Kangaroos

This week my daughter wanted to learn about kangaroos.  So that's what we did.  We had an idea of a project we wanted to do and shows we would watch to incorporate our theme.  The weather was really nice this week so we got a lot of outside time. Even lunch outside a few days! My son was pumped we were able to get the water table out and use it more than once!  

Monday we read a few books on Epic! and watched a Wild Kratts episode and a Curious George episode.  We read "Over in Australia" by Marianne Berkes and illustrated by Jill Dubin.  If any of you know the song "Over in the Meadow," you can sing this book is to that tune.  It had a lot of great info at the end of all the different animals that live in Australia.  My daughter LOVED this, we read/sung it twice.  We also read "My First Animal Library: Kangaroos" by Mari Schuh.  We were hoping to find out in this book how far a kangaroo can jump, but it wasn't included in the info in this book.  Epic! also had a National Geographic Kids video on the Eastern Gray Kangaroo.  The Wild Kratts episode we watched is called "Kickin' it with the Roos" from season 1 episode 19.  The Curious George episode we watched is called "Monkey Down Under/Bright Lights, Little Monkey" from season 7 episode 1.  We watch Wild Kratts on Amazon Prime and Curious George on Hulu.  We also watched The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh on Disney+.  We watched the "Party Poohper/The old SwitcheRoo" episode from season 1 episode 22.  

Tuesday we watched the Read Along with Michelle Obama on our PBS Kids YouTube subscription. Mrs. Obama read "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss and "Can I be Your Dog" by Troy Cummings.  I appreciate that she read "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss, but I'm not really a fan of that one.  I get it, it's graduation season... I always hated that it was always the speech that was given at graduations.  That's just my opinion though.  I still have the copy that was given to me for my high school graduation from a family member.  My kids spaced out during this one or played elsewhere in the house.  They listened a little bit more to the second book.  That was a really cute story about pet adoption.  And Mrs. Obama's special guest was her two dogs!!!  So fun!  

Wednesday we did Laurie Berkner's #berknerbreak on her Facebook page.  Today's theme was Colors!  I need to remember to get my kids to grab instruments before Ms. Laurie begins.  Both of them scrambled to pick something quick for the hello song she does.  They were ready.  My son picked the Fisher Price piano and my daughter picked her microphone.  They had a lot of fun this week with her show.  We knew a song she played today, "Little Red Caboose."  That makes it more fun for my kids when they know the songs.

Thursday we ventured out to Target.  I try to recycle the store-drop-off plastics.  Since the lock-down started I've accumulated two big shopping bags full of said plastics.  We also had a return to bring in that I had before the lock-down.  We were able to do the return, no problems.  They had the recycling bins covered and had a sign that they weren't doing customer recycling at this time.  Bummer... I'll have to check at other stores if they're accepting store-drop-off plastics.  After that we went through the car wash, always a good time.  

Friday we did the Metropolitan Museum of Art's story time or Storytime with the Met. Again, the kiddos had a hard time focusing.  But they sat in the same room and hopefully listened to the story even if they weren't paying attention to the TV screen.  They did "Sparky" by Jenny Offill.  We own this book, which might be the only reason my kids stayed in the room with me.  At the end the staff member shows their selection of artwork that goes along with the story they chose.  "Sparky" is about a sloth and the staff member chose a print.  It had animals, including a sloth, dressed in human clothes in a scene.  So great that they show kids artworks from the museum to go along with the story they read.  I really enjoyed it even if my kids were having a hard time focusing.  

We had been so busy with other things we never got to our kangaroo project until Friday.  We found out that Kangaroos can jump up to 25 feet!  So we decided we would use our measuring tapes and mark on our hall floor how far 25 feet was. With a piece of tape we made a starting line. We measured from there where the 25 feet was.  Then we took turns jumping and marking our jumps with tape with our names on them.  Then we measured how far we all jumped and compared them to the kangaroo jump.  Boy did we fall short!  A kangaroo jump is pretty impressive when you see it compared to your three foot jump.  

Hope you all had a good week.  Hope you come back next week to see what we've been up to.  Thanks for reading! 

Art and Storytimes...

