Yesterday Twister came to group time. He's a kid magnet! They particularly liked his squeaking noise- he was a little nervous being out of his guinea pig haven in Stephanies room.
Having a guinea pig around is a great way to teach the kids about animal kindness. Guinea pigs are sociable creatures who love to be pet. They always act like they are starving to death- we don't mind feeding them carrots and occasional apple slices.
The kids thought it was funny that Twister sort of hopped like a rabbit.
"Gentle.." I reminded them. Our Twister makes a purring sound when he is pet. He loves it!
Nothing like a little animal lesson to make the kids smile! Happy Friday!♥♥♥
Song for today just drifts my mind away to somewhere sweet- wonderfully melodic tune by Celtic Woman called The Sky & The Dawn & The Sun. ♫
We spent yesterday counting to thirteen. 'Peanut' our flying squirrel puppet stacked 13 blocks in group time. We counted and beaded 13 wooden beads.
Wooden beads with shoelaces are a great tool for fine motor skills, color and shape recognition, and patterning. We use a tray to keep the loose beads from scattering all over the floor.
We glued 13 square pieces onto the paper. Sometimes I think we repeat the same projects for different numbers too often, but this project works well for the kids I have at Henle House right now. As long as it works, I am IN!
A bakers dozen (13) of biscuits finished off our day of thirteen. YUM! Best biscuit recipe ever. If you want the recipe, shoot me a message and I'll get it to you. We really enjoyed our outside time yesterday- it was so nice to have a break from the pouring rain and snow! Today it will be exceptionally warm- 61 degrees. ☼ Happy Thursday!
Song for today is a great live performance by led Zeppelin. 'The Ocean'. It sounds even BETTER than the recorded version, I think!☼
When the sun shines, do you ever just stand in it? Sometimes the kids and I joke about grabbing a handful and putting it in our pockets to save for a rainy day. ♫ Yesterday was glorious! I could feel the heat.
We woke up to snow.
I stepped out to investigate and saw the forsythia in bloom. How had I missed this?
I like to step out onto the front porch and feel the heat, and while out there I noticed my bottle vases needed cleaning.
I don't have a skinny scrubber, so I used a shish ka bob stick and a piece of fabric.
It fit easily into the bottle...
And the pointy end of the stick was great for getting into the edges of it. I was so happy- they look much better now! (Sorry I don't have a before photo..)
After all of that fun, we were almost late for the bus. Run! Of course, those are my boys running in the street, while the other little guy is so obediently on the path. Isn't that how it always is?
Look at the moss. Good old Washington. Follow the green mossy path.
The sun is so beautiful. We noticed the leaf buds on the trees. Suddenly everyone was chipper.
We returned home and on the way I investigated how the garden is managing in the snow. Those are poppy plants and rosemary. They are surviving.
I don't mind the snow when the sun is shining. I almost hit my 'lack of sunshine breaking point', God rescued me. Just in time!
Now the bottles look great and are ready for continuous stuffing this coming Spring! Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥
Song for today is Walking On Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. ♫☺
We threw out our worksheet again and created a nest yesterday.
We glued on some paper strips to make the nest look more realistic. There was talk about what birds use to create their nests and how some nests are big, some small, but they are all nests. Now is a good time to spot the nests in the trees without their leaves, so we will start looking for some on the way to the bus stop!
He colored his eggs for the nest.
Beautiful!♥
Meanwhile, I was up at 4AM with our kitty Smudge, who decided it was time to bat the baseball around the house. It sounded like an elephant wearing shoes. Smudge likes to play what we call "Horse". (Laughing..) He gallops back and forth and because we do not have carpet, we hear every paw step. He is so funny! Even more funny, while I was gathering the balls at 4:00, (there are three of them that he likes to bat around) I noticed that the baseball has a Babe Ruth autograph! Ethan got the movie 'The Sandlot' for Christmas. LOL
Here is Aiden and Smudge playing "jail". Aiden is the policeman and Smudge is clearly in jail. He was so good and stayed until he was released. We love our Smudge. Happy Tuesday! We woke up to snow and a 2 hour late start for school. ♥♥♥
Song for today is Strange Little Girls by Tori Amos.♫
Sometimes we just do nothing. Friday was that day! It was funny because I had planned to watch the movie 'Up' with the kids and then one of them showed up with her 'Up' DVD. It was meant to be. Popcorn completed our do-nothing morning. The kids played at their leisure, munched on popcorn, snuggled on the couch in front of the warm wood stove. To my disbelief, when the movie ended, I was asked to start it over. "Seriously?" I asked. I felt like we should do some jumping jacks or something. Sometimes we just NEED to do nothing. Kids are so busy it seems, rushed here and there, play dates and parties, school and daycare, where we scurry around and follow our daily schedule. I usually mention to parents when they tour our business that we occasionally throw out the schedule and do nothing. They like the idea as much as I do. This house can be a place of rest, too. Good.
I managed to catch up on some paperwork and Smudge wasn't getting enough attention. He practically wore a path from one end of the desk to the other. We love our Smudge. Happy Monday!♥♥♥
Song for today is Cosmic Love by Florence & The Machine. ♫
M is for mountains was much more fun than writing m's on a worksheet. I cut out large M's, white snow peaks to glue onto the top of the M's, and grabbed some cotton balls to glue on for clouds.
Easy easy- we colored the mountains brown. We glued on the snow.
We colored some grassy plains below. We fluffed some cotton balls to create clouds. By the end of our project, they remembered that this is the letter M. (Big smiles!) A couple of years ago, I printed out an alphabet idea sheet that included this project. It came from this website, but I can no longer locate it. I'm glad I printed it out! Happy Friday!♥♥♥
Song for today is The Future's So Bright by Timbuk 3. I thought this was the coolest song ever when I was a kid. ♫
I guess when there are kids in the house who need entertaining, singing is necessary. We love the '5 Green and speckled frogs" counting song. Yesterday was leap day, so I was looking for something to do with leaping. Frogs leap. It was a stretch, but we created 5 speckled frog puppets and an envelope to store them in.
I could've been more creative, allowing the kids to create their frogs. I was having "a day" I suppose, so took the easy way out and just printed some photos off of the internet.
We laid the photos upside down and placed some popsicle sticks on them. We then used tape to secure the sticks to the back of the photos.
We took some time to notice the differences between all of the frogs. Opposites have been talked about recently in group time.
We spent a lot of time holding our puppets and singing the song! The kids enjoyed having frogs to look at. In group time we use our frog puppets, and when the frogs "jump into the pool", we fly them across the room.
One piece of construction paper folded over and stapled makes a great storage envelope!
This happened yesterday, and threatened to happen this morning. Happy Thursday!♥♥♥
Song for today is Figlio Perduto performed by Sarah Brightman. She's so graceful- and I love Beethoven.♫
