We did it!

We did it.
We both had a super day at Preschool.
Does it get any more preschool looking than this??

 Seriously, I think she grew up over night.

(Plus we cut about 6 inches off her hair last week and that made her look older.  I'm already missing the long hair but shhh don't tell. She does look adorable though!! Actually her hair reminds me of a preschool picture of me. I'll have to find that one.)

Jas brought her to school at the correct time this morning and didn't he do a good job getting a picture?

You can check out our preschool happenings at my preschool blog. Click here or on the link on the right side of the blog.

And for so many reasons today I love this guy uh lot!! (Yes I meant to say uh lot instead of a lot.)

Kids Craft

Kids projects.
Sometimes they are so fun.
Sometimes they are so messy.
Sometimes they are frustrating - let's just be honest.
Yesterday was one of those kinds of projects.
Not all of it was frustrating - it ended super well.
We did this paper tissue dragon project from Meg's blog.
I knew my boys would love it.
They did love the idea of the dragons.
We set up outside.
The wind didn't cooperate
So after we were ALL frustrated and after a bowl of glue flew away we went inside.
At that point I was ready to say let's just stop - this isn't going well.
But once you have four kids ready for a project you can't very easily call it quits without a mob on your hands.
So we got settled inside.
We forced through the frustrations of how to do the project.
Tearing instead of cutting was a little frustrating to some.
Then painting glue over a picture instead of on the back and sticking it down was a new concept too.
Finally everyone got in a groove and the creativity started to flow.
My boys always think outside the box with projects.
It's fun to watch them think.
They turned out cool and in the end it was fun.

 

I love the spectrum of clothing . . . some in pjs, some in dress up/dance attire, one in normal clothes.

I'm surprised we didn't have one in a swimsuit.

Here are the simple directions.

1. Find a place with no wind.
2. Mix reg. glue with water - you just want water down glue.
3. The kids tear pieces of colored tissue paper and lay it on the paper, painting over the tissue paper with the watered down glue.
4. Create a shape of a dragon or any shape really.
5.  Let dry then trace outline/trace with marker.
6. Cut out.

Seasonal Preschool Activity

After that last post I need something lighter.
Here's a simple seasonal preschool activity idea to do with your kiddos at home.
Carter, Coleson, Tatum and I did this activity today and they loved it.
All you need are plastic easter eggs and a permanent marker.
Write a capital letter on each egg.
I did a pattern with the colors too.

Hide the eggs.
Let them find them.
Then together put them in ABC order.
My three loved it.

The first time we did it we sang the abc song each time to figure out what letter we were looking for and then the kids took turns finding that letter out of the bunch.
The second time the twins each figured out which letter came next in order by themselves.
When it was Tatum's turn (she's 3) to find the right letter, we told her what color she was looking for and what row it was in.  It was just process of elimination for her but she was practicing colors and 1st row, 2nd row or whatever.

You could do so many things with this.
Write lowercase letters on the back of the eggs in a different color.
You could do numbers to 50.
If your child is a reader write out a sentence with one word on each egg and have them unscramble the sentence.
You could practice the weeks spelling words this way too.
If you memorize scripture with your kids you could write out a verse and unscramble it.
Tons of possibilities.
Just beware . . . all afternoon while the twins were at school Tatum kept saying, "Let's play Easter."
Happy Egg Hunting!

Preschool Activities

I haven't blogged about preschool activities in awhile . . . here's what we've been up to in April and May. . .

CRYSTALS

Jason did this with all the boys . . . (remember science isn't my thing). They put equal amounts of water in the jars and dangled string into the glass. One glass had sugar mixed in it, one had salt mixed in it, and the other was just water. Then they sat on our window sill for weeks, which was a lovely decoration (ha!) and watched them. It really was cool, the sugar and plain water one did nothing (the sugar one should have, not sure what happened), and the salt one made real crystals. Maybe science is cool! Just watching the water evaporate was neat for the boys.

BUTTERFLIES

This was the coolest thing I've ever done with my kids. A friend of mine told me where to get the small kits to grow butterflies. I knew most preschools did this so I thought it could be really cool for Carter and Coleson. It wasn't expensive either, we just did the small one. We got to watch them go from tiny caterpillars, into large caterpillars, they positioned themselves into a "J" shape at the top of the jar and put themselves into a cocoon. You never actually see them make the cocoon it just sort of happens, amazing! (I even peeked when I'd get up through the night.) Then we transferred them to the net container and one by one they opened up into butterflies!!

I could get very deep with you on how amazing it was to watch something transform into something else. I had many "life thoughts" as I watched the process. It's amazing they were created to just do those things - no one teaches it to them. God is pretty creative. I made a note to myself . . . whenever I teach again, regardless of the grade we'll be watching the butterfly process. My mind went crazy with things you could link to this activity in school!

