Our Carnival/ Circus week

Last week was our last week of school (which makes it my last week of teaching until Maddy is three!) so I wanted to make it really fun. 

I went with a carnival and circus theme. I really wanted to have a photo cutout thing but they are pretty expensive so I got a 3 fold project board from Walmart for a couple of dollars and made my own!

All week Abi would be earning tickets to use at the Carnival at the end of the week so one of the first things she did was to decorate a bag with crayons and animal stamps to keep the tickets in.

She had to try to guess how many clowns were in this jar. She was way off the first time. I dumped out about half and then she was still a little off. I dumped out about half of what was left and that time she was only four off. 

I used the remaining clowns in the jar for a graphing activity. We set up each clown color and as I pulled the clowns out, she colored in a square to see which color had the most.

Then the circus animals had a race to see which one could make it to the ring first to be the first performer. Each animal was assigned a number and when Abi would roll the dice she would move that animal one square. Before we began I asked her to predict which animal would win. She chose the elephant.

She chose wisely! Here is the elephant celebrating his victory.

For snack we had.... 

Then it was time to get to training the circus animals. First, she had to teach them (by throwing them) to jump through the hoop.

I put out a yarn tight rope which she had to walk along. Easy.

Then she had to walk it with a stick over her head...

Then she had to come back across again balancing her lion on the stick.

It was time for lion training. Using her stick, she had to teach the lion to sit up...

roll over...

and jump...

Then we used blocks to set up a steeple chase. We each had a horse and got to move however many spaces we rolled with the die. Abi won.

then the giant circus monster came to knock down our course...

Another day, Abi decorated cupcakes.

I put a few balloons out with slips of paper inside. Abi had to choose which one to stomp on and she would get however many tickets were inside. 

Maddy wanted to get in on this.

We also had a beanbag toss.

Throughout the week there was also a lot of worksheets, reading, and other fun.

Camping Week hike

I thought I had taken more pictures from our preschool theme of camping week but I guess I didn't! We had a great week playing bingo, doing worksheets, making up camping stories, and playing like we were camping. I really wanted to take the girls on a hike but the weather didn't cooperate and that week there was a lot of rain. Finally at the end of the week, while driving home from a neighboring town, I decided to pull over to a favorite place of mine here and take advantage of the sun shining by going on a walk in the woods.

Maddy was the slowest hiker ever. She kept stopping to play with things and explore all these new things.

Abi was a little trooper. She wanted to run! I made her slow down for a few minutes to enjoy the garden area.

She was loving this. I let her choose which way to go whenever we came to a sign showing different trails knowing that we would eventually end up in the big meadow with the historical houses no matter which way we went.

We had a real Little House on the Prairie moment once we reached the meadow. There was a class there having their old fashioned school day so we got to watch a bunch of kids and teachers dressed up enjoying their lunches on the school steps and playing games.

Also, we have started watching the first season of Little House and Abi loves it as much as the books. Her favorite thing is at the beginning of each DVD when they are playing the music and Carrie is running down the hill and falls. Maddy kept running through this meadow and falling and each time Abi would exclaim, "She's just like Carrie!"

It was a great day and a great week. 

Friday night we also had a pretend camp out and made smore bars.

May random moments

Little Bit being a cutie pie...

Abi had been afraid of riding this truck for years because it was loud or something. On a recent trip to Toys r us she noticed it and told me that she was very brave now and wanted to try it. After slightly moving for a few minutes and controlling the siren she found it to not be very exciting. 

We were blessed with a few nice days this month that were perfect for playing out in the yard...

I think this picture is hilarious. This was Maddys first walk in the new umbrella stroller and she wasn't too happy about it or the sunglasses I put on her. I think she looks like an old woman in this picture. A few moments later she was giggling and happy.

Maddy has this awesome crazy hair. It is almost always messy no matter what I do with it and she won't leave in the hair styles, bows, or hats I try to force on her. One day after a bath, Abi and I were having a fun time playing with Maddy's hair. Whenever we would do something with it, it would stay that way.... 

trying some Trump comb overs

Soon I tell you... soon

I have really bad about blogging lately. Everything has just kind of caught up with me and it's been a last priority but very soon I will get pictures on here and have posts about our camping preschool theme week with hike and this weeks Carnival/ Circus theme including a trip to Circus World and our own at home carnival we just finished.

18 months old

It is a little unbelievable to me that my baby is already 18 months old. She has been going to nursery for a few weeks though so I was a little prepared for it. She officially hit the mark on Friday.

So, what is she like at 18 months?

Madeline has a mind of her own!

She wants what she wants when she wants it. She will let you know if you are not getting her what she wants or if you are bothering her.

She does not like to cuddle. She is so much like me. She gets really annoyed if you try to hold her too long or snuggle her when she is not in the mood for it but when she comes over to you and puts her head on your leg and says, "Ohhhhh." it does make it all the more sweeter.

She is the pickiest eater in the world. I am having a really hard time with this because Abi wasn't picky at all until recently when she has started having an opinion about what she does and doesn't like. Maddy, on the other hand, can like something one day and not the next. She hates fruits and vegetables. Occasionally she will eat peaches or pears but sometimes she won't. The only fruit that she loves is bananas. 

