O is for OLLIE!

Ollie really enjoyed this week. Mostly, because it's the letter O and besides the fact that O is the first letter of Ollie, it is also just a really cool looking letter. We did extra projects and a few extra special projects for this week. He already knew the letter but it was still lots of fun! Isn't that what learning is all about?

We started the week with a super fun project I found in March's Family Fun magazine. If you don't already know, I LOVE FAMILY FUN! Get

yourself a subscription yesterday if you love to craft and play with your children. We made the

leafy letter topiary. I went to our local greenhouse and let Ollie pick out a

pot and we bought the ivy. He was really into a hot pink pot but then he spotted a yellow one. Bob helped by making thesupport and Ollie I headed outside to collect rocks for the bottom and to plant our ivy. I love the pictures I was able to take of him! I think this project was uber cool!

Next, we made an O painting. I tied two ends of yarn together to create circles. Ollie then dipped

these into paint and stuck them to some paper. He also moved them around to create streaks. He loves to paint!

We also did an "O" toss. I made a ring catcher by taking an empty cool whip container and cutting a slit in the bottom. I then put a ruler into the slit. Viola! I made rings by using 4 pipe cleaners or chenille stems if you

want to be all fancy! I found that I needed the length of 2 so they would be big enough but I needed the weight of 4 so they could be tossed so I

wrapped each stem with another. Ollie liked this game for about 5 seconds. I do think he will come back to it though!

For a snack, I created an owl. I used a piece of bread, peanut butter, carrots, raisins, pretzel sticks and 2 vanilla wafers. I spread peanut butter on the bread and then used my oval cookie cutter to cut the owl out. I cut each of the wafers in half and used them to create the wings. You could possibly just use 1 but half of

each one crumbled on me so I had to use two. I cut slices of carrot into a beak and feet then added the pretzel sticks to the bottom and raisins as eyes. It was pretty cute. Ollie didn't even tell me it

looked goofy so ha! I look forward to when Ollie can actually help make the snack not just eat it:-)

Finally, Ollie spent some time "writing" his name. He doesn't quite have the motor skills to actually write it but he can spell it! I punched out the letters to Ollie from a set of die cut letters I bought at the dollar tree. I set them in front of him (out of order) & let him glue them in order onto a sheet of construction paper. This is a great activity for him since he thinks

Ollie has one L. After he used half a glue stick to stick on the letters, he decorated it with some animal stickers. I think this was his favorite activity. He has been able to read Ollie for quite some time and spelling it out was an added bonus!