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Saturday, October 31, 2009

L is for Leaves

Here is our week on leaves. We did lots of fun activities. I made this activity. I cut out a large tree using construction paper and taped it to our wall. Then I printed off some numbered leaves that I got from this website. You can use them for a file folder game as well. What I did was print them on cardstock and then cut them out. I had them laminated for durability. I used sticky tack to put them on the wall. I would call out the number and the boys would have to find the correct leaf. We also put the leaves in order, and used them for some other number activities.We also used round sponge brushes to paint leaves on trees.And remember our tree that we made in the Spring with the butterflies around it? Well the seasons change and so the wall art needed a change too. We used watercolors to paint some leaf templates that we cut out and put on our tree. And of course we went outside to rake and play in the leaves!

Halloween and Another Update

Sorry for the looooong lack of posting. Things have been a little hectic around here. As some of you know my father-in-law had open heart surgery on Wednesday and my mother moved one of her stores on Saturday. The kids also had conferences so we had early outs during the week and no school on Friday so this week has been busy and chaotic and a bit blurry to say the least.

Both older boys conferences went really well. I was extremely pleased.

Wednesday night I was home with all 4 boys while Will stayed at the hospital with Grandpa. The boys and I watched a Halloween movie on TV and decorated sugar cookies. This is always a favorite activity. Of course with all the chaos I never really got a picture of the actual cookies we decorated but I did get a picture of Jakes frosted hand. I guess all I can say is at least he waited till after he was done frosting the cookies to lick it.Friday night was trick-or-treat. The weather was miserable. Cold, windy and rainy. We braved it though and the boys filled their buckets. We just had the three younger kids. Jake went to a friends house and watched scary movies all night. I am really starting to miss my "baby"!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

An Update on Us

Every so often I like to give a little update on what has been going on around our home. I get so caught up posting about crafts and projects that sometimes I forget about all the other events going on with each of us. So here is a quick update on the kids.

Jake It has been a whole week now and we have no new breaks. In case you haven't heard, he has broken both his hands. He broke his left hand in September and while still in the cast broke his right hand last week. For one day he had both hands wrapped up. We went and saw the Orthopedic Dr. last week and his left hand was healed enough to remove the cast. The right hand has a buckle fracture so they gave us the option to either put a cast on it or make a removable splint. Jake opted for the removable splint which has been wonderful. Mostly because he can take it off to shower and we don't have to mess with wrapping it up.

So, needless to say he is out of football. His last game of the season is tonight. He also is quitting band at the end of the quarter. He has been wanting to do this since the beginning of the year and as much as Will and I have tried to talk him out of it, he really just doesn't enjoy it. Other than his injuries he is doing really well. He is now taller than me and weighs almost as much!

Tony
He is doing pretty well. He is bored to death at school because he says it is too easy. Here is a picture of his latest project. A Ziggurat.He missed a couple days of school due to a fever and cough but has since recovered. He is really liking percussion in band and just got some new music to practice so it has been a little noisy around here. He is still debating whether he is going to play basketball this Winter. I am not pushing it, I figured I will let him make his own decision this year.

Brodie Brodie is at a really easy stage right now. He is so laid back and easy going. He loves to do "projects" and as soon as we are finished wants to know whats next. He went in for his 4 year well child check the other day and weighed in at 39 pounds. He is in the 95th% for height and 70th% for weight. He is doing great.

Drew Oh Drew. I never what the day holds with Drew. He is my little firework right now. We have entered the world of terrible 3s and he isn't even 3 yet! He is very determined, stubborn, smart little boy. He dresses himself, buckles himself in his carseat and tries his hardest to do everything he sees his older brothers doing. He just started potty training himself, so I am pretty excited about that.

