Random

OK this is just a random post of this and that!

First – I babysat all day on Sunday and when I came home I walked into this

Yes, that is a 4x4x12 in the living room! The girls were so excited and had the best day with dad. They played circus and the beam was the tight rope. Along with a tight rope walker they had a lion tamer (Emily with a stuffed animal lion tied to her), a juggler and I can’t remember what else. Believe it or not this beam is still in the living room (tonight is the last night) because the girls have had tons and tons of fun on it! There is talk of the beam coming back out this weekend along with the cotton candy maker and clown face paint so we can have a family circus. Anybody want to come to our house this weekend? What, no takers????

Ellie saw a boat valentine holder in Family Fun magazine and of course she said we had to have it to hold our family valentines (the boat was in the middle of her table on her Valentine plans). It is basically an O.J. bottle with card board taped to the front. There is a section cut out  in the back to stick the valentines in and is covered with construction paper. Once I helped her cover it she decorated it all on her own and then made all of us Valentines and stuck in the back. She was very proud!

 

My last bit of randomness is that we are still trucking along in school but I have not taken any pictures the last 2 weeks. I have been very slack!!! Emily is doing great with Raising Rock Stars and we just finished up the letter H week. Ellie is still moving along as well. She is still working on handwriting, math, and reading but we are just finishing up our winter activities, most of which I printed from here, so we can move into our chocolate Valentines activities!

My Party Planner

I am pretty sure I have mentioned on here before that Ellie loves to plan and have parties. It is no lie when I say that we have at least 2-3 parties a week. It can be anywhere from a tea party to a stuffed animal party to a triangle party. You name it we have had it! For one of her gifts awhile back we gave her a big box with plates, napkins, streamers, plastic cups and silverware, gift bags, tablecloths etc. in it and called it her party box and she uses it all of the time. It isn’t surprising that she wants us to have a family Valentine’s party on Valentine’s day. So I go in to check on her last night assuming that she was asleep and I find her propped up in bed. She had an office organizer type thing, that zips open on her lap and holds a tablet on one side and pen and notes on the other, sitting on her lap and the Valentine’s Family Fun magazine beside her. She was flipping through the magazine for the 100th time and drawing out all of the ideas she wants to include for our party. She said that she couldn’t wait to share her plans with us in the morning. I could not help but to smile. I love this girl!!!

 

Workbooks

I have always loved workbooks! Ellie has never been a fan until recently and Emily LOVES them. Anytime she is done with her workboxes she says that she better get out her workbook. We have several favorites. Kumon of course, who doesn’t love those, but we have found several that we love just as much.

Gakken is very similar to Kumon but the girls love the pictures and stickers in them. There are several different ones but I think Let’s Create is our favorite.

 

A friend also introduced us to the Mead workbooks. Snip It is my favorite. Each page has areas where you peel off the paper to make it sticky and than you use the paper you cut from the back to put on the sticky picture.

Other Mead workbooks we like are Color Bound, Idea Builder, and Ellie’s favorite, Shape Builder.

Do your kids like workbooks? If so, what is their favorite?

Chocolate

I LOVE Chocolate!!! I love all sweets but anything chocolate is my favorite. Both of the girls have taken in my footsteps and have a love for all things sweet. So what better way to spend the couple weeks before Valentines Day learning all about chocolate. I ordered this

Download N Go Chocolate Challenge. It is 94 pages of all things Chocolate for only $7.95. We will learn where chocolate comes from, how it is made, types of chocolate, the science of chocolate and much more. Some of the information is a little too old for them (for grades K-4th) but I think we will get to use a lot of it! I am sure there will be some taste tasting as well:)

Popsicle Stick Game

I saw this sight word game using popsicle sticks awhile back on Activity Mom and I finally made it for the the girls. All you do it write sight words on popsicle sticks, stick them in a cup and take turns pulling out the sticks and reading the word. If you read it correctly you get to keep the stick. Whoever has the most sticks at the end of the game wins. I changed it a little because I wanted Emily to be able to play too. I put sight words on one side of Ellie’s sticks and a black dot on the other side. On Emily’s sticks I put letters on one side and a red dot on the other. Ellie only picked sticks with black dots and Emily with red. This was a great way to review and took no time to make!

Playing in the Leaves

I was looking back at pictures recently and found these of when we were playing in the leaves at Thanksgiving time. Chris is going to get me but I couldn’t help but share some of these pictures. We had a ball that day!

The ones below are my favorites. We stuffed as many leaves as we could in their shirts!

Tortilla Snowflake

In school this week we talked a lot about winter and used the awesome printables from Musings of Me! Ellie cut out these snowflakes from tortilla shells for our snacks like the ones found here. We brushed on melted butter and sprinkled on cinnamon/sugar. Yummy!

