The Wonders Of

Overheard

2012-01-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

The girls have been amusing me lately by narrating all the stage directions to their pretend play. Since they are always playing characters, they refer to themselves as she and then describe what they're doing. They do this constantly. For example, Mabel might say, "She twirl-ored into the room and jumped on the ground," or Ella might say, "She walked bravely up the stairs to find the horse."

or it may go something like this...
E: "Well, I think I might have to sell the farm. Half my hogs have already run off. She jumped on her horse Thunder and rode off.
Galloping back into the room. "Yeah, it's not looking good. All the hogs are gone now...Wait, maybe I can throw a cowgirl fair and save the farm!"

or as Mabel plays Mama Dinosaur
Mabel: "She sat on her eggs to keep them safe them from the creditors"

Also Ella has taken to using baked goods as preschool expletives such as "Holy Canoli" and "Darn it Donuts!"

Beatrix's Big Step

2012-01-26T14:10:00.001-05:00

Newsflash! Beatrix took her first steps. She had taken one or two during the day, but she waited until the girls were in bed to walk five steps to Daddy. I guess she wanted the maximum amount of attention from her parents!

Purple Puff in the Snow

2012-01-26T14:00:00.001-05:00

We had our first play-worthy snow. What a change from last year when the snow was so deep in January that we were afraid we would lose Mabel if the girls went out to play. I kept telling myself, Beatrix won't really like the snow, so that I could stay inside, but, guess what, she loved it. And pointed to the door when the girls went outside the next day so I would take her out.

We like to call her the Purple Puff when she's in her snowsuit, so here's Purple Puff in the Snow.

Fun with Static Electricity!

2012-01-26T14:00:00.000-05:00

We discovered that using a fleece blanket like a parachute can be a lot of fun! She looks grumpy in the shot, but she was having a balll.

Beatrix at 11 months

2012-01-22T20:27:00.000-05:00

Beatrix is 11 months old. She loves to cruise around the room. She loves to listen to music and dance. Now, she can clap her hands and say "Good, good" when we sing.

She has two teeth, and, boy, does she use them. She now eats pretty much everything we eat and feeds herself. She is our most petite kid, but is known as the bottomless pit because she is constantly eating, wanting to eat, or taking the food you are eating. I call her my little chef because she really hasn't found a food she doesn't like. She especially loves pizza, oatmeal, yogurt, and fruit.

She also has devised a system for getting you to the food she wants. When you are holding her, she holds her arm out like a rudder and points the way she wants you to go, which is usually to the kitchen, to a specific cabinet where we keep the crackers.She also has everyone in the house trained to share their food with her. She just crawls over and makes a gimme motion with her hand.

Though she isn't quite walking yet, she is quite the climber. One night, at bath time, she was standing by the tub. This always freaks Ella out, and she yells, "The baby's going to fall in the tub!" We always assure her, "She's not quite tall enough to fall into the tub." But on this particular day, I look over and Beatrix has one knee reaching up toward the edge. I say, "Beatrix! Don't" She looks at me and tries again. I correct her again. Then she turns around and holds out her hand like "Calm down people. I know exactly what I am doing!" The next night while I was helping Ella out of the tub, I look down and Beatrix has her knee over the tub and is on her way out!

I also think of her as our little Montessori baby because she loves to have little work project. Her favorite thing from Christmas was a box of old candles that Brent's grandmother gave us. We've pretty much given it over to her because she likes playing with them and moving them around. The other day, I was cooking and she popped up with a ziploc bag like, "I know just the thing for this!" She crawled over to her candles and started loading candles into her bag.

Her next favorite toy is her sisters' box of markers, which she takes out of the box and puts them back in. She also loves putting lids on things, and moving things from one container to another, so I made her a basket of things to open and close. After I gave it to her, I discovered that she needed things to put in her boxes so I gave her some stands from our dollpins. She loved this.

Old-fashioned School: Wash Day

2012-01-22T20:04:00.003-05:00

Our project for Old-fashioned school today was Wash Day! I couldn't find our wash board, so we used two bowls of water. My mom had sent me some old doll clothes, which we washed and then hung up to dry.

Old-fashioned School: Dolls

2012-01-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

Old-fashioned School was all about dolls today. We made our own dolls out of old-timey clothespins, fabric, and wool roving for hair. The girls designed the outfits. We tried using school glue, but it was not sticking well, so we turned to the glue gun. The ones on the right are Mabel's. She said that she needed to make a man doll to go with her first doll so that "he could marry his girl." Ella made the ones on the right, a grandma and a girl.

Then we printed out some paper dolls. I found this set on pinterest called The Ginghams. They're cute and old-fashioned in a 1970s way and have lots of clothes to print out, including a whole page of green dresses for Mabel. The dolls have names like Sarah and Becky, and the girls just couldn't seem to remember these names. I guess they just don't know many Sarahs and Beckys because they are all their mom's age. Strange!

Old-Fashioned School: Lincoln Logs

2012-01-22T19:51:00.001-05:00

For old-fashioned school, we read a book about log cabins and the chapter from Little House on the Prairie where they build their cabin. Then we got out the Lincoln logs from the attic and got to work. Lincoln Logs can be a little frustrating if you are used to blocks that stick together, but we finally got our roof to stay on. We only had to rebuild it four or five times with it got destroyed by Hurricane Beatrix. At first, I thought the project was a bit of a flop, but then we got out our TRIO blocks and added to the scene. Over the day, Ella built an entire "Old Storage Village" with cabin, barn, animal pens and a stage coach.

Strawberry Shortcake and friends moved in, but not before they were outfitted with Mama-made sunbonnets.

Old-Fashioned School: Biscuits and Butter

2012-01-22T19:05:00.002-05:00

We took advantage of Daddy's holiday and put him to work for our old-fashioned school. First he and the girls baked biscuits. Yes, my Eastern-European husband makes better biscuits than me, but it is my Grandma's recipe. Then we had story-time from The Little House Cookbook and My First Little House books.

Then we all tried our hand at making butter by shaking cream in a jar.

We've successfully made butter this way before, but this time we managed to make whipped cream instead of butter. Must have been using commercial cream instead of raw. A trip in the Kitchen-aid and a little patience finally did turn the cream into butter. Not very old-fashioned, but we had a yummy lunch.

Overheard

2012-01-19T12:27:00.001-05:00

Someday I'll get back to all of our old-fashioned posts, but as it requires uploading pictures in the coldest room in the house, for now, I'll just give you this glimpse into life at our house lately.

A couple days ago, I broke up a fight because Ella had taken a key from Mabel. I do my usual yelling, "Ella, give back the key to Mabel." Ella refuses. A chase ensues. Much pushing and tugging. I finally scream. "Give me the key!" To which they both reply, "We can't, Mom, it's imaginary."

Yesterday, mid-way through eating her oatmeal, Mabel realized that there were no cranberries in it. I had put the full bag of cranberries beside her for her to serve herself. I went ahead and put the cranberries in the oatmeal, but by this time Mabel was thrashing on the ground and howling, "I wanted you to put them in before! I wanted them before." I explain that I really can't go back in time and put the cranberries in." Ella says, "Mom, maybe you could ask Jesus." I say, "I don't really think it's tops of Jesus' priority list to send me back in time to put in the cranberries." Ella says, "Well, He could just send you back in time really quick and you can put them in." A few moments pass, (Mabel is still thrashing on the floor.) Ella says, "Maybe Jesus could send us back in time to the dinosaurs!"

Old-Fashioned School: Vintage Seed Packets

2012-01-13T14:19:00.001-05:00

For our second day of old-fashioned school, we made some vintage seed packets to use in our store. I pre-cut the photos from a Comstock, Ferre & Co. catalog. Comstock, Ferre is an heirloom seed store run by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

The girls glued the squares onto index cards. Then we ran them through my "llama-nator" and cut them out.

Now we have some great seeds to sell in our store, both vegetables and flowers. And it's great for secret math practice when they have to count out the number of vegetable and flower seeds I order at the General Store.

Old-Fashioned School: This Old House

2012-01-12T20:16:00.001-05:00

It is very convenient when your child comes up with an idea that you already were planning to do. And so when Ella said, "Mom, we have an Old Village store, we should do Old Village school," I said, "That's a great idea!" So we pulled out some slates and are learning our ABCs the old-fashioned way.

Our first project was to make an old-fashioned house. We drew a house on a big piece of paper, and pulled out our Lehman's Non-Electric Catalog. Get your own copy of the catalog here. Our house had a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and a storage room. The storage room being where everything that didn't already have a place went. Of course, we don't have any rooms like that in our house...

Ella had to draw in the people and some furniture we couldn't find like beds and tables. The kitchen was definitely the most fun to outfit with wood cookstoves and butter churns.

Some New Artwork

2012-01-12T08:26:00.000-05:00

The Pig Who Ate Too Much Cake and had a Stomachache by Mabel

Untitled by Ella

Our First Flower Arrangements

2012-01-12T08:25:00.000-05:00

Our friend Anne made the girls a flower arranging kit and they absolutely loved it. It came with a little vase with holes in the top, a bouquet of carnations, some floral foam, and an inspiration file of photos from magazines. The girls loved working with their Daddy on this project.

Here's what they came up with.

The Blizzard of 2012

2012-01-11T19:37:00.001-05:00

We hit the Christmas clearance sales and bought the girls some light-up ceramic houses for a winter village. We put a layer of polyfill underneath for snow and then left them alone to play. Later we heard, "Dad we used up all the snow!" And, yes they did! The winter village was never quite the same after the great blizzard of 2012.

Welcome to our General Store!

2012-01-05T13:31:00.000-05:00

This year, Brent and I decided to put together one big mostly handmade gift for the girls: an old-fashioned general store playset. We were inspired by the awesome play area at Old Sturbridge Village (or Old Storage Village, as it is known in our house). Here is how it all came together:

First we had to find an appropriate sized cabinet with doors. We found this one at an unfinished pine outlet store. Brent painted it dark brown. At the outlet, we also found a half barrel container.

Then we needed a old-fashioned looking and sturdy cash register. We found this fun tin one made by Shylling. Then as it turns out, the girls received another awesome vintage Fisher Price cash register and a wooden scale from Auntie Amelia and uncle Lindell, the perfect addition to our store.

