P is for St. Patrick, Pansy Fairy, Penguins, and Patience!

I'm behind in posting stuff, but here are our photos from P week. We are working our way through R week currently!

Here are our themes for the week, all of which went into the Word Box, as usual.

Our P poems for the week from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and God's Alphabet

~Work Activities~

peg board

There were also plenty of puzzles this week! Cecilia's princess felt storyboard was also used heavily.

~Circle Time~

Caroline brought Piglet for Show and Tell, and the item in the mystery sound pouch was a popsicle mold.

Songs and Rhymes

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater

Peter Piper

Pease Porridge

Polly and Sukey

Pat-a-Cake

The Pancake Song

This Little Piggie

~Foods for P Week~

potato pancakes

pasta primavera

pita pizzas for lunch...

...and some pigtails!!

pesto tart (it looks great, but it didn't taste as good as it looked to me!)

chicken pot pie - Chris made the crust and put PP on it for pot pie

noodles with pesto

five cheese penne (I leave out the gorgonzola)

pastitso, one of Caroline's all-time favorites

pear crisp - yum!!!

Other foods on the menu: pumpkin fettucine alfredo, pumpkin pancakes, pineapples, pizza, popovers, peas, and probably some other things I can't remember!

~Tea Time~

Okay, so it is not really tea... this is a smoothie called a Purple Cow. Personally, I did not care for it at all. Apparently I don't care for smoothies made with frozen juice concentrate... too sweet for me? Caroline liked it, though! Maybe next time, I will try this one, since it doesn't contain the frozen concentrate!

We read Joseph and Chico, a story about the Pope, while eating painted cookies - shaped like the Pope and the cat in the story!

There is also another book we read this week about the Pope, called Max and Benedict, featuring a bird... so some of our cookies were shaped like birds, too. I got this idea here. Oh, and I used the recipe for pumpkin rollout cookies for the dough!

~Letter Formation~

forming letter Pp using playdough

writing P's in cornmeal

Punch Out the Letter - Capital and Lowercase Pp

~Flower Fairy for Letter P: Pansy~

Caroline's Pansy flower fairy page from the Flower Fairies coloring book

~Saint for Letter P: St. Patrick~

Finished copywork from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and illustration

~Picture Study: P is for Peacock~

Caroline illustrated this painting, Madonna and Child with Saints. There is a peacock in the tree above them.

~ABC Virtue of the Week: Patience~

Well, the virtue coloring pages I'd been using have run out with letter O. So, since Caroline seems to like them, I attempted to illustrate the rest myself and come up with the virtues. So I chose patience for P and drew a coloring page of kids patiently waiting for a turn on the swing. My drawing isn't as good as the originals, and I haven't drawn much in recent years, so it's nothing fancy, but if anyone has been doing the virtue coloring pages and wants some pre-made for P and on, I would be happy to figure out how to upload them to Google Docs or something. Still reading Caroline a relevant story from this sweet little book full of stories with morals to them to correspond with the virtue coloring pages.

~Activities for P Week~

P is for Painting Pumpkin Pope Cookies

Here are some photos of the girls painting their cookies, as I mentioned above in the Tea Time section.

Max the bird was blue, and Chico the cat was a orange tabby. We also had red for the Pope, although there are a variety of colors in which he could have been dressed! We used a dove cookie cutter, a Halloween cat cookie cutter, and our St. Nicholas cookie cutter.

We left a few plain for the grown-ups! The "paint" is just some powdered sugar mixed with milk and food coloring. The black is a tube of icing.

P is for Parade of Saints

Caroline was playing and decided to make a all the wooden painted saints have a parade through he castle. She took this photo herself.

P is for Penguins

We did various penguin activities, including this craft found here. We also used a word search we found on this site.

They made these penguin potato prints using an idea I came across... you cut a potato in half lengthwise for the body and stamp it using black paint. Then you cut a potato in half crosswise and stamp a white belly on top of the black paint once it has dried. Then the girls glued on details cut from construction paper and painted with watered-down glue to attach squares of white tissue paper for snow and ice.

Here's a cute little penguin that the girls ate for lunch one day!

P is for Puzzle Planks

I found this idea in a Family Fun magazine. Tape seven jumbo craft sticks together and then flip it over. Draw a large picture on the front, then untape it, mix up the sticks, and try to reassemble it as a puzzle. Caroline did a giraffe and a heart.

Cecilia made one as well.

Here's a close-up example. We left them out as a work activity for the rest of the week.

~Cooking Project: P is for Pretzels~

We made whole wheat pretzels and then took them to the park to share with friends while we played!

The girls did lots of rolling, and I helped finish them up and shape them. Yum... and we'll be making more pretzels soon, with Lent beginning in one week!!