Happy Reptile Day!

 Today is Reptile Day!  We have had Lea (who used to be called Leo) for almost seven months now.

 She's lots of fun to watch and pretty low maintenance, which makes her a great pet.

The first time I came downstairs and found her like this, though, I was a little freaked out.

 

 After googling it and finding out that she would shed periodically, I was able to laugh when I saw her like this.

 Today we made lizard cookies!

The decorators at work!

Fall Break Fun

 For some fall break fun, my parents got a couple of rooms at a local hotel so the kids could swim.  I took about 80 pictures of them jumping in the pool in various poses.

 Jack swam the length of the pool without coming up for air.

 Dinner that night was pizza and chicken in the hotel room.  Then my sister and I went to our room next door, expecting that eventually a kid or two would end up with us, but nobody ever came over so I ended up sleeping from 10:00 until 7:30 all by myself!

 We swam a bit more before checkout time.

 Alice worked on swimming to the bottom of the pool to get her toy.  She got really good at it!

 Grandpa pushed all four kids out with the luggage!

 About five minutes after we left the hotel I looked back and saw Alice was already asleep.

 Friday evening the kids spent the night at my mom and dad's.  Since my mom had knee surgery recently, my dad was the one in charge.  When we went to get them Saturday night, this is what the front yard looked like.  The picture doesn't really do it justice.  The kids had a blast, though, and got it all cleaned up today.

We also got to roast hot dogs in the back yard!

The kids had a great time, but they were worn out.  No one got up until 8:45 this morning and Alice slept almost 13 hours--the longest she's slept in her whole life!

The Fashion Plate

 Alice has a lot of clothes and she loves to get dressed.  Every night she sets her outfit for the next day on her chair so she can be dressed as early as possible.  Sometimes her choices look fairly normal.

 Sometimes she gets into the accessories.  Who doesn't need three bows in their hair?  Why should you ever wear that necklace when you wear the dress it came with?

Multiple headbands = extra style.

 

Sometimes she goes with a theme, like flowers.

 

Or stripes.

 

Or tiers.

 

And sometimes she just puts together random pieces she likes.

 

As you can see, her fashion sense doesn't stop when the day is over.

Yes, I do let her go places in her outfits.  As long as we're not having pictures taken and the outfit is appropriate for the activity, I go with it.  If she's still dressing like this in ten years, I may rethink that.  For now, though, I think it's adorable!

Nursery Rhymes, Folk Tales, & Fairy Tales

Alice started off the school year with nursery rhymes, folk tales, and fairy tales.  You should hear her recite "Hey, Diddle, Diddle"--it is the cutest version ever.

 

Working on her "Jack Be Nimble" page.

 

Most of the things we used were the same things I used with Jack (see below for links to books and things since I'm not re-linking everything!), but this was a new puzzle I found on clearance at Mardel a while back.

 

We did The Little Red Hen during Farm Animals Week!

 

We had porridge when we did The Three Bears.  Alice wasn't too impressed.

 

This time when we did the Three Little Pigs snack I was actually able to find the potato sticks at the store!

 

Alice loved this, so I'm not sure why she looks like she's about to cry!

 

I picked up these window clings at a consignment sale and Alice had a blast with them.

 

We also incorporated fairy tales into number practice, which you can read about in my post at MetroFamily.

 

When we did The Three Billy Goats Gruff we got to see some goats up close at the zoo!

You can find links to the different resources in these previous posts:

• The Little Red Hen

• The Three Little Pigs

• Little Red Riding Hood 

• Fairy Tale Wrap Up

We had a lot of fun and now we've moved on to pumpkins--which I will hopefully post about in a more timely manner!

The Pumpkin Patch

Since it's supposed to rain this weekend and next week public school kids are out for fall break, I decided we'd make a trip to the pumpkin patch before October got away from us.

 

Jack loves this one because it has a dark hay house.

 

They also have lots of animals that the kids love to feed.

 

Both of the kids kept reprimanding the goats for being so pushy.

 

This little guy cracked me up.

 

Alice loves to ride the ponies.

 

Jack's feet are way past the stirrups now.  He had a doctor's appointment Wednesday and he has grown an inch and gained three pounds since his check up in July!

 

Love these kiddos!

 

They have a lot of different kinds of pumpkins so we all picked out a weird one.

 

Alice was very excited to be big enough to pull the wagon.

 

She wasn't so excited about Jack getting to pull it back--until he offered her a ride.  He's a great big brother!

Art Class

I'm sure there will be more pictures to come, but here is one from the kids' first art class today.  A friend is teaching classes in her home and today they learned about Mondrian and made their own artwork.  Alice is the youngest one in the class but she listened and made big bright rectangles, just like she'd seen.  After she saw some of the bigger kids using tape, she decided to add some, too!

The Make Shop

 One of my kids' new favorite things is the Make Shop at the Discovery Lab.

 There are tons of different kinds of supplies ready to use.

 Each month there is a different theme and supplies and books to go along with the theme.

 When we went last Friday we got in on the tail end of the Paper Fun month.

 This week was the beginning of Take Aparts.  Alice took the buttons off this old Speak and Spell and made a barrette.

 Her finished product at work!

 They had lots of old toys there for kids to take apart and make into something new.

Jack took apart a TMNT and a dragon and reassembled them into this creature.  They enjoyed it so much they asked if we could go again next week!  We're not going back again that soon, but I did go ahead and get a membership because I think we're going to be spending a lot of time there!