Then we needed goods to sell. We ordered some amber plastic bottles and tea tins and I printed out vintage labels (free from The Graphics Fairy) and applied them to the bottles and tins with clear contact paper.

The girls also each got a plastic three-legged iron kettle like Ma cooked with in Little House on the Prarie. And we bought one tiny cast-iron skillet to share. And they each got an enamel tin cup in their stocking.

The bean bags Brent made the girls a few years ago have been the most played-with toy we ever made them, so we made them more, this time bean bag logs to build a fire, as well as bean bag sacks of flour and sugar and some photo-realistic fruit and candy bean bags. We were hoping to find some corn or vegetables, but we found fruit and the girls were happy.

Of course, as soon as Ella saw the store, she said, we need costumes! Fortunately, we had bought those too in the form of sunbonnets from Ashley's Attic on Etsy. This shop is truly special, selling all kinds of historic costumes for kids from Little House on the Prairie to Colonial to Civil War. These sunbonnets were handmade and we got to choose the colors for only $10 (the same price as Old Sturbridge Village except that theirs were made in China).

We also bought two vintage looking tins on super sale at Michael's, which we filled with index cards for them to write on (very popular). I would have bought Beatrix a tin too if I would have known how much she likes to open and close things. But she settles for the barrel, her favorite part of the set, which she fills with bean bags.

And sometimes we fill the barrel with Beatrix. It's tough being the smallest person in the house.

That is our general store. I don't know if we will be quite some ambitious next year, but it was fun to put together for the girls and they have enjoyed it, especially Ella, who seems to be at the perfect age for this kind of toy.

Christmas Morning

2012-01-04T19:24:00.000-05:00

Some neighbors of ours have a large light-up pig decoration with antlers. The girls named him oinkster and if we were ever out at night, they would request to go see oinkster. Well, they were very surprised to wake up on Christmas morning to see four mini-oinksters on their dressers by their trees. The oinksters later had to travel with us to West Virginia because Mabel would miss them too much.

We had many extended family celebrations on pre- and post-Christmas, but I seem to have been negligent in photodocumenting them, so here is our Christmas morning at home. I will save our big, homemade present for the girls for another post, but here was some of the fun.

Mabel and her piggy bank

Beatrix's First Christmas

Ella's favorite present, a sunbonnet. She wore it all day and wanted to wear it to bed. It was made by Ashley's Attic, a great historic kids' costume shop on etsy.

W, X, Y, and Z

2012-01-04T19:04:00.002-05:00

We wrapped up our advent time with the final four letters, and since it was the week before Christmas, we kept the projects pretty low-key.W is for Wise Men and Women, X is for Expect: We read Humphrey's First Christmas by Carol Heyer and Three Wise Women of Christmas. by Dandi Daley Mackall. For our project, the girls wrapped presents with Daddy.Y is for You, Z is for Zion: We read Thank You God, for Christmas by Henrietta Gambill and The Christmas Tree Alphabet Book by George Mendoza. We picked up The Christmas Tree Alphabet Book at the library. Each letter describes a different custom in a different country. For our final project,we finished up making some Christmas ornaments to give as gifts.

U is for Unto Us a Child is Born, V is for Village

2011-12-20T22:39:00.003-05:00

Since we were doing our gingerbread village today, we combined two letters. For U, we did Unto Us a Child is born. We listened to the song "For Unto Us a Child is Born" off of the Veggie Tales Christmas cd and read "Operation No More Tears" about Isaiah in the Jesus Storybook Bible.

And V was for village. In addition to making our gingerbread village, we read two books, which focused on helping lonely, older people in your community, Merry Christmas, Old Armadillo by Larry Dane Brimner, and Angelina's Christmas by Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig.

3rd Annual Making of the Gingerbread Houses

2011-12-20T22:34:00.004-05:00

Today we had our third annual family gingerbread house day. This is always a really fun creative project and I love to see what everyone comes up with. Mabel, with some assistance from me, made a giant snowman for her house.

Ella made a snowman too, but mainly focused on beautifying her yard.

When she finished, Mabel said, "Boy, Ella, your yard sure is full!" And that's just the front yard!
Of course, Brent and I got in on the fun too. He made a traditional two-story with candles in the window.

And I made a winter sleighride.

And if you're wondering what Beatrix was up to. She was eating her body weight in graham crackers. And she managed to steal one jelly wreath and pop the whole thing in her mouth. How she gummed that all down with one and a half teeth, I will never know, but she's gifted that way.

And the aftermath...

T is for Tree

2011-12-20T20:05:00.003-05:00

T is for Tree (or why you shouldn't plan overly-complicated projects the week before Christmas).

Excitement is extremely high at our house right now, and Daddy is home for vacation. Also Beatrix is teething and non-stop fussy. I had thought of this fun sewing project, and it seemed so good in theory. We would draw little trees with the fabric markers, and then sew on buttons for ornaments. Then either put them in embroidery hoops (couldn't find any) or stuff them.

This is how it turned out. The girls who can color 10 pictures in a row, suddenly couldn't finish coloring one tree. As things devolved, we quickly ditched sewing on the buttons and got out the glue gun.

Then we realized that any sewing at all was probably a bad idea, and had the girls cut out their trees and we glued some felt on the back. Ella quickly seized the tree for her felt board. So what began as a cute hand-sewn ornament became a felt-board tree, but they turned out pretty cute anyway. Mabel's is the first tree and Ella's is the second.

Brent read the girls Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry, The Christmas Tree Book by Carol North, and The Tale of Three Trees by Angela Elwell Hunt.

R is for Room, S is for Stable

2011-12-20T19:52:00.001-05:00

For our R and S day, we read Room for a Little One by Martin Waddell , This is the Stable by Cynthia Cotten, and The Stable Where Jesus Was Born by Rhonda Gowler Greene.
We made up a batch of gingerbread play dough like last year, and got out our nativity candy molds. This year the girls gave up on the molds pretty quickly, but still had tons of fun with the play dough making families of worms, cars for princesses, and even a gingerbread mask.
And meanwhile, in other parts of the kitchen, someone was working on her own project...

P is for Peace, Q is for Quiet

2011-12-14T12:02:00.000-05:00

Yes, on Mommy's wish list for Christmas: peace and quiet. We read one of our new favorite Christmas books: Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck . First, Pearl Buck was born in the same county in West Virginia as me. Second, the illustrations are just stunning. Third, the story is a beautiful tale of a boy who wakes up early to surprise his farmer father by doing his chores for him. Lovely. To go with the theme, we also read a Little House in the Big Woods picture book we have called Laura's Christmas.

For our craft, we made a nativity felt board. It was originally going to be a wall hanging, but the girls decided it would be more fun if they could move the figures around. We started with some felt nativity stickers from Hobby Lobby. I pulled off the paper backing, which was a little difficult, and we put them on a felt backing. The girls then cut the felt around them. Then we cut a piece of felt for the back, and Ella cut out a stable, and we were done.

Afterward, we pulled out the nativity match game we made last year and played a few rounds.

O is for Ornament

2011-12-13T19:37:00.003-05:00

Today was O is for ornament. We read A Merry Bunny Christmas by Rosemary Wells, Clifford's First Christmas by Norman Bridwell, and I'll Be Home for Christmas by Holly Hobbie.

Then we made a set of nativity ornaments from a kit I picked up at Hobby Lobby. The girls are going to hang them on the trees they have in their room.

Beatrix at 10 months

2011-12-12T20:28:00.002-05:00

I'm late getting up my post, but Beatrix turned 10 months a few weeks ago. Our friend Susannah says she almost always has an expression like, "Isn't this world just amazing and wonderful?" She does love to smile and laugh and usually makes other people smile too. She seems to share a lot of her Daddy's passions: dogs (She completely fell in love with my uncle and aunt's pug), Christmas decorations, and popcorn (which she eats with her one tooth).

We sometimes think of her as our puppy because she's always happy to see you and she's always pulling on your pants leg begging for food. Since she has one tooth, she is convinced that she can eat anything and gets quite offended when she doesn't get what everyone else is getting. The other day she was crawling around chasing the girls and howling, and Ella said, "Beatrix is roaring because we won't give her raisins." So I said, "Well, give her a raisin then," and sure enough she stopped. She can be a bit of a tyrant about a food. She demands her 10% of any food any person is eating in the house. She got very offended when she got a different breakfast while the rest of the family ate bagels. So she usually gets her bagel, and her eggnog, and her cookie. She, thankfully hasn't shown any food allergies yet.

She still loves standing and has now managed to stand by herself and to stand up without holding on to anything. She likes to show off this skill for no good reason other than she can. The other day, I gave her a cracker, and she was like, wait, let me stand up and eat this. Yes, that's better.

She also now likes to work on projects, especially putting things into and taking things out of containers. In the kitchen alone, she has four or five projects: taking the lids off of canisters, including the one with cheerios in it; taking oranges out of the box, sorting the gladware, taking ziploc bags out of their boxes, and opening the jelly cabinet.

As for fun, Ella says that she is "obsessed with peek-a-boo." She has now learned to pull the blanket down herself, which makes for endless fun.

M is for Manger, N is for Nativity

2011-12-12T20:13:00.003-05:00

We combined M and N and did more fun printables from great teacher-moms out there. For stories, we read The Town that Forgot About Christmas by Susan Leigh, Christmas in a Manger by Nola Buck. Christmas Mouseling by Dori Chaconas, and The Nativity by Francesca Crespi.

We used free printables from the Nativity Preschool Pack by 1+1+1=1
and The Nativity pack from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Christmas with Susannah

2011-12-12T20:05:00.002-05:00

We had a fun early Christmas visit with our friend Susannah. The girls had a ball running her ragged with puppet shows and preschool board games. We also baked cookies. We tried making pffernusse for the first time and they came out great.

L is for Light

2011-12-12T20:01:00.004-05:00

For L day, we read Light of the World in the Jesus Storybook Bible and made foil luminaries from Family Fun.We used baby food jars and I cut the foil to size. The girls punched holes in the foil with toothpicks, which they really enjoyed. Then we taped the foil on and tied a little bow with twine. We used our battery operated tea-lights, which are such a great thing for kids.

We also watched a new video we have, Adventures in Odyssey Electric Christmas. The movie was neat because it talked about getting caught up in greed and excitement at Christmas, but then realizing the true meaning of Christmas. But it also talks about Angel Tree Ministries, which we had just taken part in at our church. So that night, the girls and Brent wrapped up the presents we had bought for Angel Tree.

