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Our letter this week was 'K', however Leah decided to start the week with the letters 'E.R.' due to a dislocated elbow. You can read about it here.

To share my Louisiana roots and celebrate Mardi Gras, I hosted a Mardi Gras playdate. Molly helped me decorate one of the two king cakes that I made. She did a great job pouring the colored sugar only where she was told.

We worked on crafting our letter 'K'.

I combined ideas from No Time for Flash Cards and dltk-teach.com to create our K for King.

Molly worked on her counting skills with this kite matching game.

She made a cardboard kazoo and then serenaded Leah with a song.

Aunt Caroline and Will came over for a visit. They had fun stamping paper for our last K project...

a kaleidoscope! Molly enjoyed the kaleidoscope for a few short minutes. She had more fun stamping the cover!

Leah wanted to try out the kaleidoscope too. Ok, so maybe she just wanted to chew on it, but she was looking through it by default!

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

Again this year, I hosted a Mardi Gras playdate. It was such a popular activity with my MOMS Club that it filled up in 12 hours and even had a wait-list! Next year, I might just have to host two!

I tried my hand at making a king cake from scratch this year. I even made it with yummy cream cheese filling like Chad prefers. I learned a few things that I know to do differently next year, but overall it was a success.

In addition to eating king cake, we listened to traditional Mardi Gras music, and had fun making jester hats.

Molly and her friend, Allison, happily modeled their new hats.

Molly is her father's child when it comes to cake. She licked all the sugar and icing off the king cake, then asked for another piece. Clearly, she does not need to be able to see to do this!

I made sure that both girls were sporting their Mardi Gras fashions for the day. Here they are taking in a little reading after the party.

When I planned our letter weeks, I had not initially done the letters of Molly's name in a row. But, after we did 'M' and 'O', I got questioned whether we were doing 'L' and 'Y' next. And I thought, "Well, that would make sense!" So, as you can see, that's what we did.

To begin our letter Y project, Molly colored everything yellow.

As soon as I got out my scissors to cut out the shapes, Molly was no longer interested in coloring. All she wanted to do was cut, so I gave her some small strips to practice with.

Here is our 'Y' for yellow. Notice that we "colored" the lemon with some of her paper snips.

We worked with various forms of yogurt. First Molly used yogurt-covered raisins to practice her counting skills with these Curious George cards from One Little, Two Little.

She was also very excited to make chocolate frozen yogurt.

And after one failed attempt to actually freeze the yogurt, Molly finally got to enjoy the tasty treat.

For our stART project, we read Just how long can a long string be?!

We extended the story by making a yarn egg. Molly was not interested in getting her hands dirty with the glue, so it turned into a Mommy project.

It turned out really neat. Molly has loved playing with it, but it is now a bit squished. If you have the patience to do a few of these, they'd make a really pretty Easter decoration.

We also used the yarn to make this octopus, which appears to be attacking Noah's Ark.

Lastly, Molly and her daddy went out for a little bit of playing in the snow. She couldn't really walk in the snow, since it was almost as tall as she is, but Molly was very helpful in using the yard stick to measuring how high the pile Daddy was shoveling was. Also, note the plastic bags taped onto her legs as makeshift snow boots (we learned that trick last snow storm).

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

We started our letter L week learning about lemons and limes.

Then we made fresh squeezed lemonade. As I squeezed the lemons, Molly had fun transferring the rinds back and forth. I tried to turn it into a counting lesson, but she was only interested in transferring and pouring.

Molly loved her fresh squeezed lemonade. I realized that squeezing lemons by hand was harder than I thought it would be. Next time, I'll find a better way!

We started learning our lowercase letters with this matching game I found at Homeschool Creations.

We worked on fine motor skills with these lacing activities. The beads kept her busy for over half an hour!

A few non-L things:

Molly got these picture puzzle blocks from her Aunt 'Chelle last Christmas and has finally learned how to match the puzzle on her own.

We needed a place to hang some of Molly's crafts, so this was my solution. I think I might need some more walls soon.

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

Little sister, Leah, kicked off our 'O' week wearing her owl dress on Sunday.

I found inspiration for our 'O' craft at No Time for Flash Cards. We began with some sponge painting.

Then gluing on some shapes.

And here you have it. Whoo, whoo guessed we were making an owl?

Continuing our 'O' activities, I helped Molly make Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. She's been asking to help in the kitchen a lot lately. It's important to evenly space the dough when spooning it out onto the cookie sheet.

We had to let them cool before digging in.

Molly thought the cookies were excellent, though I think she couldn't have eaten much chocolate since most of it is on her face.

We finished out our 'O' week by participating in stART. A Story + Art = A Great Start!

The idea for our craft came from this blog. Here's Molly's interpretation of Sarah, Percy and Bill.

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

I was inspired by Melanie to begin working with Molly on preschool-type activities. I have decided to focus on a different letter each week. The letter this week was B.

We began our week by going bowling with some friends. You can read the details of our fun here.

I based our letter craft off this site. We started by first painting some bananas.

Then we cut them out and glued them on to construction paper.

Here's our B for banana!

Our final activity was baking banana bread. Molly was so excited to help and wear her new apron. First we mashed the bananas.

Then it was on to pouring, mixing and baking.

Molly was so proud of her banana bread. She had to show everyone that came over.

In addition to these activities, Molly also played with lots of balloons and some blue Play-Doh. I've had fun planning out our letter activities. I hope that I can keep it up and that Molly has fun learning as we go! You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.