We are on our preschool alphabet study and “F” is for fun and with firetrucks, a stuffed frog, and a fire chief hat that filled the sensory basket, and flash-cards with a fox, fish, flower and frog were posted on the magnet board.  “Fox” was a new word for Peanut.  Also featured here are some great books if you are on the letter “F”: “Hooray for Feet” by Susan Pearson, “Froggy Gets Dressed” by Nathan London, and “Trout, Trout, Trout (a fish chant)” by April Pulley Sayre.

I found a craft kit at Walmart to create a colorful foam cutout fishbowl.  You can see the completed small blue fishbowl in the picture above.  There are some colorful foam fish in the kit.  My 2-1/2 year-old enjoys stickers so it’s a fun kit to have at home.

To share some of the fun memories we’re creating with the boys, I’ve included a short video of them playing.  If you are receiving this post in a reader, please click on this link, Two boys playing, to watch the video.

For this letter I got a great idea from a children’s magazine to create a “go fish” game using card stock paper, paperclips, a magnet, string and a short stick.  I used a cookie cutter to trace shapes of fish out of card stock and then I cut the shapes.  Then I attached a paperclip to each fish.  I tied one end of a short string to the wooden pole and the other to a magnet and then reinforced the knots in the string with tape.

I gave Peanut directions on how to fish each fish out of the bowl but as you can see he did not start doing it right away.  He did catch on eventually, and this little game lasted well over an hour – which is a long time to keep the attention of a two-and-half year-old. If you are receiving this post in a reader, please click on this link, Go Fish, to watch the video.

In the photo below, our little Peanut was mesmerized by the picture of our family.  I kept pointing to the picture and explaining to him that he, daddy, his little brother and I make a family. Pictured on the table are free printables from 1plus1plus1equals1.com which are great for coloring with crayons or painting with paint.  The pages included pictures of feet, frogs, fish and flowers.

We stopped by the library today to re-check some books and we found some of the new titles mentioned above. Here Peanut is having fun with the peg board.

 

The go-fish game was a huge success – here you can see Peanut pulling a paper clip free from the magnet.

And here he is putting the fish back in the bowl.

And no blog would be complete without a recent picture of our nine-month old.  So here he is giggling and laughing because he’s on his big brother’s Mickey Mouse pull-out mini-couch.  He loves being in on all the action.

For me, the letter “F” brings to mind the word “Faith”.  To live by faith in that I hope I am raising these boys the way God wants me to raise them – even though I will not know for many years the impact my time with them will have on their lives.

Hebrews 11:1, New International Version (NIV)

11 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
I pray every day that they will come to know the Lord at an early age and that they will follow Him all the days of their lives.   Every morning we read a children’s bible story, and if time does not permit that we at least say a short prayer.  Daddy prays every evening at supper and he prays with our eldest when he puts him to bed. If anything ever happens, we want them to have a relationship with the Lord as early on as possible, because we believe that a relationship with Him is what truly sustains us.

I pray you’ve had fun reading about our exploration of the letter “F”.  And I pray you are living out the faith He has ordained for you.

In His Grip,
Monica