Before My Eyes

Before my eyes, our babies are growing up.  It really hit me when my aunt Michele commented on a facebook photo of me with my babies.

She said," ...it reminds me of that same time of my life, when you can put your arms around them all like a big bundle of giggles and love and then shake em up."   Boy was she right!  I can't stop thinking lately about the limited time I have to squeeze them all at once.   

I have this fierce need to get as much of them as I can.  They are all growing, changing.  Not as snuggly or needing me as often as they used to.  I'm ok with that, they are great kids!  They are learning quickly who they are.  I cannot stop this process, but I have to revel in it while I can. :)  That comment from my aunt Michele reminded me how precious this time is!

Ethan (right) is such a bright boy!  He is always thinking about things.  How things work.   He's a problem solver.  We had a very intense conversation the other day about who was faster, The Flash or Superman.  After extensive internet searching and discussing, we decided together that The Flash is probably faster on foot, but Superman is clearly faster in flight.  I cherish the simple conversations like this.  

Ethan enjoys knowing that Smudge chooses his bed for the day while he is at school.  Even if he leaves his fur all over the bed and we have to do laundry.   For Mother's Day, he brought me home a book of poems that he and his class had been working on since last Fall.  Here is one of his poems!

Love is the color of a rainbow shooting throught the sky.

Love smells like a fresh loaf of chocolate chip banana bread from the oven.

Love sounds like music from a violin.

Love tastes like the sweetest candy in the world.

Love looks like a Valentine's Day card in the shape of a heart.

Love feels like the softest fluff.

By Ethan Henle

(Proud mom alert- Proud mom alert!)

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥

Enjoy the three day weekend if you have it!

Jellyfish

We created jellyfish art for fun yesterday.  To begin, paint a hand except for the thumb.  Print as many as you would like onto the paper.  We chose black paper because the white paint shows up really well on it.

Turn the handprints upside down.  These are your jellyfish, minus tentacles!

"Please hold up one finger!"  We used one finger to drag some longer tentacles down the paper.

They were really starting to look jellyfishy.

Next step: add some blue dots to resemble bubbles and to give the effect that the jellyfish are actually under water.

Add eyes and a smile, I think they turned out great! 

It was a torrential rain kind of morning, so we were stuck inside and I had a craving for SHORTENING of all things. (I don't know what is going on.)  I whipped up some pie dough cookies.  Just mix up your usual pie dough recipe and roll it out.  Cover it with a cinnamon and sugar mixture, cut it into squares using a pizza cutter.  I baked mine at 350 degrees for 9 minutes. 

Craving killed.   I have found that if I deny myself a craving, it will not go away and then I go way overboard later.  What about you?

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥



X-Ray

Aaah, the letter X.  The letter that I can't really get them to understand because of the lack of easy words we can come up with that start with X.  We usually resort to the X-ray. 

This time we had a plan!

We traced the hand and forearm of each child onto black paper using a white crayon.  We counted out 9 Q-tips per child.  These would be our bones!

I helped with the glue placement and the kids laid the Q-Tips into place.  Some of them tried to paint the glue with the Q-Tips because we have done that in the past, but eventually we got all of our bones into place.

X is for X-ray!

Speaking of X-ray, our daughter Stephanie hurt her knee Sunday evening on the trampoline.  We spent last night at the walk-in clinic to make sure she didn't crack anything.  No x-ray needed, she just sprained it. (Ouch!)

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥



Snack Outside

Every afternoon, if it isn't raining, we have our snack outside.  I am convinced that fresh air is important, and we try to be outside as much as possible.  Lately we have our snack on the steps because the grass has been damp all day.  In the summer time, we lay a blanket out under the shade of the apple tree and have afternoon snack there.

They heard me snap a photo and turned around to catch me in the act.

One two year old gives wisdom to another two year old.  They speak the same language.

I moved some flowers around and added some stepping stones underneath the arbor.  I borrowed some Spanish Moss from the front garden and transplanted it around the rocks. 

It was a beautiful night last night!  I feel very blessed to be able to step out into the backyard and watch the sun set over the lake.  It sure highlighted the Wisteria last night and I couldn't resist a photo shoot. 

The whispy vines are growing like crazy!

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥



Blossoms

We create this project every year.  It's a good way to recognize the seasons!  by creating the tree of the season, they learn about the different growth stages.  It was time to create our Spring tree blossoms!

We began by coloring some grass onto our papers.  Then we glued on our tree.  They all noticed that it was missing something.

"Show me ONE finger, pelase!"  They all did.  "This is the finger that you will use to dot dot dot some pink tree blossoms onto your tree." 

This was a very quick project, yet it turns out beautiful!  I love trees, they are so beautiful.  God's art. 

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥



Wait A Second...

Yesterday at the bus stop a car pulled up to the stop sign.  A smiling grandmother looked out the window and said to me, "What a marvelous family you have!"  It donned on me that when we opened up this daycare it was only going to be temporary.  The goal was to do it until our kids are all in full time school.  That was last September.  Wait a second, none of these kids are mine!  I'm still doing it?  Funny.  This is proof that I love my job!  Sometimes I DO feel like these kids are a part of our family.  It's a blessing.  ♥

Plugging along in our daily routine, Smudge was not the center of attention and knew right where to find me!  This is where I am every morning.  greeting parents, dishing out breakfast, downing coffee and reading the paper. 

We did a great color review worksheet.  Those who could work on their own whipped right through it.  The rest of us worked on it together.  These kids are so smart!

I am learning lately that there is value in just getting out a couple of outside toys instead of the entire toy shed.  These kids played with a frisbee for about half an hour.  It was nice to see them engaging with eachother.  Sometimes the over abundance of toys squashes out creative play!

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥

Seeing Large Numbers

I cannot believe we are almost to the end of the preschool year!  Preschool at Henle House runs from the beginning of September through mid June.  We have made it through the alphabet to the letter W, to the number 18 and the kids have completed the shapes and colors memorization and recognition.  They can now recognize their names, and several of them can spell and or write their names as well.  The kids all know how to "pinch" the crayon and pencil to hold it correctly.  When we get into the high teen numbers, it can be hard to get the kids to see what that actually looks like.  We have in the past stacked blocks to see what 18 looks like.  This time we traced our hands, omitting two fingers on the last hand tracing to create 18 fingers.

While several of the kids cannot count to 18 on their own, I still think it is important for them to see the number, and our repetition right now will help it click later on when they finally grasp counting to twenty.

Our goal is to complete the aplhabet (sounds of each letter, too), be able to recognize those letters out of order, count to twenty and recognize those numbers out of order, recognize the colors and shapes, hold a pencil, recognize their names and spell or write them, and to be able to handle sitting in a grouptime.  We have reached almost ALL of those goals!!

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