March 2012

Ryan kept getting wet at the water table and wanting to put on dry clothes.  Uh, no, I don't want to do that much laundry.  Hat, underwear, crocs, and sunscreen was a compromise.  Already Fall here, so not tons of days left for running around mostly naked outside.

We made leprechaun masks.  I cut out the hat and the hole in the plate for Ryan.  He did the rest.

Justin cut out his own hat and tried to make it full of the colors of the rainbows.  Leprechauns like that you know.



Stamping words with ABC stamps.  Ryan got his basic words down and then just went crazy.

I cut out shamrocks and the boys cut and pasted various green papers on them to make a shamrock collage.

The boys really got into building leprechaun traps.  We read a number of St Patrick's Day books and in one of them the children made leprechaun traps.  Here is the block trap.  We saw leprechaun footprints here, but didn't catch a leprechaun.  Looks like he had a partner working with him.

Seems like the leprechaun(s) were able to knock over some of the legos in this trap to get free.

We saw footprints by this trap, but evidently the leprechaun(s) knew that a papertowel can't support much weight and avoided stepping out to try to get the shiny coin.

The boys colored and cut out their own 10 little leprechauns.  Justin kept playing with his like paper dolls.  Ryan glued his in order, but I forgot to take a picture before it went into the garbage on April 1st.  Ryan did put my leprechauns in order from 1 to 10 though.

The boys pretended to be frogs and jumped as far as they could.  They then measured the distance first in unifix cubes and then in links.  They recorded the measurement on a chart.  We were going to measure using other nonstandard units, but didn't get around to it before the masking tape got peeled off of the living room floor.

We acted out Jump, Frog, Jump! with the flannel board and story props.

Justin found a marble outside and thinks it is the most amazing find ever.  He insisted on a picture of it.

Ryan saw that Justin got his picture taken, so he needed his taken too.

Frog life cycle.  Justin, Ryan, and I worked together on it.  The large writing is Ryan's. :)

The boys love doing projects like this.  Yep, it is coloring on wooden items purchased from Michael's.  If only I knew what to do with all of them.  I thought hanging them in a mobile thing might be fun, but it would probably set off our alarm if they moved at all. :(

We made frogs out of paper plates.  Justin informed me that they do not look like frogs.  Ryan wanted his to be a mommy and a baby frog.  We reviewed that baby frogs are tadpoles so it became a mommy and a little boy frog.  Of course.

I took a mini book reproducible and numbered the pictures in order.  Ryan could sequence by number, Justin could put the words in order on the pocket chart.  He often liked to change the song though to make it funny.  Oh yeah, just had me laughing on the floor by changing a word or two around.  Five year old humor. 

Taking a break from frogs now to do Easter the first week in April.  Might pick up with frogs and other living things after that.  I want to do spring type things even though it is Fall now.  Sorry, April just doesn't mean Fall to me, it means butterflies, flowers, and getting ready for summer.  We will see.  I am sure the boys will lead the way and totally change my plans.  We also want to do a little bit to learn about Armenia since that will be our new home next year.

January 2012 Stuff

Here are some of this month's activities, in no particular order.

We went to Swakopmund on the coast of Namibia.  We had a great time playing in the ocean.



Ryan got some tinkertoys for Christmas and the boys LOVED them.  I found some on clearance at kmart.com and got them some more.  What a great toy!  Unfortunately, I don't think the quality is as good at the tinkertoys I had as a kid.   They have changed a few of the pieces, not for the better.  Oh well.

In Swakopmund we went on the living desert tour with Tommy.  Best tour ever!  Here is Tommy bringing Ryan back up a dune to where the vehicle is.  Evidently it was easier to go down than up. :)



In Swakopmund they also had a children's play place for kids to play as much as they wanted for about USD $4 a day per child.  Justin and Ryan both enjoyed these boats.

We went over to Walvis Bay and went for a dolphin and seal cruise.  Unfortunately, Justin appears to get seasick.  Note to self for future trips on the water!

We use dot a dot markers on these coffee filters and then attached them to pipe cleaners for a cheery bouquet.

Justin was exploring weighted numbers with the balance.  Who knew there were so many ways to get to 10?

We sorted things according to size.  I had three different sizes of each object and the boys compared to put them in the right place.

Here are some of the objects we used.

Our yard is incredibly uneven and in a moment of weakness I made an indoor bike course for the boys.  It really helped them figure out how to control their bikes.  Now they can manage better on a bumpy, slanted surface.

We traced things (like our hands) and measured them using nonstandard units of measure such as crayons.

Ryan found this in the scrap box and insisted on doing it.  I cut, he matched and glued.

This month we have been making a lot of games.  Some make more sense than others.  I guess a lot of the fun is in the creation.

For my birthday we went to Na'an ku se Wildlife Sanctuary.  This is one of the animals we got to see.  He and a few friends escaped from Etosha and needed a place to live where they weren't killing farm animals.

Ready, aim, fire!  We shot at targets.