I is for Inn, J is for Jesus, K is for King

2011-12-12T19:54:00.000-05:00

My new memory card has had some difficulty with uploading so I don't have pictures, but we took advantage of a lot of free printables this week to go with our projects.

For I is for Inn, we read about the Innkeeper from some of our longer nativity storybooks, and made the Innkeeper craft from Bible Kids Fun Zone.

For J is for Jesus, we read The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg. I printed out the Candy Cane mini-book from Christian Preschool Printables and we read that too. We used a ton of great preschool printables for J is for Jesus from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I also had a pack of candy cane striped pipe cleaners, which we used to make J's. The girls had a lot of fun building all kinds of things with them afterward. Of course, we had candy canes for snack.

For K is for King, we read King of Kings from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones, and I printed out the K

H is for Hark the Herald

2011-12-12T19:42:00.002-05:00

For H day, we read A Night the Stars Danced for Joy by Bob Hartman, a story of a family of shepherds and the healing they experience on Christmas night. It's one of my favorites.

For our art project, we made collages. I printed and cut out the shepherds from You Seriously Made That?. I also free-handed an angle shape and we traced around that with oil pastels and the girls used their fingers to blur the pastel. Then Ella wanted to trace a shape on to foil. So I cut the angels out of foil for them and we glued them on too. Above is Ella's, below is Mabel's.

G is for Gingerbread

2011-12-12T19:37:00.001-05:00

The girls have gotten really into coloring lately, especially since I found a 64 pack of Crayola pipsqueak markers for them. For gingerbread day, we read two of our favorites: Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett and Mortimer's Christmas Manger by Karma Wilson. Jan Brett's website is loaded with free coloring pages, activities, and other fun printables. We played a gingerbread baby board game, and I printed out a whole coloring book of gingerbread friends for them. I thought the coloring pages would keep them busy for a few days and they sat down and colored them all (8-10 pgs) that morning. As a result their coloring is getting quite good. The top picture of gingerbread baby is done by Mabel who suddenly went from just scribbling to really coloring. And below is one of Ella's.

F is for Fair

2011-12-07T20:16:00.001-05:00

We didn't do too much exciting for E is for Elizabeth, just read the story of Elizabeth from our Christmas books. So I will skip on to F is for Christmas Fair.

We took Oma (Brent's grandma) and Aunt Gici (Brent's great-aunt) to a Latvian Christmas Fair at the Latvian Lutheran church they used to attend in Connecticut. It was great to meet some of their old friends and there were lots of yummy Latvian foods like pirags (rolls stuffed with bacon) and Piparkukas (gingerbread Christmas cookies).

D is for Decorate

2011-12-07T19:57:00.001-05:00

We decorated our tree last weekend and had a lot of fun.

Beatrix got to put on her first ornaments. She is crazy about Christmas decorations, but especially bells. We found this out when we took her to the Christmas aisles at Hobby Lobby and she began squealing with delight. Soon she made up her own baby sign where she shakes her hand like she is ringing a bell, which means "jingle" or "give me that shiny Christmas bauble" or can also mean "sing jingle bells".

Brent is the chief Christmas decorator in this house and he was excited to get a huge tree, even if we didn't make it to the Christmas tree farm this year.

Helping the girls put up the ornaments on top.

And a picture of our lovely tree before today's tragedy. I heard a crash and ran into to find that the tree had fallen on Ella and Mabel so that I couldn't even see them. There were vintage glass ornaments and broken pieces of glass all over the rug. I was carrying the baby and both girls were barefoot. What would you do first? I pulled the tree off the girls, got them out of the room safely, had Ella hold Beatrix while I tried to right the tree. The tree fell again. More shattering. Ella is wailing, "No more decorations! No more tree!" Then I finally sent them all up to their room so I could clean up the glass, left the tree on its side and we got it all set up again when Brent got home. And that is the story of the undecorating of our tree. Someday we'll laugh I'm sure. Now to redecorating.

C is for Christmas Cookies

2011-12-02T08:02:00.001-05:00

C is for Christmas Cookies. We read The Gift of the Christmas Cookie: Sharing the True Meaning of Jesus' Birth by Dandi Daley Mackall, and we made cookies. Last year, I came to the realization that making cut-out cookies with preschoolers is not my favorite thing, so much rerolling of dough and hard to pick up cut-outs. So this year, we will leave the cookie cutters to the adults and we made stamped cookies instead.

We have some special cookie stamps. So I roll the balls of dough and the girls stamp. But if you don't have stampers, you can use the bottom of a fancy crystal glass or little tin with a design on it.

Beatrix got to make her first Christmas cookie.

And eat her first Christmas Cookie. Goo!

Last year's Christmas Cookies.
and 10 Rules of Baking Cookies with Children

B is for Baby Jesus

2011-12-02T07:58:00.001-05:00

B is for Baby Jesus. We read The Christmas Baby by Marion Dane Bauer, One Tiny Baby by Mark A. Taylor and God made Christmas: The Story of Baby Jesus. Then we made these touch and feel Baby Jesus pictures from Bible Kids Fun Zone.

For more Advent ABCS check out our Birthday cake for Jesus from last year.

A is for Angel

2011-12-02T07:54:00.001-05:00

This year we're doing our advent ABCS again. We started with A is for Angel and read Christmas Angels by Gwen Ellis.

We made these cute angel ornaments as our craft.
.
For more angel activities, check out our previous angel crafts:
Playdough and Pasta angels
Angel collages
Clothespin angels

First Sunday of Advent

2011-12-02T07:46:00.001-05:00

Advent is here and the whole family is very excited. To quote Ella, "Mommy, advent's almost here, you have to get your crafts together!"

We lit our first candle on Sunday and read one of our new Christmas books this year, Song of the Stars by Sally Lloyd-Jones. She wrote the Jesus Storybook Bible and this is equally beautiful. It has beautiful illustrations of animals all over the world getting ready for Jesus coming.

It seemed only fitting to get out the nativity set Brent put together as a child. He was inspired by one of his favorite books The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeline L'Engle and began collecting and adding all kinds of different animals to the nativity from hippos to squirrels and aligators.

The girls loved it and immediately pulled up their chairs and started playing. Ella's narration was pretty funny, "And then the opossum went around the world telling the shepherds and kinds the true meaning of Christmas." After day 2, we had our first casualty, so we had to get out their Fisher Price Little People nativity for more unbreakable play.

Overheard at my birthday

2011-12-01T16:02:00.001-05:00

This year the girls have gotten a lot better at keeping birthday secrets. Not once did Ella have to say, "Mom pretend like you're not listening" like last year. They did try to throw me off the trail several times, though. First Ella kept insisting that they had gotten me a big rock. Then the day before my birthday, she announced that they had gotten me two dinosaurs and five pieces of carrion.

On my birthday, Ella whispered to Brent that she and Mabel had to go upstairs to their bedroom, sneak out the window and time travel back to get the two dinosaurs and the five pieces of carrion. Brent asked if he would need to make room in the fridge for the carrion, but Ella assured him that "Dinosaurs didn't use refrigeration. We can just keep it in the front yard or on the back steps."

I have to admit I was pretty disappointed when I didn't get the carrion. Just kidding. But I was thrilled with the lovely pearl necklace and other accessories they picked out Ella insisted they get the one with three strands for the three girls.Oh, and also they got me a "lemonator" so I can stop using up all of our packing tape to badly laminate things. Woo hoo!

Brent also made me an awesome make-up Thanksgiving dinner since we were on the road, and a beautiful cake. Beatrix was sitting on my lap when the cake was cut and went to dive in with both hands. I said, "Beatrix." She looked at me, then picked up the fork and went for the cake. Excellent manners for a nine-month-old. She got her own piece of cake and pronounced it "goo," which is her highest compliment.

Fall Vaventures: West Virginia

2011-12-01T15:56:00.001-05:00

We've been off to West Virginia for a little vacation. We really enjoyed our cabin in the woods with the big fireplace, and visiting with our deer friend who stopped to peek in our window.

We had lots of fun with Mamaw and Papaw too. The girls especially liked making Barbie clothes with Mamaw, who came armed with a big bag of stray socks and some scissors. It was a good thing because the girls realized when we got there that there Barbies were way underdressed for the chilly mornings. It turns out you can make a surprising number of clothes from socks, everything from skirts to ponchos to hats and belts. The girls are all set to make more clothes at Christmas.

Pilgrims and Native Americans

2011-11-16T07:02:00.001-05:00

We've been learning more about Thanksgiving this week. So we made Pilgrim bonnets and Native American headdresses. The bonnet is from instructions by Martha Stewart.

The headdress we made by attaching a length of packing tape to the top of a construction paper strip. Ella punched out beads with a hole puncher and stuck those on it along with some feathers. Then I added another piece of packing tape over the back to seal it.

We've been also doing lots of activities from the Plimoth Plantation website. They have great historically accurate coloring sheets and this Thanksgiving Interactive feature called You Are the Historian.

When Ella was done, she decided to build a wetu, the traditional home of the Wampanoag.

Ella's Forest Skirt

2011-11-13T20:11:00.001-05:00

I finally finished my second sewing project. I promised Ella I would make her a Fall skirt in September, and now it's almost Thanksgiving and it's finally done. So we have renamed it her "forest skirt."

The fabric is a really cute printed corduroy I found at JoAnn's fabrics.

The skirt is a slightly modified version of the Oliver + S Lazy Days skirt. It's a free pattern online and pretty much the easiest way to make a skirt. Then I added an owl pocket at Ella's request. The pocket is made from a felted sweater, and I needle-felted the wings, eyes, ears, and beak, and then sewed on some vintage buttons for eyes. Ella loved the pocket, which was great.

On Board the Mayflower

2011-11-13T20:00:00.001-05:00

I've been trying to teach the girls about the first Thanksgiving. So last week, we learned about the trip on the Mayflower. We were going to make a little replica of the boat out of cardboard and then Ella saw these big cardboard boxes, and a new plan was born. So we added some paper sails on dowel rods and they had a ton of fun sailing in their ships all day, fighting leaks and bad food and bouts of scurvy, and all.

And, of course, there were costume changes because apparently princess ballerinas also took their babies on the Mayflower.

