Caterpillars Everywhere

Our caterpillars have arrived!  They sit on the little table for the kids to look at.  They came with a small tri-fold full of information and photos so the kids can visualize what will happen.  They will cocoon in seven to ten days, and move to the large butterfly garden.  (Purchased separately.)  If you would like to purchase your own larvae and butterfly garden, visit Insect Lore and order them.  They arrive in a timely fashion!

We have five caterpillars inside to watch.

They have food in the bottom of the cup, so all we need to do is not handle the cup, watch and wait.

When we had the apple tree pruned, it disturbed hundreds of tent caterpillars.  I hate these creatures.  They destroy the tree year after year.  Because of the pruning, the caterpillars that weren't destroyed are popping up around the yard.

I thought that this might be a good opportunity for the kids to play with a caterpillar since they can't touch the ones we have inside.  We found a leaf and offered it to one.

It started chomping down immediately!

This was a great opportunity to teach one child who is scared of bugs that caterpillars are friendly creatures.  (When they aren't killing my tree.)  He discovered that this furry guy wasn't so scary after all.

We are powering on through the letter Ww.  

Even if the kids draw something resembling the letter, it's a great success!

W is a good letter for this week, we are waiting for the caterpillars to have wings.

♥♥♥Happy Taco Tuesday!♥♥♥

Volcano

We finished up last week with the letter Vv.  I cannot believe that preschool will be winding down!  We created volcanos!

The kids added some tissue paper strips for a little bit of 3D grass. 

Offering supplies like that keeps the kids interested.  They were glad to be creating volcanos.

For fun, we added some dinosaurs.  I don't know why I always associate volcanos with dinosaurs. 

They each painted some lava coming out of the volcano.  Good, busy fun!

 I have really been enjoying the gardens lately.  I have done more planting and rearranging this year than I have the past several years.  I've been scoring lots of fun containers at yard sales and look forward to planting in those as well.  Yesterday I noticed a few of the newly planted Mammoth Sunflower seeds have sprouted.  I am so thankful for these giants! The kids look forward to them each year, too. 

http://vevo.ly/0sLMnl

Click the link above to watch the amazing Holograph performance of one of Michael Jackson's posthumously released songs.  This aired last night at the Billboard Music Awards.  It was awesome!  I'm sad that I will never have the chance to see Michael Jackson live, I suppose a hologram will do.  I will always remember rocking out to "Bad" as a kid.

♥♥♥Happy Music Monday!♥♥♥

Caterpillar

For story exploring Thursday we used The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  We read the story.  A good way to keep kids interested in group time is to involve them in the story.  The kids had a job to count the foods that the caterpillar ate through, and to say it with me when the story read,"but he was STILL hungry!".  This keeps them engaged. 

We created our own hungry caterpillar.  This is really all in anticipation of our own caterpillars arriving.  

Lately I have been on a binge of letting the creativity flow naturally when the kids pick up a paint brush, but this time we were very organized, and worked together step by step to create a caterpillar like the one in the book.  Preschoolers are very good at following instructions!

They each created a beautiful caterpillar!

They each told me what their caterpillar eats.

Watch out for this one-- it eats butterflies.

It was a simple and fun project.

We hopped down to the Snohomish Farmer's Market last night for some $5 flower bouquets.  I like to split them up and place them everywhere.  We got a new (used) fishing boat yesterday-- hopefully we will take it out tonight and catch some fish. I'm a happy lady!

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥

Tent City

Time is flying!  This has been one of the smoothest preschool years.  I can't believe we are nearing the end!

We've been plowing through the Spring birthdays, one after the other.

We are working on the letter Vv, and have begun using pencils.

It's a much different experience using a pencil instead of a crayon.  There is a little bit less control, but they did pretty well. 

Something cool happened that I forgot to share!  A week ago we took a trip to the mall, which is rare.  I'm not a mall shopper.  My boys needed shorts, so we had to go to Old Navy.  It turned out to be "Free Comic Book Day", which is observed nationally.  We hopped over to the comic book store and everyone was allowed to choose EIGHT of the comic books they had laid out for the event.  They had some great kid ones, and I snagged several for the kids to flip through in the play room and several for the treasure box.  Score!

