While Daddy is at School...

...we spend time taking pictures to send him to remind him how much we love/miss him!

Experiments

I'll admit I have been totally lacking with the themes 'school' with C. But we have still been keeping ourselves busy doing lots of 'science stuff' together. Most ideas are from pinterest or that Berensteins Bears Big Book of Nature (I think its called that).

Here we set up string with little pieces of straw on it, then tapes a balloon to each straw and it is balloon race time. 

Getting better at writing and other pre-k skills

rubber band painting his thank you cards

pony bead melting - he kept saying he was making 'fractals'

 (anyone else's child ever watched Super Hero Squad????)

p.s. he is naked b/c he didn't want to get his clothes dirty during the painting time that came before this..

LOVE that profile... ahhh heart melting

There was a family day at preschool last week where they showed us all their dances. Caed has become way into 'dancing' lately. He shows us all the moves that his teacher teaches him. Yesterday we were in town and a clothing place was playing loud music and he says, "Um I think I need to go in there and dance for a little bit" - which he did, with some hilarious moves we had never seen, and then pouted about having to leave (until we told him we could have a family dance night at home). And Sean and I were like "Who's child is that???" and Sean said - "Your's dear, I was never like that, this behavior has Nicole written all over it". Right after we left we saw a group of kids playing on the steps and C goes,

"I need to stop and play with them for a while because I think they want to play with me." - Yep definitely mommy genes. 

Here is me when I was maybe 3? Minus dark hair and eyes I see lots of C in this pic :)

Making a volcano erupt, by far his favorite, just look...

at his excited face!

LOVE love love this boyo. 

Snake Bubbles and Germ Spreading

Today was one of Caeds 'homeschool' days. I haven't done any real units or lesson planning since January (!). But I still try to devote the morning to doing one on one activities with him. This am I saw this quick easy project on Pinterest called "snake bubbles"

You just cut the end off of a bottle (water, soda juice) and put a sock over the cut off end, secure with a rubber band. Then make a mixture 1 part dish soap/1 part water. Dip sock in soap and blow... 

(the site I got it from added food coloring to sock too to make rainbow snakes but that didnt work to well for us). 

C made a few with great success but then he inhaled while his mouth was on the bottle and got a mouth full of soapy bubbles, after that he thought only I should blow them and he would chase/pop.

On the way home we found two cool looking bugs so we stopped by the HERC (this is a super cool education resource center in our city set up by a foreigner for foreigners) to take a closer look at them.

We tried with the microscope too but that didn't work. I need to revisit some science tutorials (I haven't used a microscope since 9th grade!) I think it is for looking at super super small things???

Best part of the day, C wanted to show his classmates and teachers the bubble snake. So I took him to school this afternoon and showed them all. Even though I warned them that if kids try they will probably suck it in they wanted to let them all have a go at it (this is where the germ spreading comes in, as every student and teacher proceeded to take turns blowing on this bottle). And seriously almost every kid that did it sucked bubble into their mouths. It was pretty funny :) They kept coming back though after washing out their mouths with soap. 

Last thing accomplished today was this little bookof songs for C's room. We try to sing a song every night as a family before he goes to bed. And S and I don't know all he words to the ones he keeps choosing so I made this today for his room. 

Also I have to say how much I love this "Time Timer" my MIL sent me. We used them in the classrooms when I was in the states. You pull out the red to a time say 15 min and the red disappears as it counts down. We use this all the time :) As in "25 min until we have to leave" "10 more minutes of reading time (or tv or game time)" etc. It's a good way for him to visually see how much time is left.

Catch Up

For a while now we have been saving all sorts of 'garbage' for our building box. Here we took turns building a home for a transformer.

Obviously the best part was when the other transformer came along and knocked it down

We reorganized the school room a while back. We moved the futon in there (not in the picture) so guests can be in there too. I love having a couch to sit and read on with C. The poster above his table is also a new addition. 

Here is a super low quality example of the poster (the real file was 421 MB?!). The idea was from pinterest but I designed it myself with Photoshop. 