That's the kids in a nutshell. Will and I are doing great. Will still has a job thankfully. He is enjoying his new Jeep and we got the old Saturn sold after sitting at the end of the driveway for only 3 days. We have lots of projects to get done before Winter hits. I am afraid some of them will have to wait till Spring though. Winter will be here before we know it.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Leaf Craft

This week we are talking about the letter "L". Leaves are the theme. I loved this craft. We made torn paper leaves and glued them onto a tree. Here is what you will need.
construction paper
glue
scissors

I cut out the tree and trunk. I gave each of the boys different colors of scrap paper to tear apart. Then they glued them onto the tree. Brodie wrinkled his leaves which I thought gave them a nice look too. He actually did that all by himself.Here is a picture of Drew's tree. As you can see he got bored tearing paper so he just glued on the big pieces too!And this is Brodie's. Also in this picture is the alphabet picture we did for his ABC book. When we start a new letter we make one picture for their 3-ring binder. For the letter "L" I drew with marker a tree trunk and branches and had the kids use their fingers to paint the leaves on. Brodie made some of his leaves "falling off the tree" since that what is happening outside right now!
Linked to Showcase Friday at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

One of the Many Reasons Why I Love My Husband...

Saturday I celebrated my birthday. As per birthday tradition Will decorated the dining room. I was quit impressed with his decorating skills. He found the streamers and even put on a tablecloth! I had fresh flowers waiting for me when I woke up.He made me pancakes. We (heart) U with a chicken. So professional.The boys gave me 2 new pair of "stretchy" pants. My favorite kind of pants to wear! My gift from Will was a night out. We spent Saturday at a themed hotel room. We stayed in the "Mountain" room. It was awesome. It had mountains and snow scenery painted all over the walls. It was very rustic looking. There was fake pine trees in the corner with snow all over them and the ground. We even had a whirl pool in our room.

After checking in we went and ate dinner at The Big Steer down the street. It had wonderful food and I got a free icecream sundae. From there we tested our luck at Prairie Meadows Casino. I have only been there once and it was a long time ago. I figured I didn't go there for my 21st birthday so going on my 31st birthday sounded fun. We didn't have such great luck. We lost about $20 and went home. (Ok, I lost $20, Will broke even). We spent the rest of the night relaxing eating wine and cheese that Will had brought from home!

Sunday we drove up to Colo and spent the day with my in-laws. We had fun playing cards (and beating the men), eating good food (mom and Jen made my favorites...snickers salad...ummm) and just hanging out.

My birthday theme for this year was chickens. I am bound and determined to get chickens this Spring so my cards, decorations and even some gifts were poultry oriented. My mother in law and husband gave me singing chicken cards. My sister in law gave me a feeder and waterer for my coop. And here is the cake hubby made me.And last but not least, the posters. For those of you who don't know, we always make little birthday signs and hang them up for decorations. Will was pretty proud of himself this year.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Fun Friday Night

We spent our Friday night having a movie and campout in our living room. Brodie has really been wanting to have a campout. All week we have been telling him we could do this. So tonight we moved furniture, put up sheets, made a tent, and got out all the pillows and blankets.We went shopping earlier in the evening and let all the kids pick one snack to share for the evening. We also rented a movie. Drew picked out Oreos. He really enjoyed them. (Sorry Grandpa Joel, he picked them and I couldn't say no!)We had lots of fun. After the movie everyone actually went to their own rooms to sleep. Everyone except Brodie. So Will and I slept on the floor with him under the tent!

F is for Farm

We talked about the letter "F" all week and focused on Farms. We did lots of fun activities. We of course made our farm mobiles and our muddy pigs. We also made these cute little sheep.The kids had fun matching up the animal parts in this file folder game that I made for them.They also made matches and we attempted to play memory with these cards that I printed and cut.We tried to play with our farm animal lacing cards. My boys are not a huge fan of these. They seem to get bored with them pretty quickly.The boys always enjoy doing puzzles. And here Brodie is putting together his farm animal puzzle. Next week we are talking about the letter "L" and will be focusing on leaves.

This post is linked to The Preschool Corner! Head over to see what others are learning this week!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Farm Mobile

Here is another craft we did this week for our farm theme. It is our version of a farm mobile. You can go here to print off the template.

I had the boys color the pictures with markers. I cut them out and then we hole punched them and tied yarn to them. Since we really don't have anyplace good to hang a mobile (all of my nails in the walls are occupied right now) we decided to just tape them to our chandelier in the dining room. Drew's is dangling from the lamp in the living room.

Here is a picture of Brodie's mobile.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Quote From My Little Drew


"Mom, why are you wearing your life jacket?"
And here I thought I was being fashionable for once!

Muddy Pigs

No this is not a post about my children, well I guess it is actually!

