June Happenings!

In addition to selling things, donating things, or throwing them away we have done a few activities this month. :)  The boys are still VERY much into Super Mario Brothers and like to watch people play it on the wii, play it on the wii themselves, play with their Mario figures, watch Mario videos, hear Mario bedtime stories...

We made our own liquid watercolor using markers that were too dried out to use as markers anymore.  I got the idea from this blog: http://mrspicassosartroom.blogspot.com/2011/04/liquid-watercolors.html

Here are pictures we made using the blue liquid watercolor.  We sprayed it from a spray bottle onto paper and then used green glitter glue for seaweed and sea shapes macaroni (THANKS, ALICIA!) to make an ocean picture.  It is not gorgeous, but they had fun. 

We went to the earth science (or whatever they call it) museum.

Dino from the earth science museum.  This is actually one of the most museum looking museums in Windhoek. It was a pleasant surprise. :)

Duplo legos!  We aren't taking them with us to Armenia so we got a lot of good play time with them before we sold them.  We are moving on to the "big kid" legos. :)

Justin has developed a love for Scrabble.  He plays it his own way, basically just creating a crossword of words.  He is very excited about the point aspect as well.  Good for practicing spelling AND math skills.

Magnets!  Cut up pipe cleaners and magnet wands.  They loved scattering them and cleaning them up again.

Playing with trains is fun too.  Somehow they managed to incorporate their Mario figures and dinosaurs into the trains as well.

Went to what my boys call the "Gingerbread Church" to take a picture.  This is a major Windhoek landmark and we were doing a Flat Stanley project for a friend of mine.

Practicing right and left with Twister.

Also practicing our balance skills with Twister.

Aren't we attractive?  We played Ring a Round the Nosey.

Pick up the rings with your trunks.



We made funny cloud pictures after reading "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" together.

June 19th was probably the coldest day of the year, but we had fun playing at the playground with our friend Leah.

And, of course, eating with Leah was good too.  Any wonder why Ryan outweighs his older brother?



Justin is having a great time on the trampoline.

Ryan loves the slide.

June Happenings

June is the middle of winter here.  It is weird not to be doing "summer" stuff.  I don't like that the days are shorter, but I do appreciate the warm, bright sun.

Justin looking at the frosting on his knife.  We decorated star cookies with yellow frosting and sprinkles to celebrate him being able to read 100 words from the Dolch Word List.

Ryan couldn't read the words, but he got to decorate a cookie too.  He knows his alphabet, so I guess that should count.

We made Flubber.

The verdict was that Flubber wasn't as much fun as play-doh.

Our chain to count down the days until we go to the US to visit family.  Justin helped me staple the chain pattern. Ryan was excited that the chain made an "M" for Mommy.

Ryan with a rabbit at the petting zoo.

One of our favorite playgrounds here.  Now you see why we are so excited to go to the US to visit.  I wouldn't let them play on something like this there.  Here, despite missing bolts, broken boards, etc., it is a real gem.

The boys are using monkey finger puppets to play Angry Monkeys.  Very similar to the Angry Birds game, but they do much better with their version than they do on the ipod.

An obstacle course for the monkeys.  It includes sballs with spikes, giant spiders, fence with spikes, and several other challenges.  Justin loves to take ideas from videos or games and make them his own.

The boys made this for Rob for Father's Day.  Wooden box from JoAnns plus tissue paper and glue equals a box for Daddy to put his keys in at work.  Ryan did the lid and Justin did the rest of the box.

Since it is winter here, we read the book The Mitten by Jan Brett.  We laced a paper mitten and put the animals inside it to retell the story.

Here are Justin's animals and part of his mitten.  He chose a pink mitten since pink is still his favorite color.

I laid out clothes for the boys to wear, but they got the wrong piles.  Two years apart and they still get their clothes confused.

Fathers Day 2011

Justin playing on the wii with Nickelodeon wii fit game.

