Last week

The weeks seem to be going by quickly...we're doing a little bit of everything and nothing at all at the same time. We've been filling our weeks with playing outside when it's nice, keeping occupied inside when it's not, preschool, play dates, and swimming lessons. Here's a bit of what we did last week.

While at a play date... puddle jumping... something we don't do nearly enough of.
Lots of arts and crafts. This is some kind of a space ship we found in one of my new books I bought from my school book fair.

Shadow puppets.My beautiful flower garden. Emma Grace is STILL working on do-a-dotting her coffee filters... a week later. :)

The sensory bins made an appearance. The sister and I gave the construction workers "lunch", and my froggy took a random swim in the ocean... it was a free or all.

I even planted some marine life.

Another project from my new books. An owl.

And then there was some work in my workbooks. After I finished a page, Emma Grace checked over it for me. :)

This week we've already spent loads of time outside... THANK GOODNESS for the rain paying us a visit in the evenings and not smack dab in the middle of the day! :)

Insects

Rachel here. I know for a fact I've already written and posted this bad boy, but alas it's missing... Hmmmm... Blogger has been up to some fishy shenanigans. ANYWAY... last week was bug week. I had tons of activities planned, but the girls kept busy with tons of other things besides what I had out for them. C'est la vie...

Reese is VERY in to quiet activities that she can work on by herself. Here are a few activities I printed off of Kidsparkz for her. She can be quite the little worker bee.
Emma Grace started this activity off by doing it for real. Matching the right colors together. Don't get too terribly excited though... it went downhill as soon as I put the camera on her. She's sweet like that. ;) Magnet bug puzzle.
Bug word puzzles from Kidsparkz.

Shape practice... creating a butterfly.

Ordering butterflies from small to large... Kidsparkz.

For Reese's Teacher Appreciation gifts, she used her finger prints to make little bugs... and a random fish... from her classroom... that she makes me say hi to every day. :)

Lacing bug patterns with pipe cleaners and beads.

Emma Grace's little hands aren't quite up to Reese's ability... obviously. She desperately wanted to bead, so I got out her letters, and she laced those.EG also pretended to master the color yellow. She's still telling me everything is yellow when I ask her, but she tells me what it is actually on her own accord. Yesterday I asked her what shape something was; she looked at me, smiled, and said "yeyow." She's going to be trouble.

New transferring activity I got from The Dollar Tree. I planned on using it this summer, but it had that new car smell, so I gave in. :)

Reese playing with her Alphabet Sensory Bin. She loved it but was way more intrigued with the tongs and lifting the items up instead of sorting them.

Here is Little Miss Independent... emptying her dishes from the dishwasher. :)She's growing up... and she reminds me of it everyday. :)

A budget... le sigh...

Rachel here. Etsy rears it's ugly head again. :) So my new favorite Etsy shop is Time for Tots. (<- visit it... it's really cute!) Their learning kits are ADORABLE! $30 is a little high for me to pay though for materials I have a lot of already. I did go ahead and "order" the Kit of the Month portion because they are adorable. We'll get a new learning kit every month that represents the season/holidays in that month. I'm really excited because I know the girls will love them. I'm going to attack as many of them as I can by myself and then order the ones I'm really in love with. Honestly it's a matter of finding the materials on Oriental Trading from what I can tell. The issue is... with O.T. you have to order a dozen of everything... ANNOYING... but I do have spare materials in case any of my friends are interested. :) My first project was this Number Themed Sensory Tub.
Reese and I dyed the rice this evening, I printed the numbers chart and the "I Spy" list, the container and magnetic numbers were picked up from The Dollar Tree, and the rest of it I already had... you're looking at a whopping $2 spent on stuff we didn't already own. TFT was charging $15+$5 s&h... DEAL!
And it all fits nicely in my box. :)The next plan of attack...The dinosaur kit! I've gotten so much of it done tonight already! :)

Reesie Reesie Quite Contrary...

Rachel here. Last week we had a little fun with a garden theme. Actually it was more than a little fun. :) We started the week at the Horticulture Gardens on campus. I love living so close to Tech... I can show my girls everyday where Bryan and I met, fell in love, and chose to love them as well. Totally cheesy but super sweet nonetheless. I joined kidsparkz.com and got a membership for the year, and I LOVE IT. All of the printed activities you see are from there. Awesome stuff. This was a sweet little 9 piece puzzle. Reese is a pro, and has done puzzles up to about 50 pieces... so this seriously took her 2.2 seconds. Sunflower lacing. Sandpaper letters... letter sounds sorting. Coloring the parts of a potato plant. Reese has never really been into coloring... until lately. And frankly... she's pretty good at it. The girl can stay in the lines like no other. I threw in a little bit of Earth Day. This was a really cute book on recycling... "Hey That's Not Trash!" There are little cardboard cutout items that you can actually sort into recycling bins. ;) Categorizing what does and doesn't grow in a garden. Letter sorting... this is an old activity from Montessori for Learning.Flower transferring... Emma Grace does it without the tongs, as she hasn't come close to mastering them.Garden tool search and find. Counting to 12.Now for the fun outdoor activities. The weather here in The Burg this past week was anything but luxurious... with the tornadoes and all. We got out when we could, but the weekend was BEAUTIFUL, so we did quite a few of our activities then.After playing with their garden sensory box, the girls planted a "1/100th Acre Farm." A really cute activity I found on FamilyFun.com. I even made the girls a barn out of a shoebox... can't wait for the grass to grow and watch the girls play with the farm animals. The girls also planted their little flowers from their Easter baskets. Rumor has it the Reester Bunny found them in the dollar section at Target. :)We also worked on a couple of activities from Pink and Green Mama. Gazing balls. These actually turned out really cute, and I don't have a great picture of them... I'll have to get one or two. Next Bryan mixed up some good ole concrete, and the girls made stepping stones for their garden. Super cute.We spent ALL DAY Saturday transplanting our little sprouts into the big veggie garden. We decided not to grow anything last year because we were becoming increasingly discouraged by our resident groundhogs. We literally did not get one vegetable the year before last. :( Needless to say it took us forever and a day to get the weeds cleared out of both beds, but they look great so it was worth it.Before and after of the veggie bed.We also have a large bed that we used to use for our pumpkins. This year we decided to turn it into one large sensory box for the girls. They love it! Emma Grace picked out all of the tacky trinkets to hang in the trees and stick in the ground. Reese and her butt crack really give maintaining the bed their all. ;)Before and after.Hoda and Kathie Lee chillaxin. I'm going to take that little table and paint it for the girls to match their chairs... you know... when I should be sleeping.And with all that time spent outdoors... we had our first bee sting of the season. Or should I say 3... within seconds of one another... on one sweet little face. Luckily she's nothing like her mom and she didn't hardly scream, and she's not like her sister in that there was very little swelling. :(