An important thing I had to explain was that the Mayflower was not, in fact, a pirate ship; that pirates while quite popular in today's culture were actually pretty horrible people, and that the pilgrims were sort of the opposite of that. Whew. Glad we cleared that up.

We also had a Mayflower snack: half an apple with a cheese sail.

Turkey Art

2011-11-09T14:34:00.001-05:00

Ella convinced me to buy a big bag of feathers at the craft store, so we've been making some Thanksgiving turkey art. First, I just gave them some oil pastels and feathers to see what they would come up with. Ella's is above, and Mabel's is below.

Then we made some little turkey books. Here is my favorite drawing by Mabel. It's called Turkey Wearing Glasses.

For Ella, we did a little book of different colored turkeys with different numbers of feathers. We went up to the yellow turkey with five feathers.

Then we had to make Thankful Tom. My mom did this project with our Sunday school class and her kindergarten classes every year, so it didn't seem like Thanksgiving time without Thankful Tom. The girls wrote things they were thankful for on all of Thankful Tom's feathers.

Beatrix at 9 months

2011-11-04T16:13:00.003-04:00

Beatrix is 9 months old. Things she loves: standing. Crawling is just a way to get from one standing place to another. She's even trying to stand by herself. She also finds a lot of super secret places to stand like under the table.

She likes to be Mommy's big helper by standing at the dryer or laundry basket and pulling out clothes.

Putting things into containers and taking them out is one of her favorite new games. Boxes of ziploc bags are especially fun. She didn't put this pumpkin in the pot, but she does love playing in the pantry and chewing on bulbs of garlic. Nature's teether, right?

She also is starting to communicate some. She has her first two signs, All done and more. Though sometimes they get a bit mixed up. More can be hard to spot because she just puts her hands together, but yesterday, Ella was playing Peek a boo with her and she started laughing and signing More.

She also has her first tooth and is learning to feed herself. She thinks that she has to have a snack anytime the girls have anything to eat, and that she should get to share whatever you're having. So she's eating all kinds of things she probably shouldn't, but seems to be doing fine.

Oh and in case you didn't notice, she loves to smile. It's her favorite.

Pumpkin Carving

2011-11-04T15:59:00.001-04:00

We tend to keep Halloween very low-key in our house. We're not huge fans of the holiday, but we are huge fans of candy and also pumpkins. So we tend to focus on those things. The girls went through several costume changes from the huge supply of dress-up clothes we own, and finally settled on being rock stars. I asked Ella if she knew what a rock star was, and she said, "They're really sing-y and hyper." So I guess it was the perfect costume.We went trick or treating in the house, which was basically going from room and to room and getting tiny candy bars from Mom and Dad. They got enough for a few days candy rush. Fortunately they don't know they're supposed to get a lot more than that.

The girls were very excited to have Daddy home for a snow day. We read The Pumpkin Patch Parable and carved our pumpkin.

We had the girls draw on the pumpkin with a Sharpie and then Brent cut out the pieces.

It turned out pretty cute. Cuter than Mabel? I don't know about that!

Fall Vaventures: Snow Day!

2011-10-31T09:24:00.000-04:00

This is officially the year of crazy weather: record snowfall last winter, a tornado, a hurricane, an earthquake in the summer, now 10-12 inches of snow on October 29! I think this storm did more damage than any of the others. There are trees and branches down everywhere. We were trying to drive home in the middle of the storm and there were multiple giant trees down across the interstate. Pretty scary. We are one of the lucky few around here with power so I can post this.

But the kids had fun in the snow! And we decided to take advantage of the snowy weather and bake cookies and watch Christmas movies. And today's a snow day!

Pumpkin Obstacle Course

2011-10-28T15:45:00.000-04:00

It's acting more like winter here than Fall, with tempatures in the 40s and snow! But we're still having fun with pumpkins. Today we made a pumpkin obstacle course.

I spread out a piece of green yarn on the floor for the vine and then we placed stuffed pumpkins and baskets along the route.

First they had to walk along the vine heel to toe without falling off.

Then they had to pick up a basket and carry it with both hands while walking.
Next, they had to carry the basket with a pumpkin inside.

Finally they had to stop at each basket, pick it up, walk to the next pumpkin, put the pumpkin inside and leave it there. Then they had to do the same thing with each pumpkin until all the baskets were full.

When we were done, we sorted our pumpkins and baskets by size, largest to smallest.

Pumpkin Art

2011-10-28T15:39:00.000-04:00

We made some pumpkin paintings inspired by these at Joyfully Weary.

To make them, you use your fists to make a pumpkin print. You paint your fingers orange from knuckle to knuckle.

Then press them down on the paper to make a pumpkin print.Then you add green stems and vines. Mabel's painting is at the top. Ella's is below.

And Beatrix made her first painting too. For hers, I put the paint on the palm of her hand. Ella went back and added some stems for us. Yay for baby art!

Pumpkin Fun

2011-10-28T15:22:00.000-04:00

We've been learning about pumpkins this week. We made pumpkin muffins from an actual pumpkin, an all-day experience with all kinds of opportunities for using our fine motor skills, and for learning how to accomplish a task with a very tired, unhappy baby under foot. Ella said they were the best muffins ever. I hope so.

We also learned about how pumpkins grow with this activity from My Montessori Journey.

And we made this fun marble corn maze that I saw on pinterest made by Katie of Ohdeedoh. Her original is way cooler than ours.

And we did some math using candy pumpkins and pumpkin seeds.

The girls are really into memorizing short things like Bible verses and poems, which is totally surprising to me, but fun. Ella picked up this one really quickly and loved it. (Found on canteach. author unknown)

Pumpkin pumpkin
big and round,
I'm glad you grow
upon the ground.
I'm glad you don't
grow in a tree
for then you might
fall down on me.

We also rewrote the song "Down by the Bay" to be
"Down on the farm, where the pumpkins grow, back to my home, I dare not go, for if I did, my mother would say, did you ever see a ..." We got out all of our farm animal figurines and made up rhymes for them to complete the song. The girls love singing so they had lots of fun with this.

Three Little Piggies Dress

2011-10-27T16:15:00.001-04:00

I finally finished Mabel's dress for her birthday, only three weeks late. The design kept getting simpler and simpler as the weeks progressed. The t-shirt is from H&M and I cut it off and sewed on the skirt and pocket.

The fabric is drawings by Mary Engelbreit with different fairy tale characters including the three little pigs. There's also a cute little piggie button on the pocket.

Play Dough Coral Reef

2011-10-27T08:50:00.000-04:00

For our last ocean project, we made play dough coral reefs. These were simple to make and fun. We just took some play dough, and decorated it with pasta to look like coral. The tri-color rotini looked the most like coral.

The water is a gallon zipper bag filled with cheap, blue shampoo. We made them to trace our letters, but the girls were not really interested, so we repurposed them as a mini-ocean and they worked great. Ella used her new Coral Reef and Baby Sea Life Toob animals to play in the water. We also used our mini fish erasers.

Happy Birthday Ella!

2011-10-26T09:21:00.000-04:00

Ella is five years old! She's grown so much. I can't believe it. Here she is at one month old and at five years old.

Ella loves art, music, animals, and all things shiny. Her favorite color is either red or every color of the rainbow. She wants to be an artist when she grows up, and if given a pad of watercolor paper, will paint all 12 pages in one sitting. But she also loves science and making discoveries about rocks, dinosaurs and animals, especially sea life. She loves to build things, whether it be with blocks or anything loose in the house. She likes to write words by copying the letters out of books or anything with words really. Whatever she is into, she is into completely.

She loves dressing up in fancy clothes. She is still partial to sparkle shoes, though she has added cowboy boots to the rotation. She narrates most of her day in song, sung at full volume. She likes making up new songs and has recently taken to writing poetry.
Her first poem:
"Day and night
Children are the greatest sight."

She does not walk, she prances. She does not rest, she dances. She especially loves to dance with her baby sister. Beatrix loves it too.

I recently read the book, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and the main character reminded me so much of Ella. In one part of the book, Rebecca's aunt is implying that Rebecca is too lively, and a visiting missionary says that more problems have been caused in life because of deficient vitality than excessive vitality. She is our lively, energetic girl.

Her cruise director side comes out strong at her birthday, so I have found that it is best to give Ella full creative control on her birthday. So she and Mabel got to decorate her Under the Sea cake.

As you can see, they did a much more amazing job than I could have done!

She also drew fishy faces on all her balloons and helped put up the decorations. Daddy decided she needed a few surprises though, so she also got a seaweed chandelier and a fish bowl full of snack mix.

Happy fifth birthday, beautiful, vivacious girl!

Fall Vaventures: Homecoming

2011-10-26T08:38:00.003-04:00

We spent Saturday at our college homecoming. I think there was a football game going on somewhere, but for the girls it was all about the free stuff. When Ella got home, she set up a little table and played giving out penants, megaphones, little footballs, and pom poms.

There was also the world's biggest beach ball....

And lots of free food and balloon animals. I headed for the balloon animal line thinking it was about half the length it was, but by the time we got there, I had to commit to it. So I earned my parenting merit badge standing in that line. But the results were worth it, I guess: a pig, of course.

It was at least helpful when Ella ran off into the crowd and I was able to say, "Ella, you can't run off like that. If you hadn't had a giant octopus on your head, I never would have found you!"

Under the Sea Snack Mix

2011-10-20T20:29:00.000-04:00

We made another thematic trail mix this week for snack: Under the Sea Snack mix. It's not the healthiest mix as it's pretty heavy on the crackers, but the girls loved it.

Under the Sea Snack Mix
Assorted Goldfish crackers: we used rainbow, cheese, pretzel, and chocolate graham
Cheddar Whale Crackers (Ella insisted we needed Goldwhales, and Goldsharks too)
Oyster Crackers
Strawberry-yogurt covered raisin pink pearls
Banana chip sea shells

We also had some fun with Goldfish crackers using these Fish Cracker math activities from PreKinders. You sort the rainbow Goldfish by color, count them, graph them, and make patterns with them.

Ocean Art

2011-10-20T07:35:00.000-04:00

We made some art inspired by the book Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. Rainbow Fish, if you haven't read it, is a book about a beautiful but selfish fish who learns to the joy of sharing with his friends. We got out our watercolors. Above is Mabel's rainbow fish with the shimmery scale. I love 3-year-old watercolor paintings so much.

