Some of our friends gave us a train table and the children really enjoyed setting up and playing with it today. We've had the train set for a while but adding the new table in has made it the greatest thing since sliced bread. Thanks Katie, Avery and Addie! Adelyn is learning her animal sounds and has taking a liking to the figurines from our snap-on blocks. The group built with our Magform blocks this morning and had fun mixing colors and holding them up to the light to see the secondary and tertiary colors they made.
We celebrated Caleb's 3rd birthday today! He shared yummy Bom-Pops with us and was pumped to have all of his friends sing to him! Thank you to his family for bringing in popsicles. The children loved them! Klayden was a busy builder with the waffle blocks this morning. His friends joined in and they built streets of waffle blocks throughout the kitchen. We had red-pepper tomato soup with lunch today and Adelyn was a BIG, messy fan! Hugs for Leightyn!
Klayden was proud of this all yellow tower he built so we had to take a picture to show mom and dad! It's hard to see but he has such a big smile in this photo--too cute! He's been loving building with just about anything these days! We started learning about our letter M this week and read a book about a moose. The children had fun yelling out moose and making antlers on their heads whenever they spotted him in the book. Our outdoors time was very eventful today. Klayden loves eating snow. he usually just eats it off of his gloves but he must have been hungry here as he's scooping it off the teeter-totter. Owen was a proud big brother and took Adelyn sledding down the small hill in our back yard for the first time all by himself. It was adorable how cautious he was and held onto her for dear life. He also taught himself how to snowboard today! I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff but I was very impressed at his snowboarding form even on his first time down! Love that little guy! Becker enjoyed playing in the little cottage today. He liked carrying buckets of snow inside where there wasn't any accumulated yet.
After turning the bottom half of the loft into a cave this morning, our imaginations ran wild. My favorite was pretending we were cave men and women. Owen started a fire at which we cooked our Wooly Mammoth from the morning hunt. He collected water from the river for us to drink . When cave life became boring with the everyday chores, Owen decided it was time to bust out his Leap Reader. We discussed the mind-boggling thought about life prior to such things as electricity and batteries. Watching a 3 1/2 year old wrap his brain around that was awesome! Here Owen is teaching Adelyn about his Leap Reader. He did a nice job sharing and telling her how it worked. We finished our afternoon with some board games and of course we had to play one of our favorites- Cariboo!
The children made their "L is for Ladybug" art today after reading Library Lion by Michelle Knudson and The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. Leightyn and Owen's dramatic play was adorable today. They were pretending it was rest time in which they set their alarm clocks for times such as "4:8:15:11-teen". They would fall asleep and then all of a sudden shoot up and yell comments such as "I'm so tired! Ugh! It's time to wake up and mow the lawn!" or "It's so early but it's time to wake up and eat dinner." Caleb and Becker were interested in the new castle we brought out. There are secret trapped doors and steps that they enjoyed figuring out and finding.
I love this picture of Becker. I just wish I could have recorded what he was saying here. He was so incredibly pumped about the remote controlled construction vehicles we brought out today.
We had some rhythmic fun this morning with new instruments donated by Caleb's family! Thank you very much! The children love them! K is our letter of the week this week. After reading Does a Kangaroo have a Mother Too?, we made our 'K is for King' artwork. Duplo blocks were a huge interest today and there was some really neat construction going on. There guys were some very busy builders.
The nice weather allowed us some time outside on bikes today! Before the sun went down we caught some speed on the sled hill too! It was a wonderful afternoon.
What a big girl! Adelyn loves brushing her teeth but today was her first day up to the sink to do this task. She was so proud to be brushing with her big friends!
Owen loves Magna-tiles! It's one of his favorite building materials. Here he built a parking garage with the cars inside and asked for me to take a picture. These little guys are always so adorable when they are snoozing! Dragon was invited to snack this afternoon and the children thought it was really funny.
Adelyn and Klayden were having some fun with the pianos today. Klayden was up to some very serious composing! Becker woke from nap a little early today, giving us some quality reading time together.
You would have thought Becker won the lottery when he came across our dump truck flashlight in the bottom of our dress up box today. He loved that it has sound effects and can drive around like a typical toy truck.
Adelyn has been busy figuring out the many facets of the activity table. It's so fun watching her put the ball in the hole on top and then with an astonished look on her face, try and figure out how it came out on the bottom. Magic! The children were excited to find some USPS hats in our dress up clothes mix. They were delivering lots of mail today! Thanks to Owen and Addie's Grandpa Frank.
J is for Jewels and everyone had fun decorating their J's with lots of bling today! Eric Carle is one of my favorite children's authors and illustrators. After reading three of his books and taking a closer look at the designs we could see in his paint, we used him as our source artist for today's activity. The children participated in a group painting using finger paint and paint scrapers. It was a great way to learn and experiment with secondary colors. They had a lot of fun and it looks great!
Everyone was really excited to see each other after winter break. I'm almost certain everyone grew at least an inch! The group had fun working together and building a sail boat out of our large waffle blocks. During circle time, I read one of my favorite children's books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault. Due to the cold weather we switched things up a bit and had our art time in the morning where the children enjoyed doing some dobber art on the first letter of their names. We then hung their awesome letters on our own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree. Leightyn and Klayden were feeling extra artsy and enjoyed drawing during free-time as well. I absolutely love when they choose the art area during free-play!
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