Gardens

I love gardens.  I however was not blessed with a green thumb and have the ability to kill a plant just by looking at it.  Even so, we tried, once again, to teach the kids (and myself!) about gardens.

Monday was wet and muddy from a huge rainstorm.  We spent the day inside painting, reading, playing games.  We made garden rocks and flowers to use later in the week.

 we played some file-folder games.  This one was good practice for number recognition and counting.

And we made an indoor garden inspired by the book The Imaginary Garden.  

We did some exploring at the arboretum.

And tried planting some seeds.

Last year Ethan dumped out all the seeds after we planted them.  This year isn't looking too promising either.   We'll see if anything actually survives this year.

more game playing and activities saved from last year.

and garden lunches

St. Patrick's Week

For our St. Patrick's week we focused on rainbows and colors.  We also talked a bit about St. Patrick, Ireland, leprechauns, etc. 

We used this idea to make it 'rain rainbows'.  The kids loved seeing all the colors on top of the shaving cream and how they mixed together to make new colors.

We also used this color wheel (we've used before) to make rainbows

I get lucky charms once a year for St. Patrick's Day.  The kids pick out the marshmallows and no one eats the rest.  We used this graph to chart and count before eating.

We tried drawing rainbows

and finger painting.  I made finger paint just with cornstarch and water.  I drew the lines on the paper with a crayon so the kids could make the rainbow

We went on a green scavenger hunt.  It was interesting, the younger kids (just turned 3-years-old) couldn't focus on two adjectives.  They could find something green OR something hard, but couldn't seem to focus on the idea that it should be green AND hard, or green AND something you eat.  

speaking of things to eat...we made lots of rainbow foods this week.   This one is a quesidilla dyed with some colored water.  We used a pineapple for the sun and marshmallows for the clouds.  

You can't really tell, but we also dyed our waffles to be rainbow colors.  We used banana pennies for the gold and cottage cheese for the cloud.

Brielle also requested a leprechaun.  I wasn't sure how to do that, but came up with this.  I used tortilla to make the face and ears.  Shredded carrots for the hair and beard.  Raisin eyes, a green pepper hat, and mouth drawn with food-safe marker.

Gavin and Elise's mom put together this sensory activity for the kids.  She wrote letters on Rolos so the kids could find the letters to spell out their names.  

I then used it for an idea I saw for Brielle to practice sight words.

 The Leprechaun Trap

We read the book 'The Night Before St. Patrick's Day".  The kids all caught on to the idea of trapping a leprechaun and were determined they could do it. 

Using an idea from the book the kids decided to use legos to build their trap.  Brielle determined it should be rainbow colors to lure the leprechaun over to it.  They then put pennies in the container and thought the leprechaun would go up the steps and fall into the hold and get caught in the container.

The next morning they found their trap had been knocked over.  The leprechaun had left a note and tied green string all over the house.

the followed the green string to find their prize at the end

Isn't being a kid so much fun?

Happy Birthday James

James' Birthday turned out much different than expected, but ended up being a great spontaneous day of fun.

James and his parents had signed up to do a 62 mile bike ride for his birthday.  There was rain forecasted for that day, so they were watching the weather and still planning to ride in the rain.  Saturday morning when they woke up early to do the ride they looked out to find not just a drizzle of rain, but a major downpour.  At times it looked like a waterfall coming from the sky!  They all decided against riding in that kind of rain.

So, with no plans for the day we made had an impromptu family fun day.

we started with St. Patrick's Day breakfast.  Grandma made Shamrock Pancakes.

We all went bowling and out to lunch

And that night the kids got to play with Grandma again while James and I went out on a date.  We had some success in geocaching and enjoyed dinner without kids.

The next night we had James' traditional birthday dinner with the family.  A full St. Patty's feast with Corned Beef, Cabbage, Potatoes, Irish Soda Bread, Rainbow Fruit, and his favorite dessert: Toll House Pie with home-made icecream.

Farm Week

Thanks to my sister-in-law, we had a lot of farm-themed activities to play with this week.  It was nice to have some ready to go without me needing to print, color or laminate.

This one matched capital and lower case letters using different adult/baby farm animals.