Then we started painting other sea creatures too. I loved Ella's invention of the chocolate-chip cookie sea anemone. We had seen a chocolate chip starfish in one of our books.

Last week, we also tried drawing pictures of sea life by looking at photos or illustrations of them. Mabel's jellyfish was not half bad, I thought.

And Ella did the whole crew: whale, jelly fish, crab, fish, octopus, lobster, shark, and eel.

Also Mabel did her first picture of Daddy that looked like a person. She had me do the eyes, but then she made sure he had fingers, toes, and hair.

Bubble Wrap Painting

2011-10-19T20:16:00.001-04:00

We've been doing a lot of ocean art lately. We started a big ocean mural and are going to be adding animals as we go. To paint the ocean, we used bubble wrap to make a fun print. I taped some bubble wrap on our rolling pin, spread on some washable paint and we rolled.

Then for even more fun, the girls added some handprint sea weed.

Because all this painting still wasn't enough, we made a sea turtle out of a paper bowl and paper plate. We read the book One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies and the girls absolutely fell in love with it. Ella said she wanted to read it a hundred times. It's a non-fiction picture book about the life of a loggerhead turtle. It has quite a bit of information without being totally overwhelming and lovely illustrations.

The girls have also really loved I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry. It's a fiction book about a giant squid who thinks he's the biggest thing in the ocean. There's a funny twist at the end, so I won't ruin it for you, but Mabel thinks it's especially funny.

Food for Thought

2011-10-17T09:27:00.001-04:00

Some Monday food for thought from Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child's Unique Core Personality by Michael Gurian

"We're conditioned to create families whose standard of success is how a child will function as a competitor at the highest level of the competitive hierarchy. In the shadow of this stressor, we hyperprepare children from prebirth to entrance into the "best" college or highest-paying job even though we know that 1) most children will not achieve this top-end acquisition, nor need to in order to be successful and happy; and 2) that we and all other adults end up most successful and happy by living and growing in sync with who we really are, not by making huge amounts or money or fitting a rigid mold."

I was really struck by this passage I read recently. It's such a small, niggling thing this worry about your child's future and if they will make it. Will they be successful? I think it first happened for me when most of my friends started enrolling their 3-year-olds in preschool. It didn't seem right for our family, and, yet, what if we were making a bad decision? What if she missed learning some crucial thing that would help her succeed and yes, get into a very good college. Wow, how much time we invest these days worrying about college when our children are four.

I spent my preschool years playing outside or under the table at Grandma's house. I attended a very good college, and I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with my preschool years. Or maybe it did, I did write my best essay on watching the stars at the top of Spruce Knob in West Virginia. I excelled in writing in college, and I'm pretty sure the reason is that my voice didn't sound like everyone else's. I spent thousands of dollars on education and when I had my first baby, gave up all my "earning potential" to throw myself into the fray of dirty diapers and mud pies. Brent and I were talking the other day about how much time we invest in our twenties wondering what we will be, preparing ourselves for a career, trying to find the thing we are meant to do. Yet, you don't think much at all about how you will respond to the thing that will change your life completely: parenthood.

Most mornings the task in front of me of raising three girls, and hoping, beyond hope, that they will actually turn into civilized adults some day, seems daunting. Yet, I am learning each day that is not just about raising "future adults," but about raising three unique individuals with their own personalities, talents, and weaknesses, giving them lots of time to play, and hopefully helping them to find a place in the world where they can feel contentment and joy whether that be at the "best" college, at home with their own babies, or sitting on a mountain top somewhere staring at the stars.

Thoughts? Comments?

Ocean Sensory Bin

2011-10-15T18:58:00.000-04:00

The girls had fun with this ocean sensory bin. It would have been better if I had something blue as the base, but instead I just used the flax seeds from the Tea bin. I added seashells, pebbles, marbles, glass gems, turtle and seal beads, and 100 fish and flower mini-erasers. I put some numbers inside the shells hoping Ella might count out the erasers and match them with the right numbers. But she had other ideas...

She quickly dug out all the erasers, sorted them into sets, and put them back into their original containers.Mabel gave it a try, though.

And the big sea shells made perfect scoops for some cooking fun.

Whale Mail Center

2011-10-15T07:25:00.000-04:00

At Ella's request we've started learning about oceans. She had originally wanted to do mermaids, but has recently decided that she isn't interested in make-believe and only wants to learn about real things. Huh? I wasn't really prepared to do a unit like this until next summer, so I'm a little behind, and am very grateful to other mommy-bloggers like Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for putting together great ocean preschool packs. Ella has enjoyed The Under the Girly Sea pack and the Montessori ocean match-up cards.

Fortunately, Ella's requirements were that we read lots of ocean books and play with her new Baby sea life Toob. That we can handle.

We also had fun with this letter writing center. I made a mailbox out of a cereal box. Then put together this letter-writing box. Inside are ocean postcards, notecards, paper, envelopes, address labels I got in the mail, ocean stickers, abc stickers, labels cut into stamp-sized squares), a puncher, a stamper, and some markers.

Then we set up some mailboxes for different ocean animals around the room and delivered our mail. I had thought they could just put a sticker on each card for the animal to which they wanted it to go, but Ella made it even more educational by using the first letter of each animal's name. It was also great practice for Ella at learning her address.

Make a Little Book/ Notebook

2011-10-14T18:35:00.000-04:00

The girls love to make little books and write in tiny notebooks. This week, I stumbled upon a super easy way to make a little blank book using a blank notecard. Michael's is a great place to pick up notecards $1.50 for a pack of 8 (or at the end of the season for 25cents!)

What you'll need:
a blank notecard
2 sheets of paper (blank or lined)
scissors
stapler

First take your 2 sheets of paper, put them together and fold into fourths.

Next, cut along one of your folds.

Put your two sheets together and fold along the fold. Insert into your blank notecard. Staple twice on the folded edge.

Trim the excess paper around your card to the size of the card.

And there you go: a little notebook.

Open your book and write a story about a baby octopus (or anything else you would like.)

Our Big Helpers

2011-10-13T07:50:00.000-04:00

Daddy had lots of help building his birthday smoker.

And I turned around to find our helpful 8-month-old standing up and helping herself to some garlic. Yum!

You know you've been reading too much Little House when...

2011-10-12T22:10:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime conversation
Ella: "Did your father ever go out and shoot and wild turkey and eat it?
Me: "No, I don't think so."
Ella: "Well, why not, is there something wrong with his eyesight?"
Me: "No, I think Papaw just doesn't care to hunt."
Ella: "Well, he should. His house is just surrounded by woods."

Fall Vaventures: Cider Pressing

2011-10-12T19:03:00.001-04:00

Some friends invited us to make apple cider with them at their csa farm. We had fun learning how cider is made. First we had to mash the apples.

Then we had to press the juice out of the apples by turning the crank at the top.

Then we bottled up our yummy cider.

Then we ran fleeing from all the swarming yellow jackets. We were a bit on edge after I got stung earlier this week and had a pretty severe allergic reaction. Who would have thought: lots of mashed up apples would attract bees? But we were happy with our cider anyway.

Piggy Collage Art

2011-10-07T08:02:00.000-04:00

For Piggy School today, we made 3 Little Pigs collages. I found some great scrapbook paper at JoAnn's Fabrics, which really looked like straw, wood, and bricks. So we cut out houses. The pigs are courtesy of an article from GRIT on pig breeds. The girls also decided the pigs needed an apple orchard blueberries, and piglets or "piglings" as Ella calls them.

Three Little Pigs Trail Mix

2011-10-06T13:57:00.002-04:00

The girls have been really loving trail mix as a snack lately, and I love it because I can throw together whatever is in the cupboards when I'm headed out the door somewhere. But lately, I've been getting a little more creative with it.

This week we had Three Little Pigs Trail Mix. Here's my recipe.

Three Little Pigs Trail Mix
pretzel sticks
frosted mini-wheat straw bales
dried cranberry bricks
strawberry-yogurt covered raisin piggies
A Big Bad Gummy Bear

Also last month I forgot to post our special September apple picking trail mix. So here's a bonus recipe. Sadly I didn't get any pictures as it was munched up too quickly.

Apple Picking Trail Mix
Apple-cinnamon Cheerios
Walnuts
Dried Cranberries
Toasted Pumpkin seeds (ours were cinnamon-sugar)
pretzels
a couple caramel candy corn or mellocreme pumpkin candies

Piggy School

2011-10-06T13:35:00.003-04:00

I let Mabel choose what she wanted to do for preschool for the week of her birthday, and not surprisingly she chose The Three Little Pigs. So we've been reading every version of The Three Little Pigs we own. Mabel says she can't choose a favorite. She even loves the Barry Moser version where the wolf eats the little pigs and then ultimately gets boiled for stew by the third little pig. We've been noticing all the differences in all the stories, and I have to say my favorite is The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas.

We've been doing other fun piggy games like telling the story with these pictures from Kidz Club. They also have a fun online storybook version of The Three Little Pigs on the site.

The girls also loved this Three Little Pigs Match Game from Making Learning Fun. It was a perfect preschool level game. This picture is not great but there are a stack of cards with the different houses and the Big Bad Wolf. You keep drawing cards until each pig has a house, but if you draw the Big Bad Wolf, you lose either your straw or stick house.

I also happened to find an old copy of Martha Stewart Kids with a whole section on pigs and this fun pig game. Ella loves to play it. Mabel loves to roll the dice and put her little pig in the different houses.

We also did some piggy math from Making Learning Fun. Putting pennies in the piggy banks.

Beatrix at 8 months

2011-10-04T13:01:00.001-04:00

Beatrix is 8 months old! I don't have the customary shot of her sitting in our green chair because, well, this child does not sit. She is constantly on the move. She is now crawling on hands and knees. She has learned to pull up, and this morning tried to take a few shaky steps while holding on to the couch. She will be cruising around the room soon.

She also is extremely curious like her Daddy and big sisters. The other day she made a major discovery. "This bag has APPLES in it?!! Whoa! I'm going to get one and eat it!"

She also had another first, her first word. We were at a store and the girls were running to Brent, yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" She started saying "Da! Da!," and then said it about 20 more times. This time it was Daddy's turn to be very pleased.