Meanwhile, at Henle House we are enjoying 80 degree weather this week.  It has been so heavenly, I am already mourning the rain in the forecast for this weekend.  It felt like summer!  We created a tent city yesterday.

The kids are always active outside, running here and there.  They are usually jumping off of the patio or climbing up and down from the tree platform. Adding tents was great for their imaginations.

The Snow White Cottage became the jail.

The police officer was scouting for criminals.

But he was corrupt, so this girl kept him locked up.  It was so funny!

It was bliss.

We have been noticing some butterflies and bees.  We recently ordered our live caterpillar larvae.  We will watch them eat, grow, cocoon and hatch.

During nap time, Petra hung out in each tent.  She has always liked them.

Zuko put himself in jail.

I sat and watched the breeze.  What you can't hear in the photo is that somewhere in the distance, for two days in a row, someone is playing an accordion beautifully.  It was kind of magical.  

I am in love with Tori Amos's new album "Unrepentant Geraldines".  Here's a fun fact for you about Tori.  Her favorite album of all time is Led Zeppelin's "Four" album.  When she was young and playing piano for peoples funerals, she would secretly mix tiny bits from that album into her playing and the people just thought she was playing hymns.  That's  an amazing sendoff!   You can download her new album here at Amazon.

The song above is called 'Trouble's Lament'.  

Something I love about her is that no matter what my mood is, she caters to it.

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥

Birthday And Garden Work

So many Spring birthdays-- so many smiles!  He wore these amazing glasses for his photo. :)

One wish later-- out the candle went!

It's so fun to see the excitement over each child's Birthday.

The Birthday boy gets to choose activities and be the line leader.  Off they went into the sunshine with balloons.  I forgot to snap photos.

It was because I've been digging in this vegetable garden.  

 Hours of weeding, tilling by hand, fertilizing and planting later- I have a sunburn, a sore body and bruised hands.  It is exhilarating!  I love to have a garden and thank God every day for it.  I love working in it and the feeling of accomplishment.  This year we are growing Sugar Snap Peas, Peas, Kentucky Blue Pole Green Beans, Carrots, Sweet Corn and of course, Mammoth Sunflowers.  Now that the garden is ready, we can get back to our preschool schedule. 

In the Fall, the kids helped me throw our leftover pumpkins into the garden.  We left them in the place that they landed and we now have pumpkin plants growing.  We are experimenting this year by leaving them there and letting them do what they choose to do.   

 My morning routine now includes a walk around the yards to see what the gardens are doing.  I love when a cat joins me.  Baby Zuko is a great companion.

The poppies are blooming!! 

The Allium are rounding out!

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥

Votive Holders

We created Mother's Day candle holders as gifts.

They used a mixture of water and Elmer's glue to paint each piece of tissue onto the jar.

Each child chose a stripe to add.

Add twine, and the results were beautiful!

Into a bag they went.

The bags then went into another bag, complete with a note about what each child loves about his or her mom.  Priceless!

The apple tree FINALLY got pruned yesterday!  The kids kept saying it was going to get a "haircut".  Pretty much sums it up!  Above is the before photo.

Here is the after photo!  It looks like an apple tree should.  

(Or at least as well as could be expected for this ancient beauty.)

Even better--- the rhododendron that I wish would die was chainsawed again.  To the ground, this time.  Amen-- I can't express that enough!!  When we bought this house, the Rhody was touching the roof.  It was also surrounded by ugly trees, one that had 4 inch spikes coming out of it.  The Rhody is the last of the evil things that grew here.  I have tried to grow a garden in the area around it with no luck.  Even my rhubarb died!  I'm picking up some stump killer this weekend at the hardware store.   I've been very busy digging in the gardens, it's been amazing!

My son Ethan made this for me for Mother's Day!  I had to share because it's so great.  It now has a permanent place in the dining room. 

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