 

Emily’s 1st Week of Raising Rock Stars Preschool

After having several weeks off from school we started back to school Monday. Both girls were so excited, which just melts my heart because it is inevitable that one day they will complain about it. Emily started the Raising Rock Stars (I highly recommend this program) and it has gone great this week except for a few tantrums. I was really unsure on how I would juggle both girls needing so much help and it has definitely been harder on me but I have made a conscious effort and prayed about being patient. I also have gone over our class rules before school each day and have been very firm about keeping the rules!

Here is the board we are using for circle time. It is just a foam board that I pinned to our hanging felt board. I set it up just like Carisa did. It has all of the below on it plus the song we are working on for the week(This Little Light of Mine) and an application sheet on how to let our light shine throughout our day.

Letter: L l

Number:1

Shape: Circle

Sight Word: See

Color: Yellow

Bible Verse: Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16

Each day we watched her inactive slide show that is for members only for RRSP. Anything on the computer is a huge hit.

She colored this candle with her verse on it. I cut it out and she glued it to to the page.

She cut out her verse and almost my finger and taped it together. She is showing me how long it is. This is the one thing we did that made me want to scream and we used about a half a roll of scotch tape. She loved it…….me? not so much:)

I worked with her a lot with the Rock Star activities so that is all of the pictures I have of those activities but she colored her bible verse, practiced writing the letter L, read her little beginning reader book which she memorized and could read to me today! She was beyond proud. Here are some of the other activities she worked on:

  Not sure why this picture is coming in side ways but she made a foam lion with the letter L. It was very hard for me not to interject when she was putting the feet on wrong and the tail on the wrong side but I bit my tongue and let her do it her way. You can find all of the alphabet foam letter crafts here.  Colored Linked together these little plastic people. There arms connect together and are great for patterning. I found them at a local $ store.Put stickers on the page Put her patterning cards in order Matched bottle cap letters to our names

Put the discs in the right cup based on color

    Putting the ladybugs in order by size. I printed these from here.

My proudest moment this week is when she was able to say her bible verse. It is really long and I never thought she could do it. I have to say it with her but she knows it and that makes for a proud mama!!!

Christmas Favorites

I wanted to share some of the girls favorite Christmas gifts this year! All of their favorites except for Pick and Draw came from family members but of coarse Emily’s least favorite gift, which was actually a birthday present, came from Chris and I….go figure! Here is their list of favorites.

 

I ordered Pick and Draw after seeing it on several blogs and we are not disappointed! It is so fun! You can read more about it here

Emily got this sofa and now she has one just like Ellie. She loved it so much she slept in it for 2 nights! We have Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom which they love and they love this game just as much!  This is a great learning cash register. My only complaint is the drawer opens so forcefully that the coins pop out. It still has so many great features that we can use for school and play!

  They love their new bikes! Emily got a 12” Pinkalicious which is her first big girl bike and she can ride like a pro already. Ellie got an 18” Barbie bike.We had Guess Who but Guess Who Extra is so much better! We have played this game A LOT! Ellie wanted a cotton candy maker so bad and it did not disappoint!

This wooden food has been a huge hit with Emily. We have eaten lots of wooden food around here. Good thing it is zero calories!!!

 

Emily’s least favorite gift…..

Baby Alive. She is the cute doll that laughs, cries, sucks on a bottle, and all sorts of things. I thought she would LOVE it! When she opened it she seemed excited until I opened my big mouth and said that she peeps and poops too! Well that did it! She wanted nothing else to do with her and asked Chris not to open the box. I think I will put her away for awhile:)

What were your kids favorite gifts?

The New Year

Happy New Year everybody! 2010 was a great year,for the most part, and I pray 2011 will be even better! I love this time of year when the hustle and bustle is over (although I love the holidays too)and I can refocus on school, personal goals and just being with my family. We spent New Years Eve with wonderful friends and I spent New Years Day with one of my beautiful sisters! Every year we meet on New Years Day at the coffee shop and update our new calendars over a cup of Joe, make up new menu plans, go out to lunch and hit a movie. It is a great way to spend New Years Day!

I have also spent this week planning for our next 8 weeks of school. As always I am really excited about some new changes. Not a lot is changing for Ellie except I am adding in Story of the World and First Language Lessons. A lot is changing for Emily. I am starting Raising Rock Stars Preschool with her. I really think she is going to love it! It is such a great bible based curriculum created by Carisa at 1+1+1=1. I know everything will not go as planned but I am looking forward to getting started.

What do you did on New Years and what are your plans for the upcoming year?