CATERPILLAR ART PROJECT

Supplies: styrofoam balls (cut in half), pipe cleaners for ears, washable paint, glue, strip of cardboard or a ruler for the base

Tips: The glue won't be dry for a long time. We still glued them and painted right away, they slid around a little but then the paint and glue dried at the same time. I tried cement glue, Elmer's glue, and super glue . . . Elmer's WON!

Coleson's Quote while painting : "This is art. We are doing art. Art is when you make a mess and don't have to pick it up. This is art."

Tatum's Quote when I asked them if they wanted to do some preschool time. "I do. My pink bus come to my house." It will be a sad day when she realizes the same YELLOW bus that picks everyone else up will also pick her up, a PINK bus won't be stopping at Princess Tatum's door!

BUTTERFLY ART PROJECT

Supplies: markers, coffee filters, spray bottle of water, clothespin

Tips: Do outside on sunny day! It was fun and simple

Steps: 1. Color the coffee filter 2. Spray it with water 3. Let it dry 4. Group it together with a clothespin and you have a butterfly. 5. Put them somewhere cool . . . garden, tree, or a bike (boys wanted them to fly so they came up with that idea)

One of the best parts is watching all the color mix and run down the driveway.

SMOOTHIES

We also made SunnyD Smoothies.

Ingredients : Sunny D, ice, banana, and little water

(you could add yogurt or anything else too)
Simple fun, they all add stuff, and then cover there ears while they turn the button on!

So many different things . . .

I hate cramming so many different events/topics into one post but I haven't had time to blog and today is no exception . . . so I'll just group it all together.

Let's start with this . . . GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE . . .
As a mom this is one of the hardest things. It takes so much effort to get out of the house. That's usually when I lose my patience, lose my cool, and many times lose my keys. My kids ask questions like; When are we going? Where is my other shoe? Can I take 100 toys? Are we all going? I begin thinking things like; Maybe we should just stay home, Why didn't I get up at 5:00 am instead of 7:00am? How can I get things more organized so everyone is self sufficient? I'm pretty good at planning ahead and being organized but regardless of how prepared I am those last five minutes are just frustrating . . . . BUT once we are out the door it's ALWAYS worth it. On Saturday we decided to take our first SPRING hike!!! It was a beautiful day, there was no exception with our "out the door hassles" but the second we were out and my eyes could capture these moments it reminded me how worth it is to trudge through the hassles. Everyone loved the hike!!

Topic number #2 - I made my friends blog. Check it out . . . remember the blogging friend I said I was going to meet. Well she took pics that day of us and the kids playing and posted them. She has many blog followers and has appeared in some magazines for crafts she's done. She's super talented. Check it out HERE

Next topic . . . On Friday I had a day for me . . . my good friend and I went to an all day Scrapbook Exp. We left at 9am and returned as midnight!! AHHHH!! We scrapped all day, laughed, watched people compete in dance competitions for prizes (my back hurt so I didn't enter the contest, ha!). We were so lucky to have a HS girl that watched the kids until the hubbies returned. The girl even skipped school. (Don't worry her mother knew; she just had electives that day and playing with our kids sounded like more fun to her.) She'll never know how much of a gift she gave us girls until she's a momma. THANKS JORDAN!! That evening the daddies and kids did a hot dog roast in the backyard. No one even missed mommy. I haven't scrapped traditionally since September (the last all day crop) - I've been digital scrapbooking. I worked on Tatum's baby book and did 20 pages!!!!!!!! Here's some of them!

Here's pics from last week's preschool activities . . . I think if I had to name our little home preschool (it's just myself, the twins, and sometimes Tatum if she's up) I'd call it NAKED PRESCHOOL. The twins are always in underwear!

I found two blogs with great preschool activities. Both our linked on the side of my blog. The Crafty Crow and Preschool Daze. You can steal my ideas or check out these blogs. The Preschool Daze goes ALL out - what a fun preschool to attend!

We made rainbows out of pipe cleaners and the foam blocks used for silk flowers. (I'd use styrofoam if I did it again.)

Then one day we did an activity with skittles. They each had a bag of skittles to graph and see which colors they got the most and least. Then they did AB and ABBA patterns with them. They loved doing patterns in their real preschool so they loved doing this. Plus it included candy!

The twins have really started asking about when they'll get to go back to preschool. I think they just miss going to school like Ian does and they miss some of their friends. I miss it too but am enjoying being able to use my creativity and do things with them. These years with them are flying by. It's also fun to see how they both do things a little differently when working on a project.

Just a moment ago they were all doing a Slime Science Kit that Ian had earned and they wanted to smell the slime they were making. I taught them all how a scientist smells something - they waft. It was HILARIOUS watching them all waft the beaker to see if it smells. Science is my LEAST favorite topic but I think it may become my boys favorite. AHHH!

I think I've covered enough topics for one blog. Time to get some things done on my list. More slime is being made I better supervise a little better.