Just a little fun with their piggies!

Buzz...Buzz.....Buzz. Now can we go outside and play football?

The boys were using the fort on the swingset as their fire truck. Oh what imaginations! They used jumpropes for their water hoses and hollered out orders as they put the fires out. Katie was their dispatcher. She would answer her pretend phone calls and then announce to the "men" where the next fire was! Very cute!

What a beautiful smile! I hope you all have a WONDERFUL summer and thank you so much for everything!

Good-bye for now friends!

On our last Wednesday together we talked about plants. We talked about the stems, leaves, roots, etc. of the plants and flowers that we had here. Then the kids planted seeds and we talked about what seeds and plants need to survive....soil, water, sun....and bees!

Plants and flowers need bees to help with pollination. They used Honeycomb cereal to make their own bee hives.
Charlie hard at work on his bee hive.

Even dandelions have stems, leaves, flowers and roots!

Garrett and Charlie playing together with the barn and the farm animals.

Several weeks ago we discovered that there were three robin eggs in a nest on our porch. Last week one day I peeked into the nest and saw that there were only two eggs. Later that day Alex found the lost egg broken and in the mulch near the porch.....but we still had hope for the remaining eggs.
The next day I found another of the eggs broken.....on the porch. The remaining single egg was all alone in the nest and the mother never came back. Maybe a cat? Another bird? A naughty neighborhood kid? (I know it wasn't my kids as they were so excited about the eggs and anxiously waiting for them to hatch!:)) Anyway, I decided to let the kids hold the egg. They were so excited and so gentle.

It is so blue....or is it green?
Is there a baby bird in here? Exploring, touching, questioning, growing......ahh.....childhood!

The kids made nacho dip mix to give to their moms for a Mother's Day gift. The card read...."I'm so happy she's "nacho" mommy, she's mine! giggle...giggle.... This is Garrett smelling the ground cumin before he added it to the bowl. We had to smell everything of course!

Katie is taking her turn stirring all of the spices together. We put the mix into bags with directions and a gift card. Everyone helped! Then they made cards for their mommys with their handprints. They love to have their hands painted.....it tickles! We also read a Mother's Day story about a little mouse who came up with a secret gift for his mom. He sang her a song!

After all of that work upstairs we headed downstairs to play. We hung streamers down from the chair so the boys could drive their cars through and pretend they were driving their cars through a carwash!

Of course it costs money to go through the carwash! Cha-Ching! The cash register is one of their favorite toys!
We used our flannel board when we read the story "Under the Big Red Umbrella". The kids all took turns coming up to put the animals from the story under the umbrella.

Katie making her own "magnet magic" on the serving tray!

Charlie watching carefully as he connects several magnetic items together on the tray.

I wonder how many things I can pick up with this big red magnet......hmmmm.

For our snack today we had raisins and string cheese. We had a story to go along with our raisins to make snack time..."math time". For example....You have five raisins...the raisin monster ate two of them....now how many raisins do you have? And so on......Also, they have been pouring their own drinks at snack time. This is quite an accomplishment and I am happy to say that we have not had any spills!

I just had to take a picture of Garrett helping Charlie dry his hands. How cute is that? Of course Charlie can dry his own hands (and he always does) but for some reason this Wednesday he ran out of the bathroom after washing his hands without drying them. Garrett noticed, grabbed the towel and did it for him! Now that is what friends are for!

This week they made up their own "shape designs" and we introduced two new shapes, the trapezoid and the hexagon! Those are big words for these kids!

I read them the story "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" by Charles Shaw. This book is about all of the different "things" you see when you look at clouds. The kids made their own "paint" clouds and then decided what he/she thought it looked like. They came up with some clever ideas!

For a little science fun I got out our tub of magnets! At first we just played with them. Then we did a couple of experiments with plastic fish, wooden puzzle letters, and metal paperclips. Ask your child which of these things would stick to his/her magnet. Then we tried stacking some magnets and found that sometimes they stick and sometimes they push away from each other. Then we ran our magnets under a wooden serving tray and watched the items on top of the tray move around. The magnet worked right through the tray!!! Science is fun!

I have more pictures to share with you but cannot figure out how to post more than five at a time. I will add them as a new post so you can see them.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Since playing "restaurant" was such a hit with the kids I decided to accumulate food boxes and other containers for a "grocery store". The red wagon served as a grocery cart for the shopper. Then of course we had a cashier and a bagger! They have wonderful imaginations!

We talked about the letter "M" and the sound it makes. After they came up with a list of "m" words we headed upstairs for a little "monster" business. We read three great monster books by Mercer Mayer....."There are Monsters Everywhere", "There's an Alligator Under My Bed", and "There's a Nightmare in My Closet". They loved these stories! Of course we discussed that monsters are not real so your kiddos should all sleep fine tonight!

We baked "monster" cookies. I'm not sure why they are called "monster" cookies but that is what the recipe calls them. They are oatmeal, peanut butter, m&m, and chocolate chip cookies. I guess it is just easier to say "monster" cookies! The kids dumped all of the ingredients in the mixing bowl and did MOST of the mixing. While the cookies baked we watched another clip from the "Kids for Character" video. Today it was about "respect". Ask your child what respect means.
While the cookies cooled we made our own crazy monster creations! Notice the "p" on Harrison's monster. He did not plan this, it just turned out this way! They worked very hard on their monsters and I think they turned out great. After our cookie and banana snack we headed outside to enjoy the beautiful weather!