C is for Cookie ( yes we made cookies)

8/30 is C day.  It was definetely Challenging. I'm still trying to figure out how to manage both girl by myself all day, Emma needs to work on independent play a bit more so I can give Lauren some attention.  Our activity for today was clapping and cuddling.  We ate Organic/all natural cookie monster Circle waffles for breakfast on a stick just for fun and Crescent shaped mandarin oranges. We burned some energy at the park this morning and then made sugar cookies with circle cookie cutters.  (this was tough to manage both girls while making cookies)  Emma made a catepillar craft with various art supplies, foods (cocount), etc.  we had a playdate after nap with Lydia and Makayla they played in the water outside and the Cloud dough and then played pretend camping, cooking, etc. in the basement. they also got to decorate 2 of the cookies as a snack. I also set up a colander and gave Emma a package of pipe cleaners, she played this for quite a while (thanks Wendy Adams for the idea) The letter days are kind of a lot of work to prep for but the results have been great, emma knew her letters/letter sounds already but she is getting really excited about writing her letters and everywhere we go she looks for the letter of the day (street signs, stores, menus, packages, etc) pretty neat to see her learning so much.

Letter B

August 28th, Letter B day and Emma's first week home 2 days with me.  Our 1 minute activity was bouncing and doing the bear crawl (yes mommy did the bear crawl too!) For breakfast we ate Boiled egg boats (cut an egg in half and make a sail with a triangle of cheese) Played a new game of Balloon ping pong, basically glue a popsicle stick to a paper plate and hit a balloon back and forth (we of course chose a Blue balloon), this was a big hit, about 20-30 minutes of laughter and giggles.  We gave Baby Lauren a Bath and wore some blue in our clothing and headed off to meet our Buddies for a playdate at my friend Liz's.  For lunch we had peanut Butter and jelly and spinach salad and milk in a Blue cup.  At naptime we read Big Sister Dora book.  I surprised Emma with a beach party when she woke up, we had lei's, turtle friends, floaties,Bathing suits (not me of course) and Ryan made Emma some Blue moon sand to play with (outdoors of course).  We ate frozen bananas as a snack and then made Rainbow snake bubbles (very cool project) made of a waterbottle, duck tape and dish soap, this was the favorite of the day. She seemed bored in the afternoon (on day 1 already) so we also took a trip to the library for Books.

Holding my toys

Lauren started grabbing her own toys this weekend and playing with them, she is just way too cute!

 

Ella's Deli

We made a quick stop at Ella's deli for lunch on Sunday vefore driving, Emma spotted the ice cream on her tour of the cool toys, she really wanted a cone so of course we said YES since she was a super girl all weekend during our travels

Weekend in Madison

We decided last minute to make an overnight trip to Madison to just "get away" We visited the zoo, Ella's deli and Emma swam in the pool.  Her favorite part of course was the pool.  More pictures to come from the weekend, Ryan has some cute ones on his phone I need to download. Emma did a great job "reading" the map at the zoo, feeding the goats and the giraffes were reaching out their long tongue to eat leaves off the trees it was pretty funny.  We continued to work on our letter theme, she found all the A's on the signs at the zoo, we counted the animals we saw, we read the map, and I found a super cool Zoo scavenger hunt online that we tried to complete during our visit.

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly baby photo books are the perfect way to preserve your baby's precious moments.

Adventures in Temporary Stay at Home Mom Part I

As most of you know I am fortunate to have a 6 month child care leave of absence to spend with my girls.  The plan was to have Lauren home for the first 6 weeks (which we just completed and it was wonderful) and then starting next week Emma will be home on Tuesdays and Thursdays with the girls and in daycare M, W and Fridays.  I'm used to only having emma on Fridays and of course with only her so this will be a new and exciting challenge for me.  My goals for the 6 months are of course to bond with both girls, learn as much as I can about both of them, have fun, and I also want to work with Emma to continue to grow her knowledge and skills. So the over organized person that I am created a 13 week (26 lesson plan) for her with the topics being Letter of the Day.  We will focus on a different letter each day she is home and do lots of fun activities involving that letter. I will "blog" and post pictures of our adventures in letter learning.  Emma already knows all of her letters and letter sounds but I wanted to work on site words with letters, small case letters and writing her letters and numbers.  Basically prep for reading. We will also work on patterning, counting higher numers (above 30) and go on many adventures outside the house.  Check out our blog each week for postings on what we did, I hope you enjoy and possibly find some fun ideas for your kids. 

I have our daily schedule made with magnets on the fridge and our letter of the day and activity (exercise) of the day posted

August 20th Day 1 (yes it's a monday, but Emma was home sick so we started today)
Letter A: 
Activity of the day:  Arm circles and ankle rolls (put a masking tape A on the ground, every time she steps on it, she says mommy I'm on the A and we do 1 minute of the "activity/exercise of the day", she LOVED this!

Next we did "alphabet bug spray", I drew 26 Ants on the driveway with sidewalk chalk the night before and we created bug spray with water and food coloring and I called out a letter and she found it and sprayed it "dead", she did this twice after the bug spray dried the first time and couldn't wait to show dadd when he came home
Lessons learned: Letters, color mixing (food coloring in the bottle), pouring and filling the spray bottle by HERSELF of course

Our art project or craft of the day was an edible "ART" frame found on the website playathome blog. We melted white chocolate and made our frame and then filled it with goodies (pretzels, raisins, skittles, sprinkles and coconut) not the healthiest activity but she hadn't eaten much being sick so I decided not to care. 

Our food of the day was applesauce (would have had other foods but she wasn't eating much)

Before nap we did letter worksheets and activities, practiced writing the letter A, circling A's in words, and coloring pictures of things that start with A. Yes she dressed up as Ariel the princess because she started with A. We read a poem about Apples and our books before nap started with A (Autumn is for apples and Arthur's new baby)

she asked for more letter coloring after nap.  After nap we made A shapes with popsicle sticks and then just played of course for the day.  She asked when we get to do B so I guess my day was a success.

And of course - we can't forget my other little sweetie Lauren, here are a few cute pictures from today

Cutie

Emma loves to hold Lauren when she gets home from school, big help to mommy at least for a few minutes.  Lauren and I played outside today too, she loved the grass on her toes

Go Pack Go

Uncle Matt and his friend Andy came up to Green Bay to watch the Packers practice, they stopped for a quick visit with the girls

Bundled Up

It was a little cooler this week so I had to bundle Lauren up for our daily walk

Swing and smiles

She's a little too small for the swing yet, started out good, then started to droop but lasted 30 minutes without crying, making progress and a few more cute smiles from today