Happy Birthday Mabel!

2011-10-03T15:07:00.000-04:00

Mabel is 3 years old!! She loves the Three Little Pigs, the color green, puffy princess dresses, and armadillos.Also dinosaurs, princesses, and fairies. She loves pickles and oatmeal and sometimes eats them both for breakfast (not in the same bowl). She will only wear dresses or skirts and sometimes wears skirts under dresses. She loves to do puzzles, play with dolls and little princess and dinosaur figurines. She has always been a nurturer so that even when she plays with dinosaurs, there is always a mommy and a baby. In fact, she told me that she wants to be a mommy for halloween.

She loves music and to dance. Her favorite song is "Good Life" by One Republic. She asks me regularly, "Can we listen to my favorite song, the one I have in my head all the time? I love that Good life song. It gets me all popped up! I just love that whistling song." She calls her and her sisters "The Good Life Girls."

So she was extremely excited to get a mix cd for her birthday with four of her favorite songs: "Good Life", "Candlelight" by the Maccabeats, "Marvelous Day" by Stevesongs, and "We are the Dinosaurs" by Laurie Berkner Band. This is Mabel all popped up on Good Life!

and dancing with her new armadillo

For her birthday, she requested a piggy party. So we had piggy decorations.

And a strawberry piggy cake with a jumbo marshmallow snout and strawberry cream cheese frosting.

And she got the Three Little Pigs play set that was tops on her list. She was super appreciative of everything, including the special card and present her sister picked out for her. She kept saying, "I like having birthdays. It's so exciting."

So Happy Birthday beautiful girl! You're awesome and we love you very much!

Beatrix's First Haircut

2011-10-01T20:04:00.000-04:00

To usher in the beginning of birthday season in our house, we all got our hair cut. That includes Beatrix who got her first haircut-- just a little off the back. As usual, she was very pleased with herself.

Tea Parties Around the World: Russia

2011-10-01T19:58:00.000-04:00

For our final tea party around the world, we went to Russia. We got out my Russian tea set. We stirred jam into our tea like the Russians do. To go with our tea, we had Kringels. It's actually leftover Latvian cake, but Oma made it and she is half-Russian, so we decided it was close enough, and super yummy.

We finished the last page of our tea cup collage book with a picture of a samovar (a Russian device used to keep tea hot throughout the day), and some Russian tea party invitations featuring Russian architecture and Matroyshka dolls.

We read Russia ABCS by Ann Berge, and for our craft we made Matroyshka dolls. The free printable dolls are from Activity Village.

After coloring them and having fun lining them up by size, we got to make them dance too.

Tea Parties Around the World: India

2011-09-30T08:41:00.003-04:00

For our fourth tea party around the world, we headed to India.
We had chai tea, which was the girls' favorite so far, and I made some elephant crackers flavored with garam masala and cilantro.

We read India ABCs : a book about the people and places of India / by Marci Aboff and read the section on an Indian Tea Party from The totally tea-rific tea party book : teas to taste, treats to bake, and crafts to make from around the world and beyond by Tanya Napier.

We added another page to our tea cup book.

And for our craft we made bracelets. The one on the left was our first effort: a tp tube, with Indian looking fabric glued on and held together by a ponytail holder. But since I had to make that craft entirely myself, we did another bracelet. We cut some marigold blossoms from our yard and cut a piece of contact paper to a bracelet size. Ella pulled off the petals and stuck them on, and we covered them with another piece of contact paper and stuck the ends together around her wrist.

A Good Vocabulary

2011-09-29T12:07:00.001-04:00

My girls have a really good vocabulary. I know this because I am constantly having to teach them new words like belligerent, contradict, and criticize.

Just the other day, we were going to the library. We were hours late from when I wanted to set off and I had to get there to return some dvds or get a fine. As soon as we got out of the house, it started pouring buckets. We ran to the car and got totally drenched. Mabel said, "It is a bery blusterwy day! This rain makes me so angry!"

As I was buckling Ella she said, "I don't know why, but sometimes I just feel so obnoxious!" I think to myself, "Ain't that the truth!" But I say, "Oh, really!" "Yeah, this rain just makes me feel so obnoxious!" Finally as I am buckling Mabel in, still getting soaked by the rain, I ask Ella, "Do you know what obnoxious means?" She says, "Yeah, uh, no." I answer, "Obnoxious means really annoying." "Yes," she says, "That's it!"

I finally get into the front seat and quickly realize there's no way we're going to the library. Our car is on its last legs and it doesn't defog the windshield very well. So there's nothing to do but unbuckle everyone and go back out into the rain. That's when I realize, "Sometimes the rain makes me feel so obnoxious!"

Tea Parties Around the World: China

2011-09-29T11:41:00.001-04:00

For our third tea party around the world, we went to China, the birthplace of tea. Daddy was nice enough to pick up some Chinese treats for us at the Asian market. We had China green tea, Ginger honey tea, sweet rice crackers and husband cakes.

We read the China sections from The Biography of Tea (How did That Get Here?) by Carrie Gleason and D is for dancing dragon : a China alphabet / written by Carol Crane and illustrated by Zong-Zhou Wa.

For our craft, we made Chinese paper lanterns. I folded the paper in half and drew lines on it. Ella cut along the lines. Then we glued the paper together at the ends. Very simple and cute.

We added another page to our tea cup book. Please ignore the word Japan, Ella was working on the back of her Japan page, but it is actually China. The drawing is of a panda bear and the color is red because we learned that they think the color red is lucky in China.

Ella Finally Finds a Decent Toy Transportation Vehicle

2011-09-28T20:19:00.001-04:00

We put in a new shelf in our pantry and had left this spare rolling cart in the dining room. Ella came pushing it into the kitchen loaded down with toys, a notebook, and a trash can, extolling its virtues to me. "This tray slides out and Mabel puts her baby here and we play hospital. Or I can do favors for you like if you say, Ella can you get me some milk, I can put the milk here and roll it to you. And I have the trash can." I knew that no basket, bag, or box was safe in our house, as they were constantly being filled with essential toys that must be carried around. But this is a whole new level.

As long as they don't ask to bring it along to Grandma's house...

Tea Parties Around the World: Japan

2011-09-28T20:13:00.003-04:00

For our second tea party, we went to Japan. Since there are those of you who appreciate my candor, I will admit that the Japanese principles of harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility were not at all present at our little tea party. Instead there were two-year-old storm outs, Mommy losing her temper, and Mum-mum-covered babies wailing. But what can you do? Take a big breath, ask for forgiveness, put the baby down for a nap, and put the kettle on.

For our tea, we sampled green tea. For our snack, we had a bento box. Brent bought this for me a few years ago before the Bento box craze. I'm not much of a bento master here. It all turned out a little orange, but you have faux-sushi pb&j sandwiches. They're tortillas spread with peanut butter and wrapped around apple and carrot sticks. We also had Japanese rice crackers, Hello Panda cookies and pocky.

We read Tea with milk by Allen Say, A to Zen : a book of Japanese culture by Ruth Wells, a portion of The Biography of Tea by Carrie Gleason.

We learned how to make simple origami cups (or at least I did) at Simply Modern Mom.

These were supposed to go into their books, but they were too much fun to play with. So we cut out some other origami paper for our books and added Hello Kitty and tea stickers.

I found these awesome Japanese eraser stickers at Micheal's for $1.00.

I set Ella to work making a memory game with them, and that turned out much better than doing it myself. She went through the book and found matching stickers she liked. She put together "about a hundred" cards and then had me write a title card "Ella's Japan game." Later that afternoon, Mabel decided to make her own game too. It involved putting two stickers on each card, folding the card, and putting it in her origami cups. She loved it.

Tea Play Dough

2011-09-28T14:44:00.002-04:00

Ella begged me for more school today so we did a play dough tea. I let them use my cupcake tower, cupcake papers, and baking pans, and we pulled out our picnic play dough toys and a tea set.

As you may have figured out, I like inventing play dough recipes, so here's a new one: Tea play dough. I asked Ella what type of tea we should use: raspberry zinger, chai, or black tea. She decided that she wanted to save all the sweet smelling teas for drinking and we should just use the plain tea. Though the possibilities for teas to use are endless: fruity, spicy, herbal, black teas, green teas. You choose.

Tea Play Dough:
1 cup boiling water
1-2 tea bags
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp vegetable oil

Pour the boiling water into a cup. Steep you tea bags for half an hour. I used 2 to make it have an extra strong color and scent.
After half an hour, remove your tea bags and pour the tea into a medium saucepan. Add the remaining ingredients.
Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly until the dough holds together and forms a ball. Remove the dough.
Wait until cool enough to touch and knead on a floured surface until it feels like play dough.
This is the color it came out, so I just left it that way because I thought it looked like cookie dough, but feel free to add food coloring to make it any color you like.

If you haven't made homemade play dough because you worry it won't last very long, we are still using red play dough I made in June. I recently added some apple pie spices for fall and it's still going strong. The green play dough I made in August was slightly sticky so I kneaded it with more flour and it totally revived too.

On this particular day I learned a lesson. This activity didn't occupy them as long as I had hoped. So finally I sent the kids outside to play. They invented their own sensory and fine motor play that was far superior to mine: picking leaves off of our herb plants and cutting them up with scissors to make food. Sometimes the best school is just sending them outside.

Tea Parties Around the World: England

2011-09-28T14:27:00.001-04:00

We are taking our tea parties around the world this week. Our first stop was England. For our tea time, we sampled English Tea Time tea and Earl Grey tea. Ella surprised me by really liking the Earl Grey tea. She liked it even more when her father told her the tea was made from the bee balm plants like we grow in our garden. For our treats, we had jam tea sandwiches, digestive biscuits, and custard cream cookies.

I found these great cardboard tea cup blank books at Michael's for 25 cents each and we're doing a collage for each day as well as learning how each culture says words like hello, please, thank you, and tea.

We started reading A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond last week, so we continued reading that and have been enjoying it very much. I copied an illustration from the book to paste in our book, as well as the papers from the tea bags. On the back of the page is a little notecard with a crown on it.

We also read the section about English tea parties from The totally tea-rific tea party book : teas to taste, treats to bake, and crafts to make from around the world and beyond by Tanya Napier. This is the book that inspired me to do this unit and its loaded with ideas for all kinds of tea parties from different parts of the world and for different themes. Very fun!