We got all the farm toys out to play with

and also used them for painting

We used wheat to practice numbers, counting and measuring

we also played this feed the chickens game from prekinders.  I put the kids on teams so the big kids could help the younger kids count the right amount of corn kernels, based on the number they rolled on the dice.

The kids love solving mysteries.  This time we did the 'mystery of the missing cow'.  The kids started by making predictions about what kind of cow they might be looking for.  They wrote things like: real or pretend (or just the first letter of the word.), what color, if it would make noise, quiet or noisy etc.  We then searched for the cow.  Once we found the cow the kids drew a picture and decided if it was what they had predicted it would be.

Brielle requested a farm lunch.  For this one, I cut a quesidilla and used food-safe markers to decorate it to look like a barn.  We then used celery for grass and hot dogs for horses to put in the barn doors.

I forgot to take a picture of our books before taking them back.  I remember the kids loved the books by John Himmelman.  He wrote Chickens to the Rescue, Pigs to the Rescue and Cows to the Rescue.  They also liked this book by Nicholas Harris called A Year at a Farm.  There are pictures to search for on each page, which is always a favorite activity for my kids.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

My kids haven't really been interested in any of the Dr. Seuss books until this year.  Some of them tend to be quite long.  We had some fun with our Dr. Seuss theme week this year and talked a lot about words that rhyme.

From the 46 books he published, we went with some of the well known classics...

Green Eggs and Ham

 It seems you can't do a Dr. Seuss week reading and trying green eggs and ham.  It does not look very appetizing, but the 3 out of the 4 kids loved it.  (Brielle does not care for eggs or ham even on a normal day, but she tasted it anyway.)

 we also made 'dessert' green eggs and ham.  We used melted white chocolate on a graham cracker topped with a green m&m to look like the fried green egg that is in the book.

The Lorax

We played this game over and over again.  One of the kids would go upstairs to play the Once-ler and lower down the bucket asking for a certain amount of coins.  The kids downstairs would count out the correct amount to send back up to be counted by the kid upstairs.

We haven't yet seen the new Lorax movie, but we want to try it still.

 One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

 

We made some 'pink ink' (strawberry smoothies)

And did lots of fish activities (this one was fishing for the correct number of 'worm' to feed the fish)

The Cat in the Hat

We made the classic hat

Happy Birthday To You

We had a marching band, we also measured all the kids side by side to see which was the tallest birthday pet.  Ethan was very sad he wasn't the tallest.

 Fox in Sox

 From the words in the Fox in Sox book we made a lunch with 'cheese on trees' (cheese cubes stuck into pears with toothpicks), 'blue goo' (dyed yogurt), and 'oodles of noodles' angel hair pasta with garlic cheese sauce).

Ethan 3-year-old stats

My name is: Ethan (aka Fums, Little Buddy)

Height: 39.88" (91%)
Weight: 38lbs (94%)
Sleeping: Night-about 11 hours (7:30pm-6:30am), Nap about 2 hours (1pm-3pm)
Words: Talks a lot, but struggles with pronouncing certain sounds.  If you can't understand what he is saying, try adding an 'S' or 'F' to the beginning of the word.  Is interested in letters, doesn't know all of the alphabet, but loves to find letters from his name.
Movement: Loves to jump from high places, great at climbing, not yet peddling tricycle or balancing on scooter.  Throws and catches balls.  Loves to swim, play in the dirt, and in general get dirty.

Ethan's responses to 3-year-old Interview Questions

(we had to repeat the interview, to get better sound on the video camera.  Some of the questions he answered differently the second time)

What is your name? E-an (can't say the 'th' sound.  Until about 2 weeks ago he wouldn't try to say his name at all, but when asked what his name was would just say 'Me'.

When is your birthday? March

How old are you? 3

What is your favorite color? Green
What is your favorite song? Doe a Dee' (doesn't say the 'r' at the end of deer)

What is your favorite food? Macaroni

What is your favorite animal? Tiger

What is your favorite movie? Princess Aurora

What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Green

Who is your best friend? Gavin

What is your favorite book? Disneyland

What is your favorite thing to do? Go to Disneyland

When do you go to bed? On Tuesday

What does your Daddy do? Work

What does your Mommy do? Go to meetings

(these pictures are all from Aunt Alana's wedding in December.)