Zuko The Great

We are working on recognizing the sound of letter Ff.  We cut up another worksheet.  It seems pointless, but I think that just gluing it onto a piece of colored construction paper keeps the kids engaged. 

The kids took their time saying the names of each tiny picture until they realized which ones started with the F sound.  They did a great job sorting them out!

They glued the pictures onto the fence and colored. 

Outside into the sunshine we went!  The kids couldn't believe that Zuko was up in the tree.  He looks like a king up there.  Zuko the Great!

"Oh- she sees me."

He hopped down for a closer look.

"Zuko come down!"  The kids were amused.  

Zuko the Great does not follow orders, though.

The kids just couldn't get enough of seeing him in the tree. ♥

This is a part of my every morning routine.  I stop to see Zuko at the napkins.  He has a routine.  First he eats his breakfast.  Next he joins me in the bathroom and watches me get ready.  He sits on the counter right next to my coffee.  EVERY MORNING.  Then he moves to the table to catch the napkins.  I don't know why, but he really enjoys taking them all out of the holder.  

This morning I realized that we had TWO table kitties.  See Petra on the little red table in the background?  I sure love having cats around.  They are so good with the kids, too.

It's my Friday today!  I'm making sure to let each family who brings their children to me how thankful we are for them.  We would not have a Henle House without them, and I do not ever take them for granted.  I thank God for them each and every day.  The blog will take a break until Monday.  Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥

The Kids Said..

Look at my babies!  Where is the time disappearing to?  Lately I have a strong desire to capture as many of these moments as I can.  I've always enjoyed writing things down that we can look back on and remember.  I while back, I interviewed my kids with some questions about their mom. (Me.)  I typed up the answers and we get them out every now and then and laugh.  I found the list of questions somewhere on the internet. 

The interview took place four years ago when Stephanie was 11, Ethan was 6 and Aiden was 4.  My, time has flown!

Question: What is your mom really good at?

Stephanie: "Hmmm....she's good at...you are really good at cleaning MY room."

Ethan: "Yelling at me."  ☺

Aiden:  "Cleaning the garden and every stuff."

Question: What is something your mom always says to you?

Stephanie:  "Come get your shoes out of the living room."

Ethan: "I love you."

Aiden: "Come snuggy on me." 

Question: What does your mom do when you're not around?

Stephanie:   "I have no idea... which makes me suspicious."

Ethan:  "She relaxes and watches movies."

Aiden:  "She's not looking at me." LOL

Question: How tall is your mom?

Stephanie: "Maybe 5 point something?"

Ethan: "2 feet.":)

Aiden: "Like thisssssssss big." (Reaching high.)

 Aiden age 5 said, "Mom, what we are colored of is beige." 

Aiden again at age five said, "Mom, I love you!", after I made him a piece of toast with peanut butter and banana slices on it.  "Let me tell ya the number how much I love ya. 5000." ♥

Aiden was talking with his cousin Alexis.  Ages 5 and 4.

"Have you ever been married?" Aiden asked her.

"No, I've never been married." Alexis replied. (Phew!)

"Good, cuz kids are the worstest thing ever!" Aiden said. 

When a kid was going to kill a bug in the back yard, Aiden said, " If you kill that bug I'm going inside.  Bugs have a life to live!  They are very important!"  

Ethan at age 6 while playing in the kitchen sink, "Whoa!  Water beats ice!!"  Everything is a battle.  Everything.

On Ethan's fist day of kindergarten I said to him, "Ethan, you're handsome!"  He said back to me, "Perhaps..I am." ♥

One of Ethan's prayer requests at age 6:   "That Kirby be returned to On Demand."

When Ethan was 6, he was easily sucked into infomercials.  He was very dramatic when he  rushed me in front of the tv so he could show me the toothpaste dispenser.  I told him he didn't need it.  "But Mom!!  It's ONLY $19.99!" 

It's so important to me that I don't forget these things.  At the beginning of this year, we started a "Good things about 2013" jar.  The goal was to write good things onto a piece of paper and tuck them into the jar.  Everyone took part all year.  We will sit down ans a family and go through them at the end of December and read what everyone had to say.  I'm looking forward to that!

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥

A Bunch Of Turkeys

 The turkey fun continues!  I'll admit, usually right now we are reading pilgrim books and learning about them.  I strongly feel that the pilgrims were not the nice people that the books portray them to be and it has caused me this year to avoid the subject with the kids.  Maybe I'm just being stubborn- but I'm pretty sure that there was some horrific slaughtering going on.  No pilgrim glorification for me this year.  Instead, let's create turkeys and give them hope before the slaughter!  Geesh!!  How's that for irony?  

ANYWAY- we created turkey hats.  I cut out the pieces ahead of time.  This project took only about ten minutes.  Easy!

The kids glued the pieces on.  Glue sticks are great for a project that results in instant wear.  When they have something to wear or play with immediately after creating, I avoid the google eyes.  We used white paper circles so they could continue using the glue sticks. 

Once they got the pieces glued on and added marker dots for the eyes, I measured their heads and stapled the feathers to the back of each hat.

Look, a turkey!

More turkeys!  In fact, they were a bunch of turkeys all day.  It was great!

Today we are having a free day.  

♫Here's a fun version of Sleigh Ride, by FUN.♫

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥

Thankful Pies

The kids and I have been talking about what it means to be thankful for things.  The word "thankful" has proven to be a bit confusing for them.  We read a book in group time about being happy, and talked about what makes us each happy.  They can understand that concept much better!

