Yesterday & Today

I forgot to post yesterday... actually I didn't forget, I was exhausted for some reason and when all the kids left, I simple sat down and didn't get up again. Closed my eyes (when I should have been cooking dinner) and took a nice little nap. My wonderful husband and children took care of themselves and let me relax... how nice :)

Anyway... yesterday started out with one of my friends taking out a puzzle (with many pieces) and then not wanting to put it back together. So, as a group we painstakingly pieced it back together... with these two finishing it off for us... How proud!!!

We have been reintroducing our Montessori practices... which I have missed!! I reviewed with the kids how to use their mats, and trays. It seems to be helping us define our work space and even putting our work away when we are done, instead of just leaving it and walking away. Not sure how we got away from using them, I guess babies can veer you away from somethings sometimes :)

I was going through some of my drawers, in the garage, and found this lacing apple... I forgot how much they enjoy it. I think it has been used pretty much all day... I just have to remind some of the 2's to use it on their mat and put it back. They have a tendency to walk around with it.

Little Miss M practicing rolling her mat.

For snack yesterday we had Chocolate Fondue... YUMMY!!! Little Miss M & her Mom brought us special organic chocolate chips to make the fondue and we got to dip strawberries, banana's & yummy marshmallows into it. It was a big hit. My son was a great help in combining the milk and chips...

We were going to do the communal fondue pot, but with all the sickness going on and the ages, I thought double dipping was inevitable... so everyone got their own "pot" of chocolate, a fondue stick and their fruit. Lots of sticky faces, clothing and fingers.

Some liked the fruit either way... but as you can tell, the chocolate was a great addition.

Ok, Little Man couldn't have the chocolate, but he had a good time watching us anyway!!


Today...

Sprout is really doing a great job of being independent. She is trying to take her smock off, getting her whole body through the neck hole was tricky... but she did it!!

And hung it up as well... Good Job Sprout!!!

We read the book Snowballs by Lois Ehlert. It is about using "found" materials around the house to make a Snow Family. The illustrations are beautiful and just looking at them makes you want to go outside and build snowmen. Unfortunately our snow is all gone and we had to make do with paint and paper snowmen.

Each child took a silhouette snowman, taped him onto a white piece of paper and sponge painted with blue and white around him. We then took the silhouette off and whala... a perfect snowman in a blizzard :)

Little Miss M wanted to just paint the silhouette snowman... but she finally got the hang of it.

I wish we had the collage material like the book to make more exotic snowmen, but alas... we again had to make due with black paint and the back of a pencil to make the features of our snowmen. The kids didn't seem to mind.

They came out nice I think...