Sweet Pea's Birthday Party

I tried to convince Sweet Pea to stay seven forever, but for some reason the little stinker wouldn't listen.

Disobedient little stinker that one was.

Anyways, she had some of her friends over to the house for a birthday party.  I took pictures.  Enjoy!

 We made friendship bracelets.

 Facepainting, with really bad paints. 

 Opened presents, had a egg-and-spoon relay race, made flowers with brightly colored duct tape

And had cake and make-your-own-sundays.

So she's eight years old now.  Ten years away from being an adult.  And just thinking about that gives me the shivers.

So hold you babies close, hug them, kiss them, cuddle them on your lap as long as you can, because it goes by much too fast!

Confession

Confession

Last Sunday night, after an extremely busy day, after cleaning the disastrous living room, kitchen, and dining rooms, after already going up and down the stairs too many times, I was ready to climb into bed.  But I had no PJ's in our room.  It was looking like my options were to either go to bed in my jeans and sweater, or trek back down to the laundry room and bring up some clean PJ's.  Neither option sounded good at 12:30 AM. 

So I improvised.  

I did what I usually do when I can't find clean clothes of my own.  I stole my husband's clothes.

I grabbed one of his comfy sweatshirts, and...

wait for it...

his long underwear.

Yep, I wore his long underwear as pajama pants.

Sure they were a little loose, but they were warm and comfy :o)

But don't tell my husband or he'll start hiding his clothes from me!

Wishful Wednesday

I wish for good health for all of my family.

I wish I had a dvr upstairs, ours is downstairs.

I wish I had a housekeeper.  Maybe some day I'll be able to afford one, but I'm not gonna hold my breath!

I also wish for a personal masseuse, to give me neck rubs and foot rubs anytime I need one.  Not gonna hold my breath for that one either :o)


Your turn! What are you wishing for?

Birds and the Letter B

Last week the theme was "Birds" and the letter B.  As you can see by the little snippet I'm showing you, we had a lot planned! 

Once again, we started the week off with the letter, number, and some other non-bird related activities.  One thing I had to do was find out where the kids were with their cutting ability.  I knew the 4 year old was able to cut on a curved line just fine, but I wasn't sure about Babydoll.  Turns out she can cut a straight line, a zig-zag, and a curved line without too much difficulty. 

Then on Tuesday we started talking about Birds.  We started with Bird vocabulary and body parts.  Did lots of make-believe which helped anchor those words into their memory (and it's fun!!),

We used a real bird feather to paint blue jays.  Perfect integration of the Birds theme, and the letter B.  We sang songs about birds, bird fingerplays, number puzzles, read books like The Little Red Hen, and Are You My Mother.  We made artwork with birdseed, used almost all our senses to examine and discuss about a real bird nest (the one sense we didn't use? taste!).  For lunch on Friday the kids helped me make egg salad sandwiches.  Throughout the week we kept going back to the letter B, word wall, B sound, and the letter A.

We also made a simple bird feeder out of an orange juice container.

Do you think the birds like LOTS of PULP birdseed?  Sure hope so!

Ants and the Letter A

I am really behind on blogging about preschool!  I've been stock piling pictures on my camera because I wasn't sure where my usb cord was, and I wasn't about to post about preschool without pictures.

Two weeks ago the theme was the letter A and Ants.  The first day of the week we just worked on the letter A, number 1, short A sound, and some other super cool stuff.  Then on Tuesday we got going with Ants.

We learned some ant vocabulary, ant body parts, the toddlers worked on learning their body parts. So far Little man has nose and feet down, is getting the hang of mouth, and my toddler daycare girl nose all her basics and was working on cheeks and lips.

This was the Letter A word wall.  I am not expecting my 3 and 4 year old to learn to read these words.  The point was for them to recognize the letter A in words, to understand that letters make up words, and that words have meaning (the pictures next to them, which they helped me match up).  Then the words stay up all week, we keep coming back to them, and they have the opportunity to possibly remember them by sight.

We made ants out of egg cartons, which helped them to remember how many legs ants have, and to compare that to us and other animals.  Look out kids, there's a giant brown ant about to eat your snack!  This day the kids also used their "mandibles" to pick up and eat their goldfish snack.  I wish I had a picture of that, it was pretty funny:o)

We made fingerprint ant pictures, painted a letter A, and made ants out of playdough. Read books like, The Ant Bully, and The Magic School Bus Gets Ants in its Pants.  We sang songs and learned fingerplays about ants.  One favorite activity was for Dramatic Play/Large Muscle.  We made our "colony" under the table, then went into the living room/playroom to find "food" which was a bucket of large legos.  We then carried our "food" with our "mandibles" all the way back to the colony.  We made ants on a log, and explored ants outside with magnifying glasses. 

We did a lot more that was unrelated to Ants as well.  The toddlers are starting to learn to count, and the preschoolers are fine-tuning their one-to-one correspondence during math, and getting the hang of those upper-teen numbers that are always tricky.

On an unrelated note, we pulled out some dress-up stuff, and Babydoll showed us some awesome ninja moves! :o)

Next up... the letter B and Birds.

A night out with the family

A few weeks ago there was a big family event in our town hosted by the Fire and Police Departments.  I thought I'd share some pictures with you.

All the kids got free firefighter hats

A helicopter landed in the grass and everyone swarmed to the landing helicopter like cats to an opening can of tuna.

Babydoll and Little Man got to sit in it!  Sweet Pea and Spence were over in the bouncy castle when it landed.

Before we left the girls got to try out the fire hose.  She looks so little holding that huge hose!

Sweet Pea tried it too.

This is what they were aiming at.  If they got the water into the windows or doors, things popped up out of the roof. 

The girls sat in the fire truck, we didn't put Little Man up there though because he was covered in Tootsie Pop!

And before we left we watched them filling up a hot air balloon.

It was a fun night full of demonstrations by the police and fire departments, display and info tables set up by local businesses, food, beverages, fire trucks, squad cars, horses, and lots of friends!



Wishful Wednesday

I wish Little Man would stop being such a crab. he's in a mood.

I wish Jeni would have her baby already, but probably not as much as she's wishing that.

I hope I can get this week's Sunday school lesson planned soon, first week teaching it on my own.

I wish bills would pay themselves, not just auto-withdrawl, but actually pay themselves.  that would be cool.

I wish there were more hours between 7PM and 10PM.

What are you wishing for?