Spring Fever

My children have been felled by the vicious Spring Fever. Symptoms of this disease may include (but are not limited to):

Trips to the playground in flip-flops

Ditching footwear altogether at the playground

Twirling around the yard for no apparent reason

Digging out the Easter baskets and finding new uses for them

Having school outside

Trying out sunglasses

Excessive use of the swingset, even after the sun goes down

Should your children experience any of these symptoms, put them outside immediately and for as long as possible. The disease should wind down once temperatures reach the 90s.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Did you know that March 20 is Very Hungry Caterpillar Day? Me neither, until I happened across it online one day last week. I started thinking of all the stuff we could do, but I realized that Alice is still too little for most of the ideas I had, so we'll do it up big next year--if I remember.

We found some caterpillars outside Friday. Alice was very intrigued.

She watched this one crawl around for quite a while and wanted to hold it, but couldn't quite work up the courage.

I picked it up to show her how easy it was, and as a reward, I was pooped on. Alice was a little shocked and kept saying, "pewwwp!" all drawn out, over and over. She declined to try holding it herself.

Tonight we had caterpillar cupcakes for dessert and we will do a few simple caterpillar/butterfly crafts this week to get our school room looking like spring. Go here to download a free activity guide!

Hanging In There

Our resident monkey has mastered a new skill.

For a while now, she has been able to hang from various places--my parents' treadmill, bars in elevators, and pretty much anywhere she sees a bar or handle. This week she decided she was brave enough to try it on the climber bars. It's quite a difference from last year.

Now she gets mad if she sees Jack hanging on them.

She doesn't look quite so sure in this shot, does she?

I'm glad that we have almost made it through winter and we are so looking forward to the beginning of spring!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A little family St. Patrick's Day trivia: Alice was going to be named Patrick if she had been a boy. But she wasn't, so...

The kids woke up to a treasure hunt this morning. Well, Jack had to do all the work, but Alice tagged along.

He found one clue in his shoe!

The clues eventually led to the living room, where he went around and around before he found the leprechaun's pot.

In the pot was one final riddle. (Please note that I am NOT a poet, especially when it's late and I'm trying to get stuff printed off before bed!)

Jack had to rearrange the letter stones (based on these sight word jewels I found linked from Phyllis) to solve the riddle. I made a set of them so we can use them for spelling practice and word games.

Tonight we had rainbow jello for dessert--Alice said it was awemoff!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

All in a Day's Work

I got a job. Before you spit your Coke on the screen, it's just a freelance writing gig from my friend Mari, who is the editor for Metro Family Magazine, but the way Jack acted when I told him, you would have thought I was never going to see him again. "You'll never have any time for us!" he wailed. This from the child who could count the moms he knows who work regular full-time jobs on one hand.

Anyway, once he discovered that I would, indeed, still have time for them, he was excited. I am supposed to visit several places around Tulsa and do some short articles so people in Oklahoma City will know what we have here. We have some pretty cool stuff!

The Jazz Hall of Fame is in downtown Tulsa. I had never been there before, so I was interested to visit. Did you know that Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was written in Oklahoma? You can also visit the Center of the Universe (the first picture here) which is right next door. Jack loved it!

Our next stop was Philbrook, which we visit at least once a month, but I had a depressing realization on today's trip. After Waite Phillips built Villa Philbrook, he donated it to be a museum after living in it for only eleven years. So if a bajillionaire can't build a custom house he likes enough to live in it for good, how are we ever going to do it? Ugh.

We took a lunch break at the arboretum, where I got a lovely farmer's tan--actually it is more of a farmer's burn.

Our last stop was the Tulsa Children's Museum, which the kids love.

Alice still likes the stroller and the baby.

The kids wound down with some yoga moves. We didn't leave until they closed. As Alice would say, it was awemoff!*

*Alice-speak for awesome!

I began the day around 5:15 when Alice woke up (totally NOT awemoff, by the way) and just put Jack to bed at 10:00. The kitchen is in shambles and I have yet to write a single article. I think it's a good thing that this isn't a full time job!

Games

We use a lot of games for learning here. It seems like a lot of them involve beans or some other tiny thing that can be scattered around the school room by a one year old in under six seconds. Games are a great way to sneak extra practice in on a kid and hearing laughter instead of moaning. It even works on fifth graders!

I picked this magnetic hangman game up in the travel section at Target a while back. Yesterday we used it while we were at the dentist's office. Jack is getting to be a good reader, but his spelling needs a lot of work still. He got in a good twenty minutes of practice making CVC words for me to guess. It turns out those can be pretty tricky to solve. My poor man hung many, many times.

Today we played a compound word game. (I don't know how that pajama collar isn't driving him crazy. I'm twitching just looking at it.)

Each player got to turn over two cards and was trying to build the compound words they had in their pile.

Even Alice liked it.

I downloaded cards for this Chutes and Ladders game from Finally in First, which I found thanks to Amber. The math facts are good review, but Jack also got even more practice with adding and subtracting 10 and 5--and he was surprised to find it didn't work the same way as it does with a 99 or 100 chart!

We recently played The Game of Tens and Ones--printed it off and covered an old die with stickers and we had a good half hour of math practice!

This (sideways) game is from Mailbox magazine. I love their ready-made and easy to make games!

Many of our games come from the fabulous Peggy Kaye books. Tomorrow's reading practice will be from the reading games book!

And of course there are tons of great games you can buy! I picked these two up at Mardel and we'll be giving them a try soon.

What are some of your favorite learning games?

Read Across America

Lately this is a pretty common sight around here. I found Jack reading on his bed at 6:45 this morning--the perfect start for Read Across America Day.

We had our traditional green eggs and ham for breakfast. I know the eggs aren't scrambled and the ham is green in the book, but this is how my kids will eat them.

In addition to some other Dr. Seuss activities, we worked this puzzle I found on clearance at our closing Borders last week. Jack wanted to have his picture taken next to it so you could see how big it is.

Tonight we went to a Dr. Seuss celebration at the library.

Jack with the Cat in the Hat

Alice's fishbowl craft

Jack's fishbowl craft

They also had several games set up for the kids to play.

Jack was never able to balance the apples long enough to walk anywhere, but the helper had him laughing so hard, I don't think he cared.

I think this game was for Hop on Pop--they jumped on bubble wrap to try to pop it.

Not the best action shot, but Alice can jump pretty well.

I'm not sure what this game was for, but Jack had fun!

We wrapped up the evening with cupcakes!

Happy reading!