This week was a mixed bag, but we rolled with it.  Started the week off okay.  I think trying to force education on my two year old didn't work so well.  We've had to adjust for his level of learning. Monday we did painting.  I had my Seurat book, Magritte book, and my Modern Art book from college out for them to look through.  That didn't happen, however.  My daughter and I read a few books on Epic! that were really great.  We read "My Dog Thinks I'm a Genius" by Harriet Ziefert and "The Little Paintbrush" by Bjorn F. Rorvik and illustrated by Thor Hansen.  

I had some Crayola paints, two 9"x12" canvas boards, paint brushes, q-tips, sponges, and FINGERS to use to paint a beautiful painting!

Their finished products.  My son had more fun squeezing the water out of his sponge than anything. 

Tuesday we did Read Along with Michelle Obama on PBS Kids for the first time.  We found the video on their YouTube channel.  It was so great!  We'll definitely be doing this every week.  Mrs. Obama had a special guest for the second story too, President Obama!  The first book was "Giraffe Problems" by Jory John and illustrated by Lane Smith (one of my favorite illustrators).  The second book was "The Bear Ate Your Sandwich" by Julia Sarcone-Roach.  Both really fun books.  

My daughter and I made a road of Play-doh.  All of her characters and animals were finding a new home.

Wednesday we did another online event with Laurie Berkner.  She uses the hashtag #berknerbreak. We used her Facebook page, but I think it's live on her Instagram and might be on her YouTube channel too.  It's at 10am.  It's a half hour program and she has a theme every day.  She does it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  The theme was HELPING.  She had a brightly colored banner behind her so she could spell the word with the kids.  There were a lot of shout outs to people watching her Facebook live feed.  She sang a few songs and were easy to pick up if you didn't know them, like us!  I think the kids would've liked her Friday show better.  It was dinosaur themed and my kids both know the "We are the Dinosaurs" song. 

We didn't do as much as I hoped on my theme of the week, but like most people these days, I'm learning.  I am realizing now that I have to do two different things for my kids.  And that's okay, when I accepted that on Monday I noticed things were much better.  I wasn't so frustrated and the days went more smoothly.  Hope you all had a good week.  Check back next week to see what we were up to. Thanks for reading!

Baking Week

It was suggested to me by a friend to start a blog about my projects with my kids during the covid-19 pandemic.  Thought I'd start this up again and see how it goes.  I try to watch PBS News Hour every day to stay up to date with everything going on.  I really feel for parents during all of this.  Especially parents with kids with special needs.  Our teachers are SO important in our society.  It really does take a certain type of person to be an educator, in my opinion.  And some parents are not, and that's okay!  That's why we have schools!  Or at least we did...  It will be interesting to see what happens this fall with our education system.  With my eldest going into kindergarten.  I'm nervous and curious to see what they do about the classroom this coming fall.  

So in absence of school and libraries for my kids we do things at home that I have picked up from what my daughter did at her preschool and what they do at story time at our library.  I pick a theme over the weekend to do throughout the week.  My daughter had school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  So I tend to do writing and that type of things with her on those days to keep that up.  (Which the past two or three weeks I've definitely slacked on that one!)  I try to do an art craft at least once during the week.  I try to read books on the theme at least on MWF.  I kind of slack off a bit on Tuesday and Thursday to give them a break.  I know it's not the best policy to do, but we incorporate TV and/or movies with our theme of the week.  Because I still have to get the dishes and laundry done... And my son won't leave me alone if he's not occupied by a screen.  Even then he sometimes gets bored and finds me.  Outside time is put in in our mornings as well on the nice days.  That usually takes up at least an hour of our morning.  

So back to BAKING WEEK!  I really only did it Friday, I'll be honest.  So we started with Blippi.  My son LOVES Blippi, and my daughter too.  My daughter likes a lot of different things right now, but Blippi is at the top of my son's list of things to watch.  He has a video on visiting a bakery and he goes behind the scenes and makes things at the bakery.  

We haven't baked in a while at our house so we made soft ginger cookies Friday too.  If you make it from the link, it's a double batch from what's in their cookbook I have.  And we alter the spices at our house too.  Definitely recommend them, they're my husband and my favorites!