Meanwhile, I cut a pie shape out of some paper plates to prepare for our thankful pies.

We took turns in group time mentioning one thing at a time that makes us happy.  I wrote each child's responses down on their own paper plates.  When doing this, it's important to write down exactly what the kids say, even if it doesn't make sense to me.  In the past, when I thought a child was making up something odd, it turned out that what she was talking about was something specific to her family and an imaginary friend they all have.  So if this guy eats fish with the gold in it, I'm sure his parents must know what he meant by that. :)

Off to the table we went to color our paper plate orange, just like pumpkin pie.   Not one of them mentioned that the plate looks like PacMan. (I'm feeling old.)

While they colored, I mixed a little bit of Elmer's glue with some water.

We got out the pumkin pie spice and smelled it.  I thought it might be fun to add a smell to our thankful pies.

When the kids finished coloring, I placed their pie on top of the plate with their responses about what makes them happy and brass fastened them together.  This created a thankful pie wheel.

To add a smell, I just took a paintbrush with the glue/water mixture and ran it around the edge of the orange color and the kids sprinkled pumpkin pie spice onto it.  It covered quite nicely!  The kids enjoyed that their pies smelled good.  I enjoyed that they could all tell me things that make them happy. 

It is freezing this morning and the fire inside is blazing.  All of the cats are watching me and looking at me as though I can warm things up for them so their outside experience will be more pleasing.  So funny!

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥

Frozen Noses

Our noses were frozen when we returned from the bus this morning!  It is beautiful outside, though.

Look at the beautiful moon.  One of the kids was pretending to catch it at the bus stop.  She reached way up to the sky and got it.  "I got it, Cole.  I got it."  (Big smile.) 

I'm beginning to think we might possibly have TWO Chippy's.  This Chippy doesn't look like he or she is nursing babies.  Hmmm...  Either way, this guy was on our porch and is currently chowing down on peanuts.  Our cats are all snuggling inside on this frozen morning.

Yesterday we reviewed the numbers 1-5.  Reviewing is so important!  

The instructions were simple: color the number of items that it says.  This was a great way to get the kids counting.  Although a couple of the kids are too young to grasp the concept of counting only to two or three, they still did a great job coloring the items.  Mission completion.

The ground was still muddy, but the rain had stopped.  Out we went!  These kids like to run around in celebration.

There she is, the little gardener!  She is so smart about gardening!  She has in the past pointed out veggies in my garden and named them correctly.  Even turnips.  I was busy in this garden box.  I finally planted some Allium bulbs.  Whenever I do something in the garden, this little one in the purple pants is right there watching and asking questions or giving me suggestions.  I actually planted them a few weeks ago, but the second I came outside and headed to the box, she followed to see what was happening.  I love the company!

This is Allium Giganta.  I am so excited!!  I've always wanted some of these in my garden, but being frugal, I couldn't justify spending $7 on two bulbs.  They were buy one package get one free at Fred Meyer.  I splurged.   I planted 4 giant bulbs and 10 smaller ones.  I CANNOT WAIT!!

P.S.  I broke the rule about no Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.  I feel that because Thanksgiving falls one week later than usual this year, I am justified.  There is too much wonderful music and not enough weeks to listen to it all.  I'm a Christmas music hoarder and I am not ashamed.

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥

F Is For Feathers

I purchased a turkey craft kit from Oriental Trading.  The pieces are supposed to fit together and allow the turkey to stand up.  They do not work.  I'm glad I bought the kit on clearance for a couple of bucks.  I used the turkey cutouts on a piece of paper yesterday to at least get some use out of them.  The kids are learning the color brown, so they colored the turkey shapes brown.

They added feathers. F is for feathers!

I had to laugh at the problem that arose for the little guy.  He just didn't want to tolerate glue on his fingers for this project.  We all have our days!  He made sure that I knew that this was his "day".  No glue on the fingers.

They glued on the letter F to remember that F is for feathers.

They added the turkey head last.  It was nice not to have to cut out shapes ahead of time.

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥

Birthdays!

These two guys share the same birthday!  One turned 6 and the other turned 4.  The excitement had been building for weeks.  Hooray for birthdays!

They each made a wish.

After two rounds of "Happy Birthday" they blew out their candles!  

Balloons are so great.  They will immediately bring smiles!

Hooray!

I usually get books for the kids.  Children's books are wonderful!  Every child should have books handy.

They were happy with the stories they received!  You cannot go wrong with Iron Man, Spiderman, The Avengers and Monsters University. 

☺They were thrilled and were sharing. ☺

Birthdays are the BEST!

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥

Fort

I've been a bit under the weather.  While on the mend, I feel like my energy is zapped!  Yesterday I only had a couple of kids- it was incredibly quiet.  We got out a sheet and made a small fort!

All of the hope I had for a little bit of noise was gone-  they immediately hid from me in the fort.  FOREVER!  I have a rough time when things are going a little too easy around here.   I will never understand why that is.  When this house is bursting at the seams I become Wonder Woman.  When it's quiet, I wander around bumping into walls. LOL!

He came out to show me that he had been under the fort the whole time.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  ☺

Someone else was a bit needy yesterday, too.   He followed me around and we bumped into walls together.   Today we are celebrating TWO birthdays!

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