H is for Hearts and Hadassah

This week happened to be the week before Hadassah's birthday (which was on a Saturday). Pretty perfect to be studying the letter that fit for some focus on her! :D

 H is for an "H" snack. When the girlie asks for one and you don't have anything special planned, you make one out of whatever you were going to give her anyway. And she loves it! ;)

 H is for hands. Sometimes I use youtube to get a quick chore done. At least it was an active song which is always good for this energetic miss. And with it's simple words and actions, doing things slowly and then quickly (clapping, shaking, wiggling, etc.) it was a fun thing for me to use later with our little group of children at bible study.

 H is for Hide and Seek! It didn't take Ellie long to learn she was supposed to go find her favorite sister. :) It's what she does all day after all, trying to go wherever Hadassah goes! ;)

 We even got her to take a turn hiding. Oh how I love watching little ones grow!

 H is for Hugs. I can't even remember what prompted this particular one, but it always warms my heart to see sister hug. And Dassah has gotten better at not squeezing too tight... The height of the girls means Ellie gets almost strangled every time, but as long as Dassah doesn't squeeze too tight she doesn't mind. ;)

 H is for Highlighter. Sometimes it's the simplest things... Hadassah was curious about the highlighter, seeing me mark off things on our daily list for preschool with it. She wanted to highlight words too. And thus it began. This picture was taken a month ago. Since that day, nearly every day she has asked for something to highlight. Old church bulletins are her favorite. And it keeps her quite occupied, singing praise songs to God while she does or it, or reciting over and over (and over!) John 3:16. We've finally wised up and started collecting bulletins people leave on Sundays, because they are great time fillers that she really enjoys to highlight them! ;)

 H is for Hats. This was a fun freebie from Teachers Pay Teachers. Dassah really enjoyed matching the fun lower case hats to the uppercase penguin. She has gotten very particular about doing things like this starting from a and proceeding through the alphabet instead of just matching whichever hat she happens to pick up. Can be good and bad, but neat to see her really grasp the alphabet as a whole!

 H is for Houses of the Wise and Foolish - We read the story in Matthew about the man who built his house on the rock and the one who built it on the sand and acted it out a bit. Of course I had to make she only sprinkled the water on the rock, whereas we poured it straight from the bottle on the one on the sand...

 Because, yeah... if she poured it from the bottle on the one on the rock it also washed away completely. ;) You do what you can!

But she liked it so much she wanted to act it out again and again until we ran out of water! Of course we also had a Chinese mom and boy watching us almost the whole time, probably wondering what on earth we were doing!

 H is for Hearts. Cutting out different sizes in a variety of colors and then drawing hearts randomly on paper made a good activity for Bible study kids. They each took a glue stick and picked out the hearts they wanted and glued them down. Of course, it occupied all the children but my own. ;) Hadassah still isn't one for group/mostly solo activities...

H is for Heart Hunt! Having Hadassah's hearts left from the previous day meant I could use them the next day. I wrote sweet messages on them and hid them around the room for her to find.

 She really got into it then, and had the sweetest, awed smile as I read her the messages. She happened to be wearing a fitting heart shirt too!

 It was a good time to think of ways to encourage her. So much of motherhood is training and correcting and disciplining. It is always good for both of us to take time to focus on the positives.

H is for hearts on an H, a Hippo (who knew one could look so cute?) and a grassHopper! Okay, so the last one was just never done from G week so we did it this week. ;) Dassah is very into tracing letters these days - she enjoys that more than coloring.

H is for Hokey Pokey! Dassah actually followed along on most of the actions and Ellie got into it, dancing around herself and having a ball watching us. It's always fun for me to get up and move too!

 H is for Horsey Rides! The good ol' cross one leg over your knee and have them sit on your foot and bounce them up and down. Thankfully Hadassah helped by jumping up and down with her own legs too!

 Ellie absolutely loved it as well. The girls took turns until my legs couldn't take it anymore. ;)

 H is for Hadassah! It was fun to do a little "interview" of her. :) It will be fun to look back on her 3-year-old answers years from now. I have to say, though, she is highly influacable by what is around her. Take her favorite color: she almost always chooses purple things but just then she was coloring with a red marker, so I think that influenced her pick. ;) But the food is quite accurate. Youzi is a HUGE grapefruit type fruit that you peel in sections and eat. Dassah loves raw, grated zucchini, don't ask me why! And BiJiang Guangchang is the mall just 10 minutes taxi ride from us that has the best food we can find around here!

 H is for Heart biscuits. Biscuits just taste better in shapes when you're a little girl. ;)

 H is for Helper. It being birthday week, Thursday was the perfect day for Dassah to be my helper and make birthday cupcakes!

 H is for horse and our home! I love how Dassah drew each of us. Daddy had glasses, and each person got progressively smaller as she tried to fit them in the house. ;)

 H is for Heart lineup. Sensing a theme? There is just so many things you can do with hearts! Dassah did a good job lining up the numbers 1-10.

 H is for community Helper Bingo - This freebie makes for a fun game. Dassah has continued to ask to play it, so that makes it a winner!

 H is for Highlighting Hadassah. These days tracing anything is a win for her, and I like getting her familiar with how her name looks. :)

H is for Hiding Animals. I hid her stuffed animals around the room for her to find. Something about young ones means they love searching for things!