Funny note the third font down that says "Always tell the truth" totally looks like my dad's handwriting! I'm right aren't I mom???

Most of the 'rules' are phrases from this great handout that I have called "Wise Words For Mom's" by Ginger Plowman. Of this she says, "In a handy quick-reference calendar style format Wise Words for Moms identifies 22 behavior problems in children (such as disobeying, lying and tattling) and offers examples of Scripture passages that help parents address heart issues. "

Caed and I usually pick out one or two and talk them over during our school time. We try to think of examples of how to say 'be considerate' and talk about the verses that go along with it. 

Learning to play Carcassone with Daddy - we are games people :)

Mothers Day

Dads Away We Play

Sean Left for HK yesterday am. So here we are playing some of our new favorite games. This is called "Lair"  - basically C collects stuff from all over his room, or the house and puts it in his lair, which is sometimes in a mountain or on a pirate ship. The best part was that every thing he brought to the lair he would say, "I got the angry books of mads, I got the space ship of labs, I got the secret ball of mars." Everything came from a "land" LOVE IT!!!

Eating lunch with his "new friends" as he calls them

contact paper art - sticky side of the paper is up and I gave C a bunch of little things to stick on

little fingers at work

we then stuck it to our yangtai window

then we did the same thing with stickers 

and played I spy

The outlines from the peeled stickers make amazing superhero button pads for your arms with super special powers. 

and we started fort building

and homemade bagels = yum

this morning we woke up and imagined even bigger and better things for our fort - while making it C said, "Mommy this fort is going to be even bigger than God!" hehe

caed taking on the phone 'aka a half eaten sleeve of ritz crackers' calling Robin Hood the Clean to enlist his help (Backyardigans :)

The fort continued to get bigger and better. Though shortly after this picture was taken C had a melt down and when I asked him what he was so upset about he said {yelled} -

 "I am not responding to you!!!"

(he will get a bath today and a new set of clothes)

Baby It's Cold Outside (so we are just staying in)

Yesterday was the end of a long "staying indoors" spell for us. I hate to actually write down how many days we were in this apartment before we finally left yesterday afternoon {as I do usually try to get Caed outside at least once a day} but lets just say it was a record for us. Since it was Chinese New Year and the stores were crazy, and it's cold we have just been hanging out here - and it has been enjoyable :)

This activity is in the book "Slow and Steady Get Me Ready" - which I highly recommend It is weekly activities for kids birth to 5 years. I in half a bunch of magazine pictures then we went on a treasure hunt to match them

hard at work

yesterday I made 'water land' for Caed - there was a while story that went along with it. He loved walking to the 'big pool' through all the little ones. 

I enjoy out 'wet' bathroom very much. One of those mops in the background says "forever vivid" on it. Every time I look at it I chuckle 

After water land we went on into 'pillow land'. There was lots of jumping, flipping and swinging in this land

Blankie break. We joke with C that he needs to 'reenergize' so he takes a few sucks of his thumb with his blankie. I tried to make blankie an only sleeping thing after Thanksgiving, and because of my lax-nes it hasn't totally worked. (Though we did successfully remove blankie form school completely)

Then we decided to play 'prince{es} and the pea' - we stacked all the pillows one his bed. I ought to have found a real pea to put under - next time. 

We asked him if he wanted to nap on that pillow bed, he said yes, and then ended up like this - that is his head sleeping under the pillow in the left bottom corner. 

And you would think with all that Mom fun he had in the am he would be excited to go out and play after nap but instead when Sean got him ready and we were all near the door C said, "Mommy you're not coming this is just a Daddy date." And then proceeded to complain that it was in fact a family date. I told Sean that I need a girl and he said, "She would probably just want Daddy dates too." [true]

here is that man in our town who makes cotton candy with his bicycle contraption - a favorite treat of mine, plus it is just so cool, a mobile, pedaling cotton candy maker!

Happy 2012 - Year of the Dragon

Pretend fires all over our city - bizarre

And what would CNY be without endless supplies of fireworks?!

weeeeeeeeeeeeee