Sometimes she'll eat peas or corn but not all the time.

She hates goldfish crackers.

There are days when she won't even eat Macaroni and cheese!

What she does like are Cheerios, Milk, water, bread/toast, peanut butter sandwiches, granola bars, Gerber cereal bars, Gerber puffs, and treats like animal crackers of course.

I don't know what to do about it because I don't feel like she is getting the nutrition she needs and I am not patient about making special meals for the kids. I just don't do it. I serve what I serve for dinner and if they don't like it they have to go without...I know I'm mean. But with Maddy that is harder to do because if she won't eat anything.... 

I will usually end up giving her a cereal bar or something. 

She loves putting pants around her neck like a scarf... and pretty much anything else that she can do that with.

She loves books! She is always looking at them, pulling them down off shelves, and has to have a few in bed with her at naptime and bedtime or she will cry.

She also loves carrying around these ice cream cone toys Abi got for Christmas that have the scoops velcro on. She is really cute with them pretending to eat them and give them to others.

While she doesn't like to be held or cuddled, she is quite the charmer in other ways. She is extremely friendly and everywhere we go she tries to get every ones attention to tell them Hi.

I can be in a store and she will be crying and then someone will walk up next to us and she will immediately turn off the whine and smile and say 'Hi."

She is hard to take places because she isn't easy to keep entertained. She wants to be down getting into things. I find this very challenging.

She is so fun to listen to. She will jabber on and on telling me stories I don't understand. 

She loves to laugh.

She can say lots of words but chooses not to. Mostly she says, Mom, No, Yeah, Yay,That, Cak (cracker) and Hi.

She continues to love music and dancing and just gets so excited whenever she hears music of any kind. I could watch her dance for hours.

She likes to sit in the baskets we keep the toys in.

If we watch Phineas and Ferb she tries to sing along to the opening song and sometimes you can make out "104 days" and she points when they say, "It's over here".

She is very independent (like her mother) and stubborn (again, like her mother!) and we can't imagine life without her!

Blast from the past

While Doug was in San Diego he got to stay in a really nice hotel on Coronado. I have told him all about Coronado because as a kid I lived in San Diego and Coronado was my favorite place. The Navy Lodge was there and we stayed there many times as well as living in it for a few months waiting for housing to open up. I loved living on the beach and I was smitten with the Hotel Del Coronado.

When we went to Disney World I told Doug that the amazing Grand Floridian hotel is patterned after the Hotel del Coronado so he really wanted to check it out.

He went over and rode an old fashioned elevator with the attendant in it and got me a souvenir...

It may seem a little strange that Doug got me a wine glass for a souvenir but it's not. It was an awesome gift that made me smile!

When I was a child and living there my best friend was a girl named Jamie. Her family had a fancy guest room at their house that we got to sleep in when we had sleepovers. We felt so cool and grown up sleeping in there that we would get some of her parents wine glasses and fill them with milk and pretend that we were sipping white wine in our room at the Hotel Del Coronado. 

That is why he got me the wine glass.

And that night I had a glass of milk in it!

An Art Show

This past week was art week in school for us. I used the Fancy Nancy book 'Fancy Nancy Aspiring Artist' for inspiration. Each day of the week she does a new kind of art based on a specific artist.

It was great that most of them fit in perfectly with the things we were doing each day.

Monday she was given a new set of markers and crayons and some paper to doodle.

Then we looked at ballerina paintings by Edgar Degas. After ballet she drew a ballerina of her own.

Tuesday we were going to paint in a garden somewhere like Claude Monet but it didn't work out so we went straight to doing portraits. She drew Maddy. (She was a little anxious to get onto playing)

Throughout the week she would get out her supplies and make new pieces for the upcoming art show. Here are a few examples. The one in the middle is Strawberry Shortcake.

In the book Fancy Nancy goes to a 3-D show about fish and then makes up her own fish. Wednesday we saw a few 3-D movies at Legoland so I asked Abi which was her favorite. It was a Bob the Builder one where they build roller coasters and a birdhouse. So, she drew her own roller coasters and a birdhouse  (pictured later)

Thursday we looked at pictures by Henri Matisse that he made from pieced of colored paper that he cut out. Abi made a butterfly (pictured later) and this bird with a frog under it.

Abi checking out some of her own work.

some doodles and crazy numbers...

Here is the butterfly and the birdhouse

a snail, and some more doodles...

She said her favorite was the Easter Bunny..

On Friday we went outside to paint like Jackson Pollock flinging paint all over the place. Unfortunately it turned very cold and windy on Friday so the piece got very messed up and had to dry in the garage and could not be featured in the art show.

Because Doug was gone all week we set up an 'art show' for Saturday morning. I strung a piece of yarn across the room and hung all of her work across it back to back. Then we made cookies and invited Daddy to come to her art show. She was so proud and it was so much fun.

here are some pictures I took outside when she was doing the crazy big painting.