For our craft, we made fancy hats. I had been showing the girls pictures of some of the amazing hats from the royal wedding. And they did their part to keep up the tradition. We used paper bowls as the base. Then we added paper doilies, lace, tulle, buttons, bows, and beads. I stapled some elastic on it so they would stay on. They both insisted on adding veils to their hats. Here's Ella's:

Mabel has less than a week of being two, but she has been making it count. She worked so hard on this hat and did a beautiful job. Then she decided it didn't fit right and has refused to wear it. So Beatrix had to model it for us. Cheerio!

Painting with Milk and Sugar

2011-09-24T13:43:00.002-04:00

I found this great idea for painting on pinterest and thought it would be perfect for some tea time art. This beautiful glossy paint is simple to make. It's just sweetened condensed milk mixed with food coloring. I used my gel food coloring for really vivid colors. You definitely want to wear a paint shirt because I'm not sure about the washability of this. (Also I would advise you to use some thick paper. Our fingerpaint paper had soaked through by the next day and attracted some ants on the porch.)

Here's Mabel's finished painting.

And one of Ella's. She declared that she could paint all day, which I totally think is true.

Pleased with Herself

2011-09-23T16:25:00.000-04:00

Who's that at the door?

Who's that pulling up?

Who's that playing the piano?
It's Beatrix! And she's very proud of herself.

Tea Sensory Bin

2011-09-23T10:10:00.005-04:00

I've been seeing a lot of fun sensory bins out in the blogosphere, so I decided to try a Tea themed sensory bin. Ella helped me put it together and as soon as I poured the flax seeds in, she was scooping and running them through her fingers. In our bin we have: a small tea set with pot, cups, and saucers; 4 tea bags (I used old ones. There are 2 black tea, a chai, and a mint tea bag); a small metal spice tin; two wooden bowls; a tiny honey jar; Ella added the marbles for sugar; and flax seeds. The flax seeds worked great for pouring and with the tea bags, the bin smelled great.

Ella declared that this was "great fun," and played with a long time. Four teas with sugar, anyone?
E

Tea time game

2011-09-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

I saw this cute tea party game by Eeboo, and decided to make my own spin on it. I used this fun free tea party printable from Arian Armstrong.

To make your game, you will need 3 copies of the printable and a die.
Mark off your paper into six sections, and mark with number 1-6. Cut out your printables and glue onto each section.

Then cut our your other two sets of printables (you will need to print more if you have more people playing). To play: Roll the dice. For each number you land on, you get the item listed with that number. Play until you have a whole tea party.

I accidentally printed an extra page so I made some little word cards too. When we were done, Ella matched up the words to the pictures.

For more fun tea printables and craft ideas, check out my Tea Time pinterest board.

Tea Time

2011-09-20T10:08:00.004-04:00

The Fall temperatures have arrived just in time for our preschool unit on Tea Time. A few weeks ago, Mabel asked me, "When are we going to do Pretty School?" I said, "What is pretty school?" "You know, with princesses and stuff."

So here is my take on Pretty School where we talk about how princesses should really act: with kindness, grace, and hospitality; not with the selfishness and bossiness that most kids' princess t-shirts herald.

We are going to be focusing on learning good manners, practical life skills like pouring and setting the table, and about tea around the world.

After reading several kids' books on good manners, we made our own placemats to help the girls learn to set the table. I downloaded the vintage tea placemat at The Pretty Blog. It was plain with just the utensils. I printed it on cardstock. Then the girls traced around different sized lids for the plate and glass. We cut those out and glued them in place. Then I covered the whole thing in clear contact paper so they can be wiped down.

Then we had tea. I put together a really cute real tea set for the girls at Christmas Tree Shops for around $10. That included 3 cups and saucers, 2 small tea pots (not pictured), and these little creamer jugs, which were 2 for $1.00. We have a cow, a pig, and a duck. The plates we already owned. For tea, we had Thai coconut chai, and a tin of butter cookies Oma had given the girls.
Since it was the first day and the girls were really excited about the new unit, we decided to switch Dinosaur Land small world into a princess woodland tea party. I got out some princess figurines Grandma had bought them. I used the glue gun to make them a tea pot and cups. The pot is made from an acorn, buttons, and a pipe cleaner, and the cup is a toothpaste cap with a button handle. Since then the princesses have had full reign of the house for their tea parties.

Fall Vaventures: Apple Picking

2011-09-20T09:40:00.003-04:00

We went apple picking at a giant orchard outside Boston with some friends.
On the hayride back with our apples.

And fun on the haybale maze. Most kids thought it was more fun to be on top the hay. Also Mabel looked smashing in her apple dress.

Apple Prints

2011-09-14T23:23:00.000-04:00

After our apple snack, we got out some paints to make classic apple prints. I tried to guide them toward red, but, of course, Mabel reminded me that apples can also be green.

Then they just started painting with brushes, and stamping apples with pencil erasers again. And then the fingers got involved. As with all preschool art, it's more about the process than the product. But the end product was some really fun apple art anyway.

A Trip to the Orchard

2011-09-14T23:02:00.002-04:00

Today we stopped at our local orchard. I asked the woman working there if she would make me a mixed bag of all the apples they had out, both sweet and tart, so we could broaden our apple horizons some. Fuji apples we love you, but there are other apples in the world, I guess. Since we were there, we had to also pick up a gallon of cider and some cider donuts.

Nothing says New England in Fall like a cider donut. If you haven't been to New England, you might not be aware of them. They are lovely old-fashioned cake donuts flavored with boiled cider. I prefer the kind that are rolled in cinnamon-sugar. They are the perfect accompaniment to a big glass of fresh cider. I have to say that I haven't always given the cider donut its full due. When I was first introduced to them in college, they served cider and donuts at what seemed like every single study break we ever had. They became so mundane that I just kind of wrote them off. You begin to think. Well, anyone can have a cider donut any time they want, why are they so special? Then you move away, and you realize why. That is why we have agreed to mail a package of cider donuts to our friend from college who lives in Oregon now. Yes, Sugene, we will get them to you soon....

Anyway, once we got back home we laid out all of our apples on the table and sorted them by how they looked: pink, green and red, yellow and red, and green. Beatrix who usually crawls and around and tries to eat stuff while we do school saw the table full of apples and suddenly got a lot of motivation to learn how to pull up and explore too. She loves to suck on apples and will fight you for a half-eaten apple. She always wins and there's no getting your apple back.

Then we consulted this handy chart I printed from 2 Teaching Mommies. The chart is for New York apples so it's not all the varieties at our orchard. But we did our best to identify our apples and found out we had some Honey Crisp, some Macintosh, a Crispin, and some Paula Red. (These were our best guesses).Then it was time for a taste test.

I chopped up three apples: a Crispin, a Macintosh, and a Honey Crisp.
The Crispin turned out to be tart. Ella didn't like it. Mabel loved it because it was green. The Macintosh was sweeter but still a little tart. The Honey Crisp was very sweet and very crispy. Mabel said it tasted "peachy." Ella said that it was her favorite and that she would just have to be the Honey Crisp Queen. Beatrix said Best Lesson Ever!

Free Fall Printables

2011-09-14T22:32:00.001-04:00

We went for about two years without printer ink. You see our yellow ink ran out, and our printer refused to let me use my perfectly full black ink cartridge because the yellow had expired, and that made me mad. But we finally broke down and bought some yellow ink when I began to see all the fun and educational things you can print out there, and they're not all worksheets. And now I can't stop printing everything...

Here are some great printables we've used with our apple unit:
100 apples from Making Learning Fun (Pencil erasers make great stampers)
Life Cycle of an Apple from Montessori for Everyone
Seasons and Clothing Matching Game from Montessori for Everyone
Fall Cutting Strips from Montessori Print Shop
Autumn Calendar Cards from Counting Coconuts
Apple Varieties chart from 2 Teaching Mommies

For more Fall printables, check out my Fall pinterest board.

Fall, I Adore You

2011-09-12T15:14:00.000-04:00

The girls have been positively rhapsodizing about the beginning of Fall. Ella's favorite lunchtime conversation is "What do you like best about Fall?" They quickly list off pumpkins and apples and sitting by a cozy fire and drinking hot cocoa. Mabel loves "new things to eat in Fall" best, and by that she means candy corn.

But in typical two-year-old fashion, she's deadset against wearing long-sleeves. So I've started an advertising campaign for corduroy, constantly extolling its virtures. Ella used to freak out every season about the clothes change, but this year, she actually picked out and is excited to wear a pair of brown corduroy pants. That's right PANTS! Unbelievable! My corduroy campaign seems to already be a success!

So since there was so much enthusiasm, I decided to postpone our next unit, and do a week on Fall and apples. So we've started singing the "Johnny Appleseed Song" and "Farmer Brown had 10 green apples," and reading Fall books.

The girls have really enjoyed having little books that they've made and can read by themselves, so I thought we would make some simple I love Fall books with pictures of leaves and pumpkins and apples. Then Ella ran with the idea and said, "Here, Mom, write down these sentences," and I struggled to keep up.

"Fall, I adore you" by Ella.

I love you, Leaf.

I grow in Spring and I fall in Fall

I'm sweet and yummy and you eat me in Fall.

I love my toasty taste, pumpkin bread.

I'm hot. You drink me by the fire.

I love you, my cocoa, you can't be too far.

But don't drink me in Spring it's just too hot.

I love you, cake. I love you, my birthday.

I like my mother and father.

Happy Birthday to you Ella, party girl.

I love you, soup.

Soupy girl.

Pumpkin girl.

Pumpkins, I love you and you're sweet.

I like how you look, my pumpkin.

I adore you.

I love you, apple treats.

I love you, gourds.

Apple pie, I adore you.

I love to eat you in the Fall and Winter, but never in the Spring.

I love to wear you when I'm walking, hunting, or going to school: a hoodie.

If I see a bear, I always run.

You know that's always right.

And Mabel's book: "Fall: We're Eating Apples and Drinking Hot Cocoa in Fall."

I love you. I love you, party girl.

Potty Party Mabel.

I love you, I love you, my pumpkin,

and it's so great to eat you.

Don't eat me in Spring, just eat me in Fall.

A brachiosaurus that's decorating for Fall

I love you, I love you, my Mabel.

