May 2012

Where has the time gone?  We are almost halfway through June so I suppose it is time to post May's happenings.

Rob and I went to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe and left the boys behind.  They had a wonderful time on their first sleepover at someone's house WITHOUT Mommy or Daddy there.  They missed us a little, but are still talking about how much fun it was.  Over a month after the trip they still have no idea where Rob and I were.  They assume we just sat around bored I guess.

We made pictures with lemons.  I put paper in shallow boxes and then put globs of paint on the paper.  The boys rolled the lemons around and created the designs you see here.

Justin loves cutting up paper and gluing it.  This is one of many creations he has made.   I would love a project that looks cute or at least looks like something, but I guess if I don't let him do his own thing he isn't expressing his creativity.

We read the book One Drowsy Dragon and looked for all of the words that described how that poor drowsy dragon was feeling.

We filled an inflatable bouncer with blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals.  A perfect little nest for the boys to play in.  They thought it was a great place to curl up and watch TV too.

We went to the Farmer's Market and the boys played with some friends on the school playground.

Ryan walking up the steps to the art museum.

Justin on his way up to the art museum.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum.

We put some paper in the window to see how the sunlight would fade it.  The red didn't fade nearly as much as the dark blue did.  We did this because they didn't understand in a book we read why Amelia Bedilia had to draw the drapes.

We did One, Two, Buckle My Shoe and practiced counting and writing our numbers.

Nice stairs at the Alte Feste Museum, huh?  Going up wasn't so bad, but I was a bit worried about the boys on the way down. 

The boys running around on the front steps by Alte Feste Museum.  I realize now that there wasn't anything inside the museum that I wanted to take a picture of.  Hard to get a good picture of the boys with the sun's location, but they wanted one.

Statue in front of Alte Feste Museum.

I found some kindergarten math vocabulary cards from my teaching days.  Ryan and Justin enjoyed going through them.  They know quite a few of them.

I have no idea, but he loves it.

We also spent a lot of time this month getting ready for the second big yard sale held by the Embassy.  Great timing since we will be moving soon.

April 2012 Events and Non-Events

Ryan is pretty fast at sorting by color, counting, and graphing (help with graphing) when it means eating jellybeans is the final step of the process.

And there he is, eating away.

Ryan and Justin's graphs in the window.

Easter egg covered with stickers hanging from fan on patio.

Cardboard ovals covered with foil and tissue paper squares.  Not exactly like the samples I saw online, but fun for the boys.

Scholastic tadpole book on a pocket chart.  Ryan can sequence the pictures and Justin can do the words.  Of course Justin often likes to change them around to make them "funny" in his opinion at least.

Our Easter eggs made out of glue covered yarn wrapped over balloons.  Yeah, they looked different on Pinterest and just about every other place I saw them online.  Justin didn't want to touch the sticky yarn and Ryan only wanted to put his hands in the glue.  Sigh.

Mine turned out a bit better, but it looks like a ball instead of an egg.  I thought that the water balloon looked egg shaped.  Guess I was wrong.  Oh well.

We made Easter bunnies and filled with cookies and/or stickers to give to friends.

Our Easter eggs.  I love the brown one on the back row.  Yep, after all the time Ryan spent on the egg he was able to dye the brown egg brown.

Ryan has his Easter Bunny shades on to help him find the hidden eggs.

Justin's basket is full and he is ready to find out what is in the eggs.

After getting his stuff out of the basket, Ryan donned an Easter bonnet.  Very attractive, Ryan.

We got a huge bag of lemons from a friend.  In addition to lemonade and lemon bread, we did some lemon science experiments. We also made some household cleaners from lemons.  Next up, lemon bars and lemon meringue pie.

Playing on the playground at the petting zoo.  Ryan is the faster, braver climber.

We had a wonderful vacation in Cape Town, South Africa.  More about that on the other blog.

We filled bowls with baking soda and used droppers to put in dyed vinegar.  The boys LOVED it.

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.