The Land of Rain

Hockey Fans

We all got green t shirts tossed to us from the rink, go Americans!

Weekend

Laughing babies are the cutest

 We visited Brian and Tia this weekend. We had so much fun running around at the lake and playing games.

Playing on the train tracks at the pond

Eating pizza in the back yard

I finished Claire's quilt, this is my favorite piece of it. HOORAY! Thanks again, Paula for my sewing machine, it is definitely my favorite belonging.

I believe in SCIENCE

Gummy bear science. We hypothesized about the effects of water, salt water, and vinegar on red bears. Then we carefully measured the water and vinegar.

 I wrote their hypothesis for each liquid under each tub. I'm excited to compare the results with their guesses.

Then we played don't eat Pete with the extra bears!

Sharp shooting number recognition

Smashing our paper mache from last week, super fun cause and effect

UPDATE:

Here the kids are comparing their before and after gummy bears. The vinegar soaked bears got the biggest and the salt water bears got bigger but not much bigger. The kids compared how the bears looked, smelled and felt different. Then I told them to see if each of the bears tasted different than normal bears...this is the picture that came after that suggestion. Funny thing is that they were willing to try each of the bears, even though the first was so nasty! So fun.

Active Schooling

So we've been trying to get creative here to better help Will with school. He is fidgety. Since we're working on number recognition with him right now, I came up with a couple fun games to get him moving and focusing on numbers!

He picks a card, tells me what number it is and then we do that many jumping jacks, or count to that number while doing a wall sit (his favorite). (It's nice to get a mini-work out for me too!)

Today we played a game where he has two piles of cards. One pile has pictures of objects and the other pile has numbers. He has to count the object, match it to the number card in the other pile and then take a victory lap around the dining table, then repeat. He loved shouting as he ran around the table and this short break helped him get excited about focusing on counting again. He did a great job with counting the pictures of cats, cars, submarines, and other objects; he was careful and counted them all correctly! I played this same game with Ruth (with bigger numbers) to help her practice this skill. She had a hard time carefully counting each flower or star on her cards. It takes a lot of patience and focus to sit and count carefully!

Also, we went to a hockey game this weekend with Brian and Tia. It was super fun. Beforehand we went to Bookwalter (it's a winery...I had to tell the waiter 3 times that we really didn't want any wine!) for dinner. The food was killer; perfectly cooked meat, and fun yummy appetizers.

Goopy Slimey Week

This week was all about sensory fun. We started out easy with playdough.

 Claire loved sticking stuff into the playdough

 Will is playing in the dirt, he planted a daffodil bulb

Then we stepped up the "yuck" factor with pudding.  Claire mostly wanted to eat it, but that's the fun about painting with pudding!

Then we took a bath-paint bath. They all loved this

Will is working on number recognition by rolling a die and putting the blocks on the corresponding number. He really liked this.

Painting with wet chalk, also a favorite

Sweet sleeping baby. She's been a big napper this week.

Ice cream is sloppy

Then we started making a big mess, and not everybody was happy about the goo. Paper mache

Then we made slime with liquid starch and glue...big kids loved rescuing the little people from the slime monster...Claire, not so much.

 I got new glasses after more than 3 years

Painting our paper mache after it had dried

Excavating for treasure in frozen jello

 Shaving cream fun. We read a book about how rain is formed and then did a rain experiment...then we sprayed shaving cream all over the table, back window and finally the big bath tub. Claire once again hated the sloppiness...until we were in the tub.

And today when I finally crawled out of bed, this is what I found 2 of the critters doing.

Today we went on a 3 mile hike with the kids. It was mostly flat so it was easy, just a bit cold.