I love my Mommy and Daddy,

and they love me

and my sisters.

Decorating for Fall

2011-09-12T14:29:00.003-04:00

Our decorating for Fall

Ella's decorating for Fall

Fall Vaventures: Pumpkin Shopping

2011-09-12T14:26:00.000-04:00

The weather hasn't really changed, but our family has declared it the beginning of Fall. The candy corn has been bought and we went on our annual trip to a local farmstand for gourds and pumpkins. The girls are so excited.We found big pumpkins..
.
and little ones...

and this little pumpkin wondered if she could eat them...
We filled up our wagons with pumpkins and gourds and mums and headed home to decorate...

Design a Dinosaur

2011-09-09T15:52:00.000-04:00

This week we picked up our sewing lessons again and designed our own stuffed dinosaurs. I got this idea from the book Sewing School, which is a great book and has much better directions than the ones I am about to give, so you might want to check it out from your local library. We started by deciding what kind of dinosaur each of us would be.

Mabel decided she would be a T-Rex so she became Mabel-saurus Rex.

Ella decided she would be a brachiosaurus so she became Ellasaurus.

Beatrix actually picked up her dinosaur alter-ego a while ago when we nicknamed her Betrixie Rhina after Cretoxyrhina, a prehistoric shark.

Ella drew each of our pictures with a black pen, and I placed the drawing under a piece of white muslin and traced it on to the fabric with a permanent marker. I cut around the drawings leaving enough fabric for a backing. Then we colored our drawings in with Crayola fabric markers.

At this point Mabel decided that hers was a book and that she didn't want to sew it. But she did want to add more pages. So she drew some more dinosaurs, dinosaurs with big cheeks.

This is the point at which I should have heat set the drawings. I tried to iron them after they were sewn and it was not as easy. We ended up tossing them in the dryer for 30 minutes when they were done and that worked much better.

Ella was very into the idea of doing real sewing with sharp needles. We turned the fabric inside out and sewed around the edges as you would a pillow. We used #22 chenille needles as suggested by Sewing School. I should have used the craft thread they suggested too, but I had a lot of embroidery floss on hand. Ella was having trouble sewing as they suggested with a knot on just one end of the thread, so I did it the way my grandma taught me to sew. I took 2 threads of the embroidery floss, threaded them through the needle and knotted the strings together so they wouldn't fall out of the needle.

Then we turned it right side out and stuffed the dinosaur, and sewed around the bottom edge using a whip stitch (which Ella decided to rename "the loop stitch.") I helped her by holding the two edges together while she sewed.

Our finished dinosaur!

Construction Projects

2011-09-08T14:14:00.000-04:00

Our house seems to be in a constant state of remodeling. Our future interior designer redid our backporch into a mini-house. She is standing in the dining room. The apple-butter kettle is the kitchen. The food is in a basket by the window. The potty is through the kitchen.

The entrance was a turned-over table. We had turned it over to protect it from the winds of Hurricane Irene, but it turned out to provide a lot of amusement for a day. It was a boat, a store, a house. To the right of the door, is a little spare room. Beatrix quickly learned how to crawl over the door and into the spare room.
And on the inside of the house, the girls built us a new fireplace yesterday. The bean bags are the fire with kindling wood and the blocks are the fireplace.

Summer Vaventures: Old-fashioned fun again

2011-09-07T09:48:00.000-04:00

We went back to Old Sturbridge Village since we had the free pass. I wasn't going to post again, but these pictures were just too cute!

Summer Vaventures: We're sailing!

2011-09-07T09:44:00.002-04:00

Our friends invited us along on a cruise around the islands and shoals around Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Yay, for Groupon again! I didn't know how the girls would react, but they had a ball. Mabel said, "It's so wavy!" and Ella kept looking for whales with her friends. We didn't see any whales, but we did see a lot of lighthouses. Of course, it only gets better in retrospect since the girls keep asking, "Remember when we went on that boat ride?"

V is for Volcano!

2011-09-02T06:26:00.001-04:00

We made a volcano! We took a small glass jar and packed playdough and sand around it. Then we added a few teaspoons of baking soda to the jar. I tinted some white vinegar with food coloring to make it more lava-like. Then Ella poured it in.

Lava!!

After a few eruptions, our volcano needed a little rebuilding-- a good lesson in how lava changes the rock around it.

Then we made some erupting volcano art. I added some baking soda to our recipe for sidewalk chalk paint and when we poured vinegar on it, it bubbled and fizzed.

Summer Vaventures: Beneski Museum of Natural History

2011-09-02T06:07:00.003-04:00

We took a mid-day adventure to the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College. It's a free museum and has a lot of fun stuff like mammoth skeletons and dinosaur bones. Ella is checking out the T-Rex and the Triceratops heads.

Downstairs there is a whole room of dinosaur tracks.The college actually has the largest track collection in the world, collected by Edward Hitchcock, Professor of Natural History and Chemistry in 1825. Apparently the composition of the soils in Massachusetts made it really good for preserving footprints, but poor for preserving bones. Some of the tracks were actually found underneath the paving stones of the sidewalks in neighboring towns. Pretty cool.

Beatrix at 7 months

2011-09-02T05:59:00.000-04:00

Beatrix is 7 months old and what a difference a month makes. When she turned 6 months and started scooting , suddenly our chill, good sleeper baby was gone, and Beatrix the explorer was here. (But as Brent pointed out, at least we got six months of sleep with this one. It's more than we've ever had before.)

One day she finally did decide to take a 2 hour nap. When she woke up, she crawled all the way from the living room to the kitchen. I thought that was her big accomplishment.

Then yesterday I found her with her belly on the first step of the stairs and reaching for the second.
She's a curious little monkey. but definitely still our sweetie. She wakes up happy every morning and is eager to give her big sisters hugs and kisses. She thinks that the girls wearing hats is the funniest thing ever. She loves it when we sing, especially The Johnny Appleseed Song at dinner. And she loves trying new foods and rocking her cowgirl bibs. I ran out of clean bibs and just started tying our dinner napkins around her neck. Our dinner napkins just happen to be bandanas. Decided it was pretty darn cute.

Overheard

2011-08-31T10:28:00.000-04:00

Mabel: "Will Grandpa be there?"
Ella: "No Grandpa will be at work. He only comes out at night."

Mabel playing I spy: "I spy with my little eye something hummingbirdish...It's the hummingbirds! I spy with my little eye something babyish. Beaprix! I spy with my little eye something fishy. The goldfish!"

Ella: "If we buy more tiny things at the store, we should give away some of our old toys. Because if we keep buying tiny things, our house is going to fill up and we'll be buried in tiny things."

Ella: "Mom, you know that pig that goes with Kermit the Frog? Guess what? She has always been fancy!"

Mabel:"When we go to West Virginia again and it rains, I'm going to wear my froggie boots and Mamaw is going to say, "Ahhh, cute!""

Discussing the possibility of the power going out with the tropical storm.
Mabel: "Will Beaprix be afraid of the dark?"
Me: "No, she sleeps in the dark. She'll be fine."
Brent: "Besides the dark is not scary. You'll be fine."
Ella: "You're right! I love the dark! I'm not ever going to use lights again!"

Mabel: "Instead of getting a car, we should get a carriage. You can drive and we can ride in the back and we can go to Grandma's house!"

Making Tracks

2011-08-30T20:28:00.000-04:00

After visiting the dinosaur footprints, we decided to make some footprints of our own. I printed out the T-Rex footprint from the Dinosaur Train: Footprints and Trackways lesson plan, and made foot stamps. I cut out the footprint from the printout and traced it on to craft foam. I then cut out a larger piece of cardboard that would fit the print. I laid a strip of duct tape on the bottom of the cardboard and hot glued the track on top. We taped the cardboard to our feet and had big, stompin' dinosaur feet.

We mixed up some sidewalk chalk paint. I used 4 Tablespoons cornstarch, 4 Tablespoons water, and a few drops of green food coloring. Then I spread it in a tray and used a small foam roller to roll it on the track. Then the girls made dinosaur tracks. You couldn't see the tracks very well until they dried, but then they showed up nicely.

Then we decided to just stamp our feet and make people tracks. Beatrix got to make some prints too. She totally cracked up.

Awww, cute baby feet!

Then we examined our trackway to see what we could learn. Looks like a 3-toed, bipedal therapod.

Summer Vaventures: Old Sturbridge Village

2011-08-30T20:16:00.000-04:00

Groupon vacations are my new favorite thing. Earlier this year we were able to get a New England Zoo membership for half price. Recently we bought discounted tickets to Old Sturbridge Village, a 19th century historical reenactment village in central Massachusetts. The groupon also came with 4 tickets for the stagecoach ride and when we got there we found out that we could go back within the next 10 days for free.

So we got to leave the Jurassic period for awhile, so Mommy and Daddy could go and admire all the vintage kitchen goods. Lovely.

And the girls got to play some too. The kid zone was awesome. It had dress-up clothes, and a 19th century general store and kitchen set up with a hearth that makes me want to redo the girls entire kitchen playset. Why didn't I think of tin cups and wooden blocks with vintage labels and bean bags that look like actual beans?! Oh, and actually Ella is not in the dress-up clothes, which were historically acurate. She decided to wear her new cowgirl boots, which necessitated a straw hat and bandana.

The historic houses were much more kid-friendly than most. For example, Beatrix got to try this cradle out for size. Yep, it fits. They also had a really fun fiber and quilting exhibit with kid activities.

But the girls favorite part by far was the stagecoach ride.

Mabel declared that instead of getting a new car, we should just get a carriage. You wouldn't have to tempt Brent too much...

Summer Vaventures: Dinosaur Footprints

2011-08-28T21:52:00.000-04:00

As we prepared to hunker down for the tropical storm, we decided to squeeze in a little summer adventure and stop at the Dinosaur Footprints we drive by almost every day. The fossilized prints are a short walk down off the highway and were fun to explore.

We found one! Ella brought her magnifying glass along to look at the prints. Mabel said that she was just going to look with her "eye shine."

Here's an even bigger one. Wow!

Then when we were done seeing the fossils, we headed down to the Connecticut River where there were more fun rocks to walk on.

And tunnels for kids to climb through and branches to hang on.

And yes, we're safe and sound from the storm, which turned out to be nothing more than a little wind and rain.