This is a craft we did this morning. We are still talking about the letter "F". The focus this week is Farms. I really wanted to take a trip to the Cambridge Apple Orchard/Farm but the weather has been so chilly. Looks like this weekend will be nice so maybe we will head up there then. In the meantime we have had lots of fun so far this week with Farm related activities.

These are our muddy pigs. I printed off the template here. First we colored our pigs with pink markers. Then I had them paint over them with brown paint (that I had to quickly look up online to see how to make since I only had primary colors! How quickly you forget those things. For those of you wondering it is yellow, red and blue.)

Linked to Showcase Friday at The Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Could it be?

Snow?? This is what we woke up to this morning.
It is only 10 days into October and it is snowing already. The little kids were so excited to see the snow this morning they immediatley wanted to get their boots on and go out and play. They did eventually make it out before it melted and had a little snowball fight with daddy.

I had a baking day yesterday and made 12 loaves of bread. Here is a picture of the 2 loaves of white bread and 4 loaves of peasant bread I made. I also made 4 loaves of banana bread and 2 loaves of cinnamon bread. While I was kneading the bread yesterday Brodie was playing quietly on the floor when all of a sudden I heard him yell "rat, rat". He jumped into the laundry basket that was in the kitchen. Apparently a brave mouse decided to run across the floor while I was standing there baking!! (Did you just get the goosebumps?) Brodie said he ran into the hole that is next to the dishwasher which was right where I was standing. That little sucker had to nearly have touched my feet getting into that hole. Ugh!!

Brodie wouldn't get out of the laundry basket until I "slapped the rat". I told him that is was in fact NOT a rat, but a mouse and that it was gone so it was ok to get out of the basket. We did however spend much of the rest of the afternoon in the bedroom until Daddy got home from work. It just creeps me out to think that it could have ran over my toes. I did put shoes on after the incident.So, today we went and bought a bunch of mouse traps and tonight my kitchen is like a land mine. Hopefully I will catch the sucker. I really hate mice.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

F is for Frog

We started the letter "F" this week. We have been talking alot about frogs. You can go here to find lots of coloring sheets to print on frogs. I printed some off and the kids had fun painting them green. We watched an interesting video on the rare Golden Frog here.

Here is the collection of books we have been looking at. Some from the public library and some from our own library.We talked about how a frog starts off as an egg then changes into a tadpole, grows legs and becomes a frog. We colored this worksheet and cut out the pictures and glued them to cards. Then Brodie put them in order. You could also use this worksheet. It shows more stages of development.

I came up with this game. It helps us work on our numbers. The kids are great counters but number recognition is where we need help. They had lots of fun with this. I used card stock and cut out lillypads. I numbered them 1-10. I gave each boy a rubber frog then I would call out a number and they would find it and place their frog on the correct lillypad.
Linked to Ramblings of a Crazy Womans Friday Showcase.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Thought for the day...or night...

I love this time of the year. Fall. Autumn. Everything about it. The weather, the leaves changing, football, warm comfy food, jeans and sweatshirts, candles burning, snuggling when its chilly, it just makes me appreciate life and makes me even more thankful for what I have.

Friday, October 2, 2009

A Look at Our Week

This week we did a little bit of everything. We finished up the letter "M" and did some review of other letters for the rest of the week. We played with our Mickey Mouse color matches.Drew did great sorting colors with the counting bears and stacking cups.Brodie used dominoes to make roads for his "tiny cars".We only got to play outside a little bit this week due to all the rain. When we did, we actually had to wear coats and hats because it was so chilly! Fall is certainly here. Here the kids are cutting grass with scissors. Don't ask why, Will told him he would give them a dollar if they would cut the whole lawn, they thought that sounded like a great deal. They didn't get very far.Here is Drew. He put on Wills work shoes and socks and was leaving the house to "go to work". He was annoyed at me that I made him come back in.And of course our biggest news of the week besides celebrating Brodie's 4th birthday was...Jake breaking his hand AGAIN. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the pretty green cast that he is wearing because I never seem to see him much. He fell on it Monday night during football and smashed it. I took him in on Wednesday and sure enough, it was broken. So, he is in a cast for 4 weeks. He just got his last cast off in June. Same hand, same bone, different spot.

There is always excitement at our house. I guess that is life with 5 boys!