A's and oil pastels

Summer is coming to an end...only 2 weeks till school starts. Time to get back into the swing of learning. We've been doing "homework" sporadically throughout the summer, but we've tried to kick it into high gear in the last week or so. Maya is definitely in need of some extra help. Poor thing, she just can't keep up with her smarty pants big sister. Her writing is terrible, which I'm sure is totally normal for a 4 year old, but we've been trying to work on it some. Last week we started with good ol' letter A. We started with some printing, and then I got out the shaving cream and let her try some that way.

Pretty good with the capital letter...the lowercase took a bit more practice, but she finally got it.

I've been trying to get her to write her name with lowercase A's, so this is an important one for her, but a hard one too, she likes to put the line on the left side instead of the right. Oh well...practice makes perfect!

She is not a traditional pen and pencil learner like Maggie, so I'm having to be a bit more creative. I think the shaving cream was a success though! Later in the week we learned how to write the letter "T". This one we did by painting. Much more fun than writing with a pencil don'tcha think?!

We've also been slacking a little on the art projects, but last week when I was watching the neighbor kids, I pulled out some paper and the oil pastels and they created masterpieces! I got this idea from one of the blogs I read but can't remember which one (sorry!). I had the girls start with a circle and color in a rainbow of circles around the original one. A total "no fail" project.

They all turned out great. I might even frame some of them and put them downstairs in the basement for some color and give the walls a "modern art" kind of look. Now to come up with something for this week.... ; )