpa's House
Sandcastle
American Girl Cafe
TPR!!
Slip & Slide
Alphabet Summer
VBS

One Down

25 TO GO!

It seems like Letter I is always one of our first to accomplish for Alphabet Summer!

What can I say?  We love ice cream around here!

Josie spends every Monday over at her Nana and Papa Curt's house.  She has since the first week she came home and it's pretty much her favorite day of the week!

They don't get much face time around Journey To Josie, but they should since they play a HUGE role in her Journey!

So this past Monday, while Josie was being spoiled, Gabriel and I headed out with the Mabrey's to pick fresh peaches!

And in our book, fresh peaches call for fresh homemade peach ice cream!

It was DELICIOUS!

So much so, I'm going back next Monday to get more peaches so we can make it at our house!

We just may do Letter I every week!

Alphabet Summer 2011

This week we are starting up Alphabet Summer and I am really excited!

Last year was our first attempt but a little surprise house guest put a kink in our agenda.

This isn't my idea.  I read about it on a blog last year and thought it was an awesome way to do some reinforcement with letters over the Summer.

Basically, you do a fun activity for each letter then practice writing or reading skills for that letter.

I used a smaller version of my favorite composition books from The School Box and fancied it up a bit. 

I'm going to let her decorate it with stickers for every day she completes.

I made our activities fun, but easy.

I know that our days are going to be filled with swimming and friends so I didn't want it to bog us down.  

Last week, Josie swam for about 8 hours a day (and has the water blisters to prove it) and started begging Andrew to get in with her the second he got home from work. 

I'm thinking that the first hour he is home will be a good time to try to do most activities.  That way maybe he can get a moments peace and Josie can have some dry time.

I put each letter on it's own page.

Before we do the activity, she has to tell me the sound the letter makes, tell me a few words that start with that letter, then practice writing it.  

Then we will do the activity and after that she will draw a picture of what we did and narrate to me what we did.

I think this is going to be fun for her!  

Here's the list of what I have planned for each letter.

A - Airplanes (paper airplanes w/ Daddy)

B - Blueberry Picking Day

C - Camping

D - Donut Date

E - Egg Drop

F - Flip Flops (decorate flip flops)

G - Gumball Machine Art

H - Hopscotch

I - Ice Cream (make at home)

J - Jello Jigglers

K - 

L - Lemonade

M - Make Marshmellows

N - Noah's Ark

O - Outdoor Movie

P - Parade

Q - 

R - Rainbow Windcatcher

S - Silly String Fight 

T - Tornado In A Bottle

U - 

V - Volcanos

W - Water Balloons

X - eXplorer Walk

Y - Yellow River Game Ranch

Z - buZZZZ (Bee Art)

As you can tell, I still can't think of something for every letter!  Feel free to send me some ideas or Josie may think there are only 22 letters in the alphabet!

J-E-L-L-O

I'm running out of time to finish our Alphabet Summer.

Can JELLO count for all 4 of those letters?!?!

This one was quick and easy, other then my slight adversion to JELLO.

Gross.

Jello Jigglers!!

And even though I did not stay on track with our Alphabet Summer as much as I wanted to, Josie is looking smarter these days!!!