the month of "m"

we're up and running again for our monthly letter now that i've finally adjusted to life with 3 kids.

for the month of september we focused on the letter m. here are some of the "m" things we did...

introducing the letter m:
this time, emma cut and pasted all the m images herself for the capital m sheet. she sure has come a long way in the cutting and pasting department. some m's we included were mommy, monkey, milk, moon, and moose. note that gibson does not start with the letter m (nor is he an image of milk), but she wanted to put him in there with milk because he drinks mommy's milk (ha, ha!).



makan and minum:
makan is indonesian for eat and minum is indonesian for drink. obviously, we did a lot of that!

some m related books we read:
good night moon by margaret wise brown
exodus for the story of moses
the moon book by gail gibbons
mother goose rhymes
monkeys and apes (DK books?)
curious george books

mail and mailbox:
emma made some thank you cards a while back and after she "signed" them, we put it in an envelope, walked to the mailbox and mailed them.





mango:
sadly, we did not enjoy any mango to eat (couldn't find any nice, ripe ones at the store), but we did drink some tasty mango juice!








market:
we visited the local farmer's market and the west side market (which we regularly do anyway, so it worked out that i was able to incorporate it into her lesson this month). we discussed what kinds of things we could find at the market such as: apples, tomatoes, lunch meat, cheese, etc.




and on the way home from the market, we stopped to study some moss growing on a tree trunk:







melt:
as a fun toddler introduction to science, we melted some crayon pieces together, and also watched an ice cube melt as we cooled off her hot tea. we discussed how heat can cause different things to melt depending on temperature...but it went over her head. she just liked watching the stuff melt.







moses:
we learned the story of baby moses and how his mama put him in a basket to protect him. i found a basket weaving craft here. the weaving part required a lot of my help, but she got the idea. since we couldn't find a little baby doll to put in there, we pretended the dog was baby moses. then we learned how God talked to moses through a burning bush. i found another simple craft she was able to do pretty much on her own here. we did read about how aaron and moses asked pharaoh to let the israelites go, but did not have time to do an accompanying craft.





muffins:
we made some applesauce muffins which required molasses. and we also made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, which are a house favorite and perfect for fall.







marshmallows:
we used marshmallows and toothpicks to build 3 dimensional shapes. well...i made 3 dimensional shapes. emma just liked poking the toothpicks in the marshmallows and then eating up all the mini marshmallows at the end.









maple:
emma really enjoys taking "little walks," and it was the perfect opportunity to highlight maple trees this month. she collected a few maple leaves, used maple syrup for breakfast, and played a maple leaf matching game which i got here (i just used all maple leaves instead of matching the little helicopters to the leaves).



microphone:
we busted out the mini speaker and microphone and took turns singing (on some days this turned out to be a whole family affair). and of course, there was always plenty of music in the house...whether we were making it or just listening to it.




and lastly, my dear little sister reminded me that her name started with an m so we learned that auntie michelle's name starts with the letter m! how could i forget? yay for auntie michelle!