Painting in the bath!

Owen likes showers better these days, but I convinced him to take a bath with Katie this morning…by promising a new treat: fingerpaint soap (gotta love the dollar bins at Target!). They had a blast.

   
I had each one fill their hand with their respective colors (pink and blue) and then had them rub hands…to get a light purple! Owen knew about mixing colors but he still thought it was super cool. Katie was amazed! Some days it’s the little things. 🙂

 

A mad rush to school after school!

So, this morning before school, I had Owen write a thank you note for his teachers. It turned out super cute.

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Circle Time

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My favorite things
1. Learning vowels
2. The Oh No! game
3. I loved the slide at the pumpkin patch
4. Zoo
5. Computer

Thank you for being my teachers

I also sent in a thank you card and small gift for him to give them. When he got home, and after we asked about his last day, I asked if he gave his teachers their present. He couldn’t remember. SERIOUSLY?! So we questioned him some more and he went and looked in his bag and it wasn’t there. So I quick emailed the teacher asking if he’d given it to them or left it sitting somewhere. Then I checked his bag—and there it was, in the front pocket he hadn’t unzipped. Ugh.

Of course I really wanted them to have the gift and especially his card, so we tore out of here and rushed to the school to hopefully get there before they left. (The kids had a two-hour early dismissal, but I knew the teachers would be cleaning out their classrooms.)

Thankfully, they were both still there, so we got to talk with them for a few minutes, give them their gift, and take a picture!

And a picture of me and my boy on the way out.

Coloring inside her house!

We recently learned that Katie has been coloring the inside of her cardboard house downstairs…which is completely fine, except we didn’t realize she had access to crayons down there! So, it was a bonus realizing she hadn’t colored on the walls while she had the chance! So today I went down there to play with her and we did some more coloring!

Owen’s butterfly 

Owen was so excited to show me his project from art class—I had to stop him from trying to unroll it as we walked home!

  
Do all moms love their kids’ artwork as much as I do? Or maybe I’m just super excited drew something not video game related. 🙂

Facebook friends saw something else. 

I see a ninja turtle.

If that’s not a ninja turtle fighting a giant spider, I’ll be really disappointed.

So I told Owen people thought it was a ninja turtle—thinking he’d be thrilled because he likes ninja turtles—and he said incredulously “It’s a butterfly!” 🙂

Sidewalk chalk paint, Day 2

They weren’t nearly as excited as they were the first day, and I’m not sure why. (They were eager enough to WANT to do it, but once we were outside and painted for 10 minutes, they were about done.) And of course, since they stayed perfectly clean the first day, I didn’t make them change into different clothes…and it’s the day Katie got paint all over her.

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So I pretty much did all the painting just so it wouldn’t be wasted.

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Sidewalk chalk paint!

Even though I was the one that bought the paint, I really hadn’t been looking forward to it at all (because…mess!) but then I read this article on Facebook: Why You Must Let Your Kids Jump In Muddy Puddles (about the Muddy Puddles Project) and I instantly knew what we were doing today. If you read the article, get your tissues handy.

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And a few close-ups of some of the drawings (taken the next day after they were completely dry):

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Star of the Week

At Back To School night, we had to sign the kids up to be Star of the Week—basically an “about me” board to share with the class—and I was able to grab the week of his birthday. So this weekend we worked on it. I had asked him to think about what pictures he wanted to use, but that was too broad. So I started asking him about specific pictures, but of course he wanted every picture I suggested. So I just picked a bunch of good pics and then once I saw the actual instructions (the theme turned out to be more “show why your child is a star” vs. a general About Me page) we concentrated on four areas:

  1. Owen is a master builder (Legos).
  2. Owen loves his friends and family.
  3. Owen is a great big brother.
  4. Owens loves to play in the water.

I printed out all the pictures and text and had Owen cut them out (which he did pretty good at, but we need practice on cutting evenly around things). Then I arranged most of the pictures—but let him do all of the gluing (which was an exercise in frustration—plus I see now how kindergardeners go through a zillion glue sticks).

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Then he wrote a few sentences about things he liked. He did really well with the Star Wars and Family sentences (even using his pinky to allow for spacing between words) but then kind of lost it when it came to the Lego sentence… But overall, still an awesome job!

Star of the Week final

I have a feeling it will end up with more stickers on it by the time it goes to school Tuesday… 🙂

Catching up on school work

I’ve been very bad about scanning and posting Owen’s schoolwork/homework and art projects as they come home…so these are not really in any particular order, except I guessed on the dates and they’re all from about Thanksgiving to the end of the year. 🙂

The robot-like creatures are from a video game he plays with daddy and the numbers above them are their “health” in the game.
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At the time he told me what this was, but we’ve both since forgotten.
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This was from months ago, but I just took a picture of him with it this morning. It’s a playground he designed.
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I love this monster!
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Better pictures of the satchel he made for the Thanksgiving Feast.
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He came home with this turkey and honestly, the vegetable- and God-feathers threw me. One, he dislikes vegetables and two, we are not religious (and there has been no discussion of religion of any kind—not on purpose…it just hasn’t come up) so we were confused as to how he’d come up with being thankful for both those things. We asked him and he did the shrug-his-shoulders answer. I was thinking maybe he brought home the wrong turkey or took someone else’s feathers (because they didn’t really look like his handwriting) so I actually emailed his teacher! Turns out, after more subtle questioning, he just borrowed ideas from his classmates and copied some of the things they wrote!
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Owen was VERY excited about the Hour of Code and everyone got a certificate! (The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics.)
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Mom, notice the bubble light? 🙂
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They learned about all different holiday traditions…
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Acorn Christmas Wreaths

Look familiar, Gramma Jean?!

Each kid got their own wreath. For Katie, I glued the strips and then let her put them on. She was only interested for about eight strips, so we put it away then tried again another time—at which point we got another handful of strips on. I ended up finishing hers for her because I wanted it finished before March. She was, however, more interested in the acorns—she’d tell me where to put the glue then she’d put the acorn on.

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Honestly, Owen’s attention span wasn’t much better—it took him two times to get the strips done and then another time for the acorns.

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And Owen fixing my wreath by adding an acorn that’s been missing for as long as I can remember:

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But, I think it’s time to finally retire the wreath I made in pre-school (age 3)…

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