Ryan LOVES typing on the computer.  He likes hearing each letter name as he hits it on the keyboard.  He also really enjoys the alphabet part of starfall.com.

Justin uses a picture dictionary I made with my kindergarten class.  It saves me from having to spell the same words for him over and over as he types them in.

Justin wanted to pretend it was winter and have some hot chocolate.  I told him that it was winter. Just because it isn't snowing and we aren't wearing coats doesn't mean it isn't winter.

Justin likes his hot chocolate to 'warm down' a little bit so it is cold.

We played a game with instruments.  We laid several out on the floor.  Two of us would cover our heads with a blanket while the third person would play one of the instruments.  The blanket would come off and they would have to guess which instrument they heard.

I made an overlay for the intellikeys so Ryan and Justin could retell the story of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by typing simple sentences on the computer and hearing them read back.

We missed a couple of weeks of swimming lessons because the heat pump was broken and they had trouble getting it fixed and back up to temp. Once that problem was solved, we started making up lessons, meaning three times a week instead of only two!

Justin is getting better about getting out of the pool on his own.  It took him a long time to learn.

March 2011

Here are some of the activities that have been keeping us busy during the month of March.  We have also enjoyed swimming/wading, playing in the sandbox, building castles and rockets out of empty boxes, making Thomas train layouts, playing our new  Nickelodeon wii fit game, and a number of other things.

Justin (Cat in the Hat hat) and Ryan (orange hat) listen to a reading of Dr Seuss books at the Embassy community Dr Seuss celebration.  Justin thought it was weird to have a bday party for someone who was not there AND had never even been to Namibia.  He thought it was really weird when he found out Dr Seuss isn't even alive anymore.

J and I flipped a penny ten times and graphed the results.

Justin trying to predict if his penny will land on heads or tails this time.

Our Cat in the Hats.  Justin made his into a thank you card, but realized that he didn't know how to write "thank you" so he stopped trying and wrote "the end" because that is what you put at the end of things.

We put flashcards on the floor and one of us calls out a word and the other person has to shine the light on the word.  I have no idea while Blogger thinks it should rotate this picture sideways.

We sorted some cards in different ways.  Shown is by number of letters in the word.



Ryan was really into coloring with markers.



Justin building with the pattern blocks Meredith made.  Once again, Blogger thinks this picture looks better rotated.

Justin has patterns down, but he does not want to work on his cutting skills.  He has the most awkward grasp!  He was a better cutter 6 months ago when he accepted help with positioning the scissors.

This is Ryan's "leopard-con" which he for some reason thinks looks like Rob.  The hat?  Bushy beard?

Looking at letters with Dad.

Ryan has FINALLY started showing an interest in letters and numbers.  Much later than Justin, but he is getting there.  He knows 16 uppercase letters and some lowercase (like w).

The boys are getting ready to play a game that is based on one of the wii party games.  I don't mind building the game with them, but I can never keep up with the rules.

Ryan working on counting to ten with 1:1 correspondence.

Justin using his feet to manipulate the unifix cubes.  Lovely.

We were experimenting with different ways we could make ten.  Justin finds it fascinating that so many different combinations of numbers can add up to ten.

Ryan thinks he is pretty cool with cubes on his feet.

We were decorating hats for an alphabet safari.  Unfortunately, Ryan decided the letters should go Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and foam letters went flying of the table and all over the floor.

Ryan sporting his alphabet safari hat.

Justin adding the finishing touches to his alphabet safari hat.

We started our alphabet safari.  Each day, I give the boys a list of letters, and we go around the house looking for things that start with those letters.  We have taken many pictures.  When we finish the whole alphabet, we will choose our favorite pictures and put them in a powerpoint.  The boys have been having a lot of fun.

Justin with Brown Bear, Brown Bear manipulatives, retelling the story in his own order.

Ryan has the leters up the coconut tree, but they will come crashing down soon.  Chicka Chicka Boom BOOM!