We read "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak the other day.  I should have read "The Little Red Hen" with them.  I love that Golden Book.  Verizon sent links with free service to a few educational site until June 22nd in an email.  I took part in the Epic! site.  My daughter LOVES it!  They have a reading buddy feature.  They read books for 20 minutes and they get to feed their pet a snack.  They have a great selection of non-fiction books that we really liked to get at the library when we lived in Columbus, OH.  They have a fair amount here in Muncie, IN, but not as much as they did in Columbus.  So today we read two books on that website about baking.  Really cute books.  "Save the Cake" by Molly Coxe and "Grandma's Kitchen" by Madison Lodi.  "Save the Cake" is felted and fabric animals photographed for the illustrations.  "Grandma's Kitchen" is illustrated by Francesca De Luca and I really like her style.  

Thursday we made a three tiered cake out of construction paper, buttons, ribbon, cardboard, and stickers.  We practice using markers, colored pencils, crayons, and gluing.  I didn't end up having them cut with scissors today.  I cut out the shapes to save time of the cake layers.  They helped me glue them together.  My daughter glued lots of buttons on herself.  I don't know if anyone remembers the song "not a river, not a lake, not a puddle, not a stream" from elementary school about glue.  I taught it to my daughter.  She puts so much glue on the back of buttons and apologizes so much for it because I taught her the song!  Haha!  She keeps doing it though, haha.  

Before lunchtime we turned on Sleeping Beauty so I could finish baking the cookies.  Why Sleeping Beauty you ask?  For the cake baking part of course!  Love the mess they make trying to make Briar Rose's birthday special without their magic, such a fun scene.  We made it to lunchtime with out too much of a crying issue with both kids!  What a day/week.  I've been struggling with feeling exhaustion.  Haven't felt that way in months.  I haven't been very motivated to stay on track with keeping the kids engaged in something other than TV lately.  It's been bad for three weeks now.  I think I'll be better this coming week.  I have a plan!  Check back in the coming week to see what we do.  Thanks for reading!

New Hampshire weekend getaway

Polly's Pancake Parlor, Sugar Hill, NH.

In July Kevin and I went up north to see some family from Texas and North Carolina that came up for a vacation in New Hampshire.  So to explain the situation: My dad's oldest brother lives in Sugar Hill New Hamphsire.  My dad's second older brother lives in Dallas Texas.  This uncle loves to visit New Hampshire at least once a year, usually in September.  But they wanted to do a family vacation this year because my cousin recently moved to NC.  Most of my uncle from Texas's family was able to come up to New  Hampshire for two weeks.  So to add to the family my uncle in New Hampshire has two of his three kids living up there as well.  And all but one of my cousins that were there that weekend have children as well.  Kevin and I were only there for a weekend, but it was really nice to get away for a weekend.

Kevin and I stayed with my cousin EB.  She has a little boy and he is adorable!  We really love staying with them.  We get to hang out with my cousin, her husband, her little boy, and her extra lovable golden retriever Kebler.  Their house is beautiful and their back yard view is the White Mountains.  It's so beautiful up there.

My cousin's dog Kebler.  He's so loveable.  Even though he's an older dog he still romps like a puppy.

The day after we arrived we went for a short hike in Lincoln, NH.  It's called the Lincoln Woods Trail off of route 112.  There were so many people there that day.  There was this group of trail runners that didn't seem too serious about what they were doing.  They ran past us and then stopped 100 feet in front of us and "adjusted" them selves.  One of them wasn't wearing socks...  They kept running then stopping the whole time we were there.  We didn't end up staying long because the amount of people was getting to us.  We stopped for a few minutes so I could take some pictures on the river and so we could put our feet in the water.  Holy crap was it cold!!!  And it was JULY!

Kevin and I taking a break along the Pemigewasset River.

After our hike we got some lunch at the Black Mountain Burger Co. in Lincoln, NH.  The burgers hit the spot.  I was pretty hungry.  I think we ended up being a little late to dinner at my aunt and uncles because of this.  That's okay though.  We got to see everyone and ate some more of course.  It was nice to catch up with my cousin that recently moved to NC.  We weren't able to get an invitation to him in time for the wedding.  But he ended up telling us because of the kids they probably wouldn't have been able to swing it anyway.

Our cold beers at Black MTN Burger Co.

This photo doesn't do the moon justice.  It was huge and really bright orange.  I took this from my cousin's back deck.

The next morning we had breakfast at Polly's with a few of the cousins and then we headed up to Littleton to shop at some of our favorite stores.  There are a few thrift and antique stores we like to frequent, there's a fun farmers' market, and of course there's Chutter's candy store.  It's always a good time going to visit my family in New Hampshire.  I would definitely move back to New Hampshire if I was given the choice/chance.